Berkeley’s new Indigenous Community Learning Garden takes root

Student Jesmane Sanches admiringly examines a sunflower growing in the new Indigenous Community Learning Garden in the Oxford Tract. Nearby, Adina Lewis waters some of the many native plants growing there this fall. (UC Berkeley photo by Adam Sings in the Timber) There's a new garden at UC Berkeley, but for Adina Lewis and other Indigenous people in the campus community, it's much more than flora and fauna. The Indigenous Community Learning Garden is a place where both they and native plants can connect and thrive. On 1,050 square feet in the Oxford Tract, at the campus's northwest corner, the four-month-old garden boasts Dakota Ivory corn, Cherokee Purple tomatoes, Chiletepin peppers, California buckwheat, tree mallow, white sage, native California grapes, California brittlebush and many other Indigenous and California native plants. Since June, students have been planting, tending and harvesting the crops, documenting their work, and learning and sharing stories about gardening done by their ancestors. On a recent afternoon, Lewis, a fifth-year microbial biology major, checked the heartiness of the "three sisters”- corn, beans and squash - growing there as companions and in mounds, not rows.