The Land Lab's sustainable agriculture project expands this summer with the successful cultivation of traditional herbs like sage, enriching our storytelling initiative.
Expanding Our Garden’s Story with Traditional and Healing Herbs
While we continue to nurture our fruits and berries as part of our community garden and storytelling project, this year we made a conscious effort to expand on herbs and spices. Sage, with its rich history and versatile uses, was naturally one of the main additions. It’s been amazing to watch these plants settle into our expanded grow boxes and plots, bringing another layer of sensory experience to our hands-on learning at the Land Lab.
This summer at the Land Lab, community members are diving into combining the arts with sustainable agriculture. Our focus isn’t just on what we grow, but the stories behind it – how these plants connect us to the land and to traditional knowledge. This year, we’re undertaking detailed plant documentation of a whole range of garden and traditional plants, including herbs like sage, understanding their roles and histories. This work builds beautifully on last year’s pilot programming that was supported by Manitoba Agriculture and the Sustainable Canadian Agricultural Partnership, allowing us to cultivate community relationships and nature connection. This ongoing garden expansion is key to our environmental education efforts.
The sage plants themselves are doing incredibly well. Their leaves have that distinctive bumpy texture and a beautiful, muted green colour that hints at their aromatic power. After a slow start, they’re growing stronger and bushy, clearly enjoying the sun and the care we’re giving them. This commitment is part of our broader urban farming initiatives.
Adding sage to our collection feels significant. It’s a plant often associated with healing, cleansing, and wisdom in many cultures, including Indigenous traditions. And in cultivating it, we’re not just adding another plant to our garden; we’re inviting conversations about its historical uses, its role in wellbeing, and its place in the diverse collection of plants that sustain us.
A Growing Canvas for Community Arts and Story
Beyond the tangible act of growing, the Land Lab supports our incubator program for creativity, deeply integrating with our media arts and storytelling initiatives. It’s a place where the rich narratives of the land become the subject. Through activities like oral history storytelling, we capture the diverse voices and traditional knowledge connected to these plants and this place. Artists engage in photography workshops, documenting the subtle beauty and growth cycles, turning everyday observations into compelling visual stories. This unique intersection of nature and creativity makes our Living Land Lab program one of the main hubs for our arts incubator program, supporting life long learning and creative expression.
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