Do you want to learn more about incorporating native plants in your garden? Are you curious about the healing properties of native plants? Ever wondered how Native Americans managed wild spaces? Would you like a free source for native seeds, cuttings, and plants? If so, join the Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) Wildtending walks on the last Tuesday of each month at Verbena Fields. This series of two-hour educational tours focuses on native plants and includes identification of plants in various stages of growth, their importance to native cultures, information on propagation and growing needs, examination of plant communities, interaction with insects, and forestry management. The first in the series was held on February 23;the next one will take place March 30.

Unlike most public gardens sporting signs that forbid touching or removing plants, in Verbena Fields (a 17-acre plot of public property in the middle of Chico), visitors are encouraged to take a redbud or willow cutting, dig up and give a new home to a mugwort, or scatter native wildflower seeds. Ali Meders-Knight, a TEK practitioner and Mechoopda Tribal Liaison, led the February tour with Raphael DiGenova, who is skilled in the propagation, seed collection, and cultivation of native plants; and Janova Sorenson of the Camp Fire Restoration Project. On their delightfully rambling tour of the park, the Plant Walk co-leaders allowed attendees to get up close and personal with native species such as poppies, lupine, blue oak, and gray pine, as well as intruders like star thistle and mustard. Meders-Knight shared her deep traditional knowledge of Mechoopda heritage, describing the tribe's kinship with the healing properties of the plants and the earth.

As the tour attendees paused for a few minutes to pull up handfuls of invasive star thistle in order to give the poppy seedlings and herbaceous perennials a better chance of growing successfully, Meders-Knight and DiGenova discussed the traditional use of fire in managing plants. The earliest inhabitants of this region utilized fire, an arm of “wildtending,” to ensure the health of oaks and pines, to encourage straight young shoots of willow and redbud for use in basket weaving, and to control undesirable insect populations.     

DiGenova shared his extensive knowledge of our native flora and highlighted the importance of reseeding and replanting areas destroyed by fire or invaded by non-natives. The co-leaders of the Wildtending Plant Walk combined scientific knowledge with traditional wisdom and the wisdom born from wildfire experience. Redbud, for instance, needs plant companions. Lonely redbuds that have been planted away from others of their species or from other species they evolved with will not thrive and may die. Redbuds need periodic fire (or pruning) to grow the straight, pliable shoots prized by basket makers.  Meders-Knight noted that the redbuds they planted along the eastern portion of Verbena Fields were allowed twelve years to mature before they were radically pruned this last winter. New shoots will be harvested for both weaving and propagation.

Lower branches of blue oaks and gray pines were pruned to hip height, mimicking the “pruning” from traditional burning methods. Interestingly, the Mechoopda tradition teaches that to:ni (gray pine) and c'awk'awi (blue oak) evolved such a symbiotic relationship that gray pine needles dropped near a blue oak add many times more nutrients to the shared soil than do gray pine needles dropped near other tree species.

During the course of the tour, Meders-Knight read out passages on the care and uses of the identified plants from After the First Full Moon in April: A Sourcebook of Herbal Medicine from a California Indian Elder, by Josephine Peters and Beverly Ortiz.  She also recommended Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources by M. Kat Anderson.

The Plant Walks are free.  They are a collaborative effort between the Camp Fire Restoration Project, the Mechoopda Indian Tribe of Chico Rancheria, and California State University, Chico Department of Agriculture. Visit Verbena Fields Wildtending Days for more information.  The TEK Wildtending Walks will continue at least through April and will include seed collection methods.

Managing, tending, and preserving the wonderful resources in Verbena Fields is a huge job. If you want to get involved you can join the Verbena Fields Wildtending Days team of volunteers which meets every Friday from 10am to 1pm. Volunteer tasks include laddering trees; removing star thistle to allow in more sunlight for native plants; seed propagating and transplanting; creating small native plant communities; and controlling invasive species. The group welcomes all comers to help with this unique and vital project.

For the monthly Wildtending Walking Tour meet at the entrance to Verbena Fields at 4pm on the last Tuesday of the month (time may change in Summer).  So, whether you want a two-hour informative tour of native plants and their uses, or the camaraderie of working with others for the health and beauty of the park, Verbena Fields is your answer.

For the history of Verbena Fields and a more detailed description of what to find there, see “Discovering Verbena Fields in Chico” by Laura Lukes, published in The Real Dirt blog on June 19, 2020. For more information on the Camp Fire Restoration Project, click here.  For specific questions about Wildtending Days or Walks, email DiGenova at Raphael@gnogi.com. For more information about the Mechoopda Indian Tribe of Chico Rancheria, visit their website.

UC Master Gardeners of Butte County are part of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) system. To learn more about us and our upcoming events, and for help with gardening in our area, visit our website. If you have a gardening question or problem, email the Hotline at mgbutte@ucanr.edu (preferred) or call (530) 538-7201.