The Indigenous Garden Project at Olbrich Gardens

- It's great to be back at Garden Expo.

And I was telling some of the folks I was talking to earlier in the morning how this feels like a very classic Garden Expo, where it's totally frigid and very unwelcoming outside, but then you get in here and there's so many fun garden people and neat vendors to see and so many good talks that it's really like, really does get you pumped up and good to be in communion with other gardeners and soon to be gardeners.

So I'm just gonna start a little bit slowly with some of our background information about Olbrich Botanical Gardens and this particular project, and then we'll get into the real meat and potatoes of it when Rita rolls in in a few minutes.

So just a quick show of hands, are many of you folks Madison natives?

Who's been to Olbrich before?

Oh, wow, this is awesome.

We've got the hometown crowd.

So for those of you who may not know, Olbrich Botanical Gardens is, we're a free admission public garden and we're operated half through the City of Madison Parks Department, and then funded half through a private fundraising arm.

And it's a really great garden.

It's about 16 acres.

So it's a really nice scale, I think, for people who are just getting into gardening or wouldn't consider themselves a religious gardener yet, 'cause it's a little bit smaller and a little bit easier to take in, I feel, than maybe a huge botanic garden like Chicago Botanic Garden.

And also the fact that the admission is free is amazing, 'cause I feel like for people who don't consider themselves to be garden aficionados, you know, you can just walk right in really at any time and sit down on a bench in the outdoor gardens and you don't feel like you had to spend $40 and then now this is the whole rest of your afternoon.

So I think there's a lot of ways that we do try to break down some of those misgivings or barriers to people who haven't been to a public garden before, but one thing that we're really trying to address going forward is the fact that even though we're a free garden, just because something's free doesn't mean that everybody always feels that they fit in there or they're welcome or this is a place for them.

So we're trying to actively do a lot more programming and just expand our reach into the community 'cause we are a free public resource.

So we really wanna be equally available to anybody who wants to engage in the world of gardening and with any of our programs.

So I'm Erin Presley.

I've worked at Olbrich for almost eight years now and I was also an intern there in 2002.

So I had an affiliation with that place for a long time.

So this kind of speaks to what I was saying about some of the ways that we try to engage with new gardeners and different members of the gardening or potential gardening community.

And my main area that I work in at Olbrich is the herb garden, which is so great because no matter who you are, people kind of share the same foods and the same plants and the same herbs.

So one of my goals in the herb garden is I hope that no matter who you were or what your background was or your age or whatever, hopefully you should be able to come into the garden and see something that you recognize or that resonates with you, because we want everybody to feel like they're a part of the conversation and that this a little piece of home for them, too.

So I think of it as a small garden with a big heart.

It's a very, actually a very small space.

So we do a lot of just fun things that hopefully help people feel enthusiastic about the fact that they can be really good gardeners, too.

So one of them in the upper left here and on the right side is we grow a lot of patio and container garden vegetables.

So especially in Madison, people don't always have a lot of space for a full-scale veggie garden.

If you think of like Ma and Pa's old, big veggie garden they had in the backyard.

There's a lot of people in smaller spaces, growing in containers.

I live in an apartment, so I'm definitely in that crowd.

So it's amazing how much productivity you can get out of some of those smaller spaces.

So we do a lot of container and vegetable gardening.

One of the other really fun activities that we do every year is we work with the Goodman Community Center.

So Goodman is a community center that's actually just down the bike path from Olbrich, so it's really, really close to us.

And then they have a high school where they focus a little bit more on kitchen skills and agriculture skills for the students.

So every year, it's called Seed to Table, and then they also learn a lot of stuff about food preservation, 'cause Goodman also has a really extensive food distribution system.

They have a food pantry and they also serve meals to a lot of people that are involved in their programs during the day, like seniors or kids programs and stuff like that.

So their students actually come in the spring every year, and they come to Olbrich three times.

So the first time they sow seeds for all of these beautiful heirloom lettuces.

And then the second time, they plant all the lettuces in the ground and we talk about fertilizing and watering and all that.

And then the third time, they actually come and they get to harvest all the lettuce and then they take it back to Goodman.

And I feel like it's really cool because all the lettuce is so nice and fresh.

And then I feel like they go through so much food at Goodman that I am very confident that all the lettuce probably gets eaten up in like two days.

It's garbage and garbage bags full of lettuce basically, but it all just goes really quickly into somebody else's stomach.

And then we also have a lot of ways that we're really able to highlight plants from different cultures around the world.

So in 2020, we did this project.

It was "Ayurveda in the Garden," and we worked with some women who own a Ayurvedic spa, and we grew all plants that were significant in Indian culture and Ayurvedic medicine.

And so it was really, really cool, too, because typically if people think of a herb garden, most of the times, people think of lavender and rosemary and bay leaves and things that are very European vegetables or herbs, but this was one circumstance where we were able to incorporate a ton of tropical plants in the herb garden, which was very unusual.

And some of it is just ornamental.

So we had the elephant ears, and we actually grew ginger and turmeric, which is amazing that you can grow those in Wisconsin.

Here she is!

[laughing] So that was really neat to show people.

We just wanna show people that there's a huge world of possibility out there, and everybody can be a part in it.

And then we were also able to offer some fun classes with the women from Kosha and show people about how to use the herbs and do the cooking.

So without further ado, here's my beautiful second half.

[Erin laughing] - Hi, Erin.

[Erin laughing] - And Rita came to Olbrich as a, she started as a volunteer about three years ago.

And at that time, I had no inkling that we were gonna be able to have this awesome garden journey together and just become really good friends and so much enthusiasm and just wisdom I have learned from this girl.

And we always have a good laugh together, too.

- Vice versa.

- Yeah.

So now in that teary, rushed end, here you are.

Here she is.

[laughing] - Hello, everybody.

My name is Rita Peters.

Hocak raasra xoropasaiga higaire naga maixete raasra Ritaga higaire.

My English name is Rita, and my Ho-Chunk name is Bald Eagle Woman, but you guys can just call me Rita.

[Rita and audience laughing] So yeah, actually I can't believe I've been with Olbrich for like three years now.

I love Olbrich so much.

I lived right in the Atwood-Schenk neighborhood, and so I would always go down there and hang out and stuff like that.

And I just loved the community and the type of people.

So open-minded, and I learned a lot.

So it's kind of surprising that Erin is saying that, because I mean, she's such an awesome horticulturalist, it really inspired me to actually start a degree in horticulture, but I've recently switched to conservation biology.

So that kind of falls in line with my cultural life and then my everyday life, too.

It's really easy to blend.

And I love working outside.

I love to work.

I'm Ho-Chunk, and so I was raised with traditional Ho-Chunk upbringings and that kind of affects the way that I see the world and the way that I move through the world.

So I have a deep appreciation for my culture, and this was such an awesome opportunity to be able to work with some of my Indigenous plants native to this area, because personally, this was a huge learning experience for myself even.

You would be really surprised how many Indigenous youth haven't really gotten the chance to work with our plants like this in such a close matter.

And I know it's becoming really popular, and so I'm really excited to join in on the conversation.

- Cool, so we started planning this garden last winter.

One of our initial inspirations and contacts was Elena Terry, who actually was a presenter at Garden Expo about two years ago.

And she's a very prominent Ho-Chunk chef and food activist, and just an amazing role model and is really making a big mark in revitalizing a lot of Indigenous foods and making them very relevant in the modern day.

So we worked with her, and she's also one of Rita's aunties.

- Yes.

[Erin chuckling] - So we worked with her and some other just local food advocate people to start getting a plant list together of what we wanted to be growing in the Indigenous Garden.

And we didn't really focus on any particular tribal group.

We more so wanted the garden to just be reflective of a lot of different varieties that came from a large amount of different groups within the upper Midwest.

So we don't have all just seeds that were reflective of Ho-Chunk culture.

And then additionally, we just got all of our seeds from seed sources that are available to all of you folks.

And I know amongst Indigenous peoples, there's a lot of just obviously emotions connected to seeds.

And so we just felt for our purposes, we're just growing kind of a display and outreach garden.

So we just got seeds that were like readily available, not trying to get them from particular tribal groups or anything, just kind of a basic garden, like you guys could grow at home if you wanted to try to grow some of these plants.

But just like any other seed, it's important to consider what your sources are and then treat all seeds with the proper reverence.

So we kind of figured out what we were gonna grow, and then we thought, "Well, what are we gonna do to bring people in and get people excited about at this garden?"

- So what kind of inspired a lot of this garden was actually...

So Erin I'm sure, like she said, she works in the herb garden, which is honestly a really fantastic area in Olbrich.

It's one of my favorite places.

The summer that we actually started, Olbrich was highlighting milkweed as a pollinating plant.

So they were highlighting all types of pollinators.

And in my culture, milkweed is a summer treat.

We get it every single time in the summer, we forage for it, and it's really fun and it's kind of that community.

You hear people like, "Oh, the mahic is ready."

It's kind of, people ring the alarm and we start looking for it and stuff.

So it sparked a really awesome conversation.

And then after that, we were like, "Well, it's so easy to forage and it's everywhere."

I mean, it's called milkweed.

It's literally on the side of the roads and trails.

It's absolutely everywhere.

So this would be something really easy that if people wanted to try our soup, it's really affordable, obviously.

You can just forage for it.

So we decided to have a milkweed soup tasting.

Erin was kind of meandering around and she's like, you know, actually, as we're thinking about these Indigenous plants, she's like, "We've had sweetgrass here for many years and it grows on its own here."

So we decided to try to harvest some sweetgrass.

And that was an awesome project, too, 'cause I've never harvested sweetgrass before and it smelled so beautiful back in the shed.

But yeah, so that's just a little bit about how we decided to get the community outreach and kind of get in the community.

- So then we started to think about kind of how we wanted the garden to present itself.

And actually we have a very small area that we usually use for veggies at Olbrich.

So the entire space was maybe 30 by 20, if that.

So it's a pretty small garden.

One of the things I always swear by in the herb garden is people love to walk under a dangling vegetable, and also vertical gardening is a key tenant just in gardening in general, especially in an urban space.

You're always maximizing your square footage and growing vertically helps with controlling pests and diseases.

A lot of benefits to having your garden go up and think about how it goes up as well as going out.

So we considered in the middle of the garden, making a little pathway that people could walk through.

And then that would also help us to support some of the plants growing in the garden because we figured, "Oh, we've got these huge corn "and sunflowers and stuff.

"Some of this stuff is gonna be getting pretty big by the time August rolls around."

And it's nice to have some things that you can tie plants into and kind of keep 'em under control.

So we started making this little mock up of how we were gonna construct this area and design it, and then Rita was like, "Well, I have a pretty good way that we're gonna be able to make our..." We called it the Three Sisters Living Tunnel.

Our little arch thing that people were gonna walk through.

So she definitely took it from there to get the garden kicked off in this way.

- So this is just an example of what our lodge is.

This is actually a medicine lodge.

We have different lodges.

We have feast lodges, medicine lodges for different ceremonies and purposes, but these are permanent structures.

We didn't move, we don't really pick up camp or anything.

So when we build something like this, it's permanent.

We plan to live in it and use it for many years.

And so this is called the Ciporoke, but it's like a wigwam.

And so this is what one looks like in the past.

And then this is what one looks like in the modern day.

And this is just without the canvas or the tarp over it.

We have fires and we all sit around on the outside.

And so I practice ceremonies in these, I go to feast, and so this is something that I'm around and I'm pretty familiar with.

And so when I saw her mood board of the arch, I was like, "Well, this is an Indigenous garden.

I think I know somebody who can do something perfect."

'Cause she was like, "Well, we can just, "It doesn't have to be anything spectacular.

We can just get some sticks from wherever."

And I'm like, "Hey, I know somebody "who can just get some sticks from wherever and make an arch."

[audience chuckles] And so I reached out to my Jaji, he's married to my aunt.

He's super awesome and he's an awesome role model in my life.

And so usually in Ho-Chunk culture, the women don't make something like this.

And so that's why I reached out to one of my male relatives and he was more than happy to help.

And we sent him home with some veggies from the herb garden.

You know, we like to trade and barter.

So that was super awesome.

It was an awesome opportunity to have a piece of my heart and my actual culture into the garden.

And then from here on out, it really felt the garden was just growing into something so much more, because I didn't really expect to have...

This type of structure is something that I hold really dear, because we spend a lot of time praying with each other in the community, lots of laughs and stuff.

So it meant a lot to have this there.

And this was the end result before anything really started popping up, and it looked so beautiful already.

- You always know a good garden is going to be underway when just the structure of it already looks good.

So there's not even any really plants in there, but it already looks like it's ready to receive and something good is gonna happen there.

The other thing that I thought we could just mention at this point is, I don't know if you folks are familiar with cover cropping at all.

So we initially started this whole project...

In gardening, you're always thinking, and similar in Indigenous cultures, it's a very seasonal approach to the world.

And seasonal, you're always kind of planning ahead, too.

And that's part of the joy of gardening, is planning what you're gonna grow next year, what you're gonna do differently.

So we had actually planted a cover crop in this area over the winter.

And so already prior to putting the arch together, we had tilled in the cover crop and the soil was starting to really soak in and activate with all those nutrients from the cover crop that we had just turned in.

The other thing that we thought was really funny at the time is, I don't know if you can see the little poofs of plants that are along the pathway down there, but there is some chamomile and some little pansies and stuff like that.

And then we were just joking like, "Not even one pansy was harmed in the creation of this living tunnel."

[all laughing] So it was a really good kickoff.

And then we got to planting day.

If you folks have ever read much about the Three Sisters style of gardening, where you would grow corn, squash, and beans together.

Part of that success with that technique relies on timing, just like everything in gardening.

So you would plant the corn first so it can kind of get a head start, and then the other plants start to grow up and around it.

And there's some really interesting little phenological reference notes that I was reading about the timing of planting the corn, such as, "When the dogwood leaves are the size of a squirrel's ear."

And so...

But we were not going out and measuring squirrels or anything like that.

[all laughing] So I think it was a good example of taking a traditional technique or gardening method and then just kind of adapting it to the modern day.

So we did just all of our planting on one day.

Rita's a young woman and busy with school and is not a full-time employee at Olbrich, so we weren't gonna be like, "Okay, we need you to come this day, "and then four days later, and then four days later after that."

We just did all of our planting on one day.

Just typical Wisconsin planting dates, waited until frost danger was passed, so after Memorial Day.

And then we planted everything on June 2nd.

And we were really well-rewarded, and it was a really encouraging sign for the garden that all of our seeds germinated really quickly.

So these pictures were actually taken only five days after we planted all the seeds.

- So these seeds are actually kind of special because these are the corn seeds, and these are the seeds that I got to bring myself from my tribe.

Once they started emerging-- Well, we also kind of tried something new, too.

There's some Ho-Chunk planting methods.

We didn't really wanna be too strict on our schedules or try to put too much pressure on first working with these plants 'cause we really want good energy and we wanna be able to see them grow and see what they produce.

And so it was just a big learning experience.

And so we decided to plant them in fours.

Four is a very sacred number to a lot of Native American people.

We have four seasons, four directions.

We also have four sacred herbs: sage, cedar, sweetgrass, and tobacco.

So it's just really prevalent in the Native community.

And so you might see this more as you learn more about Indigenous culture and Indigenous planting methods and stuff, but yeah, I think it was pretty successful.

They like to live together.

They came up right away, and that was really awesome.

- And another just word to the wise in this garden is, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

So all of the plants, these seeds were really, really important to us, and the last thing that we wanted to see was for everything to germinate and then see the rabbits come through and mow everything down, which is definitely something that happens at Olbrich a lot.

So right away, we actually just made little fences around all of the corn plants and all the beans and everything like that so they could get off to a good start, and it actually worked out really well 'cause then later in the summer when the corn started to get more kind of tippy, we had a little bit of a cone of the fencing still around them and we were able to throw dirt in there and then keep everything growing nice and straight.

So this picture was from June 21st.

So this is really only about 20 days after we got the garden growing.

And you can see just how happy and healthy everything was looking.

So that was when we turned our attention to starting to make tons of milkweed soup.

[Rita laughing] - Rita: Yep, so just a little bit about this plant.

So like I said, it's really, really common.

It's actually called like common milkweed.

The one that we're specifically talking about is the one that is purple.

The reason why monarchs love milkweed so much is because as the plant matures, it becomes really bitter.

And then the caterpillars munch on those leaves and then they start to taste bitter, and so it's a defense mechanism, but if you harvest it before it turns purple or before it starts actually flowering, the part that we harvest is the seed pods at the top.

And so if you've seen the picture on the far left, it's kind of starting to get that purpley tinge, and that's about when you wanna go for it, because once it becomes more pinkish, then it's gonna be bitter and not really taste all that great.

But we mostly just harvest the seed pods and the top two to four leaves.

So yeah, this is something that's really common knowledge, I think among definitely the Ho-Chunk community, but there are other tribes.

And I actually got to meet some people who moved from Mexico, and their family did the same thing, but they were Mexican.

So that was super awesome.

So that was something that we kind of got to share and learn about.

So that's just a little bit about this plant.

I love milkweed.

It's so good, and so I'm really happy to showcase this, too, because even though this plant isn't cultivated by... or wasn't cultivated by my ancestors and Indigenous people, it still is really important.

And so it was awesome that it kind of blended right alongside with the pollinating plants, our Indigenous Garden, and I got to share more of my culture at Olbrich.

And so this is what the soup looks like.

I think it tastes really good with bacon, but it also tastes just fine with green beans and some vegetable broth or chicken broth or however you wanna season it, but it really does have more of a flavor like green beans.

It isn't so much of a leafy type of flavor.

And the seed pods hold a lot of juice, so it's super yummy.

And so, yeah, this is me cooking it.

[chuckles] And then here is us serving it.

This is the first day that we got to serve it.

And this was so much fun.

Every single day that we served this soup, we absolutely ran out, which was an awesome thing because I didn't really expect so many people.

I mean, when you're trying something new, you wanna be respectful, maybe tentative, not sure whether you're gonna like it or not, but a lot of people ended up liking it, which was even more encouraging for me because this is the first time that I've shared something like this with the community.

So, yeah.

- And this is just a big shout out to Rita.

And also her partner, Donovan, is in the crowd.

And Donovan and a lot other members of Rita's family and just other members of the Ho-Chunk community and all of our big Olbrich family was there to check this out and support this, but Rita was just such a trooper.

Here you see her in the afternoon, it actually started raining, but we just were out there to the last drop, serving soup to anybody who wanted some.

So that was our first milkweed soup date.

That one was on June 25th.

And then we thought-- Well, kind of like Rita was saying, for something new, "Let's try to do this two times, "so if people feel they missed the first time, "hopefully they could come back a second time.

"Or they love the soup so much that they need to get a second tasting a few weeks later."

And the other part that Rita forgot to mention was that the soup has these really awesome tiny dumplings in it.

So it's yeah, it's very satisfying, but making so many tiny dumplings was very time-consuming.

So we might be enlisting some help on the next round.

So a few weeks later then, the word had really kind of gotten out about what a cool activity this was.

And so we had our second tasting on July 8th, and this was just like really amazing.

And it was so awesome to see the different stories that were shared during some of these events, which Rita definitely has a little bit more insight into some of the really cool things that we absorbed during these encounters.

- Yeah, so a little bit about that.

So I think part of food is that everybody can relate to it and that food means something different to everybody, but it's usually something pretty comforting.

I mean, 300 soup samplers, we were meeting a lot of new people and it was awesome to be able to share my culture, but then it was also awesome to be so rewarded in the way that a lot of people that I met had their own appreciation for it.

And then there was actually-- [clearing throat] Excuse me.

There was actually some people, there was a woman who came, and she specifically came to this milkweed soup tasting because she was once married to a Ho-Chunk man who passed away many years before.

And so she missed the taste of it and it just meant so much to her.

She drove out, and even for this small soup sample, it filled her heart and it was a really awesome story, and I felt like that was really rewarding.

And also to see random Ho-Chunk community members that I don't even know come out and be like, "Oh, I heard you're serving mahic."

I'm like, "Oh my gosh, it's so awesome to meet "more Native people in the community and people who show interest."

And so I think that's another part of working with these plants and being able to work with Erin that I think might have went unnoticed, unless we were able to do the community outreach, because all of this means so much, especially because these plants we've cultivated or we work with, and they give us food and they give us sustenance.

And in order to carry on for the next day in a good way, I think I'm learning a lot about that.

- So we got to then just relax for a little bit.

By the middle of the summer, even though it was really dry, obviously at Olbrich, we take really good care of all of our plants, especially something that holds so much significance and we're just so invested in and so many people are getting excited about.

So we had kept plenty of water on the garden all summer, and we started to see some of the first crops come in.

So we had some more of a summer squash, like a patty pan type.

And a lot of those we took to the food pantry 'cause they don't really keep.

A lot of the other crops though were more of a late fall harvest crop.

So we started to see the first beans come in.

The bean that you see pictured there with that really beautiful purple mottling is the Cherokee Trail of Tears bean, which if you know at all much about heirloom seeds, that's one of the more commonly known older beans that was actually carried by Indigenous people during forced removals.

So pretty amazing that that bean is still accessible and still being grown by gardeners everywhere.

And we also grew these really awesome Lakota Hubbard squash, which you see the first one starting to color up up there.

But those got to be the size of a basketball.

They got really huge, like a good old Hubbard squash.

But they actually cooked up and had a really awesome fine texture.

So we're really happy to see the first fruits of the garden coming in.

But the real kind of centerpiece of the garden was the corn that Rita was able to contribute from the Ho-Chunk Nation.

- Rita: Yeah.

So corn is really important to Ho-Chunk people.

We honestly believe that when we were given corn, we were also given tobacco.

So as far back as tobacco dates, that's how much corn has been in our life and has taken care of us.

Every single summer, our nation also has different corn fields full of corn that we can pick for ourselves and harvest for ourselves.

It's kind of a big community effort.

Whenever we harvest corn, it's like a family thing.

So lots of stories and laughs are shared, and it's a whole process and it's kind of something I look forward to every single year.

So on the note that these foods are super important to us, not only corn is important, but every single food that we have is sacred.

And so especially for foods that are native to this area, like Erin said, when Indigenous people were being pushed out with removals and stuff, our food sources were directly targeted.

Sometimes they would make sure that we would have to be relocated to a new place right when we would be getting ready to plant corn or right when we'd be getting ready to harvest corn.

And all of our villages were permanent, so were our agricultural areas.

Some people had grown up in these villages and farmed the same plot of land in the same area, so leaving behind that corn was like leaving behind our relatives.

And so, yeah.

So food is at the center of everyone's world.

We use songs, ceremony, and stories to make ourselves whole with ourselves and also our community.

A lot of other communities use this as well.

I'm sure we can all relate that food just at the center of all of our tables.

So it sustains us on multiple levels and contributes to a healthy, holistic lifestyle.

So we all know that there's a balance in life between the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.

We use food in almost all of our ceremonies, and that's how important it is to us.

And so I was able to work with my community and my family members in order to transcribe...

I think we got all of the names in the Indigenous Garden actually.

- And then some!

Some extras, too.

- Mm-hmm.

And so this was also really important and it meant a lot.

So we have the Ho-Chunk translation right there.

And then we also made a YouTube video recording, if you guys wanted to hear the pronunciations.

So that was a special added touch as well.

Corn.

Wicawas.

Squash.

Wicawa haja.

Bean.

Hunik.

- Erin: We had a QR code, which is one of those codes that you scan with your phone and then it takes you to a website.

So we were able to have this QR code out in the garden so that people could look at the sign, look at the garden, and then actually hear the Ho-Chunk pronunciations of the plants in the garden.

- Rita: Milkweed.

Mahic.

Sunchoke.

Paxi.

Tobacco.

Taani.

Sweetgrass.

Cemanasge.

Purple coneflower.

Xawioxere hapsinco.

Sugar maple.

Naasak.

Sunflower.

Sawazii.

- Erin: And then, again, we just got to kind of relax and enjoy the summer for a little bit.

The plants, like I was mentioning, everything got just so crazy tall.

So it was really fun to hear just anybody come into the garden, especially the kids really love when vegetables get really big.

Everybody loves to see something in a garden that they actually know.

So it was fun to see the kids come in and be like, "Oh, the corn!

The sunflowers are so huge!"

So I think some of the plants were literally 17 feet tall.

- Yeah!

- So stuff was getting enormous.

And meanwhile, we had been drying out this sweetgrass all summer in preparation for our sweetgrass braiding activity in September.

- Rita: Mm-hmm.

Which this was a lot of fun, too.

We got to work with Wunk Sheek, which is another Native American student group at UW-Madison.

And so we got to work with them a lot over the summer, and they have their own garden at Eagle Heights as well.

So it was just so cool to be able to be like, "Hey, do you need beans or do you need corn?"

And so that was really cool.

Another kind of background to how working with Indigenous plants is, because they had seeds mailed up from one of their reservations, which was super awesome.

And we got to swap beans and stuff like that.

But here, we were able to kind of just sit down with each other and enjoy the fruits of our labor and talk and smell sweetgrass and share stories and have all that good energy and good medicine around the sacred herb.

And so this was an awesome experience.

And we had quite a few people drop in and they made some pretty awesome braids.

[chuckling] - Erin: And, again, just like Rita was mentioning, we had a big shout out to, and this is the first and actually the only Ho-Chunk word that I learned.

Pinagigi!

But it means thank you, but in a really informal fashion.

So it's kind of just like more casual, like, "Yeah, thanks!"

The members of Wunk Sheek, the UW students group came out for a lot of our activities, and it was also really fun to see Rita kind of connect with them and make some new friends herself in addition to all of the support that they gave to the stuff that we had going on.

And then, like most veggie gardeners know, came the best time of the year, harvest time.

So we got to pick some of those beautiful squashes that were growing out in the garden all year.

We had some really awesome gourds, which gourds are interesting because when people actually first started to cultivate different types of squash, before they ever thought about using them to eat, they were using them for containers.

So squashes were first cultivated to store things and hold things before anybody ever thought of actually eating them.

And we do have, if you guys wanna check out later, we have some of the crops that we grew.

And so that gourd is from a few years ago, but it's nice and dry.

And some of our other plants and stuff are up here, too.

- Rita: Yeah, so this is kind of us planning for the future and working with these seeds.

So the corn seeds in particular are very special to me and my culture, but it was super awesome because at the Indigenous Garden, there's no cross-pollination from any other corn seeds around, so they're gonna stay true to seed.

And so we definitely wanted to save some of those.

And I've never saved seeds before or anything like that, so it was so awesome to work with Erin and to have her kind of tell me when, "Well, the Cherokee Trail of Tears "are kind of starting to dry and split.

I think now would be a good time to get those seeds."

And then obviously the corn.

And yeah, and actually everything turned out really beautiful.

I think that it's all aesthetically pleasing as well.

So that was really awesome.

But yeah, so we plan to use a lot of the seeds that we grew in the garden next year, too.

So we're gonna try to continue that.

- This was our best glamour shot of the seeds that we were saving for next year.

And we even tried a little bit of maybe plant breeding.

So most of the seeds that we're saving to grow next year came from the corn plants that had really purple outer husks.

And so we're curious to see next year, like you can see-- You wanna grab one of those?

- Yeah!

- Yeah, you can see, they have, even when they're dry, they have just this beautiful purple.

So we're hoping maybe next year we'll have a little bit higher percentage of corn that has really cool purple husks.

You know, in a display garden, you gotta be good to the last drop.

So we actually cut all the corn down and used it to do some fall decorations, and we considered it to be a really good sign when we saw this hawk take up residence there in the fall.

And I even saw him fly down and pick off a vole at one point, so that was really encouraging.

And then we are inviting you all to come join and have some milkweed soup with us this upcoming summer.

So we're tentatively planning for July 7th.

Keep an eye out for that and the other activities that we'll have going on in the Indigenous Garden.

- Well, thank you all so much for being patient and listening.

And it was an awesome opportunity to be able to talk to you guys about some things that I'm really passionate about.

So yeah, thank you.

[audience applauding]