Chimayo — Verbena for anxiety. Goldenrod for skin problems. Rosehips to boost the immune system.
Each plant has a purpose in Viva Vida Garden, explains owner and local herbalist Pilar Trujillo, whose old apple trees and raspberry bushes are now laden with fruit and irrigated by the nearby Acequia de la Cañada Ancha river, which dates back to the 1600s.
The garden's irrigation system may be hundreds of years old, but the garden itself is lush with fresh vegetation, thanks to a team of local youth and volunteers who spent Monday afternoon planting eight species of pollinator-friendly plants.
Monday's activity was a joint effort between environmental groups, including the Xerces Society and Wildlife Conservation, and youth-serving organizations, including Northern Youth Project, CASA First and the New Mexico Acequia Association's Semblando Semillas program, providing an opportunity for youth to connect with the land while creating new habitat for pollinators.
“Anyone can do this,” said Caitlin Haas, Southwest Pollinator Conservation Specialist for the Xerxes Society. “You can get involved in conservation by volunteering and planting something in a pot in your yard. It doesn't have to be a massive conservation restoration project.”
“Anyone can get involved in this kind of work,” she added.
The Xerces Society, a national organization dedicated to protecting pollinators, provided the plants.
The group's riparian kits are designed to be planted along riverbanks and include nearly 100 different plants and multiple species that, once established, will increase the diversity of pollinators, including the many species of bees, butterflies, moths, beetles and wasps that live in New Mexico, Haas said.
More than a dozen children and adults participated in Monday's tree planting, with new seedlings dotted across the acequia-irrigated garden landscape.
It's part of Defenders of Wildlife's broader efforts to protect wildlife on public and private lands, said Peggy Dahl, its New Mexico state representative. The gardens help people and creatures, Dahl said. They create new pollinator habitat, which supports agriculture.
Viva Vida Garden is especially well-suited as a pollinator garden because it is adjacent to an acequia.
“Woodlands along rivers and streams are often the best places for pollinators in the arid Southwest. … They act as migration corridors for pollinators and other wildlife that use these wooded areas as migration routes,” Dahl said.
Trujillo says the plant can also be used medicinally. When the group transplanted verbena and wood rose cones, she envisioned making teas and ointments from the leaves and petals of the plant, knowledge she plans to impart to local youth through the Sembrando Semillas program.
Samantha Vásquez cut a path through the garden's wetlands, following a series of orange flags marking the location of pollinator plants. The 16-year-old from Medinales used a digging stick to dig holes in the ground, then carefully removed each seedling from a cup and planted it in the hole.
Vasquez is no stranger to gardening.
As an intern with the Northern Youth Project, she works in the organization's vegetable gardens in Abiquiu, where she's learned how to care for plants and soil, as well as advanced agricultural techniques like irrigation and burying clay pots filled with water next to plants to ensure a steady source of water.
This year's harvest will include carrots, pumpkins, beans, carrots, eggplant, cucumbers, kale and more, as well as all kinds of herbs.
Vásquez said the newly planted pollinator plants at Viva Vida Garden will benefit all of the plants in the area, from agricultural crops to medicinal plants.
“We're hoping to have a really thriving garden,” Vasquez said, “and this plant will definitely be so big that pollinators can go out and provide pollen to all the plants that grow here.”