Thinking like healthy habitats (radically and radially), with Sid Hill Ecological Land Artisan

Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden

We opened up 2023 here on Cultivating Place, focusing on biodiversity, and we close the year similarly, with diverse plant community thinking getting the final say. We’re in conversation with Cornwall-based ecological landscape designer Sid Hill, a land and ecological artisan who creates beautiful, abundant, and thoughtful places. Sid challenges himself, his clients, and the broader horticultural world to keep going and to go even further in rethinking and reimagining how horticulture is practiced and thought of in our world. A believer in the ability of intentional and well-thought-out design to help our gardens help the world in moderating so many of the challenges ahead, Sid asks us to think like the plant and animal communities, as well as the indigenous human communities that are, and have been, foundational to the uniqueness of our places. He asks us to think like healthy habitats and their dynamic patterns as we look to the future – as we grow the future. I think this plant-and-ecology-of-place-centric thinking is a perfect way to close out 2023 and herald in 2024. Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years, and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud, iTunes, and Google Podcasts. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.