The Northwest Horticultural Society presents an in-person lecture by

Jennifer Jewell

at the Bellevue Botanical Garden, Aaron Education Center. 

In her presentation, Jennifer Jewell will explore how the power of gardens and gardeners can be viewed through a lens of seeds, and the general state of seeds in our gardened lives: how they grow, where they grow, who grows them, who sells and/or controls them, and their care up and down the seedsheds of our world.  Jewell will walk us through examples taken from her daily life, her research, and interviews over the past decade with seed keepers as synthesized in her newest book What We Sow: On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds (2023). All together, the histories, stories, and overall state of seed wherever we find it and the people who care for it become both cautionary tales and guiding lights in ways we can all sow, seed, and grow our world more beautiful, more delicious, more biodiverse, and more brave.

She will also explore the philosophy of Cultivating Place, her national, public radio program and international podcast, based on the belief that gardens/gardeners are powerful agents and spaces for potentially positive change in our world, helping to address challenges as wide ranging as climate change, habitat loss, cultural polarization, and individual communal health and well-being

DOORS OPEN at 6:30PM – LECTURE: 7:00PM
Book signing following the lecture

What We Sow: On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds is available for purchase with your ticket at 20% off MSRP ($24). When checking out, choose whether you would like to purchase a copy and it will be available at check-in. 

Speaker Bio: 

Jennifer Jewell is the host of the national award-winning weekly public radio program and podcast Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden.

The author of The Earth in Her Hands, 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants; Under Western Skies, Visionary Gardens from the Rockies to the Pacific Coast; and, What We Sow: On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds.

Jewell’s greatest passion is elevating the way we think and talk about gardening, the empowerment of gardeners, and the possibility inherent in the intersection between places, environments, cultures, individuals, and the gardens that bring them together beautifully – for the better of all the lives on this generous planet.

Cultivating Place has several times been recognized by Garden Communicators International as Best On-Air Talent and Best Overall Broadcast Media. In 2023, Jewell was honored with the American Horticultural Society’s Great American Gardener B.Y. Morrison award for horticultural communication.

Jewell regularly serves as a keynote speaker for horticultural organizations large and small across the country, including The Garden Conservancy, The American Public Gardens Association, The American Horticultural Society, The Thomas Jefferson Foundation/Monticello, The California Native Plant Society, The New York Botanical Garden, Miami University of Ohio, and the Atlanta Botanical Garden.

She lives and cultivates her place in interior Northern California with her partner, plantsman, John Whittlesey.

Your contributions will support our educational programs, as well as our community outreach grants and scholarships.

This event is generously sponsored by the Woodinville Garden Club. Please be sure to check out their fabulous upcoming plant sale and garden tour.