<h2 id="22b76ee0-b1b6-4ab9-a462-6ba6df48151a" data-toc-id="22b76ee0-b1b6-4ab9-a462-6ba6df48151a" style="font-size: 24px; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.2;">The Forest as a Remembered Garden</h2>In these mountains, it’s easy to believe we are surrounded by untouched wilderness. Dense forest can feel ancient, eternal, self-sustaining. But the truth held in the soil tells a different story: for thousands of years, these ridges and valleys were carefully tended gardens—alive with crops, nut trees, berry patches, and medicine plants cultivated in relationship with people who called this place home.When settlers arrived in the Appalachians, they often described the landscape as “parklike,” unaware that the open understories and abundant food sources were the result of deliberate human care. Fire, pruning, selective harvest, and seed dispersal were part of an Indigenous science of renewal—a way of living that enhanced biodiversity rather than diminishing it.To remember the garden is to remember that the forest itself is a living record of reciprocity. <blockquote>It’s a reminder that abundance doesn’t come from domination, but from relationship.</blockquote>On November 12, we’ll gather to explore this remembering in a 90-minute online conversation: Remembering the Garden: Indigenous Agriculture and the Renewal of the Appalachian Forests.<img src="https://ezycourse.b-cdn.net/4951/cmhckj8c20j42py8zf7qzaa0o.png" alt="image" containerstyle="width: 100%; height: auto; cursor: pointer; " wrapperstyle="display: flex">This live event features Lyla June Johnson, Indigenous scholar and advocate for food sovereignty; Judy Smith, elder of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, sharing teachings around local foodways; and Chris Parker, co-founder of The Forest Farmacy, whose work bridges traditional ecological knowledge with regenerative mycology.Together, they will invite us to re-imagine the forest not as wilderness to be preserved, but as a tended garden sustained by care, memory, and connection.<h2 id="630c8a2c-2aa6-4c94-a2d9-161f33728c46" data-toc-id="630c8a2c-2aa6-4c94-a2d9-161f33728c46" style="font-size: 24px; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.2;">The Living Wisdom of Indigenous Agriculture</h2>Indigenous agriculture has always been a study in belonging. It’s not confined to neat furrows or fenced pastures—it’s an ecology of participation. Across the continent, Indigenous peoples cultivated abundance through practices that wove food, medicine, and ceremony into the same breath.In the Southern Appalachians, Cherokee, and other nations, cultivated “forest fields” of corn, beans, squash, sunflowers, and tobacco, interwoven with wild stands of chestnut, hickory, ramps, and medicinal herbs. Controlled burns encouraged berry growth and balanced insect populations. Rivers and hollows were managed as shared pantries, not private property.These practices were rooted in principles of reciprocity: take what you need, give more than you take, and never forget your kinship with the beings who feed you. They weren’t primitive techniques but sophisticated ecological systems based on observation, humility, and long-term thinking.Lyla June Johnson, whose research on Indigenous Regenerative Ecological Design (IRED) has reached farmers and educators worldwide, reminds us that “sustainability” isn’t new—it’s ancestral. What’s new is remembering it again.And Judy Smith, drawing from generations of Cherokee food traditions, teaches that tending and cooking from the land is itself ceremony—a way of giving thanks, of ensuring that the stories of plants and people continue.This living wisdom asks us not to romanticize the past, but to practice relationship in the present.<h2 id="a86f5321-fd5a-49f4-8255-3a974f36e726" data-toc-id="a86f5321-fd5a-49f4-8255-3a974f36e726" style="font-size: 24px; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.2;">Remembering Through Regeneration</h2>When we talk about renewing the Appalachian forests, we’re talking about something more than restoration. We’re talking about regeneration—about returning to right relationship.For Chris Parker and The Forest Farmacy, mushrooms are among our greatest teachers in this work. Fungi embody reciprocity. They digest the fallen and feed the living, weaving connection through soil, root, and water. In many ways, they are the forest’s memory—its living network of renewal.Through regenerative mycology, Chris and Katherine teach how cultivating fungi can heal both landscapes and livelihoods. A decaying log inoculated with shiitake spawn becomes food, medicine, and fertility all at once. Mycelium running through spent straw or woodchips turns waste into living soil.This is agriculture as the forest remembers it: no separation between the act of growing and the act of giving back.<blockquote>As Chris often says, “Fungi remind us that everything we grow becomes nourishment for something else. Our work is simply to ensure that what we leave behind feeds life.”</blockquote><h2 id="9d43774f-8fb9-48d8-b255-18ee42c9d03e" data-toc-id="9d43774f-8fb9-48d8-b255-18ee42c9d03e" style="font-size: 24px; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.2;">The Forest as Teacher, the People as Caretakers</h2>The myth of wilderness tells us that humans and nature must be kept apart for either to thrive. The forest teaches otherwise. It thrives on interaction—on the pollinator, the grazer, the seed-carrier, and yes, the gardener.To be a caretaker of the forest is to enter into conversation with it. Every act of tending—lighting a restorative burn, harvesting respectfully, inoculating a log—is a form of remembering. We are remembering that we, too, belong to the cycles of giving and receiving that sustain the living world.As Lyla June teaches, Indigenous peoples didn’t seek to tame the earth but to live in treaty with it—a covenant of mutual flourishing.In this way, remembering the garden becomes a practice of cultural repair. It challenges us to ask: What if the health of our forests, our soils, and our communities are all one conversation?<h2 id="4f7c653c-e3ea-4a23-97da-7c324a0ef8b1" data-toc-id="4f7c653c-e3ea-4a23-97da-7c324a0ef8b1" style="font-size: 24px; font-weight: 600; line-height: 1.2;">An Invitation to Remember</h2>The work of renewal begins not in policy or technology, but in story. When we remember that the Appalachian forest was once a tended garden, we begin to see possibility everywhere—in our farms, our backyards, our foodways, and our imaginations.Join us on November 12 for Remembering the Garden: Indigenous Agriculture and the Renewal of the Appalachian Forests— a 90-minute online gathering exploring how ancient practices of relationship and reciprocity can guide us today.You’ll hear from:<ul><li style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Lyla June Johnson (Diné), Indigenous scholar and advocate for food sovereignty; </li><li style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Judy Smith (EBCI), elder of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians; </li><li style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Chris Parker (EBCI), co-founder of The Forest Farmacy, connecting regenerative mycology with Indigenous ecological wisdom.</li></ul>Together, they will explore how people once cultivated abundance in these mountains—and how those same principles can restore health to our forests and communities today.Because the garden was never lost. It has been waiting, all along, for us to remember.👉 Reserve your spot here: <a target="_blank" href="https://www.theforestfarmacy.com/event/remembering-the-garden-indigenous-agriculture-and-the-renewal-of-the-appalachian-forests/4055/">https://www.theforestfarmacy.com/event/remembering-the-garden-indigenous-agriculture-and-the-renewal-of-the-appalachian-forests/4055/</a>

Discover how Indigenous agriculture once renewed the Appalachian forests—and how those practices can restore abundance and connection today.

Remembering the Garden: Indigenous Agriculture and the Renewal of the Appalachian Forests

Explore how Indigenous agricultural practices once shaped the Appalachian forests—and how remembering these ways of tending can guide regeneration today.

The Living Wisdom of Indigenous Agriculture

The Forest as Teacher, the People as Caretakers

Learn how to grow and scale your online course business using our online course platform. EzyCourse blog is designed to teach you how to create and sell online courses.

Remembering the Garden: Indigenous Agriculture and the Renewal of the Appalachian Forests

Remembering the Garden: Indigenous Agriculture and the Renewal of the Appalachian Forests

Related Posts

Honoring the First Foods: Indigenous Foods of the Southern Appalachians