The Timeline Gardens of Mission Garden represent the multicolored fabric of people and cultures throughout history, celebrating and describing their similarities and differences through the language of plants and gardens. Gardens are ever-evolving, and our gardeners have been energized and invigorated while turning new soil and sowing new seeds. In the Pre-Contact O’odham Garden, Tohono O’odham 60-day corn seeds are just breaking through the surface of freshly formed beds, shaped with care and reverence for those who have farmed here for millenia. What a sight it will soon be: beds brimming with exuberant corn, broad leafed Ha:l squash, resilient teparies, and yellow O’odham melon, sure to quench our thirst on a summer afternoon.

Working in the garden for five years I’ve given a hundred garden tours. At first I tried to cover the basics. But now I’ve added a few bigger picture thoughts.

Now I talk about how we seem to be recreating not only heritage agriculture of many periods and peoples but how, in the process, we’re recreating historic ecosystems. The role chickens play in the garden. The way crops interact. The recolonization of the garden by birds, mammals, fish, frogs, snakes and insects that would have been those common on the floodplain through history.

New online content describes how Mission Garden cares for the land.

A spring full of festivals, a Top Chef surprise, inauguration of the new Africa in the Americas Garden and more…

For the recipe below, I went seeking the guidance and expertise of someone who has made it all her life. I called upon our friend Armida Elena Contreras de Maldonado, from the town of La Estancia on the Rio Sonora. Of course there are many fabulous cooks from that region, but in my small world she has no equal. She is especially known for her cakes, which are served at birthdays, quinceaneras, and weddings up and down the Rio Sonora Valley.