Notes from my Native Foods Internship

Marlowe Kastans introduces the Nourishing Communities project and shares her experience as a NLRC Intern exploring native edible and medicinal plants, community partnerships, and the restoration of local ecosystems in Douglas County.

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Nourishing Communities: Native Foods for Adapting Farms is a project that allows for Native Lands Restoration Collaborative to partner with local stakeholders in Douglas county. Through work with the community, NLRC has been able to provide native plants to farm to table restaurants, family farms, community gardens, Haskell greenhouse, and additional partners. Nourishing Communities aims to strengthen our relationship with native ecosystems by focusing on the edible and medicinal characteristics of plants that naturally surround us. 

Under this project, I have had the opportunity to research the edible and medicinal properties of native plants to create species lists. We shared this information with the local partners, and helped them select species that best suited their planting areas. Over the summer and fall, we focused on preparation work, like smothering planting areas. A few of the plants made it in the ground before winter, but we’re looking forward to doing more planting this spring and fall! 

One of the highlights has been establishing demonstration sites at Blazing Star prairie. At the sunny site, we’ve planted a variety of native edible and medicinal plants, including serviceberry, yarrow, leadplant, New Jersey tea, raspberry, purple prairie clover, and limestone calamint. The shade site is home to pawpaw, passionflower, American groundnut, hog peanut, and wild ginger. Both sites are still in the early growth stages, and some of the larger plants may take a few years to start producing. Luckily, some medicinal plants like passionflower and yarrow can be harvested within the first year after planting. 

To help the project partners explore native foods, in July we collaborated with Patti from Botanical Belonging to host an event featuring the aronia berry (Aronia melanocarpa). I made an aronia berry jam and some simple syrup for mocktails, and Courtney made a delicious aronia orange upside down cake. Botanical Belonging has an abundance of aronia bushes, so Patti graciously let everyone pick buckets full of berries to take home and experiment with! 

Inspired by the knowledge I’ve gained through this project, I’ve started incorporating native plants into more personal spaces too. At my parents’ house, we’re hoping to transform a shady area under a walnut and Kentucky coffee tree. This area used to be filled with wintercreeper, english ivy, honeysuckle, and cedar bushes. After working hard throughout the winter to remove the majority of these understory plants, we plan to create a native plant area that provides food and habitat for the birds, squirrels, rabbits, insects, and other friends living in our yard. Thanks to the species lists for the Nourishing Communities project, choosing plants that will thrive in this space has been much easier. 

To learn more about medicinal properties, I have been exploring the use of native plants as tea. There is not much published information about tea blends with native plants, so I am hoping to reach a point where I can recommend specific blends for desired taste or medicinal properties. To do so, I will be harvesting throughout the year and drying plants to properly store for consumption. I am excited to continue my exploration of the flavors offered by our native plants!

Our gratitude to the Douglas County Heritage Conservation Council for their financial support of this project through the Natural and Cultural Heritage Grant Program. Thank you!