Ancient Anasazi Gardens

Posted by Robert Dailey Apr 5, 2006

"We are synonymous with and born of the earth, so are we made of the same stuff as our houses....We built them, tasted them, talked with them, climbed on them, lived with them, and watched them die.... The entire community was the house."

-Rina Sentzell, Santa Clara Pueblo writer and architectural historian

Bandelier National Monument sits nestled in Frijoles Canyon, near the Rio Grande River in northern New Mexico. The floor of the canyon, an antithesis of the surrounding desert, is lush and green, the result of Frijoles Creek, running clear and cold, brimming with small brook trout, and lined with ancient cottonwoods.

It was here that the "Anasazi," the "old ones," ancestors of the modern Puebloan Native Americans of the desert Southwest created one of their settlements. Though smaller than Mesa Verde or Canyon de Chelly, hundreds of these people made their homes here.

Not only did they collect pinion nuts and juniper berries for food, they also cultivated prickly pear cacti, corn, squash and beans as staples to their diet.

Along Frijoles Creek, they planted gardens for food and for beauty. There is also evidence there of water storage areas, still cool damp and inviting after a hundred centuries of neglect.