SANTA CRUZ -- The UC Santa Cruz Arboretum is continuing development of a Relearning Garden featuring native plants traditionally used by the Amah Mutsun people.
The garden grew out of collaboration with the Amah Mutsun tribe and arboretum staff. A reception last month sponsored by the Office of the Chancellor, celebrated the ongoing project.
The project has been planting the garden throughout a 50-acre parcel of land dedicated to the arboretum's California native plants collection. The goal is to provide plant material to the tribe for traditional medicines, basket weaving and other uses.
Ascencion Solorsano de Cervantes, the last fluent speaker of the tribal language, passed down traditional knowledge of the tribe. J. P. Harrington, a linguist from the Smithsonian Institution, cataloged a list of 100 important plants during interviews with Solorsano in 1929.
That list is the basis for the Relearning Garden. Rick Flores, curator of the California native plant collection at the arboretum, has helped collect more than half of the plants so far.
Arboretum staff are working together with Amah Mutsun tribal chairman Valentin Lopez and other tribal members to develop the relearning theme in the garden. The UCSC American Indian Resource Center helped forge the connection between the arboretum and the tribe.
"This work is extremely important to our tribe," Lopez said. "We are working to understand the traditional practices of land management and to relearn what our ancestors knew."