The Resilience Garden at the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico is a place where tourists and locals can meet like family, plunging their hands into sandy loamy soil to help bring forward the three sisters—corn, beans and squash. From March through October on the second Sunday of every month, for $5 per class, gardeners, foodies and cultural historians of all levels, can come together to learn about thousand year old Pueblo agricultural practices that still promote successful growing seasons.
Each of the experiential classes in the “Seasons of Growth” series will focus on a different aspect of traditional agriculture while getting down and dirty in the garden. In the March 12 session, for instance, visitors will prepare soil and compost and learn about cold-weather crops. They’ll also be able to take home their own seedlings to cultivate indoors until they can either come back and plant them later in the season in the Resilience Garden, or grow them in their own home or community gardens as a souvenir of their time in Albuquerque.
The garden was established last year with a “Power Up” grant from PNM, the local utility, and it’s designed as a kind of living timeline. It has an area devoted entirely to “pre-contact food,” said Bettina Sandoval, IPCC Cultural Education Specialist who will be leading the classes. “Only things that were here before trading with the Spanish and Mexicans began are grown in this section,” she explained. “Choke cherry trees, plums, blueberries, wild celery, spinach, mint—those grew here naturally.”
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