CP LIVE: Dialogues to Grow By conversations, recorded live in front of an audience on the home ground of the Cultivators of Place with whom we are speaking. 

This week’s CP LIVE recording focuses on the paradigm shifting landscape work of Leslie Bennett who is dedicated to beautifully designed, edible-plant rich, culturally rooted gardens for all people, AND centering Black Women in the American Landscape. It’s a great pairing.

The interview and gathering for it took place on an unexpectedly chilly evening in late September 2024, but the spirited audience of 80+ people - in full celebratory finery - was not bothered at all. And the event was also occasion for the first public unveiling of photographic portraits by Rachel Weill of the first 8 women beneficiaries of a Black Sanctuary Garden. The whole evening unfolded in the heart of elegant, fruit, flower filled terraced backyard garden - one of the black sanctuary gardens to date.

What this conversation makes visible to me, and I hope to all listeners is that gardens are land use, gardens are community centers, gardens are one form of public policy made manifest by the people. 

Cultivating Place live is a special project of CP in the form of a limited series of CP interviews done with a curated group of gardeners across the US and recorded as audio and film (by the talented filmmaker Myriam Nicodemus of EM EN throughout 2024 and 2025.

The more we see and support Gardeners and Gardens, the better we grow our world.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN 

All Photos courtesy of Rachel Weill. All rights reserved. 

Filmed and edited by Myriam Nicodemus / EM EN.

CP is made possible in part by generous support from the Catto Shaw Foundation, funding endeavors supporting women, creativity, and the planet.

CP is also a LISTENER-SUPPORTED public radio program and #podcast, created from a physical base on unceded, traditional, and present lands of the Mechoopda Maidu Indian Tribe of the Chico Rancheria.