Inside Milwaukee’s Native Wellness Garden
Originally published in Milwaukee Magazine 9/6/23Tucked away in the Garden District on Milwaukee’s South Side, the Native Wellness Garden quietly cultivates growing practices that go back millennia. The community garden, a partnership of the Gerald L. Ignace Indian Health Center and UW-Extension, was designed to focus on food as medicine and help people develop healthy growing and living practices.
The organic produce grown in the plots at Sixth Street and Howard Avenue is distributed to visitors and patients at the Ignace Center and supports its programs such as Veggie RX, says Loren Rendino, a registered dietitian and nutritionist for the center. The garden has produced 2,000 pounds of fruits and veggies annually, since it was created in 2010.
Beyond its bounty, Rendino and the Ignace Center’s Health Promotion Disease Prevention Team seek to make a place for Native community members to gather, learn and grow, putting on cooking demonstrations, seasonal events and classes on gardening, composting and more.
The site has free growing beds, which anyone in the city is welcome to community use, and it also features different gardens with distinct purposes. There is a medicine wheel garden, pollinator garden, ceremony circle, elders’ garden, an orchard and more. The medicine wheel garden is divided into four quadrants, which hold multiple meanings, including cardinal directions (north, east, south, west), seasons (winter, spring, summer, autumn), or elements (fire, air, water, earth) and other nature-related interpretations. Each quadrant grows medicinal crops native to the region they represent, and is a space to gather for ceremonies, discussions or reflections.
The Three Sisters Garden is named after the Native growing practice of planting corn, beans and squash together, because each plant supports the other. The corn stalks give the beans structure to climb, the beans pull nitrogen from the air to enrich the soil, and the large, prickly squash leaves shade the soil, keeping it moist and keeping weeds and critters at bay.
“We also passed down Native American traditions and knowledge through our Lessons from the Garden series last summer,” says Rendino. “Visitors seem to enjoy the events that we host, as well as the Three Sisters Garden, the Medicine Wheel Garden and the community beds.”
Several of these growing practices, including medicine wheels and the Three Sisters, are several thousand years old, and using them in the heart of Milwaukee is one of several ways the Native Wellness team keeps Indigenous practices alive and thriving.
While the garden is run by the Ignace Center and connected to the city’s urban Native population, the food it grows is made available to anyone. Updates on the garden’s Facebook page includes opportunities to pick up fresh produce, or how to get involved by planting your own plots or volunteering.
“There are many things that people can experience in the garden,” says Rendino. “We hope that people learn how to grow their own food without harsh chemicals. Maybe learn where our food comes from and the effort it takes the Earth to be able to produce nutritious foods. We hope that people can learn to take a moment and enjoy nature for all it has to offer.”
