The Ute Ethnobotany LEARNING GARDEN

An ethnobotany garden is a demonstration and teaching garden that displays how native cultures used native plants in daily life.  The Ute Ethnobotany Learning Garden is located on lands occupied for at least 500 years by the Ute Indian people.  The end product is to provide a Living Laboratory/Learning Garden available to local schools, clubs, senior groups and visitors to the area. The scope of the lesson plan is broad, from adaptive vegetable gardening for people with limited mobility and/or limited space, teaching strategies for living and eating from a xeric landscape, teaching traditional Native American gardening skills, exhibiting traditional Ute structures and developing miniature plant communities with representative species from the life zones in and around the Grand Valley of Western Colorado. Twice a year (June and September) funding provides for Ute students and elders from the Uintah and Ouray Reservation in Utah to visit the garden and learn about the native plants and how they were used in ancestral times. During these visits mini-powwows are scheduled and local residents encourage to visit and to learn from the Ute Indians. Funding also permits visits to nearby Ute archaeological sites located on public lands where students learn from their elders about their cultural heritage. This project provides the foundation for interpreting Ute traditional culture and plant use, shares information on the value of plants and their role in resource management on public lands, teaches stewardship of natural resources, exhibits life zones and the plants used by the Ute people for food, fiber and medicine and teaches the public about native landscaping and low water-use plantings.  This project creates a unique opportunity to contribute to the lives of Ute young people and provides encouragement to students of all ages and cultures to learn about the natural and cultural world. The Ute Ethnobotany Learning Garden is a joint project of the U.S. Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Agriculture U.S. Forest Service, Colorado State University Extension, Mesa State College and the Northern Ute Indian Nation, Uintah and Ouray Reservation. This partnership is developing 2.5 acres of undeveloped county land adjacent to the existing demonstration gardens and Arboretum at the Mesa County Colorado State University Extension office at the Mesa County fairgrounds.