The road ahead is not at all clear as we enter this New Year & New Year.

Or,

as much as it ever can be,

is it in fact pretty darn clear? If we were present enough, wide-eyed enough to see it.

Perhaps, the road forward is deep green, and heart shaped, growing right out of the detritus all around us.

Native wild California ginger at the outset of winter, mixed conifer forest, Lassen National Park, 3,400...

Many mornings I start my day with a mind-clearing walk with my partner, up the road from his home of 40 years. We walk for 15 – 30 minutes before getting to the day. The most basic and quick of these weekday walks is to two mature oaks still standing at a curve in the road about a half mile up even after the 2018 Camp Fire burned much of this canyon last year about this time.

Perhaps 10 feet apart...

I’m so excited to send this update!

My first book, The Earth in Her Hands: 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants will be published by Timber Press on March 3, 2020 - in celebration of Women’s History Month and in preparation for International Women’s Day on March 8. 

It seemed so far away for so long and now it feels quite close - just 4 months! 

Included here for you all to see are...

This last month of Cultivating Place conversations all shared a strong theme of relatedness.

Dr. Lauren E. Oakes examined the relationship between Alaskan Yellow Cedar stands being impacted by the climate crisis and the communities of other plants, animals, and people who lived with them; Baylor Chapman of Lila B. Design in San Francisco considered the importance in her life of her (and all of ou...

 Rosa 'April Love' looking lovely in August.

August starts us out in the height of Summer, doesn't it? But by its august finale, there's the distinct sensation of the shifting of the season - toward the more subdued mood of late summer. Colors shift down and deepen a bit, the cycle of temperature throughout the morning, day, evening, and night are just that bit different, the light - the 'certain s...

 Ageratina occidentalis - Western snakeroot.

In my conversation with Courtney Allen, Director of Public Programs for the Native Plant Trust (previously the New England Wildflower Society) last week, she shared her own practice of trying to learn 3 new plants a day.

My ears perked up when she shared this and some of yours did too based on emails and messages from you. It kind of rocked me to think a...

 A Gardener Was Here: the Mediterranean and edible/medicinal garden at Melk Abbey Gardens - Wachau Valley, Austria. 

July of most years the paternal side of my birth family gathers - normally at someone's home, but this year we gathered on a trip to Central Europe - traveling up the Danube River to venture into countries, cities, and landscapes to which I'd never been - Hungary, Austria, Germa...

Class of 2019 - A garden-gathered arrangement for my daughter's graduation dinner celebration, including: Matilija poppy (Romneya coulteri, which do beautifully as cut flowers), Saliva clevelandii, Salvia 'Deer Spring Silver', Penstemon 'Garnet', Trileleia laxa, Achillea 'Moonshine',

and common Oregano in bud. 

This is a moment - a place if you will - in the cycle of the seasons which is ripe with...

Native California Bulbs of Spring, Butte County, CA

I love a seasonally aligned calendar date. You may have noticed– kicking off our Habitat series with the Vernal Equinox, ending it with Earth Day – May Day last week and Mother’s Day coming up here in the U.S.  I know - and shrug my shoulders and roll my eyes at how such days have been co-opted from their grounded origins into service of the indus...

Spring wildflower mosaic, Colusa County, CA

Spring is here - with her rain, hail, frosts, sun and.......flowers! In the garden and on the trail. The native bees - solitary and bumble varieties - are waking up: hungry; hummingbirds and migrating butterflies, too. And the flowers are replying with plenty this year here. It's like seeing old friends after too long a time, isn't it? They start to bloom...

The Shooting Stars are out - Spring is almost here!

Oh my shooting stars...✨✨✨

One week till spring - till the light is once again on our side. Though the dark was welcome and needed, the return to lightness is equally welcome in its season. In celebration of the Vernal Equinox, this year Cultivating Place kicks off a special monthly audio #gardenlifeloveletter for our generous donors. For all of yo...

Late Winter - Oak Woodland. Canyon Creek, Butte County, CA

Happy March my friends – in like a lion and out like a lamb – that’s what they say right? Oh my goodness….in the Northern Hemisphere we are so close to our hours of daylight equaling and numbering greater than our hours of darkness – the winter season is in its final stretches. Here – on warmish mornings you can tell the birds feel it, hand...

Pacific Chorus Frog - Butte County, CA

Winter's inner-seasons are marked in many ways. Each marker holds its own small, perfect replica of the struggle and tension embodied in all such life-altering, life-creating transitions. A tension of waiting and watching. A pregnancy between the past, the present, and the possibility of the future. 

It is at such precise creases, deep storied/histori...

May the joy, beauty, love, and peace of the garden

be yours this Solstice 

and in the year to come

Happy Winter Solstice 2018 

 warmly —  Jennifer & the Cultivating Place team

FIRE SKIES - #CAMPFIRE, Butte County, CA 2018. 

Right now the concept of lost gardens is very, very poignant – raw even – for me and my region. As a result of the recent California Fires, with close to 14,000 human homes lost in the #CAMPFIRE alone there were many, many gardens lost as well.

Gardens of course are dynamic, living constructs, and creations. They were never meant to be set in stone, a...