Herbert E. Owen Native Plants Garden & Outdoor Classroom
In the 1960s, Herbert E. Owen, the father of FLC’s Biology Department, had a vision to share a garden featuring plants that grow naturally across the Four Corners. In 1969, he hired Preston Somers, who embraced Owen’s idea and, 35 years after Owen’s retirement, helped make that dream a reality.
The first iteration of the garden was planted at the site of the current Sitter Hall in 2000 and featured plants donated from native plant nurseries around Colorado. Other plants were transplanted from the wild or other parts of campus. In 2012, the garden was moved to a .36-acre plot behind the Biology wing of Berndt Hall. Since that time, the garden has taken on a life of its own, with original plants flourishing and new additions being introduced to the catalogue as Somers and company see fit.
In the garden, a tall white pine overlooks stubby prickly pear, while an Apache plume buzzes with bees. From Mormon tea to Jupiter’s beard, Desert four o’clock to Four wing salt bush, and Ericameria nauseosa to Peraphyllum ramosissimum, the plants attract different types of insects at different times of the day and year. The one thing all plants have in common is that they have been or are still used medicinally and ceremonially by Native Americans.
“It’s wild, it’s messy, but that’s nature; that’s the beauty of the garden,” says garden caretaker and Biology Lab Coordinator Kami Parrish-Larson (Cellular & Molecular Biology, ’98).
Over the years, faculty, staff, and students have nurtured the ever-evolving park, but a few self-proclaimed “garden nerds” have ensured that the garden not only survives each season but thrives. Parrish-Larson oversees these weeding parties, while Physical Plant Services maintains the garden’s irrigation system.
Nine years after his retirement, Somers and his wife, Judy, returned to help nurture the garden in 2014 and, in 2020, applied for and received prestigious accreditation from ArbNet for the Herbert E. Owen Native Plant Garden & Outdoor Classroom. No matter the season, these two mainstays can be seen weeding, planting, cataloguing, and enjoying the fruits of their labor.
“We needed a garden champion, and Preston and Judy are those champions,” says Parrish-Larson. “It was like a whole new life for this garden when they got back.”
The garden serves as more than an oasis on campus. Community members often find the space to be a satisfying turnaround point for SkySteps ventures, while faculty use the garden to show students plant adaptations. It’s not uncommon to see signage covered with post-it notes, suggesting an ambulatory pop quiz.
“It’s such an important teaching space for providing students with that hands-on experience,” says Parrish-Larson. “It’s not the same as a video; they can really see the shape of a stem, a leaf. It helps them feel a part of something, even if it’s just weeding in the garden with faculty. These informal experiences are what make them stay at Fort Lewis College.”
Ross McCauley, professor of Biology and coordinator of FLC’s Herbarium, tells a story of a first-year student who approached him at the beginning of the Fall term. She told him that when she found the Native Plants Garden, she saw plants that reminded her of home, providing a connection to campus she hadn’t yet felt. Besides homesick students, another creature finds the garden to be a cozy respite: deer.
“It’s the curse of having such a beautiful space: the deer think we did it for them,” says Parrish-Larson. “The dream would be to one day have a wrought-iron fence around the area to keep the deer out, so garden goers could really feel the plants and trees without netting required to protect the species. A fence could set them free.”