Some of our oldest cultural traditions are meant to tie us to the land. Those traditions wear modern faces now, but their roots stretch to a time when we measured our year by what we saw in nature, and what we could grow and when.

Many of these traditions traveled with us across the oceans. Markers of the longest night in winter, then the longest day in summer. When to plant and when to harvest. Those traditions also already existed here in Pennsylvania (for information on the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania you can visit their website, or the website of the federally recognized Delaware Nation.)

One of my favorites is the origin of the common name for Amelanchier species. Legend has it that the common name ‘Serviceberry’ comes from the fact that the airy white flowers appear when the ground has thawed enough to hold burial services. Another story claims that the common name ‘Shadbush’ or ‘Shadblow’ comes from the fact that the flowers appear when the shad begin to run up the rivers.

Marking Time By Observing Nature

I love to learn about these different cultural practices because once you scratch the surface, they aren’t different at all. They track the things we need to know and remember about our world.

This appeals to me because I am lucky to measure my own year by these things. I know spring is on the way when the woodfrogs chirp in the retention basins. I know the danger of frost is almost past when the beeches unfurl their leaves by the Pond. Summer blends into fall when the yellow grass in the meadows of the Pinetum turn metallic with seeds. We’ve reached the darkest part of the year when the sunrises light the white pines across the North Meadow and the air smells like witch hazel.

No matter where we all come from, these moments are the touchstones that invite us to connect with one another and with the earth. One of my all-time favorite memories at Tyler is of my son at five years old, surrounded by his friends, peering into the retention pond by Tulip Tree House wide-eyed as the woodfrogs chirped and spring peepers sang. It was a rare 65-degree day in early March and all the kids, and adults, were silenced as we listened to the raucous spring chorus.

“Do they do this every year?” A parent asked.

Yes. Every single year. And how lucky are we to have come to stand together on the edge of a mucky ephemeral pool and hear them sing.

Honoring America’s 250th in Lucille’s Garden Planning

When I sit down to plan the garden each winter, I like to keep some guiding principles in mind. Always that I want to grow healthy vibrant food for the community. Always that I want visitors of all ages to feel empowered to participate in the garden. Always that I want the seeds I source to be ethically and sustainably shared.

This year I also wanted to do something to honor the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of the Independence. Tyler as a property existed then, and I can’t help but wonder if the inhabitants stood together at Round Top and felt part of the long story of this land, which begins thousands of years ago and stretches ageless into the future.

That is what I wanted to honor in the garden in 2026 – the legacy we each carry with us. The story of how we all came to be standing here together and the responsibility we have to shepherd it into the future.

In Lucille’s Garden in 2026, you’ll see crops from around the world. Okra, which the stories say came to America as seeds hidden in the hair of enslaved Africans. Puhwem corn, the corn variety used by the Lenape for corn flour, stewarded by Touching Leaves Woman. King Harry Potato, a new round Irish potato variety bred by Cornell with exceptional pest and disease resistance. Broccoli from Italy, arugula from Palestine, mustard from Ethiopia, kale from Russia – the list goes on and on.

I want to preserve the cultural memory behind these crops as well. Every plant has a legacy that grows along with it. Here are just a few of their stories:

Potatoes

“It struck down the growing plants like frost in summer. It spread faster than the cholera amongst men.” – The Advance of the Fungi

The story of the potato begins 7,000 – 10,000 in the Andes mountain range of South America. But they quickly became a staple around the world because they were easy to grow, grew well in poor soil, and kept through the winter.

Potatoes are famous now, of course, for being the crop that failed during the 1844 and 1847 Irish Potato Famines. The potato grown by Irish farmers at that time was a variety known as ‘The Lumper,’ and it was all but wiped out by the blight (a phytophthora rot) in 1846. At the same time, British forces exported so much food from Ireland that the European population struggled to believe that there was a famine at all.

We won’t grow Lumper in Lucille’s Garden. That potato variety can still be found in places in Ireland, but certainly not for export as seed potatoes. Ireland still faces significant pressure from phytophthora, even almost 200 years after the famine, so they tend to grow potatoes with very strong blight resistance, including ‘Homeguard,’ ‘Premier,’ and ‘Rooster.’ In Lucille’s in 2026 we’ll be growing King Harry, an Irish potato variety, and Sarpo Mira, a maincrop potato. Both of these potato types show strong resistance to both pests and blight.

Okra

Leah Penniman, author and activist from Soul Fire Farm in Grafton, NY, writes that that in some cases, African women “braided seeds into their hair before being forced to board transatlantic slave ships, believing against the odds in a future of sovereignty on land.”

Used as everything from a thickener for soup and stew, to a coffee substitute, to medicine, okra became a symbol for the establishment of West African culinary traditions among enslaved populations in the American south.

In Lucille’s Garden in 2026, I hope to encourage people to imagine the determination it took to carry these seeds across an ocean. The women stolen from their homes did not know where they were going, or what they would find when they got there. But they did know they would need to be able to grow food to survive. Look for varieties like Okra ‘White Velvet’ and Okra ‘Candlefire’ in the garden and imagine the resilience it took to bring them into the new world.

Corn

The first evidence we have of corn in cultivation comes from Central America about 7,000 years ago where it was so integral for life that the Mayan Popol Vuh (the Book of Life) says that people were shaped from cornmeal dough. From that moment on, it became woven into the fabric of the Americas, appearing in funerary masks, festivals that marked the different points of the year, and as one of the cornerstones of the Three Sisters Triangle, a growing practice used by First Nations groups.

Gladys Tantaquidgeon, Mohegan anthropologist and medicine woman, says this of corn:.

“When corn matures one must share the first gathering with a less fortunate tribesman or with some old person … In order that people may continue to receive the blessings of the Creator, every man is obliged to share his first fruits and game with others before partaking of them himself.”

Corn is perhaps a crop that touched every part of the story of every food we’ve discussed so far. The ‘Puhwem’ corn we’re growing in 2026 comes to us from USDA seed banks via Truelove Seeds to respect its connection to the Lenape Nation. Among enslaved populations in the Caribbean, cornmeal was seen as rations and a form of rebellion because enslaved men and women could grow and cook the corn for themselves. In Ireland in 1847, a thin stew made of corn was given out at soup kitchens across the country for any Irish Catholic willing to convert to Protestantism. Everywhere that people have lived and grown food, corn has followed.

This year in Lucille’s Garden, we’re growing three different kinds of corn to mirror the many faces of the grain. Corn ‘Eden RMN’ as a sweet, modern garden favorite. Corn ‘Puhwem’ because it was used by the Lenape in bread making, and Corn ‘Oaxacan Green’ to remember corn’s origins in Central America.

Stewarding This Land, These Plants

It’s easy to forget the origins of our food, just as it’s easy to forget the traditions that tie us to the land. This year I am excited to explore both as I plan and grow Lucille’s Garden. I also want to remember with gratitude the long line of people who have stewarded this special place and these wonderful plants into the future. I hope to be one more link in that long and resilient chain.