The Power of Gardeners
Presented by the Cultivating Place Foundation with Botany & Co.
and 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 panels on Friday, September 25, rounding out the day with a panel on the creation of The Power of Gardeners film series, with filmmaker and director Myriam Nicodemus joining 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 Jewel, Founder & Executive Director, Cultivating Place Foundation
Tickets
Cultivating Place sustaining donors enjoy early and exclusive access to tickets beginning August 1.
The general public is welcome to purchase tickets at an EARLY BIRD RATE August 15 - September 15, at which time only full-price tickets will be available.
THE FIRST 50 registrants will receive their very own Cultivating Place: A World Where Gardeners are a Keystone Species etched ceramic mug.
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.
Film Screening
You can look forward to a panel discussion on the creation of The Power of Gardeners film series, with filmmaker and director Myriam Nicodemus joining our speakers to share more.
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.