Celebrating the Maya Forest as a Garden

Saturday, October 13, 2007 from 11 am to 4 pm
At the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History, Farrand Hall

• 11:00 am      Fiesta Begins
• 11:30 am      Panel with Maya Forest Gardeners and Landscape Designers
  
These are some of the fascinating questions we will cover in our panel discussion
1. Where did the ancient Maya live?
2. What are we doing to protect the Maya heritage? 
3. How can we learn from the Maya Forest Garden?
   
• 1:30 pm – 4:00 pm      Fiesta! engage with the forest gardeners, panel participants, and those interested in gardening, archaeology, conservation, landscape design, the Maya, anthropology, permaculture, and sustainable models

• Beloved local landscape designer Lori Ann David will moderate a celebration of the tropical Maya forest past and present
• Archaeologist Anabel Ford will introduce the Maya world
• A panel will explore traditional landscapes. 
• Maya forest gardeners from El Pilar Belize – Master Gardener Alfonzo Tzul, Traditional Healer Beatrice Waight, and Young Entrepreneur Lucas Medina discuss how they conserve and prosper in the Maya forest
• Explore how traditional knowledge can contribute to our own lives and landscapes.

The Original PermaCulturists

_____The Maya have long been exalted for their architectural and artistic grandeur. Towering temples dominating grand open plazas remain the enduring evidence of their power. Keen observers of natural phenomena, their priests studied the heavens, making accurate celestial predictions with precise mathematics. The Maya were also superb gardeners. They domesticated their wild jungles and tropical landscape and established their cities based on forest gardens.
_____This powerfully effective art, architecture, and agriculture was, amazingly, established without the aid of wheels and plows or the draft animals, or even heavy metals like iron. The Maya were able to create a productive landscape that provided thousands of years of growth and development. This is supremely evident in the remarkably diverse and sophisticated cultivation of their landscape. Well-known plants that we rely on today were part of the Maya diet: the sun trilogy of maize, beans, squash; basic vegetables such as tomato and chile; fibers such as cotton; condiments like allspice tree and achiote bush; and the important shaded delicacies of chocolate and vanilla. Tailored to the local geography, the Maya cultivated the forest as a garden for thousands of years. Today the Maya forest is dominated by these useful plants, nurtured by traditional farmers of the region who grow a wide array of food, medicine, and spice as well as materials for construction and home utensils. Their forest gardens provide nourishment for their families, maintain the soil fertility, secure water, and clean the air.
_____Tailored to the local geography, the Maya cultivated the forest as a garden for thousands of years. Today the Maya forest is dominated by these useful plants, nurtured by traditional farmers of the region who grow a wide array of food, medicine, and spice as well as materials for construction and home utensils. Their cultivation practices nourish their families as well as build, the soil fertility, secure water, and clean the air.

Suggested contribution: $25-$100
Contact info:  Anabel Ford 805 893 8191/ford@marc.ucsb.edu