Braiding Sweetgrass

them along. But each plant has its own pace and the sequence of their germination, their birth order, is important to their rela ...

Native people speak of this gardening style as the Three Sisters. There are many stories of how they came to be, but they all sh ...

together; the placement of every leaf, the harmony of shapes speak their message. Respect one another, support one another, brin ...

The sisters cooperate above ground with the placement of their leaves, carefully avoiding one another’s space. The same is true ...

nitrogen fixers. Rhizobium can only convert nitrogen under a special set of circumstances. Its catalytic enzymes will not work i ...

For years, I taught General Botany in a lecture hall with slides and diagrams and stories of plants that could not fail to infla ...

and the more she looks the more excited she becomes. “Look at the composition,” she says. “It’s just like our art teacher descri ...

eating ovaries? Blech—I’ll never eat a squash again.” There is an earthy sexuality to a garden, and most of the students get dra ...

umbilical cord. Through this cord, the mother plant nourishes her growing offspring. The students crowd around to look. Jed asks ...

Corn, in all its guises, is a superb form of starch. All summer, the corn turns sunshine into carbohydrate, so that all winter, ...

being altogether. The relationships disappear and individuals are lost in anonymity. You can hardly recognize a beloved face los ...

like a double helix. The squash creates the ethical habitat for coexistence and mutual flourishing. I envision a time when the i ...

whole emerge which transcends the individual. The gifts of each are more fully expressed when they are nurtured together than al ...

Wisgaak Gokpenagen: A Black Ash Basket Doonk, doonk, doonk. Silence. Doonk, doonk, doonk. The back of the ax meets the log to ma ...

new wood and passes it around for us all to see. John coils it into a neat hoop, ties it fast, and hangs it on a nearby tree bra ...

Pigeon family baskets can be found in the Smithsonian and other museums and galleries around the world. But they are also availa ...

another on stout, corky twigs. And yet it’s not enough to simply find black ash; it has to be the right one—a tree ready to be a ...

summerwood. When the days shorten and leaves fall, the cambium settles in for a winter’s rest and stops dividing altogether. But ...

although John says you can bury a log in a trench covered with damp earth to keep it fresh. His favorite times are spring—when “ ...

his chair and holds the splitter between his knees so its open legs are on the ground and the peaked end rises from his lap. He ...