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Jennifer Jewell has gained a wide following for her blog \u201cCultivating Place.\u201d\u00a0 Produced from her home in northern California, it is self-described as a \u201cconversation on natural history & the human impulse to garden.\u201d<\/p>\nJennifer Jewell has gained a wide following for her blog \u201cCultivating Place.\u201d\u00a0 Produced from her home in northern California, it is self-described as a \u201cconversation on natural history & the human impulse to garden.\u201d<\/p>\n
That same description could apply in part to Jewell\u2019s first book, \u201cThe Earth in Her Hands: 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants.\u201d\u00a0 This is a wide-ranging discussion on this gardening impulse, using a very broad definition of the idea of horticulture, captured in a series of pithy biographies.\u00a0 The profiled women have careers in and a passion for plants, expressed in botany, landscape architecture, floriculture, agriculture, plant hunting and breeding, food justice, garden writing, and photography.<\/p>\n
Many of the subjects are from the Pacific Northwest.\u00a0 An example is Cara Loriz, the executive director of the Organic Seed Alliance in Port Townsend, Washington, advocating for community building and research for sustainable food systems.<\/p>\n
Another is Christin Geall, a multi-talented writer\/photographer and educator in Victoria, British Columbia.\u00a0 I confess to having not heard of either woman prior to reading this book.\u00a0 Jewell writes that for Geall, \u201cflowers are a horticultural medium for leading and educating others about plants, acting not as pretty cages, but as colorful, Socratic-style critical thinking.\u201d\u00a0 Both women are examples of conducting important work at a local level that addresses global needs facing all cultures.<\/p>\n
All these biographies provide a short list of women that inspired the subject.\u00a0 Many are contemporaries, or cherished ancestors.\u00a0 Some are important figures from history, including Sacajawea, Harriet Tubman, and Rachel Carson.\u00a0 Others are women without recorded names, but for whom \u201chorticulture is a human impulse, in all cultures, in all times, practiced, codified, ritualized, and valued across any and all social boundaries.\u201d<\/p>\n
The narratives about women in horticulture are evolving.\u00a0 In public presentations, Jewell has been expanding on the process of choosing and researching the subjects of her book.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard her speak twice in the last year and each time, she acknowledges that many additional women, from a wider breadth of ethnicities and nationalities, could be featured now.\u00a0 This study is important, on-going work and I hope that Jewell or others will continue this undertaking.<\/p>\n
Winner of the 2021 Award of Excellence in Biography from the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries<\/p>\n
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Excerpted from the Summer 2021 issue of the Arboretum Bulletin<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jennifer Jewell has gained a wide following for her blog \u201cCultivating Place.\u201d\u00a0 Produced from her home in northern California, it is self-described as a \u201cconversation on natural history & the human impulse to garden.\u201d That same description could apply in part to Jewell\u2019s first book, \u201cThe Earth in Her Hands: 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants.\u201d\u00a0 This is a wide-ranging discussion on this gardening impulse, using a very broad definition of the idea of horticulture, captured in…<\/p>\n