A Santa Cruz Gardening Collective Cultivates Belonging for Queer and Trans Asian Americans
KQED
It’s a cloudy June morning at a community garden in Santa Cruz, a verdant green space tucked into the U-shaped end of a residential cul-de-sac. Grassy pathways wind past small garden plots, each an expression of the interests or culture of its caretaker. Some beds burst with vegetables and herbs while others sit bare, their damp soil just waiting for new seeds to take root.
At the eastern edge of the garden, a rainbow flag flutters in the wind, signaling the location of the Bitter Cotyledons, a queer and trans Asian American gardening collective. Here, four longtime members talk excitedly about their plans for their plants.
“We basically grow Asian vegetables to understand and explore our cultural identities and ancestries, but through our queer experiences of being in diaspora.”
A thick bush of Japanese buckwheat, with its distinct heart-shaped leaves and tiny white flowers, is earmarked for an experiment in milling soba noodle flour. A type of mugwort native to Korea and Japan is set aside for making mochi or herbal cigarettes. Chrysanthemum bushes that produce white, fluffy flowers in the fall are reserved for a traditional Chinese tea.