Presented by
Cultivating Place Foundation
and Botany & Co., with support from Visit South Bend Mishawaka.
Friday & Saturday, September 25 & 26 | South Bend, Indiana
What does Cultivating Place well mean to you? As a Gardener, as a human?
We ask this question of our guests nearly every week on the Cultivating Place public radio program and podcast, and now we’re ready to explore it with you in person.
Please join us for our first Cultivating Place: The Power of Gardeners Symposium, this year in South Bend, Indiana, in partnership with Botany & Co. Together we will explore all that we mean when we say the phrase “cultivating place,” and when we embody the word “Gardener, with a capital G”.
Cultivating Place: The Power of Gardeners Symposium includes a full day of lectures and discussion on Friday, September 25, and rounds out the day with a panel on the creation of The Power of Gardeners series, featuring filmmaker and director Myriam Nicodemus, who joins our speakers to share more. We invite all attendees to join us for a celebratory reception to toast all that being a Gardener can and does mean in our world, as a Cultivating Place community and growing ecosystem.
Saturday, September 26, we will reconvene first thing in the morning at Botany & Co. for a morning of Garden and Green space touring, visiting, and hearing more about the background and future of gardens and green spaces contributing to the reconnection of people, plants, pollinators, and purpose of place in South Bend, Indiana. This network of green space grows and improves the ecology, the economy, and the quality of life for South Bend residents and visitors.
This green and growing network is intentionally exemplary in modeling the power of gardens and well designed green spaces to grow our world better in ways seen and unseen, even in the most challenging of conditions.
We will culminate our time together back at Botany & Co. to say farewell until next year! With plenty of seeds for thought on how we return to our own lives and cultivate our own places with ever-increasing care and intention.
See you there!
Jennifer Jewell, Founder & Executive Director, Cultivating Place Foundation
Plan Your Visit
Welcome to South Bend. We're excited to show you around, and we encourage you to explore both the well-known and the roads less traveled.
The University of Notre Dame and St. Joseph River are two of our defining features. But there is much more in our cities, towns and open spaces.
Tickets
EARLY BIRD TICKETS | $140 August 15 - August 31
FULL PRICE TICKETS | $165 September 1-15
THE FIRST 50 registrants will receive their very own Cultivating Place: A World Where Gardeners are a Keystone Species etched ceramic mug.
Meet Our Speakers
Abra Lee
Garden Historian
One of the three regular hosts of Cultivating Place since 2024, Abra graduated from Auburn University with a degree in Ornamental Horticulture. She has worked in various horticultural roles, including as a County Extension Agent for Fulton County and Landscape Manager for Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Abra also served as a municipal arborist at the City of Atlanta Department of Parks.
As of 2021, she founded her own business, Conquer the Soil, and is an acclaimed horticultural writer and sought after speaker around the country for institutions such as the Garden Conservancy, Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Centre, and Smithsonian Gardens. In 2026, she contributed to an exhibit on Orchids in Black History for the National Museum of African American History & Culture. Lee raises horticultural awareness through Black garden history, and her first book, Conquer the Soil, is in the works.
Ben Futa
Horticulture Entrepreneur
One of the three regular hosts of Cultivating Place since 2024, Ben is the Founder and CEO of Botany, a multi-modal, interdisciplinary plant-based business with a mission to empower more people to grow more plants in more places.
A life-long gardener, Ben dedicated the first decade of his career to public horticulture, working in leadership positions in public gardens across the Chicagoland region. Ben launched Botany in early 2021 with his partner, Paul Sexton, after moving back home to South Bend, Indiana in late 2020. To date, Botany includes a suite of spaces, services, and experiences, all designed to inspire and empower a botanically infused lifestyle, including an indoor plant shop and lawn conversion service.
Wambui Ippolito
Landscape Designer
Wambui is an award-winning Landscape Designer and horticulturist who in 2021 was named one of “11 Revolutionary Female Landscape Designers and Architects Everyone Should Know" by Veranda Magazine.
Her optic is influenced by an early childhood in the Great Rift Valley, and its wide vistas and spatial organization inform her work. Wambui won the 2021 Best-In-Show and Gold Awards in landscape design at the PHS Flower Show and in addition to her garden work, she lectures widely both in the United States and internationally.
Wambui specializes in fine estate gardening, with an emphasis on designing for humans and their pets. She views Nature as the greatest healer and seeks to make her gardens elegant and curative. Wambui is also a trained horticulturist, having graduated from the New York Botanical Garden’s School of Professional Horticulture. Wambui has generously served on the Board of Directors of The Cultivating Place Foundation since early 2025.
Chris Fehlhaber
Horticulturist and Activist
Chris’s goal is to raise the public’s consciousness and appreciation of enriching, progressive horticulture. He strives to make rich, dynamic, and engaging plantings ubiquitous so we no longer visit gardens - we live in them.
Chris believes we may all lead better lives by making the world a more beneficial, beautiful, and equitable place. Chris regularly writes, teaches, and speaks on plants, gardening, and the capacity of gardens to improve our world. He is the Perennial Plant Association Mid-Atlantic Regional Director, a co-host on The Native Plant Podcast and runs a garden design consulting service.
Chris believes that dynamic gardens at existing sites of social infrastructure provide the greatest impact and value, thus establishing new baselines of beauty and ecology. He was a guest on Cultivating Place in early 2026 speaking on Gardens As Social Infrastructure.
Friday, September 25
Talks | 9 a.m - 5 p.m.
Convene at the Near Northwest Neighborhood Community Center
1013 Portage Ave, South Bend, Indiana 46616
8:30 - 9:00 | Doors Open + Registration/Check-In + Morning Refreshments
9:00 - 9:15 | Welcome by Jennifer Jewell
9:15 - 10:15 | Ben Futa & The Botany & Co. Story (Welcome to South Bend) + Q&A
10:15 - 10:30 | BREAK
10:30 - 11:30 | Abra Lee, Garden Historian & Writer + Q&A
11:30 - 1:00 | LUNCH
1:00 - 2:00 | Chris Fehlhaber, Horticulturalist & Activist + Q&A
2:00 - 3:00 | Jennifer Jewell in Conversation with Landscape Designer, Wambui Ippolito
3:15 - 3:45 | Screening of The Power of Gardeners
3:45 - 4:30 | Panel Conversation - Q&A with Jennifer Jewell, Ben Futa, Abra Lee, and Myriam Nicodemus
4:30 - 5:00 | Jennifer Jewell Closing Remarks
5:30 | Evening Reception
Cocktail Reception | 5:30 p.m. - 6:30 p.m.
Walk down to Botany & Co. at 909 Portage Ave and enjoy beverages (including N/A options) at golden hour in the gardens.
Symposium Itinerary
Saturday, September 26
Neighborhood Tours | 9 a.m.-1 p.m.
Convene at Botany & Co., 909 Portage Avenue, in The Lot Next Door
9:00 | Gates Open + Morning Refreshments & Regrouping
9:30-1p | Walking Tours (wear comfortable shoes, dress for the weather, and bring a water bottle/sunscreen)
Time On Your Own | 1 p.m. onward
Browse The Botany Shop along with several other local and independent neighborhood businesses. Or, check out some other green destinations on Ben’s personal list of can’t-miss local favorites.
This 10-episode public television documentary series reimagines the role of gardeners in our world. Guided by Jennifer Jewell’s life’s work, Cultivating Place: The Power of Gardeners reveals how those who care for plants also care for communities and ecosystems. Through intimate stories and landscapes, the series shows how everyday acts of tending can restore, connect, and transform.