Indigenous Agave and Native Seed Garden Installations and Outreach

Tumamoc Hill, located at Tumamoc Hill Rd, Tucson, AZ 85745, serves as an important cultural site for Hohokam descendants such as the O’odham peoples.  Although Indigenous agriculture has been a part of Tumamoc Hill’s history, there is no current cultivation of agave plants on the hill. 

This project seeks to engage Indigenous students in the design, deployment, and maintenance of a small agave garden at the base of Tumamoc Hill. The return of Indigenous farming of agave plants on Tumamoc has a huge number of benefits, including the demonstration of water saving agriculture to the community and the engagement of Indigenous youth in an ancestral activity. Through this, the project will connect Tumamoc Hill with Indigenous students, local organizations such as Mission Garden and the Desert Seed Resource Center, and anthropologists who are engaged in similar activities and knowledgeable about the historic agriculture of Tumamoc. The students who will be involved in the design of the garden will have the opportunity to train in gardening skills, dryland agriculture, and agave agriculture. 

This project will also create outreach activities at the garden space that will be implemented into the regularly scheduled outreach calendar of Tumamoc Hill. These activities will be hands-on and provide the space to transfer knowledge and create behavior change associated with low water use in gardening and Indigenous practices.

In an effort to encourage the re-establishment of native grasses, another small garden will be installed that features native grasses. Seeding native plants can be an effective method for invasive plant control because their presence can provide a barrier to weed establishment. Before installing the garden, student interns will learn about the importance of native seed from local experts.