Two New Resources from the Española Healing Foods Oasis
Tewa Women United’s Espanola Healing Foods Oasis (EHFO) is a community garden with edible, medicinal, dye and pollinator-attracting plants and trees, situated on a slope downhill from Espanola City Hall and adjacent to Valdez Park in Espanola. The EHFO represents a value system and way of life central to Indigenous northern New Mexico and land-based peoples who steward voices and traditions, agricultural methods and foodways which contribute to and co-create layers of texture to the land and lifestyle, to place-based being grounded in values of right relationship, reciprocity, generosity, and reverence.
EHFO staff has just released two beautiful resources for everyone to access:
- “Seeding the Espanola Healing Foods Oasis” is a case study that invites you to learn about the creation of the garden and how you may emulate the process in your own community. This step-by-step guide is a summary of fundamental garden creation how-to, along with a more detailed description of the distinct community resources and grassroot efforts that contributed to the unique unfolding and development of the Oasis.
- “Plant Relatives” is a 43-page database to help you identify the plants in the garden and learn about their traditional uses. We hope this guide helps expand your knowledge and deepen your relationship to the plants of this place and their home ecosystems here in Northern New Mexico. Thanks to Kayleigh Warren, Christie Green, and Beata Tsosie-Peña for planting the seeds of this guide, as well as the EHFO as a whole.