Ep. 23: Life, Death, & Master Gardeners with Cole Imperi

Gardening can’t be separated from cultural practices and traditions.

Author

Plants Always Win
May 20, 2025

Everything in gardening connects back to broader societal themes. 

Cole Imperi is known for her trailblazing work in thanatology, the study of death, dying and grief. But she’s also a master gardener: someone who helps others learn how to make life flourish. In this interview, she shows us how grief and gardening have much in common, from the importance of community engagement and cultural sensitivity to the roles of healing, resistance, and emotional well-being.

On a more pragmatic level, Cole and Sean compare notes on how the Master Gardeners in Ontario (Sean) and Los Angeles (Cole) are trained, and what role they serve in their communities. The Master Gardener mandate is to offer free, unbiased gardening advice to the public, but how they do that can vary from place to place. Cole also reveals to our hosts the existence of master preservers in the United States, and the wealth of safe, tested recipes available from the National Center for Home Food Preservation. The conversation touches on the roles of citizen science and the Master Gardeners in the wake of the 2025 LA wildfires, the potential gardening has to spark social change, California’s unique gardening sunset zones, the right to rot, and the role of embalming in various cultures. 

Trigger warnings: death, dying, embalming, LA wildfires

For more on grief, loss, gardening, and thanobotany, visit Cole’s website at coleimperi.com.

You can also find Cole on social media:
TikTok: @coleimperi
Instagram: @imperi
The Curious Spirit newsletter: https://imperi.substack.com/ 

Cole’s Plugs
The University of California Master Gardeners: https://ucanr.edu/statewide-program/uc-master-gardener-program 
The National Center for Home Food Preservation: nchfp.uga.edu 
Sunset Zones: https://sunsetplantcollection.com/climate-zones/ 

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Credits

Website Design and Illustration by Sophia Alladin

Intro and Outro Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!): https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/when-my-ukulele-plays
License code: GWOIMMBAS15FG6PH

Timestamps

00:38 Introducing Cole Imperi
1:27 Thanatology: the Study of Death, Dying, Grief, and Loss
06:42 How Cole Came to the Master Gardeners of LA
08:02 Master Gardeners in the United States
11:44 How Sean Came to the Master Gardeners of Muskoka|
16:16 The Mission of the Master Gardeners
20:33 Community Loss and Gardening in Glassell Park, Los Angeles
23:15 Training Master Gardeners in Grief and Trauma after the LA Wildfires
27:15 Soil Samples, Citizen Science, and The Plants that Survived the Fires
29:05 Plant Names: Accessibility and Decolonization
33:05 Garden Plots and Cemetery Plots: What is Permanent?
35:08 The Master Food Preserver Program
39:30 Water Break
40:19 The Land We Take Up After Death
44:18 Culture and the Embalming Spectrum
50:28 Cole’s Favourite Plant: The Sunchoke
52:04 Hardiness Zones and Sunset Zones
58:10 Find Cole Online
58:57 Cole’s Plugs
59:28 Outro and Contact Us