Cultivating our places with attention, intention, thought, and care is certainly an ethos I hold dear and advocate for with some measure of ferocity. When student and gardener Félix de Rosen reached out to me in 2021 seeking advice on a new book project. His thinking and designing resonated with me, and we have communicated back and forth ever since.
Now an ecological designer and artist, and graduate of UC Berkeley and Harvard University, Félix’s design practice, Polycultura Studio, is based in Oakland, California, on traditional Ohlone territory. His now published book is: A Garden’s Purpose, which invites us to understand gardens as places where we build mutually beneficial relationships with the living world around us. Amen to that.
Félix’s Studio Polycultura is a design and communication studio focused on resilient responses to ecosystem and social collapse. The Studio integrates ecopsychology, organizational design, and landscape architecture to ask a simple question: how do we profoundly transform ourselves in order to live meaningfully in the world today? Félix works with individuals, communities, organizations, and farms to think through this question holistically.
Félix joins me this week on Cultivating Place to share much more about his garden life journey, his philosophy and the experience of considering from a great multitude of perspectives the idea of "a Garden’s purpose.”
Listen in!
All photos courtesy of Felix de Rosen, all rights reserved.
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HERE IS THIS WEEK'S TRANSCRIPT by Doulos Transcription Service:
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JOIN US again next week, when we’re in conversation with Shaun Hester Spencer, sharing so much more about stewarding her grandparent’s, Anne and Edward Spencer’s garden and house In Lynchburg Virginia! Anne, a renowned poet & thinker of the Harlem renaissance, and Edward, her husband cultivating their beautiful and beloved home garden together for more than 70 years. The garden served as the site of gathering for leading African Americans of the time including the likes of W.E.B. DuBois, Martin Luther King, Jr., Zora Neale Hurston, George Washington Carver, and many more. The Anne Spencer Garden remains the only restored public garden of an African American in the US.
That’s next week, right here, listen in.
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Thinking out loud this week:
I am thinking about this week’s conversation and the incredibly prismatic response I have to what a garden’s purpose might be – but also thinking about my own garden-based faith prayers/blessings shared with you last week and what I come away with is that Gardening purpose is the same as life’s purpose for me, and that when we see it as sacred, we treat all the interrelated aspects and companion lives there differently – we treat them as sacred – and when we do that….well then, everything and anything is possible….and far far more beautiful.
And here in this sacred place of my tiny suburban habitat garden in early June – it is all love’ in the time of Romneya, of Salvia, of pomegranate, of Calycanthus, and Clarkia….speaking of transcendent – head over to this week’s show notes under the podcast tab at CultivatingPlace.com or see post on Instagram for the images to go with these divine friends.
How is the divine showing up in your garden this season?
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The CP team includes producer and engineer Matt Fidler, with weekly tech and web support from Angel Huracha, and this summer we're joined by communications intern Sheila Stern. We’re based on the traditional and present homelands of the Mechoopda Indian Tribe of the Chico Rancheria. Original theme music is by Ma Muse, accompanied by Joe Craven and Sam Bevan.
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