- Welcome to Oklahoma Gardening.

Today we look back as we visit the College of the Muskogee Nation and learn more about how they're using their garden to educate students and the community.

We learn more about the Oklahoma Native Plant Network, and then we head to Oklahoma City to visit the garden at the First Americans Museum.

Underwriting assistance for our program is provided by the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, Food and Forestry, helping to keep Oklahoma green and growing.

Oklahoma Gardening is also a proud partner with Shape Your Future, a program of the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust, Shape Your Future provides resources for Oklahomans to make the healthy choice the easy choice.

I love sharing with you guys the cool things that plants can do.

We're back here at the Student Farm.

I wanna share with you a tropical plant that you might find in some Oklahoma landscapes.

It's important to know which plants we are dealing with so that we can continue to maintain them successfully for years to come.

Today we are in at the College of Muskogee Nation, and joining me is Courtney Natseway, who is the extension educator here.

And Courtney, thank you so much for inviting us here to your garden.

Yeah, so I love that with extension, you've started with a garden.

Of course.

Yeah.

Let's, let's talk about this garden here and what's the purpose of - It?

So this is our teaching garden here on campus.

This garden is basically out here.

It was built by students and we just use it kind of to teach them different gardening techniques to different pest management techniques, things like that.

- So you've got a lot going on here.

It's beautiful.

And I know this is fairly recent development, right?

Yeah.

Let's talk about kind of the timeline and what you've done here.

- Yeah, so our extension program actually started in November.

- Okay.

- And then I started here in March.

So when I started here it was still cool season, so there wasn't a lot growing out here.

And then, yeah, we started seeds my first week and transplanted them all outside of, I wanna say about May.

So this is our first like full run in the garden ever.

Well, you're doing an excellent job.

Yeah.

And your background is in horticulture, right?

Yeah, yeah.

I actually graduated from OSU with a bachelor's degree in horticulture.

- Okay.

Well it definitely shows you've got a green thumb.

Let's talk a little bit about what you're growing in here and how it's utilized.

- Okay.

Yeah.

So we have a wide variety of crops.

I think this growing season we just kind of planted a bunch of different types of seeds and just kind of saw what, what would grow out here, what would do well.

So we just have a lot of variety.

We have fruit crops, vegetables, flowers, medicinal plants, gourds, pumpkins, things like that.

- And of course you're incorporating plants that are tribally important to - You guys, so yeah.

Yeah, we have a lot of culturally significant plants.

We have some tobacco, we have gourds that they use at the stomp grounds.

We have different corn varieties, a lot of different corn varieties from different tribal nations.

- Because you guys have a corn festival, is that correct?

Or - We have, we, yeah.

A lot of stomp grounds are doing their green corn festival now, or just wrapping 'em up, so, okay.

Yeah.

Alright.

- For us as Muskogeeans, we do have our relationship as a corn may described as a tree of life for us.

And then we honor this corn into our communities every year around right after the solstice.

And we call it the, the purification process for the corn.

We fast in order to bring it into the communities.

Welcome it, don't touch any, don't eat anything until, until after our ceremony.

And then that's when we can use it and always possible.

- So Courtney, tell me a little bit about how you're utilizing this with the college and the students.

- So it's obviously a teaching garden.

We have students come out here and just kind of learn about gardening.

We have work studies that work out here, part-time.

We have a lot of students that come out and volunteer.

And I think, you know, even students just come out and hang out.

We have our environmental science club that we just started.

So they kind of have their meetings out here and they'll come out here and play music and just kind of relax and hang out in the garden.

- So not only are they learning horticulture, but it's kind of their mental health space.

Right, exactly.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- That's awesome.

It's contagious once you start gardening.

Yeah, it's a good spot to unwind after studying and stress of college and things like that.

You know, - My favorite part about working out here is building community.

It connects me to my culture.

I've made a lot of friends.

It keeps me in shape.

This is something that I've always wanted to do with my life, helping people.

I didn't know initially how I was gonna do that, but being out here, I see that this is the way that it's gonna happen.

I've seen progress be made before my own eyes, and we're really working towards building community.

We volunteer a lot.

Just overall, my mental health for sure has greatly improved being out here.

This really means a lot to me.

It's been a passion project.

My first trimester out here, there wasn't really a lot of students that came out, but now going into my fourth trimester working in the garden, there's so many people that come out here just to enjoy it.

They volunteer their own time as well.

And really it's, it, this is something that I love doing.

I had no idea that this is what I was gonna do with my life, but it's really made a huge impact to me.

And it's not just what I do out here.

Everyone else is a pretty big part.

They have introduced me to things from our culture and that that means a lot.

I, I'm just happy being out here.

- I would have to say my favorite part of being out here is building stronger relationships with other people and the amount of balance that being out in a garden and being around people brings in my life.

And I'm sure others too.

But I would have to hurry up and do all my schoolwork, do all my classes, go to work, and just make sure I was out here as soon as possible because it's just amazing being out here every day.

My favorite part working with Courtney would have to be her teaching me almost everything that she knows, because I've known her for the smallest amount of time.

And I feel like I have a good handful of knowledge that I could use day to day, even in my own personal garden.

- Well, I know you've worked hard to integrate this into the community.

Can you tell me a little bit about some of the partners you're working with?

- Yeah.

So we've partnered with the Okmulgee Community Garden.

We actually just did a children's gardening program with them during the summer.

We just gardened with kids from, you know, seed to harvest.

We also partnered with OSU extension here in Olge with their master gardener program.

So we provided scholarships for Muskogee citizens to get into to that master gardening program.

We taught a couple of the courses and yeah, our goal with that ultimately is just to teach Master Gardener so that way they can teach other people how to garden, you know, and just kind of keep it going.

- And is this open to anybody or tribal members only or?

- Yeah, so the Master Gardening Program is open to everybody.

Our ultimate goal with that is to start a Muskogee Master Gardener program where we kind of focus more on culturally significant plants and cultural gardening practices, things like that.

But that will also be open to the public.

- This is fantastic.

And if, if anybody wants more information about these programs, where can they find that on your website?

- Probably our extension page, the CMN extension page.

Our garden is also open to the public every Thursday from 11 to 12.

So anybody can come out and ask us questions, gardening related or not, and they can just come visit our garden and see it.

- Well, thank you so much.

- Yeah.

- We are here at the College of Muskogee Nation, just outside of Okmulgee.

And joining me is Brandon Gibson, who is with the Uchi Butterfly Farm.

Yes.

And also the Tribal Alliance for pollinators.

- Yes.

Yeah.

- So you're a botanist, and we're gonna talk about some of the pollinator plants that you have here, it looks like.

- Yeah, yeah.

We got a lot of good stuff blooming right now.

A lot of different color, which I like.

So that's something that we factor in when we do a lot of these pollinator planting, is that we want the widest swath of color bloom times, because we're not just planting one single flower for one particular butterfly.

We need to cover the entire ecosystem, essentially.

And so that's what we're kind of doing here.

And we got a really nice tobacco plant here.

This is Nicotiana Tobacco.

This is a cultivated tobacco.

It's an annual, and so it's an annual, but it acts pretty much like a perennial because of how many seeds the thing will produce the thousands and thousands and thousands of seeds.

- So be careful where you plant it, right?

Kinda.

Yeah.

Yeah.

- I like it a lot.

But - It's got so many tubular flowers, so you know, that's gonna be a great pollinator plant too.

- Absolutely.

Hummingbirds go crazy over this.

A lot of butterflies.

I even see a lot of the leaf cutter bees, they'll burrow their way into the top.

And so they're even utilizing those flowers, the bees that don't have that long peris essentially, but they're still able to get nectar from it.

I really like this plant, even though it's not technically an Oklahoma native.

It's a really great plant for, if you're a tomato gardener, you ever get those tomato horn worms all over your tomatoes.

They love this instead of the tomatoes.

- Oh, okay.

So it's gonna be like a trap plant - For 'em.

Yes, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And so we have all these big old fat caterpillars all over these, and the moss look really pretty.

And so we don't want to neglect those moss either.

And so providing food and sort of bait plants to where we can co-exist in a nice little garden setting is mainly what I use this plant for.

- Well, it's already kind of late into the summer and you've got a lot blooming still, which is impressive, including this cardinal flower.

- Yeah, this is one of my favorite plants.

This is definitely a staple plant that we grow every single year.

And you know, this particular plant is from Osage County out near the tall grass prairie area.

So I think Pawhuska.

Okay.

And that's another big point about what we do for our organization is that I can tell you exactly where in Oklahoma all of these plants were collected from natively.

And so the cardinal flower, like I said, is from Pawhuska area, the Blue Vervain that is from Tulsa County.

The Cup Plant is from Moland, Oklahoma.

And this is one of my favorite plants.

It's another staple that we grow at the farm every single year.

The scientific name would be Silphium perfoliatum.

And that perfoliatum part of the species name is actually telling us quite a bit about the plant.

So if you look at the stem of the plant, the leaves will actually fully encompass around the stalk.

And so that's perfoliate.

And so in botanical terms, perfoliate means wrapping around that stem.

And so that's where it's getting its name from cup plant, because after a rain you can go and look at that stem and there will be literally a cup of water there.

And so I've seen birds use that and utilize it to get a drink of water.

And so it's not only a great nectar plant, but it's also a great plant just for birds to get some natural water.

Right.

- And that's fascinating because a lot of times we think that a plant is just utilized for the pollinator aspect of it, but therefore it's holding water form as - Well.

Right, right.

Yeah.

And so there's many different great relationships between a lot of these native plants and the pollinators that it's really easy to sometimes just walk by real quick.

You know, looking at the tiny sweat beads that are pollinating the frog fruit back there, you know, they're utilizing those frog fruit flowers because morphologically, they're not able to utilize something as say, a tobacco flower.

And so it's important again, to have not only different colors, but different sizes of flowers because we're trying to service all of these pollinators, not just monarchs.

Not that we don't love monarchs, but we can do a greater overall effort if we can encompass everybody in the entire picture.

So, - Absolutely.

So we know they're doing well here in Oklahoma.

Yes.

They're not just said to be native to here.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

So all of our seed banks and the plants that we provide, they're all natively collected from Oklahoma.

We don't order any of our stuff.

So if someone like an elder comes to me and is looking for some medicinal plant, I just pretty much gotta figure out where it's at in the world and go and collect it and then propagate that for them.

And then we give them nice little gardens like this so where they can collect their own seeds and we can show them how to actually grow it out.

'cause there is some finicky processes with some of these native plants, such as the cardinal flower needing sunlight, which a lot of people don't think about that.

Some seeds will actually need exposure to sunlight rather than what we've been taught growing up where you always bury a seed and then you water it.

But some of these will actually do need sunlight.

And so during the end of the season, we're gonna come through and spread out some more of this cardinal flower, probably spread some around the ponds around here.

And so just trying to make this more and more robust because it's a beautiful plant.

I, I like it a lot.

- And this is just the first season, right?

Yes, - Yes.

And so all of these were grown from seed this year.

And so this is only probably about a month and a half, two months ago since we planted a majority of this stuff.

We have some in kind of the different stages, obviously the big tall ones doing really well, but we have more back there that are gonna be still blooming probably in about another month.

They've been really taken off the past month, I would say.

And so it's just gonna cultivate more and more and grow out more and more, which will be really nice.

- Well, I love this partnership that you guys have created.

Tell me a little bit, so obviously you have a wealth of information, so you help with the education programs that they do here at their gardens?

- Yeah, so we're doing a sort of a relationship right now with the college from the Uchi Butterfly Farm and Tribal launch of Pollinators.

So I'll be out here every week, two times a week, Monday and Wednesday.

And so just providing information like we're talking about right now, as well as different methods for sort of smart agricultural reasons.

And so going forward, talking about rain barrels, conserving water u utilizing native plants to conserve water, talk about burning a lot because burning's a very core component of Oklahoma's grassland systems.

And so those kind of get underlooked, but it's a crucial part of the ecosystem.

So having whoever really wants to come out here, there's no restrictions.

You don't have to be a student or an employee or anything.

If you want to learn about native plants, how to grow them, you can just come here and you know, I'll help you out whatever way I can.

So - This is, this is fantastic.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

Yeah.

Today we are joined by Galt Ormiston who is the co-president for the Oklahoma Native Plant Network.

And this is a new organization, but thank you for joining us to talk about it a little bit.

- Absolutely.

Glad to be here and have the opportunity for sure.

- So let's talk about this organization and who it's comprised of.

- Yes.

So really industry professionals that are geared towards native plants and either designing or, or using them in landscape areas, garden spaces, green spaces.

So we're really foundationally trying to promote the use of, of native plants and have several educational resources that we, we try to do that with.

- And, and native plants have always had, you know, the one table at your traditional nursery, but y'all are really trying to make it more mainstream, right?

- We are, we are, we feel like this is a great opportunity.

There's a lot more excitement around native plants, more so than, than before.

We've always kind of been here, you know, but now it's, it's time to, I guess, get a little more vocal and start to work on some of the branding towards native plants in the Oklahoma area in particular.

- Okay.

So you're comprised of a lot of growers and some nurseries and then also some homeowners.

I mean, anybody can be a part of this group?

- Yes, anyone can be a member, but we do have kind of levels and tiers.

Okay.

So we're trying to use this organization as a network for business to business, but ultimately the information that we produce and the events that we have are for public consumption.

Okay.

But say in a regular meeting, we're probably only going to have people that are, are in the business or in the industry, and it kind of relates to native plants.

- All right.

So let's talk about some of the educational components that you're putting out there and the branding for native plants.

I hear you got some plant tags that are going out.

- We do.

We've got a, a special plant tag program.

So our organization has, has come up with what we see as the, the, the metrics of what we'll consider as a native plant, how it's produced, the size and the species.

- Okay.

- So we come up, we came up with a list our first year, which was last year of 10 plants.

And then this year we came up with five more.

And so built special tags for those 15 plants.

And if you're a member of our organization and you're kind of been approved, then you'll have access to those plant tags.

And so as consumers are out at nurseries that participate in within our organization, they'll see these plant tags and know they've been specially approved.

- Right, right.

And so there's no second guessing to it, you know, that it's something that is native and, and grown in a, a native friendly way.

Right?

Correct.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

So no neonicotinoids, did I say that right?

I think in particular at the top of the list.

And you know, I think the, the fundamental question everyone was what is undeniably native?

And, and we had a lot of plants that we looked at.

I bet those were - From discussions.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

It took a while, you know, and it, it, it seems like 15 plants is, is maybe not a a whole lot, but, you know, this is our second season and as we build upon that, you know, look down the road five, 10 years from now and we'll have a, a, a much larger collection, but again, ones that we've really thought through and feel like they're important for this area.

- And one of the big things y'all are about is trying to make native plants more accessible to the average person.

Right.

So I assume there's resources on your website and, and events that you're having as well.

- Yes.

Thanks.

And, and our website is ompn.org.

- Okay.

- That has all of our information.

There's a few key dates that, that we're gonna have.

July 25th, we'll have a professional workshop, and that's at the OSU Botanical Gardens.

- Okay.

- That's on a Thursday.

And then September 28th is our fall fest.

We did it last year.

We had a great rollout.

There was like a thousand guests.

We were Wow.

Everyone was just floored.

This spring, this past spring, we had an event in Norman at the Stash.

- Okay.

- Had over 3000 visitors.

- Wow.

- A lot of the same audience that came to our fall show.

So it came to our spring.

We're hoping that, you know, fall's gonna be even bigger, so September 28th and yeah.

- And, and are those educational as well as plant sales?

Yeah, we can buy some plants there too.

- Yeah.

And, you know, and they'll have some goodies as well, so some edible kind of like foods and things like that.

But yeah, mostly plants.

And then we will have, I think, five or six speakers.

- Okay.

- You know, so they'll talk, you know, a little bit about everything.

- Alright.

Well I know other states have programs like this and you guys were really wanting to create something for Oklahoma, right?

- Yes.

Yeah.

And you know, it's, it's a long process and there's a lot of ground to cover.

And so trying to keep it concise as, as I was saying earlier, is kind of our key focus.

Like what makes sense for us to put our time and resources into that can make a big, a big difference, a big impact.

All of us are working within the industry, you know, so these aren't, you know, retired homeowners, hobbyists, enthusiasts, although, you know, they kind of are, are as well.

Right, right, right.

I mean, everybody loves the, the native plants.

And so, you know, trying to come up with pertinent material that we can put out there, we can focus our time on is, is really the highest important.

- Well, and on the industry side of things, I know sometimes that can be a gap between what designers want and the availability of plants.

So the fact that designers and nursery men are also working together to provide that for homeowners is kind of a cool thing.

- Yeah, absolutely.

And, and that's and, a big part of why we wanted to put the, the group together is really just sourcing materials.

You know, so designers that love native plants want to be able to spec their plants, you know, on their designs, obviously.

And, and that's part of it.

And, and that's great.

But having the suppliers and the producers and the growers that are actually here, that are, that have those plants available, it's a whole nother thing.

- Yeah.

- So yeah, marrying those two, I guess, ideas and coming up with some good solutions, you know, are, are things we're trying to work with.

- That's fantastic.

Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

- Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you.

- Today we're here at the first American Museum and joining me is Chef Loretta Oden.

Chef, thank you so much for inviting us out into your kitchen garden, essentially.

But it's full of some really native yummies, right?

Yes.

Tell a little bit about the plants we have here.

Oh, - Absolutely.

You know, we have a lot of herbs, edible flowers, most everything that's out here is edible so that we can use it in the kitchen on the plates and all of that.

A lot of things that have to do with our traditional food ways, like medicinal teas and to make tinctures and all of that.

Just an overall look at, you know, what we consumed as native peoples in the past and bringing that forward into the future.

- And you guys as a museum are representing all of the nations, right?

Or a lot of them anyway?

Well, a lot of - Them.

We are representing the 39 nations.

Okay.

That now call Oklahoma home that are literally from all over North America.

So we have people from, you know, all regions who came here with different food ways, you know, different plants and animals in their particular regions.

And we just kind of all got plopped down in old Indian territory.

So we're just kind of making the best of that.

And this museum is really so exciting, is really an opportunity for us to tell the story in our own words.

Oh.

We're using a lot of wild plants.

We're using a lot of plants that just kind of grow out in the yard.

We are traditionally pretty much a plant-based society.

So of course the corn, beans and squash, every kind of bean imaginable chili peppers, tomatoes, people are really not aware of how many foods are indigenous to the Americas.

We're using this in the restaurant as ingredients as garnish with the, with the edible flowers.

So tell us a little bit about how this garden is utilized by the museum.

So we're using it as a, as a teaching garden for the children in FAM camp, my target audience, because we've gotta get these kiddos young.

They help us plant, they make seed balls, and then when they grow something, they're really intrigued to taste it.

So we've had them eating stuff that they would never have dreamt of eating before.

But as you go through the garden, this is also open to the public all of the time.

Any visitor to the museum has access to this garden.

And as they go through the garden, we have plant identifiers and we also have QR codes on these little stakes that you can access to get some recipes from Chef Loretta.

Okay.

On how to use some of these beautiful plants.

- Okay.

And I know you've been a chef for a long time and have been working with indigenous plants for a long time as well.

- Yes.

- So if somebody's looking for a resource, I think you might have a book you could suggest to us.

I - Do have a book.

Thank you for mentioning that.

It dropped in October, my first, after 35 years of doing this, but it's called Corn Dance Inspired First American Cuisine.

So it has a little bit of my story, but it has some really, it's geared towards the home cook, so it's not real complicated.

And some great recipes utilizing our indigenous food stuffs.

- Well, this is great information and we're so happy that there is this museum here as a resource and that there are people working to preserve these native traditions.

Yes.

Thank you so much.

All - Right, thank - You.

There are a lot of great horticulture activities this time of year.

Be sure and consider some of these events in the weeks ahead.

We finally got the rain we all needed.

Join us next week as we learn about rainfall interception right here on Oklahoma.

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Oklahoma Gardening is produced by the Oklahoma Cooperative Extension Service as part of the division of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources at Oklahoma State University.

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We would like to thank our generous underwriters, the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture, food and Forestry, and Shape Your Future, a program of the Tobacco Settlement Endowment Trust.

Additional support is also provided by Greenleaf Nursery and the Garden Debut Plants, the Oklahoma Horticulture Society, the Tulsa Garden Club, and the Tulsa Garden Center.