UIC Heritage Garden

Our first Summer Volunteer Day was a success! Thank you all for experiencing the gardens with us and planting Heritage Garden’s first ollas 🌺

Consisting of numerous activities ranging from low intensity such as seed sorting and seed bomb making to high intensity olla burying and weeding, our volunteer day allowed for a multi learning experience that we look forward to providing during our next on Monday, August 5th! 🪴

Keep a look out for our ancient irrigation system in the quad beds! Helping to sustain water usage, the ollas are made of porous clay and filled with water. The system works to evaporate h2o into the soil on hot days, soaking up and storing the water during moist ones. 🌦️

No Justice No Peace No Racist Police
Thank you for helping organize the emergency protest for Sonya Massey, all Black and Brown souls terrorized and lost to systemic racism and Palestine.

Rest In Power Sonya Massey 🕊️
💚❤️🤍
Free Palestine 🇵🇸

Thank you so much to to Ramona from the for hosting us this week! 🌱

🌻 We focused on feminist approaches to
reproductive and environmental justice where we learned about feminism and liberation in relation to the physical environment and in promoting a healthier, more
livable, and more just existence for humanity. We engaged in conversations about how women and communities of color have linked their personal relationships with the
environment to their social identities and involvement in environmental justice movements.

✨We ended with @ justseeds protest posters and talked about what we hope to further learn about with environmental and reproductive justice 🦋

Free Palestine
protest poster by shirien creates 🍉

Hello fellow social pollinators! Week 7 the Heritage Garden was so happy to visit the ArabAm Cultural Center. 🌿

A portion of what we discussed was Palestine’s agriculture and the Indigenous creation of garden terraces. Garden terraces essentially utilize the high slopes and take advantage of the rain falling down the slope; they consistently use mud and stones to shape the walls and stairs.

Abuusada reports that these terraces were once considered the defining feature of Palestine’s central hilly region; they’re planted with Olive trees, Fig trees and vines. Currently, they are being destroyed or villages are being separated from their terraces by settler- colonialism. Settler- colonial borders make it impossible for people to visit their terrace that could be a few miles outside of their village. These terraces are not only a sustainable way to work with the land, but also a place for neighbors and community to be in space with each other. Overall, Indigenous knowledge of the land and plants is essential in land and food sovereignty and freeing Palestine. 🇵🇸🕊️🌻

Art Credit:

https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/palestines-garden-walls-the-deliberate-destruction-of-palestines-terraced-gardens

🪻Have you ever wanted to get involved with gardening at UIC? Support our summer gardening! 🌻🐛🌱

Join us for some Summer hands-on gardening and learn how Heritage Garden interns are connecting horticulture with environmental sustainability, cultural diversity, and social justice. Activities will vary, but may include preparing seeds to give away, weeding, trellising, harvesting, and burying ollas. Be prepared to get your hands dirty, make new friends, learn new skills, and have fun!🥒🥬🍅

Limited spots available! Take seeds and harvest when you volunteer! 🍌

When✨
Monday July 22nd from 10:30 am - 12:30 pm
Monday August 5th from 10:30 am - 12:30 pm

Where: Meet in front of UIC Latino Cultural Center, Lecture Center B2

To RSVP, scan the QR code or go to: https://go.uic.edu/HGVolunteerSummer24

Masks are required indoors 🥰

For access needs or questions, contact us at (312) 996-3143 or [email protected]

These events will be mostly outdoors: tools, gloves, and all other gardening materials will be provided. All levels of gardening skills are welcomed!

art credit: from mckinley park to palestine, community care is divine protest print 🍉 by marimacha monarca press

At the Heritage Garden, we have Palestine in our hearts and minds. We are tending to stolen Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi land occupied by the imperialist US. Seeing all kinds of life grow in color with access to clean air and water is a blessing that can never be taken for granted and we have a responsibility to stand with all nations who’ve had this blessing robbed from them by imperialism. None of us are free until Palestine is free: that means Indigenous land, water, and air sovereignty from the river to the sea! 🫒🕊️🇵🇸 The screencaps above are from a video called “Olive Oil Production in Palestine” by Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committees (PARC), available on YouTube.

Highlights from last week: deep dive about the plants in our gardens with Indigenous plant scientist and anthropologist Dr. Eli Suzukovich III (our new native prairie pictured above!) + learning from Dr. Nico Darcangelo and Dr. Margaret Fink at .dcc about connecting disability justice, climate justice and Palestine liberation. Thank you so much to our friends at the Disability Cultural Center and Eli. And the three sisters bed is thriving! 🌽🌈🌻👯‍♀️

Art by Hasbunallah-Taslim van Hattum

On June 14, the Heritage Garden cohort and friends joined LVEJO in La Villita Farm for a volunteer day! There we all learned about the efforts taking place in order to provide Little Village with a sustainable and thriving community-driven farm. La Villita Park used to be a site for Celotex company, an asphalt manufacturer, which left the land incredibly polluted. But through lots of hard work and community effort, LVEJO has turned this sacrifice zone into a green haven of abundance.

There we learned about the history of La Villita Farm, new plant knowledge, and helped clear space along the edges of the farm. 🦋

Special shout out to Nateo, Ireri, Trini, and Vivi for guiding us through our visit’s activities! 🌱

Fr33 p4l3st1n3!! 🍉
Art Cred: Candice Yanez

We can’t wait for .dcc Accessible Juneteenth today from 4-7:30pm where we’ll be tabling with fresh tea and our tea library! Hope to see you there 🌱🕊️

We can’t wait for .dcc Accessible Juneteenth today from 4-7:30pm where we’ll be tabling with fresh tea and our tea + seed libraries! Hope to see you there 🌱🕊️

Join us with our Seed Library at the Damen Silos! 🥳🤩 🌻💐

Meet us where the legendary Damen Grain Silos tower over the South Branch of the storied  on Saturday, June 8 at the Backward River Festival: Damen Silo City. Free and open to the public. Bring your family and friends!

palestin@ protest poster by Chi Nwosu 🍉

Our Heritage Garden summer internship cohort recently spent a week learning from the about environmental justice in Latine history and cultures! Here are some highlights 🐛🦋❤️‍🔥

Applications for the Heritage Garden 2024 Cohort are now open! Apply by the deadline on March 1st. Let us know if you have any questions or visit our website to learn more.

fr33 p4l3stin3 🍉 Art cred:

🇵🇸Free Palestine! Continue to call, email, and mail your reps to demand ceasefire! 🇵🇸
✨Art by

🍉Hiiii come visit the Heritage Garden tabling at the LCC Affiliated Student Organizations’ Open House. We will release our summer internship application today — come learn more!🌿

🦋Today from 2-4pm
@ The Latino Cultural Center🌻

🌈Come take a peak at our seed library🌷

🇵🇸somos almas sin fronteras
de mexico a palestina 🍉

protest poster by .monis from

reposting student finals support 🦋
Fall 2023 Finals Week At The Latino Cultural Center

Gallery Study Space
Monday December 4th-Thursday 7th 9am to 5pm CST

Breakfast at LCC
Monday & Wednesday: Pancakes🥞

Tuesday & Thursday: Coconut Oatmeal🥥🥣

Served at 9:30am. First come, first served!

For access needs or questions, email us at [email protected]

All audiences are welcome.

latinocultural.uic.edu

The Heritage Garden is celebrating its 10th anniversary!

We want to honor this milestone by bringing together HG alumni and collaborators at the Latino Cultural Center at UIC. Come catch up with former colleagues and meet the current interns and leaders!

When: Friday, November 3rd at 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm

Where: UIC Latino Cultural Center

Snacks and appetizers will be provided. Masks are strongly encouraged.

To RVSP, scan the QR code or
go to go.uic.edu/HGAlumni10years

We invite you to participate in our time capsule for the 10th anniversary of the Heritage Garden! We ask you to bring a small item or note for us to collect and soon bury in the gardens, to be opened in 10 years by future cohorts. The item can be no bigger than an apple 🤓

Join us at our zine making station at the alumni event to write a letter to the future cohorts that will open the Time Capsule in 10 years! ✨

Introducing Sarita Hernández! Sarita is an arts educator, oral historian, and print/zine maker, and now a HG educator. Swipe to see Sarita back in 2016 engaging with the HG as a graduate student. What a full-circle moment!

The Heritage Garden has always been so fortunate in the selection of amazing educators it has had over the years, and we are so grateful to be able to add Sarita to that special list.

We are so happy to have you, Sarita, and we can not wait to see all the amazing work you will do.

🍂🍁As we put our gardens to rest this fall, we honor the last ten years of the Heritage Garden: the knowledge passed down from cohort to cohort; the resistance of alumni that birthed this space of community and healing; and the regenerative cycle of those who enter and those who leave, reclaiming the abundance that the garden has to offer. We welcome you to come honor and celebrate radical rebirth with us. 🍁🍂

🌼🪴🌽Create skull-shaped seed bombs for your community’s guerrilla gardens and monarch habitats, repurpose fabric scraps through creative expression, and celebrate this year’s unique harvest. We will be handing out teas, salves, seeds, and much more!☕️🦋🌾

Masks are strongly encouraged.

Date: Wednesday, November 1, 2023

Time: 1 pm - 3:30 pm

Location: UIC Latino Cultural Center, Lecture Center B2, 803 S Morgan Street

To RSVP scan the QR code or RSVP here: go.uic.edu/HarvestFest2023

IMAGE DESCRIPTION:

Vertical undulating orange line with yellow letters that read heritagegarden.uic.edu Fall 2023. A yellow horizontal stripe towards the top reads in green letters Harvest Festival 10 year anniversary - Rest, Reclamation, Rebirth. The text with the event details is listed in a white background. There are two pictures in the poster in a circular shape surrounded by a circular green border made up of an outside green line and an inside set of green dots. One image in the top right corner is a jar full of dried mint and a jar full of dried marigolds. The second image in the lower left hand corner features six students posing in front of a corn husk and marigold arch with props such as a monarch butterfly cutout, mask, mustache and a day of the dead sign. The logos for the Centers for Cultural Understanding and Social Change, the UIC Latino Cultural Center, and the UIC Heritage Garden are at the bottom.

Do you like gardening?🪴Do you want to start gardening?🧑🏽‍🌾If the answer is, YES come volunteer with the Heritage Garden on October 13th or October 20th🌾 Both Fridays will be from 11-1pm🌻 Come get your hands in the Earth and spend time doing some mindfulness before our Harvest season ends🥀🍂 Free seeds and harvest will be available for anyone interested🌞

Image description: Vertical undulating green line with yellow letters that read heritagegarden.uic.edu Fall 2021. A yellow horizontal stripe towards the top reads in green letters Volunteer Days at the UIC Heritage Garden. The text with the event details is listed in a white background. There are two pictures in the poster in a circular shape surrounded by a circular green border made up of an outside green line and an inside set of green dots. Two pictures are displayed one in the upper right hand corner with a persons’ hands planting a green flower. The other picture displayed on the bottom left hand corner has a person with pink hair digging into the dirt.

A HUGE thank you to Ireri for working with the Heritage Garden for the past five years as a phenomenal garden educator, supporter, and collaborator. Ireri's unique personality has positively impacted everyone they interact with, creating a warm and empowering environment that fosters growth and development.

, we will miss your kindness, patience, generosity, and care. Thank you for teaching us. Thank you for guiding us. Thank you for inspiring us. Keep being the light that you are and continue to shine bright. We wish you all the best in all your future endeavors and can not wait to see what you do next!

We Love You!

The fall semester is in full swing! But before we dive in, we want to introduce you to the phenomenal group of NEW interns that made the summer semester a great success 💪

During the week of July 24, the Heritage Garden met with the Women's Leadership and Resources Center () and discussed the meaning of ecofeminism (the intersections of environmental justice and feminism), as well as the pillars of the reproductive justice framework. Reproductive justice includes the right to choose to have a child (or not), the right to have a healthy and safe environment to raise a family, and the right to have access to basic necessities. The discussions progressed to delve into how climate change affects people and how that intersects with racist systems and reproductive justice. Finally, the interns got to learn about the beginning of some institutionalized forms of reproductive health care and its ties to eugenics.

On the last day, the group did an activity where they reimagined their communities to explore what they would look like with more resources and green space, and how these tie into reproductive justice.

Image description: A group of women is marching toward symbols of reproductive justice (healthy food, as depicted from the bowl of fruits; clean environment, as depicted from the earth; health, as depicted from the heart; reproduction, as depicted from the fetus in the womb). "Women's Leadership and Resource Center" reads at the top of the page, with the Heritage Garden logo at the bottom right-hand corner.

Check out this amazing black swallowtail butterfly spotted this week at the Heritage Garden. 🐛

During the week of July 17, the Heritage Garden met with the Asian American Resource and Cultural Center to discuss the rise of fast fashion and its detrimental impacts to the environment. The interns got the opportunity to participate in a crafting project as they reflected on their own clothing practices.

Image Description: A conveyor belt filled with clothing guides them into a landfill. In the background, a billboard that reads "Asian American Resource and Cultural Center" with a mannequin on the side stands tall. The Heritage Garden logo is seen at the bottom right corner of the page.

During the week of July 10, the Heritage Garden met with the Arab American Cultural Center () to discuss the importance of food and water as a political and cultural force in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Thus, this meeting included discussions of food sovereignty (the ability of a community to produce and protect food to sustain themselves) and food security, which current conditions of colonization, occupation, neoliberal economic policies, and climate change threaten. Consequently, food has been implicated in resistance strategies in maintaining culture and heritage.

The HG got hands-on as the interns and leaders came together to create a poster that explored the current lack of access to water in Palestine and steps that can be taken to improve the conditions through different infrastructures and policies.

Image caption: "Arab American Cultural Center" is read across the upper half of the image with a palm tree replacing the first “L” in “Culture”. Below it, a clenched fist, representing solidarity and the fight against oppression, holds a scale balancing food and symbols of security and protection on barren land.

Check out these delicious, fresh strawberries picked from the UIC Heritage Garden this summer🍓

Did you know about the following cool facts regarding strawberries?

1. Modern day strawberry shortcake can be traced back to a dish that Native Americans created by mixing crushed strawberry into corn bread.

2. Strawberries are a high source of vitamin C, which has a multitude of health benefits, mostly associated with boosting the immune system.

3. In medieval times, strawberries were carved into the stonework around churches because they symbolized righteousness.

Want to know more? Head over to the UIC Heritage Garden website at heritagegarden.uic.edu to read the full article.

During the week of June 26, the Heritage Garden met with the Disability Cultural Center (.dcc). We connected our personal histories to our activism and reflected on ableism as a system of privilege and oppression. We also dove into perspectives from the disability justice movement on climate chaos and explored recent examples of resistance. We closed our time together by critically reading environmental slogans and opening up a conversation about cross-movement solidarity

Image description: A set of disability symbols lay across the bottom of the page, with an elevator and some stairs on either side. Words that read "DISABILITY CULTURAL CENTER" are read in the center of the page with a lightbulb (leaves replacing the light) substituted for the "A" in "Disability”. Two hands representing alliance are displayed at the top of the page.

The Heritage Garden visited the earlier this week to help conduct field surveys on new landscape designs aimed at expanding native plants and collect data on pollinators in the Rice Gardens. These activities were part of a bigger effort of understanding our environment, appreciating it, and taking steps to improve it.

Image Description:
1. Group picture of Heritage Garden members at the Field Museum garden.

2. Image collage of Heritage Garden members conducting interviews, discussing interview experience, and two plant images.