television production & appearances

Cultivating Life


Cultivating Life celebrates how Americans are reconnecting to the land by moving out of their houses and into their backyards. With easy-to-do projects and inspiring ideas, host Sean Conway demonstrates how we can simplify and improve our lives wherever we live. By exploring various trends, Cultivating Life provides us with simple solutions and timely ideas for outdoor living, cooking, gardening, and entertaining.
Each week, Sean and his guests reinterpret agrarian traditions and crafts to fit them into our modern lifestyles. Whether growing heirloom tomatoes or building outdoor furniture, Cultivating Life helps us to form a new consciousness about our relationship to the natural world- and strengthens our desire to make a home for ourselves in it. With simple ideas for living a better life outdoors, Cultivating Life shows us that reconnecting to the land is as easy as stepping out our back door.

Segments (click to learn more)

2009 season 2010 season
Adirondack Inspired Planters
The Botany of Pruning
Recycled Cement Planter
Nature Printing for Kids
Mounting Staghorn Ferns
Using Foliage in a Planter
Solar Bird Fountain
Creating a Nature Backpack

Martha Stewart Show

Martha reviewed our studio's artwork and the biology of seaweeds, and then got her hands wet learning to press seaweed.
View a short (hilarious) clip
Learn more about pressing seaweed

History of Plants, Burpee Seed Company

Although this show never made it to the airwaves, it was my first experience on a television set. In the spirit of sharing-even your failures. I learned an important lesson, not every show makes it. Producing a television show is far more complicated than most people realize, there are lots of parts that have to come together to make it work. My part was to prepare and create sets at Fordhook Farm. I spent hours rearranging plants and polishing leaves with no idea what I was doing. It wasn't a very harmonious set or particularly glamorous work. But I learned that your first failure shouldn't keep you from trying again.