The Jane Minor BIPOC Community Medicine Garden is a dream and a future.

It was brought to life in honor of the herbalist, healer and emancipator, Jane Minor and my grandmother Jane Green who grew food, medicine and family.

The garden is a sanctuary for BIPOC folks to come together to connect with the Earth, the Plants, the Community, and with themselves. The garden has communal beds for all to freely enjoy, tend and harvest, as well as individual beds for folks to steward as they like, in accordance with our garden ethos.

The garden, located on intersections of both Gayogohó:no' and Onöñda’gega’ land, just southeast of Ithaca, NY, also has a community herb drying shed and hoop house as well as a classroom space, lending library of herb books and tools, a free farm-fresh egg fridge, and a free herbal medicine cabinet. Classes, work parties, food and medicine mutual aid and garden events happen regularly throughout the growing season.

The garden is made possible through the work of many hands and fundsraised through:

The People’s Medicine Project: Reclamation Fund and our new Garden Sustainer program (keep scrolling for more info). If you are interested in supporting the garden through one-time or monthly donations of any amount, please click the button below!

Through our collective work and support the garden is ever-growing, bringing more and more folks into the sanctuary of earth-based community. For our 2023 season, we are implementing a new membership structure to accommodate folks who may not live close enough to commit to regular stewardship, but would still like to join us in caring for and being cared for by this space!

The new garden membership tiers are: Personal Stewardship and Community Builder!

2023 Garden Membership Applications are available now!

if you are interested in tending and harvesting food and medicine from our communal beds and/or if you are interested in stewarding your own bed in the garden, please click the link below for more information and to fill out our membership application!

How Our Garden Grows

We center bioregionalism- looking at the native, common, abundant plants of our region that help support and balance local ecosystems, including people.

As a space committed to healing from legacies of colonial violence on land and the liberation of all people, we believe the garden must center the needs of the most marginalized among us in overarching white supremacist, capitalist systems. We center and celebrate our Queer, Trans, Disabled, Chronically Ill, Mentally Ill, Femme, Poor, Immigrant, Refugee, Fat and Darkskin community.

No one is free until we are all free.

We know land is not something to be owned or controlled. We build practices to attune ourselves to the specificity of this land. We know and care for the land as a very alive, highly intelligent, breathing, sensing body. We know the plants, the fungi, the soil, and the water as sentient beings that we are working with-in consensual, co-defined collaboration and towards mutual flourishing. Their needs, wants, and autonomy are as important as our own. Because of this, we believe all landwork must start with introducing yourself, stating your intentions, and asking permission–waiting to receive an answer before engaging, giving thanks throughout, and taking only what is needed. This receptivity, or intuition, is built through practice, through building greater sensitivity and a deeper relationship to the land and to plant and fungi ancestors. 

We believe in our interdependence. Reciprocity connects us in relationships of care and responsibility to each other. The mere act of giving and acting out of abundance, trustful that that which has been given will circulate back to you, keeps us in webs of reciprocity- of mutual, collaborative flourishing.

Help Our Garden Flourish…Become a Garden Sustainer!

For the 2023 Garden Season, we are excited to announce a unique opportunity to contribute to our growing efforts and receive seasonal offerings from our garden. We invite you to become a Garden Sustainer! Garden Sustainers join us in our work by partnering in support of a certain aspects of the garden. Through the support of our community of Sustainers, we will be able to keep the garden, tools, seeds, compost, greenhouse, mulch and other materials free for all garden members. Sustainers also help to support our Free Herbal Medicine Cabinet and our Free Egg Fridge!

In gratitude and in an effort to build our Garden Community, Sustainers will also enjoy a seasonal offering from the garden, exclusive invitations to garden events and our Garden Newsletter.

Please consider joining our Garden Sustainer Community through the following options:

We look forward to flourishing with you!!