Our campus has long been known for its delightful greenery and natural beauty, but it’s easy to overlook the amount of care and planning that goes into making the UC Davis campus the lush space that it is. Beyond their beauty, campus gardens contribute to sustainability efforts, foster community engagement, and serve as living laboratories for educational exploration. The Gorman Museum of Native American Art, which opened its doors on campus just last year, recently got a garden makeover from Ryan Deering, GATEways Horticulturist, and his Sustainable Horticulture team.

Sustainable Horticulture is a strand of the Arboretum and Public Garden’s Learning by Leading student internship program, and is a year-long internship for students to learn hands-on skills related to garden design, irrigation planning, horticulture maintenance, and more! Ryan is the staff mentor behind the program, but the program gives the students the chance to manage projects, organize meetings, and work with clients to improve landscapes across campus. Staff and local volunteers are also encouraged to help out when they can, making each of the Sustainable Horticulture projects into large community initiatives that bring people together.

Their most recent client, the Gorman Museum, worked with Ryan and his team to renovate the once empty lot of land at their entrance into a beautiful space that enriches the museum experience. Ryan’s team carefully curated the plant variety garden in order to make it both engaging and educational. The garden features a host of native California plants that have a variety of cultural and ethnobotanical uses, and the vegetation is planted in patterns used in traditional Native American artwork. Native populations of the region used many of the plants found in the Gorman garden in their daily lives, such as for food, medicine, basketry, and religious rituals. For example, the white sage planted in the garden was used as a spice in Native American cooking as well as for a number of religious ceremonies. Yarrow, whose white flowers are an unmistakable standout in the garden, is a medicinal herb that can be made into a tea to treat colds, eaten to reduce inflammation or crushed into a poultice to heal cuts and burns. These plants also attract native wildlife like hummingbirds and bees, creating a dynamic habitat that would’ve been similar to what the region naturally looked like hundreds of years ago.

For the future of Sustainable Horticulture, Ryan envisions creating more gardens in other lots around the Gorman Museum and continuing to create more sustainable and efficient gardens across campus. Over time, he hopes to make an even bigger impact on UC Davis’ water conservation efforts through horticulture and landscaping. More information, photos, updates, and ways to get involved through volunteering can be found at the UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden Sustainable Horticulture webpage!