Perennial Plant Club presents garden podcast host and her new book

Jennifer Jewell is creator and host of the radio show and podcast "Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History & the Human Impulse to Garden." (Photo courtesy cultivatingplace.com)

Jennifer Jewell to speak tonight at Shepard Center

The Sacramento Perennial Plant Club at its monthly meeting tonight, 7 p.m. Jan. 23, presents an appearance by Jennifer Jewell, creator and host of the national award-winning public radio program and podcast "Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History & the Human Impulse to Garden." The meeting at the Shepard Garden & Arts Center is open to the public.

Jewell will offer a sneak preview of her upcoming book,  "The Earth in Her Hands: 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants." The book will be published by Timber Press on March 3, just in time for Women's History Month. Her subjects work in fields ranging from botany to herbalism to food justice, and include flower farmers, soil scientists, floral designers, indoor plant specialists and more.

The radio show "Cultivating Place" is a co-production of North State Public Radio in Chico; the podcast can be found on iTunes, Soundcloud or Stitcher. A new episode launches every Thursday morning. Topics span the world of gardening, from the prevalence of "plant blindness" to gardens as community activism, from "The Scentual Garden" to the gardening life of poet Emily Dickinson. 

Jewell is a writer, photographer and gardener who was curator of the native plant garden and curatorial assistant to the director of Chico's Gateway Science Museum. For several years she wrote and hosted a regionally focused radio show, "In a North State Garden," for NSPR. Learn more at Jewell's website, cultivatingplace.com

The Shepard Garden and Arts Center is at 3330 McKinley Blvd., Sacramento.