The Batavia Plain Dirt Garden Club and Midwest SOARRING Foundation partnered together to bring an award-winning exhibit to the Annual Chicago Flower and Garden Show held at Navy Pier from March 11-19. Landscape design architects and one private gardening club brought acres of natural beauty to Navy Pier in downtown Chicago, Illinois. Thirty-one displays, revealing an international sampling of plant life from Amazonian trees to Asian cactus, along with domestic garden arrangements, drew 200,000 spectators over the 9-day period.

The one exhibit that served to bring record-breaking crowds this year was the masterpiece, Garden of the Great Spirit. Ruth Johnson of the Batavia Garden Club had approached me in mid-1999 with the idea of using only plants indigenous to North America in combination with an American Indian setting, the first time this had ever been done for the show. After more than 10 months of planning, the display featured indigenous plants in a 2,800 square foot woodland display, with a village setting typical of Ojibwe life about 400 years ago.

SOARRING member, Ivan Dozier, of the Natural Resource Conservation Service, was the chief consultant on the selection of indigenous plants to be displayed. Donations of plants came from many of the Batavia club's members. Sweetgrass and sage were supplied by the USDA Rose Lake Plant Materials Center in Michigan, as well as by our Midwest SOARRING Foundation greenhouse in Macoupin County, Illinois.

I had served as Cultural Consultant for the layout of the traditional Ojibwe summer lodge and the related cultural artifacts. and Janet Sevilla had organized all the details of the project. The placement of the indigenous plants, and the layout of the simulated river, with rapids, flowing through a woodland setting, was completely realistic.

SOARRING members and friends provided many volunteer hours toward the construction of the village scene. Original beadwork and baskets were loaned for the set from the Chicago Field Museum, and a talented member, Gregg Walks Tall Kamen, provided excellent reproductions of wooden artifacts such as carved bowls, corn grinders and ladles. Nick Hockings, founder of Waswagoning, the recreated Ojibwe village at the Lac du Flambeau Reservation, supplied a traditional fish trap, and assisted us in the making of drying racks and in the construction of an Ojibwe birch bark lodge.

To enhance the realism of our living village scene, internationally-known dancers, Samuel, Jamie and Michael Begay, danced for the audience in full regalia on opening day. Throughout the week, the audience had the pleasure of seeing Verna Crooked Eyes-End of Horn doing traditional beadwork, and Terry Nagel making clay beads and bead necklaces.

Members of the Batavia Club and Midwest SOARRING were on hand throughout the exhibit to explain how the plants displayed had been used by Native people. There was much interest in the village and the cultural articles in it, and it was a pleasure to answer the many questions being asked along with teaching the people through storytelling.

The Garden of the Great Spirit won two top awards: the first place Governor's Award for best overall garden display, and the Land of Lincoln Award for best use of indigenous plant material in a landscape plan.

One of my personal goals was to show people not only the Ojibwe village, but our physical and spiritual connection to the indigenous plants and our Mother Earth. Respect in the relationship between plants and all earth-based peoples has always been essential for survival. We know we are the stewards of the seven generations to come, and as such, we are responsible for protecting and conserving the natural world.

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The Garden of the Great Spirit could not have been accomplished without the support of many friends and supporters. I publicly send my most sincere gratitude for the work and devotion of the following people who could not all be named in the article above:

Dave Bergdorf
Skip & Arlene Ruhnke
R.J. Hicks
Ed & Vida Dugan
Bill Buchholtz Allison
Myles Goddard
Georgia Stillwell
Jean LaTraille
Clare Farrell