A Wylder Garden with the Three Sisters by Marilyn Barr

         Our little town of Wylder is growing by leaps and bounds. While we can’t travel back to 1878, we can grow a small piece of Wylder with a Three Sisters Garden. The three sisters are represented by beans, corn, and squash in this traditional Native American companion planting. This trio originated in one of the Mesoamerican tribes, but the legend spread north in tribes such as the Cherokee, Iroquois, Oneida, and as far north as North Dakota with the Mandan tribe. (oneidaindiannation.com)

        Successful harvests depended on the interrelationships between these sister plants. The beans nitrogenize the soil to provide a rich environment for the others and replenish what is taken by the other plants. The corn provides the structure for the vines to climb. The squash acts as a protector with its spines for killing pests and broad leaves to prevent the sun from drying out the soil. The sisters represent the spirit of community at the heart of Native American culture. When Olive Muegge makes Three Sister’s Stew in Dance to a Wylder Beat at her first cooking lesson, it is a metaphor for Olive’s role in integrating the Sagebrush brothers into the community of Wylder. It is the desire for a new community to replace his Arapaho tribe who moved to the reservation, that motivates Nartan Sagebrush to advertise for a wife in the first place. Will Olive’s efforts be enough to win over Nartan, or will her secrets sabotage their happily ever after?


The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) legend behind the Three Sisters explains how they became domesticated crops (cornell.edu). The youngest sister wears green and cannot yet walk, so she crawls freely through their fields. The middle sister wears yellow and is protective of her other sisters. The eldest sister is tall with golden hair and a green scarf. Three sisters live happily until a stranger visits them. The boy is fascinating and at the end of his visit, the youngest sister crawls after him and disappears. The second sister is panicked and goes after her younger sister to bring her home. This sister doesn’t return by the end of summer. The eldest sister bends with grief. Her scarf turns brown, and her hair falls in brown tangles. When the boy sees her grief, he brings her to his home where she is reunited with her sisters to live happily ever after in his care.

Over the years, the three sisters garden has had many substitutions and fourth sisters added, but the basic principle in the companion planting remains. Since I do not have an abundance of winter squash recipes, my squash “sister” is a mix of summer (spaghetti) squash, pumpkins, and watermelons. The prickly spines and broad leaves are characteristics of the entire squash family, so I get away with it. With the decline of the bee population, many gardeners add a fourth sister to lure them to the other three sisters. The first was the southwestern tribes (such as the Pueblo or Tewa) who add Rocky Mountain Beeplant or Navajo Spinach as a medicinal herb and bee attractor. Other gardeners add amaranth or sunflowers to add bee attraction as well as secondary support in conjunction with the corn.

You can have your own community in your backyard with a Three Sister’s garden. What additions will you plant to make it Wylder? As it grows this spring, I invite you to Dance to a Wylder Beat with Olive Muegge and Nartan Sagebrush – coming soon from The Wild Rose Press.





Comments

  1. Sarita LeoneApril 14, 2021 at 5:04 AM

    Lovely post! I'm looking forward to reading your Wylder story!!

    ReplyDelete

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