This year, Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens will present its 13th annual Ina and Lewis Heafitz Endowed Lecture Series at the Gardens on Aug. 31, 4-5:30 p.m. The free lecture, “Invitations from and to the Garden: Cultivating a Garden Culture of Care,” will feature Jennifer Jewell, creator, author, speaker, podcast host and gardener.

In her presentation, Jewell will discuss the philosophy of Cultivating Place, her National Public Radio program and international podcast. Her podcast is a voice for gardeners and nature-lovers and operates from the belief that gardens and gardeners are potentially powerful agents and spaces for positive change in our world, helping to address challenges as wide-ranging as climate change, habitat loss, cultural polarization, and individual and communal health and well-being.

She is the author of “The Earth in Her Hands: 75 Extraordinary Women Working in the World of Plants” (Timber Press, 2020), “Under Western Skies: Visionary Gardens from the Rockies to the Pacific Coast” (Timber Press, 2021), and, forthcoming from Timber Press in September 2023, “What We Sow: On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds.” Jewell’s greatest passion is elevating the way individuals think and talk about gardening, the empowerment of gardeners, and the possibility inherent in the intersection between places, environments, cultures, individuals, and the gardens that bring people together for the better of all lives on this planet. This year, the American Horticultural Society honored her with the B.Y. Morrison Award for outstanding effective and inspirational horticultural communication.

At this year’s Heafitz lecture, she will explore how the power of gardens and gardeners can be viewed through a lens of invitation – both the invitations we recognize and accept from our gardens in our roles as gardeners and those we extend to the greater world through our gardening practices. Jewell will walk attendees through examples of these very invitations using interviews from Cultivating Place and selections from her books: the horticultural women in leadership roles in the award-wining “The Earth in Her Hands” (2020); the beautiful and innovative place-based gardens that celebrate western landscapes in “Under Western Skies: Visionary Gardens from the Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Coast” (2021); and “What We Sow: On the Personal, Ecological, and Cultural Significance of Seeds” (2023). Together, these resources, inspirations, and invitations are blueprints for creating a better—and more beautiful—world.

Free to the public, the event is scheduled in person at the Gardens from 4-5:30 p.m. on Aug. 31. Following the event, registration will open for access to an online recording of the program. Those interested in attending can register online at shop.mainegardens.org or by calling 207-633-8000.