Native plants connect Welch Building landscaping to Indigenous traditions

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — When it opened earlier this year, Penn State’s Susan Welch Liberal Arts Building came with all the ultra-modern, environmentally friendly amenities one would expect from the College of the Liberal Arts’ first new facility in more than a half-century.

But the building itself wasn’t the only thing that took careful thought and planning — just as much went into its surrounding grounds.

Representatives from the University’s Office of the Physical Plant (OPP) collaborated with Liberal Arts staff and faculty to ensure the building’s exterior landscaping include native plants and trees that pay homage to the Indigenous Erie, Haudenosaunee (Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora), Lenape, Monongahela, Shawnee, Susquehannock and Wahzhazhe nations, whose ancestral homelands now comprise the University’s campuses. The process relied on research from the field of ethnobotany, which focuses on the traditional practices related to plant usage within a particular culture.

Tom Flynn, manager of ground services for OPP, served as the project’s landscape architect, and worked closely with a committee from the Department of Anthropology including James Doyle, director of the Matson Museum of Anthropology and associate research professor of anthropology; Chris Hort, Liberal Arts facilities manager; Derek Kalp, OPP landscape architect; project architect Bohlin Cywinski Jackson; and construction manager Turner Construction.

The landscaping consists of six distinct areas — Upland Hardwood Forest, Sweetgrass Prairie, Council Ring, Great Tree of Peace, Sunny Display Gardens and Shady Display Gardens. Connected by pedestrian-friendly pathways, the spaces were designed to seamlessly blend in with the larger campus landscape, and to foster interaction, support accessibility and create a welcoming environment for learning.

It also aligns well with the Welch Building’s sustainable components, which include LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification, bird-friendly glass, and changing rooms and showers meant to encourage people to bike or walk to work.

“From a sustainability perspective, it made sense to have plants that could thrive more naturally in their home environments. You want it to have high aesthetic appeal, but be functional as well,” Hort said. “And it was really important to us to give a nod to the Indigenous people of this area and recognize what was here on this campus before Penn State.”

Doyle said the thoughtful approach brought to the landscape design dovetails nicely with the collection of the Matson, which moved from Carpenter Building to the Welch Building and will officially open in its new space May 2, when the building’s official ribbon cutting will take place.

“It was a meaningful way to bring what we’re doing in the museum and the anthropology department outside,” Doyle said. “A lot of things on view in our first installation here — pottery, bark cloth, feathers, fibers — are things that come from the landscape, so it’s great that our visitors can see how people from around the world interacted with their landscape and used it to clothe themselves or make regalia or useful things like pottery or baskets. To have something that was thinking about sustainability and the long term and the kind of meaningful plants that have been in use for generations, long before European settlers arrived, is something we can use in our teaching, as well.”

A self-described “plant guy,” Flynn found the challenge exhilarating.

“The project was very rewarding and a lot of fun to pull together,” Flynn said. “As far as the design goes, we had multiple meetings with James and the Indigenous Faculty Staff Alliance in terms of incorporating ethnobotany into the landscaping. It actually wasn’t much of a stretch because of a lot the plants we use have cultural significance. It gave me the opportunity to dig deeper into the native plants we already use and think about and study as best I could the traditional uses of them by the Indigenous cultures, particularly for medicinal, religious or utilitarian purposes.”

Flynn went as far back as he could in his research, finding that many of the tribes were “using the same plants in the same ways.”

In the end, he had put together “a pretty hefty list” of botanicals, from flowers including wild geraniums and Virginia irises to shrubs like mountain laurels and common juniper.

“This is something we do for every project — we develop a plant list, and things I note include mature height of a plant, mature spread of a plant, what kind of soil does it like, what kind of sun exposure does it want, when does it flower, does it fruit, what’s it’s fall color like?” Flynn said. “Then I added columns for ethnobotanical uses, why it was used and any additional uses I could find. It covered plants that were used to brew tea, treat coughs and sore throats, plants for fever reducers or were used for religious ceremonies.

“They also had utilitarian uses, like arrowwood viburnum, which is a pretty common plant we use — that was used to make arrows,” Flynn continued. “There’s a lot of components to this that we intuitively know but don’t put two and two together on. You know, sugar maple to this day is used to make maple syrup, and ethnobotanically it was used as a sweetener by these cultures.”

Where to put the plants proved to be another challenge, given the limited greenspace and the fact that the building’s north side, nearest to Ford Building, “basically gets no sunlight,” Flynn said.

“Trying to balance the needs of the plant made for an interesting exercise in plant selection,” he said. “So, we have one display garden that highlights more the sunny plants these cultures used, and another with more shade-tolerant plants.”

Some parts of the landscaping were already there, such as the row of towering mature oak trees that make up most of the Upland Hardwood Forest on the north side of the building. It was imperative they be preserved — plus, they’re historically significant to Native American culture, Flynn said.

Other components were more outside the box, like the Sweetgrass Prairie on the building’s south side. The grass served a symbolic and functional use to Indigenous people, who burned it during ceremonies, dried and brewed it as tea, and converted it into goods.

“It’s not a plant I introduce to campus lightly, because it can be a very aggressive plant that could take over a landscape,” Flynn said. “It spreads by its roots system, so I didn’t have to worry about seeds floating in the air. I just had to block those roots from expanding beyond the footprint, which is why it was confined to that little area.”

“It’s attractive, and an important species for Indigenous people,” Hort added. “And it’s low maintenance; you don’t have to mow it all the time.”

The Council Ring encompasses a circular formation of large boulders excavated at various campus sites and meticulously moved and positioned by Flynn’s team at OPP. It’s designed to serve as a community gathering and collaboration space for students, faculty and staff.

“Council rings were generally very important features for almost all Native American cultures I came across, for the same reasons I was going to be adding spaces for collaborating and outdoor gathering,” Flynn said. “And by making it a circle, no one is necessarily at the head of the table. It fosters improved communication among people.”

Then there’s the Great Tree of Peace — a white pine tree that symbolizes the Haudenosaunee symbol of law and peace and serves as a reminder of protection, unity and tradition.  

“According to their history, the meeting of the original five nations that comprised the Haudenosaunee confederacy occurred underneath a white pine tree,” said Flynn, noting the trees can grow to 100 feet tall. “With white pines, the needles come off the branch in a whirl, and there’s a cluster of five needles in one whirl. To the Haudenosaunee, that configuration represented the five nations.”

Before long, people will begin to truly see the fruits of the project’s labors. As late spring gives way to summer and soil temperatures increasingly heat up, the plants will “really begin to pop,” Flynn said.

“The project was a real joy to do,” Flynn said. “It was also very collaborative, and I really can’t say enough great things about our grounds team. Historically, there’s a long, long history of well-maintained grounds here at Penn State. This is just another great example of that.”