Vol. 14, No. 3, Spring 2001

Two Modern Acjachemem Gardens

Kirsten Meyer

A generation or two ago, almost everyone kept a garden out of necessity. Today gardens are viewed as optional, something for which most people do not have the time or space. Those of us without backyards are forced to make do with potted plants. This is unfortunate, as there are many health benefits to be gained from a garden, such as physical exercise and gaining control over your own food. It seems that a devaluing of traditional gardens overlaps with a devaluing of traditional ways of healing, thinking, eating, praying, and being. Our failure to use the knowledge and memories of plants generated by our parents and grandparents is one way that we inadvertently chip away at our culture and our history.

L. Frank Manriquez and Joyce Stanfield Perry are two Acjachemen women who maintain gardens. While their gardens are quite different, and located hours apart from each other, they share some of the same elements and serve many of the same purposes.

L. Frank , a well-known Tongva/Acjachemem artist, has kept a garden of some sort for the past twenty years. Having relocated to Northern California from her Southern California homeland, she was motivated to start a garden that would have the familiar scent and appearance of home. She now lives on almost half an acre of land in Santa Rosa (Sonoma County) and is therefore able to expand her efforts. Currently, she has three gardens: one for basketry materials, herbs, and medical plants; a cactus garden; and a large vegetable garden. In addition, she keeps a small greenhouse where she nurtures seedlings and young plants. Her cactus garden includes prickly pear cactus, irises, and sages from the Southern California area. The other gardens include many fruits and vegetables, which provide her with the health benefit of fresh produce that is free of pesticides and other chemicals.

The Manriquez garden was started for health reasons, as L. Frank is both gluten and lactose-intolerant. She filled her garden with all of the foods that she loves: corn, pumpkin, butternut squash, yellow squash, pole beans, sunflowers, carrots, radishes, onions, lettuce, acorns, and watermelons. Her backyard is also filled with fruit trees like Santa Rosa plum, Fuji apple, Gravenstein apple, pears, grapes, three different kinds of blueberries, golden raspberries, and blackberries. She can go out and harvest whatever she wants fresh from the source. The foods are "delicious," she said, because they have been grown carefully. When her garden is out of season, she has to go to the store, which is "more expensive and time-consuming." She has to trust other people with her food and her health.

L. Frank has been "fascinated by the magic of plants" since elementary school, when her class planted seeds in a cup and watched them grow. As she points out, "the cycle of growth is very basic and sensible. A long time ago we were in touch with the seasons." Gardening makes it necessary to value a season’s passing. According to L. Frank, "gardening is not something somebody tells you; it is something that you learn for yourself. It is not as technical as people think. It is an emotional relationship, it’s all about how you feel."

Her food garden is arranged logically, according to the height of the plants and their need for sunshine. Her cactus garden is arranged artistically in a sunny patch of the backyard. She goes to her gardens when she needs peace. L. Frank has included in her gardens a rock collection, pieces of abalone and wood, and personal icons. Being near the garden has a settling and soothing effect for her. Often she will go out and sing to her garden. Without time in the garden, she feels restless, uncomfortable, and unhealthy.

L. Frank would like to incorporate some southwest Indian gardening techniques, and has plans to include willow, oak trees, deergrass, juncus textillus, redbud, angelica root, dogbane, and milkweed in her garden. Some gardening techniques currently employed in the gardens include microclimating, plant replacement with natives, and non-toxic weed management. With wind sheltering and tarpaulins, she and her family have created microclimates that allow more delicate or less adaptable plants to enjoy a stable environment throughout the seasons. Commercial lawn grasses in the broad front lawn are being replaced with hardy native clovers that drink less water. Rather than using chemicals to control weeds, long sheets of cardboard are laid on garden plots, with holes cut for desired plant growth. Now at the end of winter, the vegetable patch is cozy under a bed of straw, waiting for spring planting.

Joyce Stanfield Perry (Acjachemen/Luiseño), is the tribal manager for the Juaneño Band of Mission Indians, and president of the educational nonprofit, Payomkawichum Kaamalam (The Westerners: The First People of Earth Mother). Payomkawichum works on behalf of the Luiseño, Gabrieleño/Tongva, and Acjachemen communities. Joyce also works as a repatriation consultant on local development sites, trying to assure that the ancestors and their belongings are handled with dignity and respect.

Joyce lives in her traditional homeland in Irvine. Since she was a girl, she has kept a garden. She started with flower gardens, and, over the years, has changed the landscape of her gardens to reflect the stages of her personal growth. She has found that plants have a soothing, calming effect for her, and because of that, they help to create balance in her life. She learned about the importance of gardens from women such as her mother, her grandmother, Ruth Lobo, and friend Gerri Ibanez. These women educated Joyce about the power of a garden to keep one clear, balanced, and strong.

Joyce’s garden is a combination of plants and symbolic objects. She started her current garden about six years ago. Everything in Joyce’s garden is rich in meaning, deliberately and carefully placed. She intuits how plants and objects should be arranged, how they are connected to each other, to her, and to creation. For example, when a childhood friend gave her an Acjachemen guardian angel figurine, she displayed it prominently in the garden. Next to the angel are images of people from the Spanish/Mexican period that remind her of her grandparents. Close by are roses, a tribute to her grandmother, who loved them.

To Joyce, "rocks represent creation, the central axis of the world." The three large grinding stones given to her by her grandmother were originally from the ancient villages of Sajavit, Alauna, and Quechinga (now the areas of San Juan Capistrano, Foothill Ranch, and Oceanside, respectively). Heart-shaped rocks, in particular, are very significant to Joyce. Several years ago, when her heart was heavy with family matters, she found a large heart-shaped rock while walking on the beach. She took it as a sign, a gift of strength. For a long time, she carried it with her everywhere she went, and prayed with it. Since this first find, she has accumulated a collection of heart rocks from various places and people.

The garden holds a tree trunk with very feminine shapes that Joyce finds symbolic of womanhood and the creation of life. Wood is a prominent part of the garden, honoring the tree people and representing their spirits. Much of the wood in Joyce’s garden and home was given to her by her friend David Belardes. The antlers in her garden are a gift from her uncle, who is a hunter. Joyce recently added an arbor to her backyard, and plans to expand her garden from the front to the back of her house.

Aloe vera, sage, lavender, and yerba buena are the herbs in the garden. The aloe vera was a gift from David. This medicine is used by the family to soothe burns and cuts, to heal and sanitize, and to keep skin soft. The lavender was a gift from Nancy Evans, and was traditionally used in initiation rites for women’s ceremonies. Lavender reminds Joyce of the power that the plant people have. It also attracts birds, especially tishmal (the hummingbird), whom she believes helps her prayers ascend to the heavens. Tishmal is a frequent visitor to her garden.

The yerba buena was cut from a plant belonging to tribal elder Richard Mendez, and given to her to grow in her own garden. The yerba buena can be boiled in a tea for stomach aches. Sage is a cleansing herb, used as incense. It provides clarity and clears the passageway to the heavens. During times of celebration and prayer, such as the equinox or solstice, Joyce will offer sage and tobacco to the fire in her garden’s chimenia, a freestanding clay fireplace.

Joyce hopes that her children will learn from her relationship with her garden, and that they will see the importance of gardens as a connection to the past. Often she will go out to the garden to speak with her sons Scott, eighteen, and Todd, fifteen. It serves as a calming place for them to communicate freely. They know that the garden is an important place for Joyce, and they treat it with respect. As Joyce says, "in today’s busy urban society, many times it is hard to get the attention of teenagers (or adults). The garden serves as a reminder not to get so caught up in the hubbub of everyday life that you forget what is important. Offering a place of respite and clarity, gardens provide a place to put things into perspective." Native gardens also honor tradition, heritage, and our ancestors, values that Joyce tries to instill in her children.

Joyce feels that "all cultures have a connection with the earth, and to their homeland. Gardens are a source of goodness, connecting us with the ancient ones, and the ones who are living today. Gardens are also a place where life, and Earth Mother are celebrated." Joyce’s garden, in particular, emphasizes and celebrates the feminine, the strength and beauty of Native womanhood.

Sea, sun, moon, stars, stone, wood, plants, and animals all converge within a few square yards in Joyce’s garden. The result is a rich, condensed, spiritual space where every object is sacred and holds healing power. Every sense is filled with power derived from the garden: taste, smell, sight, touch, sound, and memory. This place of rejuvenation offers a starting, middle, and ending point for all things, and is a foundation for Joyce’s understanding of Acjachemen culture and traditions.

Sacred spaces are an integral part of our belief systems. Native gardens provide medicine in many ways, primarily through the utilization of traditional plants and herbs for healing physical symptoms, providing nourishment, and also for the psychological and spiritual benefits provided by the garden as a sacred space. In Native gardens, the physical and spiritual converge. In the words of Acjachemen scholar Frank Lobo, "food is like medicine, and medicine is like food." Plants are both medicine and food; food for the mind, spirit, and body.

Kirsten Meyer is of Cherokee, Lenape, Lakota, and Choctaw heritage. She is currently working as a civil rights equity assistance intern for WestEd, and as Director of Programs and Development for Payomkawichum Kaamalam. She would like to thank L. Frank and Joyce for sharing their gardens, and thanks to David Belardes and Ruth Lobo for sharing their stories.