Cultivating Place

This week, Cultivating Place host Abra Lee explores diplomacy and gardens. She’s in conversation with John Sonnier, Head Gardener at the British Ambassador's residence in Washington, D.C. There since 2009, John focuses on organic and sustainable methods of care AND he has created one of the United State’s most significant historic orchid collections. Orchids are known for their extraordinary forms, relationships, and resilience and John, a distinguished horticulturalist, artist, and self-taught orchidist, brings us into that world – sharing what it means to grow them, care for them, and stay curious about them over time. We consider how the environment we cultivate – from gardens to shared community spaces – shape our thoughts and our lives. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversati

This week, when we think about Cultivating Place well, we get to the seed of the matter in conversation with the team at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Seed Bank, also known as MARSB. We’re in conversation with Ed Toth the Executive Director, and John Price, MARSB’s Associate Director and Native Seed Collection Coordinator. As a collective, MARSB is wisely managing and conserving its region’s wild seed resources, and encouraging the development of the sustainable and ethical Native Plant Material supply chain throughout the region – a gift to private and public landscapes and economies. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

Chris Felhaber is a gardener, a husband, and a father. Now based in the Chicago area, Chris has worked in public horticulture in a variety of capacities and with well-known organizations, including with plantsman Roy Diblik in Wisconsin, at Chanticleer Garden outside of Philadelphia, with the Perennial Plant Association, and as the host of the Native Plant Podcast. After nearly 2 decades working with people and places of great privilege and with people and places who would like more gardens and more garden opportunities, Chris now understands that gardens are critical social infrastructure and that gardeners are public servant leaders whose greatest tools are empathy and meeting people and places where they are. This is a fascinating Quantum Gardening conversation - join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engag

Brenna Estrada is the owner and founder of Three Brothers Blooms, a flower farm located on 2.5 acres of Camano Island in the Pacific Northwest. Brenna is also the author of Pansies, How to Grow, Reimagine, and Create Beauty with Pansies and Violas, published by Timber Press just over a year ago. Brenna makes a compelling case for revisiting our relationship to pansies, and her book was CP Host Ben Futa's own gateway to growing nearly 1,000 plants from seed in 2026. Their conversation this week spans many topics, with pansies as a worthy and common thread. As happens often in this work, we're reminded how this process of growing plants is just as much about cultivating ourselves as it is about cultivating our places. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The sho

Spring is, of course, perfect for some wild dreams about what we can and will sow in the seasons to come. With plants, and with ourselves. Jen Williams’ vision for her work as the founder of Wild Dreams Farm and Seed on Washington’s Vashon Island is to ensure abundance and biodiversity in our culture, and in our gardens, by growing and breeding open-pollinated vegetable, flower, and herb seeds that nourish our human and more-than-human communities. We revisit this best of conversation this week, just in time for some of our own wild dreaming. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In honor of the Vernal Equinox, and the balance we long for, we are joined this week by humanist, conservationist, Professor, and writer in residence at the Harvard Divinity School, Terry Tempest Williams. From her 1991 classic, Refuge, An Unnatural History of Family & Place, published in 1991, to her newest title out now from Grove Atlantic, The Glorians, Visitations from the Holy Ordinary, and the more than 100 publications in between, Terry’s writing is grounded in her love of the landscapes of the U.S. West. Her love and her writings profoundly expand our love for and understanding of this whole world we call home. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit

Spring is stirring, buds are swelling, and soil is warming. This week, we celebrate the joys of healthy living soil in conversation with Omar Al Shafie, co-founder of Northern California-based Teregen Ag, a purpose-driven, innovative soil and plant nutrient producer and researcher dedicated to advancing our collective transition toward sustainable, regenerative farming. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, host Ben Futa is in conversation with John Little, an ecological designer and public horticulture advocate living and working in the UK. His firm, the Grass Roof Company, launched in 1998. Ever since, they have been expanding and broadening ideas around public plantings, habitat, and those who care for them. John's not-for-profit, Care, Not Capital, is training the next generation of public gardeners with the skills they need to fully serve, and support the public, in the work they do. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week on Cultivating Place, Abra Lee is in conversation with Laverne Brockington and Vance Davis, great nieces of Annie Mae Vann Reid, an historic florist and entrepreneur based in Darlington, South Carolina. From the 1920s to the 1960s, Annie Mae tended a thriving floral business that grew out of her hobby flower garden, and grew her community with her.  For Laverne and Vance, their aunt's legacy is rooted not only in flowers but in faith and a deep commitment to community. Through dedication and vision, she nurtured spaces of learning, pride, and possibility through this groundbreaking work. The stories passed down through her family offer a richer, more personal portrait of the woman behind the blooms. In conversation with Abra, and in conjunction with her historical research, Laverne and Vance explore the lessons Annie Mae Vann Reid planted, the barriers she broke, and the impact that continues to blossom through generations. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for l

As the earliest signs of spring unfurl in the mild climates, think snowdrops, manzanita, the earliest narcissus, wild iris, and Daphne odora – hmmm, the earliest pollinators are paying even more attention than we are. This week, we learn more about some of our earliest and BEST native pollinating bees – the orchard mason bees. We’re in conversation with Thyra McElvie, who loves “these sweet little bees". And it was this love that brought her to gardening in her adulthood. Based in the Pacific Northwest, Thyra works with Rent Mason Bees, an organization that helps bring efficient, native, pollinating solitary bees, including orchard mason (species in genus Osmia) and leaf-cutter bees (mostly species in genus Megachile), into home and productive landscapes around the US. Just a few fabulous statistics for us Gardeners to keep in mind as to all that we can and should feed with our gardens, including our own delight: mason bees can visit (and pollinate) up to 2,000 flowers a day (read: plant more flowers); and

In these dark, cold days of February, when too much rain or snow, and WAY TO MUCH ICE, or not enough rain or snow, might be getting you down, we take this week, just in time for Valentine’s Day, to embrace, lean into, and love, the comforts of tea. We're in conversation with Michael Fritts, founder of Golden Feather Tea in Concow, CA, exploring some of the history and cultivation, the rituals, and the rewards (which are many) of tea. After more than 15 years at it, and despite massive losses to his garden and farm from the Camp Fire of 2018, Mike joins us to share the ecological, cultural, economic, and personal joys of a traditional Camellia sinensis tea garden in California’s North State. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on

Coming up this week on Cultivating Place, host Ben Futa is in conversation with artist & activist Gardener, Tanja Hollander. Tanja works with gardens, social practice, photography, video, and installation to understand how cultural and visual relationships help us make sense of our chaotic world. Very specifically, her Mourning Flowers and Ephemera projects bring awareness, often through flowers and communal acts of gardening, to the ripple effects of trauma and fear that communities sustain after acts of violence, specifically gun violence. In these chaotic and frequently violent times, we can all use some mourning to compost trauma into healthier minds, hearts, communities - and gardens. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a po

It’s been a full year since the devastating fires in Los Angeles, CA. Many lives were lost, and many acres and homes were burned. Many gardens, cultivated spaces, and gardeners were profoundly affected. This week, Cultivating Place checks in with two humans who are cultivating their place with care in the wake of this catastrophe. Leigh Adams and Shawn Maestretti are Studio Petrichor, based in Los Angeles. They join us this week to share so much more. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

This week, Cultivating Place welcomes Terry Richardson in conversation with Abra Lee. Terry is known to many as The Black Thumb: Orchid Care Made Simple, an intrepid, enthusiastic, and encouraging orchid rescuer, educator, and storyteller. Terry has helped thousands of people rethink what it means to care for plants, specifically orchids! Terry’s journey began not with expertise, but with curiosity and failure. He is a self-proclaimed “black thumb,” as opposed to the more well-known "green thumb". He began rescuing discarded orchids, specifically Phalaenopsis, and gradually learned how patience and consistency could revive even the most neglected plants. It’s a good winter's tale. Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud

January is prime seed-dreaming and seed-catalogue season. With that in mind, we’re revisiting a favorite conversation all about generosity, mutual care, good seeds, and seed people. Who doesn’t need more of all those as we continue to lay the foundation for this new year? Ken Greene – who goes by K - is a seed person. He is the co-founder of the Hudson Valley Seed Library, which in 2004 became the first public library-based seed lending library in the US; in 2008, he went on to co-found with his partner Doug Muller, Hudson Valley Seed Company, a seed and art company focused on heirloom and open-pollinated vegetable, flower and herb seed. Even more interested in seed literacy, sovereignty, and cultural seed rematriation, in 2016, K and Shanyn Siegel, a seed work colleague, founded the now-dormant non-profit, Seedshed, devoted to sharing and supporting the cultural, agricultural, and ecological diversity of seed. K joins Cultivating Place this week to delve into the long view and deep relationships born of

As we continue our new year, we’re once again gaining elevation and new, growing thinking. We’re in conversation with Jim Tolstrup, Executive Director of the High Plains Environmental Center in Loveland, Colorado, where, by development design, they caringly cultivate Suburbitat. Suburbitat is a land ethic, a mindset, and a book that all hold a vision of a built environment where suburbia and native ecosystems exist side by side and intertwined. It is magical in all seasons! And, we can all take notes. Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

In honor of the new year, fresh-faced and open-hearted in front of us, Abra Lee, Ben Futa, and Jennifer Jewell are together this week for a first-ever CP Host check-in. We’re chatting about what we’re looking back on, what we’re looking forward to, and what we’re looking to grow in 2026! Join us! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.

For our final Cultivating Place episode of 2025, Abra Lee is looking forward by looking back. She’s in conversation with Philip Norman, longtime curator at the Garden Museum in London. From New Zealand to London, Philips' is a life shaped by gardens. Happy Holidays and New Year! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com. All photos courtesy of Philip Norman, Garden Museum, London. All rights reserved.

In honor of the Winter Solstice happening this coming weekend on December 21st at 10:03 AM Pacific, we celebrate land and place-based cultivation from a foundation of cultural and spiritual care leading the way. We’re joined in this by Dr. Don Hankins, Professor of Geography and Planning at California State University, Chico. Of Miwok ancestry, Don, for decades now, has focused on applied research of indigenous stewardship practices as a “keystone process to aid in conservation and management of resources”, particularly around the cultural use of fire and and conservation of water. Don has been involved in land management and conservation local organizations and agencies as well as federal and tribal governments. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is

This week on Cultivating Place we celebrate one woman’s long-standing and loving cultivation of place in rural New Jersey. Janet Mavec is the steward and student of Bird Haven Farm, which after many years of learning from and loving, she now celebrates in word and image in her new place-based memoir: Bird Haven Farm the Story of An Original American Garden, written by Janet and photographed by Ngoc Minh Ngo, out now from Rizzoli Press. This is a conversation about a beautiful, ecological, and intentional human and place collaboration to begin tying up the CP lessons of this season, and looking forward to seeding and inspiring the coming seasons! Enjoy! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you for listening over the years, and we hope you'll continue to support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow and engage in even more conversations like these. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for ma