Archive for category Knowledge in the Garden


After developing a working plant list for the medicinal plants I plan to research and cultivate as part of a garden that suits the needs of my community, I began looking into the historical and cultural uses of the plants beyond their contemporary and well-known uses.  From here, I researched ethnobotany; the study of the relationship between plants and people. Ethnobotany focuses on how the plants available to a group of people shape their culture, and how a culture of people maintains their relationship to the earth around them with plants. Ehtnobotany plays a particular role in researching the historical uses of native plants in my bioregion because it reflects how the people who previously inhabited this land utilized their resources and the relationship that they had with these plants.


The Iroquois relationship to medicinal plants (and uses of the plants) reflects how the uses of native plants have changed over time in my bioregion and how the use of these plants and cultural value originated. Though Pennsylvania was not historically the origin or primary location of the Iroquois, many Native American trading trails go through Pennsylvania, especially central Pennsylvania, and these trading routes serve as an opportunity for material and cultural exchanges.  Researching the historical origin of native medicinal plant use; such as bergamot, black cohosh, and dandelion, demonstrates how the relationship of one culture to its plants has passed to other cultures. Specifically, the plant use and relationship to plants of the Iroquois was passed on to many of the early European settlers and then developed into the contemporary uses we associate the plants with today. Though the uses of the plants have remained the same over time in many cases, the relationships that different cultures maintain with plants (and the earth around them) changed greatly over time.


Ethnobotany connects to ecofeminist ideals because it describes how a culture interacts with its plant resources and how a culture develops based on nature.  In regards to medicinal herbs, people developed a relationship to nature as they utilized the plants available locally to remedy the health needs of their communities.


“History of Susquehannock Indians”.

“Ethnobotany from a Native American Perspective”.

Herrick, James W. Iroquois Medical Botany. Syracuse University Press: Syracuse NY, 1995.

Balick, Michael J. and Paul Alan Cox. Plants, People, and Culture: The Science of Ethnobotany. Scientific American Library: New York, 1996.

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Getting to the Root of the Problem

Last semester in the Ecofeminism course, I noticed how our class of women became a community throughout the semester through the information we learned and shared together.  Each of us contributed a different piece of background knowledge and experience to the larger ecofeminism picture that we put together as we learned about various global issues. Community development and maintenance is a major ecofeminist concern, as community building not only strengthens individuals but also strengthens regions and creates new routes of information sharing. I used this as the premise for my Independent Study this semester; how information and experience sharing (such as what our class engaged in) builds ecofeminist communities. I will also be examining how a specific medium like community gardening and herbal medicine can be used to establish communities and what role this information sharing will play in a community.


Herbal gardening and medicines are also an ecofeminist topic because herbal remedies are an approach to medicine that works from the soil up and with a person’s bodily system to remedy an ailment. This is opposed to most contemporary medicines, which simply cure ailments that may just be a small part of the larger problem. An ecofeminist approach to issues (including medicine) instead seeks to evaluate the whole system that causes a problem and potentially restructure it to permanently remedy the problem, rather than trying to solve a problem in segments. Herbal medicine seeks to evaluate the system in which a health problem is occurring and strengthen the whole system; for example strengthening the respiratory system as a whole to treat asthma instead of only treating asthma symptoms. Growing your own herbal medicine within a community also encourages a connection to the land and soil, as ecofeminism also advocates. By growing the food you consume and medicine you use, you gain an understanding of the process in which those plants become a part of your body, thus connecting your body closer to the soil on which you live.


Throughout the semester, I hope to rethink how I and members of my community consider medicine by building a community around alternative herbal medicine. By doing this, I hope to gain a better understanding of my body as a system and how it fits into and works with the environment around me and how elements of the environment (such as medicinal plants) operate within my bodily system.

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