Meet Kendall Kroesen of Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace

Today we’d like to introduce you to Kendall Kroesen.

Hi Kendall, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I am the Outreach Coordinator at Mission Garden. Mission Garden is a living agricultural museum of Sonoran Desert-adapted heritage fruit trees, traditional local heirloom crops, and edible native plants. 

The garden is located at 946 W Mission Lane, on the west side of Tucson, at the foot of Sentinel Peak. This location, on the historic floodplain of the Santa Cruz River, is considered the birthplace of Tucson because it is the site of over 4,100 years of continuous agricultural cultivation. It was the location of the Native American village of S-cuk Son (pronounced Chuk Shon), a place sacred to the Tohono O’odham. Later, it was the site of a walled garden associated with the Mission San Agustin, an outlier of the San Xavier Mission, the buildings of which are no longer present. 

The garden walls have been rebuilt and now host garden plots that represent different eras of history and different cultures that have grown crops here. Current plots include: Native Plants with ethnobotanical uses, Early Agriculture (corn), Hohokam, O’odham Before European Contact, O’odham After European Contact, Spanish, Mexican, Chinese, Yoeme, Africa in the Americas, Medicinal, and Youth. Areas in development include the Grassland, Territorial, Statehood, and Tomorrow’s gardens, as well as the Trail of Ndé (Apache) Plants. Tomorrow’s Garden will be an experimental plot exploring how agriculture must evolve with higher average temperatures, more extreme weather events, and scarcer water. 

The Garden is managed by Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace, a 501(c)3 non-profit with no religious affiliation. 

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The development of other nearby areas as a heritage tourism park foundered during the recession, but a group of dedicated historians, educators, and gardeners formed a non-profit organization to carry though with the vision of recreating Mission Garden. Archaeological excavations and the oral traditions of many cultural groups formed the foundational knowledge about what to plant and how to grow traditional local crops. While part of the garden demonstrates the arrival of fruit trees, grains, and vegetables brought by the first Europeans to the area, most of it is dedicated other agricultural developments, including Native American foodways that persisted for thousands of years on a perennial reach of the Santa Cruz River in what is today Tucson. 

Soil compaction and low organic content were some of the first barriers to overcome since the area had been out of cultivation for decades. Lowering water tables and non-agricultural land use had resulted in compaction, with very slow infiltration of rain or irrigation water. 

Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Friends of Tucson’s Birthplace?
We area a unique, historic recreation of different phases during several thousands of years of agriculture. We’re not a botanical garden, a community garden, or a school garden. We represent all the cultural groups, hundreds of crops, and eras of agricultural history here. 

Our non-profit organization gives away approximately half the produce from the garden to food banks, food pantries, and refugee groups. 

The garden is evolving into a place where you can not only see these crops growing but learn about how they were used historically and some of the health benefits of fresh, heirloom produce. 

The garden is also becoming a mecca for wildlife. Probably some the wildlife that was present historically across the mile-wide historic floodplain of the Santa Cruz River is return to this small garden. 

What do you think about happiness?
Personally, Mission Garden speaks to all my interests in life: archaeology and prehistory, cultural anthropology, ethnohistory, gardening, and wildlife. 

Contact Info:

• Website: www.missiongarden.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/missiongarden/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/missiongardentucson/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@friendsoftucsonsbirthplace619

Image Credits
Dena Cowan
Roger Pfeuffer