Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants

While picking beans, the author thinks about “the secret of happiness” (121). She fills her basket and steps through the garden toward the kitchen, thinking about her daughters and Skywoman. She is struck by the idea that “the land loves us back” (122), as she provides for people as “good mothers do.” From there, the author considers “how we are given so much and what we might give back” (122).

Kimmerer’s scientist side might cringe at the notion that “a garden is a way that the land says ‘I love you’” (123); but the author must remind herself that gardens are both material and spiritual. Loving actions seem just as discernable between a garden and a person as between a mother and a child, the author suggests. She believes that “knowing that you love the earth changes you” (124); knowing that the love is reciprocal forms a “sacred bond.”

Linden has a garden of her own 3,000 miles away from the author. It makes Linden feel at home; she is certain her garden loves her back. In graduate school, Larkin works on an urban garden with at-risk youth. In gardens, the author states, “food arises from partnership” (126). The planting of a garden is the one thing she would recommend to anyone who hopes to “restore [the] relationship between land and people” (126).