Members of the UW–Madison, Madison and broader community are invited to celebrate the grand opening of Allen Centennial Garden’s art exhibit Archipelago on Tuesday, September 24 from 4-6pm in a free on-campus event in the Garden.
Tory Tepp’s Archipelago features three lifeboats carrying plants that will help us adapt in a changing world. Each boat contains a different plant, a different message, and a different soundscape to bring us into a deeper understanding of our plant relatives. Each draws on imagery from small religious shrines to saints to increase our emotional and spiritual connection to the natural world.
Kernza, Silphium, and Teosinte are the featured plants. They remind us that different relationships between plants are possible. What would it be like if we didn’t have to plant wheat year after year? Kernza, also known as intermediate wheatgrass or Thinopyrum intermedium, is the world’s first perennial grain crop and can be used in place of wheat and rye in baked goods and brewing. What about plants that make oil? Silphium (Silphium integrifolium) is a drought-tolerant prairie plant being bred as a perennial oil crop like its relative sunflower. With deep roots, kernza and silphium help store carbon and prevent soil erosion from year to year. To create these new crops plant breeders went back to wild relatives of what we’re more familiar with. Teosinte (Zea mexicana) is believed to be the wild ancestor of corn, and represents the ongoing work with both wild relatives and crops we’re more familiar with. These plants represent the countless crops that have been modified by people over thousands of years to create the food plants we love today.
Archipelago’s grand opening will be a chance to celebrate the new exhibition and the height of the Garden in full season. Artist Tory Tepp will be on hand during the event and share more about his process for creating the exhibit and the instruments he used to create the exhibit’s audio soundscape. Visitors will also be able to try a sample of kernza and talk to current researchers in the Picasso Lab at UW-Madison about their work studying kernza, silphium, and other perennial grains.
The event will also include opportunities to learn more about other current sustainability initiatives at Allen Centennial Garden. Event attendees can dye fabric with food waste or plants from our garden. Guests can dye a tote bag from the Office of Sustainability (provided) or bring their own 100% cotton (or linen, wool, or silk) item to dye in blue, pink, or yellow.
Come celebrate student projects that are bringing a native bee hotel and solar charging station to Allen Centennial Gardens! With support from the UW–Madison Green Fund, students from Engineers for a Sustainable World (ESW) are designing and building a home for native bees in collaboration with ACG staff, the student organizations Bees Please and The People’s Farm, and campus bee experts. Another team of students from ESW are adding solar panels to the roof of an existing little free library so that ACG staff can charge battery packs for land care equipment like mowers and string trimmers and so that visitors can charge laptops and cell phones from a renewable energy source. This is the first in a series of solar charging stations that will improve the resilience of the UW campus, offering places to charge devices if grid electricity became temporarily unavailable as a result of a weather event. The Green Fund is a program of the Office of Sustainability that supports student ideas that address the environmental footprint, social impact, and operating costs of campus facilities. During the Grand Opening participants will be able to chat with the students who are leading these efforts and build a small bee hotel to bring home!
Allen Centennial Garden is located at 620 Babcock Drive. Free parking is available after 4:30pm in Lot 34 at 1480 Tripp Circle and in Lot 40 behind Babcock Hall. Paid parking is available in Lot 36 just west of Steenbock Library.
Allen Centennial Garden will make a reasonable effort to provide accommodations for participants with disabilities when notified in advance. Request a disability accommodation by September 14 by contacting Ryan Dostal at AllenCentennialGarden@wisc.edu. Efforts will be made to meet same day requests to the extent possible.
This event is sponsored by the Office of Sustainability. The exhibit has been sponsored by the Center for Culture, History, and the Environment and the Friends of Allen Centennial Garden.