Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City

 
Photos_courtesy_of_Kate Brownphoto credit: courtesy of Kate Brown, all rights reserved.

 

Kate Brown is an MIT Distinguished Professor in the History of Science. Across her career, her research has sometimes inadvertently documented the impact of urban, often small and under-resourced gardens and gardeners, in our world. Her new book, Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City, compiles this research and her own lived experience of its truth and potentially beneficial consequences.

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Recorded Shows

A Radical Plan: Village Homes in Davis, CA turns 50!

This week, we continue plumbing the potential of gardens and gardeners for growing a future we want to cultivate- for the benefit of all. In order to look forward, we look back to the radical plan of a 50-year-old intentionally-designed community-and sustainability-oriented housing development, Village Homes, in Davis, California.
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Redwood Empire Food Bank

Flora Culture with Christin Geall of Cultivated by Christin

This week on Cultivating Place, we continue with our flower theme as we celebrate May, looking toward the most floral of celebrations, Mother’s Day in the US. We discuss not us as gardeners growing flowers, but rather, how flowers shape our world, our cultures, our economies, our thinking and outlooks. We're in conversation with Christin Geall,…
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Mid-Atlantic Regional Seed Bank (MARSB) with Ed Toth and John Price

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.
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Between Soil and Self - A conversation with John Sonnier

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…
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Cultivating Place (Aired on: April 5, 2026)

Roses are one of those topics in the garden world: they can be polarizing, they can be energizing. And yet, given that there are roses native to most environments of North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa, and humans have revered this family and genus and the hundreds of rose species for millennia, they can also be connective tissue for so…
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