Our Seeds Indigenous Listening Garden: In Its Inaugural Season
Our Seeds Indigenous Listening Garden is an Indigenous-led garden and multimedia space in West Philadelphia. In its inaugural year of planting and development, the garden celebrates Indigenous ecological knowledge, community-driven storytelling, and public art while creating opportunities for people to connect with the land and one another.
Our Seeds Indigenous Listening Garden is an Indigenous-led garden and multimedia space in West Philadelphia. In its inaugural year of planting and development, the garden celebrates Indigenous ecological knowledge, community-driven storytelling, and public art while creating opportunities for people to connect with the land and one another.
Seeds' Indigenous Listening Garden in the Mantua neighborhood of West Philadelphia.
We Are the Seeds Indigenous Listening Garden builds on years of Seeds' work to advance representation, support Native artists and Philadelphia’s communities, and increase opportunities for cultural exchange and record. Seeds Listening Garden responds to the urgent need for places that create acknowledgment, connection, dignity, and collective care in Philadelphia.
With 40,000 vacant lots in Philadelphia, there is massive need and opportunity to revitalize our relationship to land and nurture a place where plants, wildlife, and people can thrive. The foundation of our garden is native, culturally significant plants rematriated to the soil, such as berries, grasses, wildflowers, herbs, squashes, and beans. Particular focus will be given to plants that support our more-than-human family: milkweed and lupine for butterflies; joe-pye weed and coneflower for beneficial insects; switchgrass and clover for the soil biome. This is the setting for soundscapes and sculptural installations by Indigenous artists, storytelling and archiving with the Philadelphia community, and organizing for environmental and climate justice.
Prior to establishing the garden, Seeds has worked at the intersection of art, agriculture, and media through The Ashawaug Project (lead funding by NDN Collective), From Here, With a View podcast (lead funding by People's Media Fund, formerly Independent Public Media Foundation), Seeds Philly Powwow + Art Market (lead funding by The William Penn Foundation), and the Seeds Art Market.
Events
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APRIL 18 2026
Seeds donated by Leilehua Lanzilotti in partnership with the public, land-care engagements of the Moananuiākea project.
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MAY 30 2026
Read more at Plant Baby Plant and Philadelphia Chamber Music Society!
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JUNE 20 2026
Purchase tickets from The Academy of Natural Sciences.
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What's growing so far
Gifts from the land (plants that existed before we started stewardship):
American bittersweet, American black nightshade, cleavers, common blue violet, common purslane, common ragweed, daisy fleabane, dandelion, epazote, eyebane, hedge bindweed, horseweed, Illinois bundleflower, lamb's quarters, Pennsylvania pellitory, Philadelphia fleabane, pokeweed, redroot pigweed, seaside goldenrod, slender yellow woodsorrel, spotted spurge, Virginia creeper, Virginia pepperweed, white snakeroot
Reminder: there's no such thing as 'weeds'!
Gifts to the land (plants growing from seeds we've planted):
blue Shackamaxon bean, butterfly milkweed, common evening primrose, common sassafras, common sunflower, hairy aster, Hannah Freeman bean, maximilian sunflower, Maycock squash, maypop passionfruit, Moyamensing tomato, Nanticoke squash, oxeye sunflower, Sehsapsing corn, Seneca landrace sunflower, swamp milkweed, sweetgrass
Select invited guests (non-native plants that that are particularly meaningful to/enhance our work):
Bamyeh Falastinia okra, birdhouse gourd, common lilac
American bittersweet, American black nightshade, cleavers, common blue violet, common purslane, common ragweed, daisy fleabane, dandelion, epazote, eyebane, hedge bindweed, horseweed, Illinois bundleflower, lamb's quarters, Pennsylvania pellitory, Philadelphia fleabane, pokeweed, redroot pigweed, seaside goldenrod, slender yellow woodsorrel, spotted spurge, Virginia creeper, Virginia pepperweed, white snakeroot
Reminder: there's no such thing as 'weeds'!
Gifts to the land (plants growing from seeds we've planted):
blue Shackamaxon bean, butterfly milkweed, common evening primrose, common sassafras, common sunflower, hairy aster, Hannah Freeman bean, maximilian sunflower, Maycock squash, maypop passionfruit, Moyamensing tomato, Nanticoke squash, oxeye sunflower, Sehsapsing corn, Seneca landrace sunflower, swamp milkweed, sweetgrass
Select invited guests (non-native plants that that are particularly meaningful to/enhance our work):
Bamyeh Falastinia okra, birdhouse gourd, common lilac
