The Wild Seed Project, with Heather McCargo

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

Fall and early winter are the perfect time in much of the Northern Hemisphere to plant bulbs, woody shrubs and trees, herbaceous perennials, and perennial vines in the landscape. It is also a good time to seed many spring-blooming native(and non-native) annuals. So, I thought it was just the right time of year as well to chat a little with Heather McCargo of the Wild Seed Project in Portland, Maine. Focused on the relationship between seed grown native plants in cultivated landscapes and reweaving healthy ecosystems across our world, Heather founded The Wild Seed Project and served as its executive Director from 2014 – 2021. She is currently the seed program manager for the project. The Wild Seed Project envisions a landscape where people help re-populate the landscape to be abundant with native plants (primarily grown from seed) so that we can support wildlife, biodiversity, and buffer the effects of climate change. They invite gardeners around the country - the world in fact – to take their rewild pledge committing to working towards including a minimum of 70% seed-grown native plants in your garden. 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, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. To read more and for many more photos please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.