What it means to be a gardener, community-based restoration ecology, Cris Sarabia

Cris Sarabia is the conservation director of the Palos Verdes Peninsula Land Conservancy. He is also a dedicated and active member of many local land and conservation organizations in his home region of North Long Beach, in Southern California, including GreyWater Action Network, the California Native Plant Society, Pelecanus, and Puente Latino, a grassroots non-profit art, culture, and ecology organization serving the North Long beach community since 2019. At this time of year, post-Solstice, in the midst of Hanukkah, pre-Christmas, Kwanzaa, and the New Year – I think many of us try to center ideals of clarity, connection, caring, and community. This week we have a conversation with a human whose work caring for lives out these very ideals within his many land, water, plant, and human communities. This to me, is what truly good gardening is all about in so many ways. Many listeners will remember an earlier conversation I had with Cris on Cultivating Place in April of 2021 when Cris was the Board Chair of the California Native Plant Society and their decolonizing work. I am so pleased to be chatting more fully with Cris this week about all that he cultivates in his community-based life. Listen in - and Happy Holidays! 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.