Louise Erdrich: Gardens of Earth and Spirit in Native American Storytelling

June 7, 1954

Dearest garden reader,

On this day, the world welcomed Louise Erdrich, a Minnesota-born Native American author whose writing weaves gardens not only of the earth but also of the heart and spirit into her stories.

Through her many books, including The Beet Queen, Makoons, and The Blue Jay’s Dance, Louise offers us portals into gardens rich with life, memory, and meaning.

In The Beet Queen, she reveals a tender lesson about plants and their quiet resilience:

“I love plants.

For the longest time I thought that they died without pain.

But of course after I had argued with Mary she showed me clippings on how plants went into shock when pulled up by their roots, and even uttered something indescribable, like panic, a drawn-out vowel only registered on special instruments.

Still, I love their habit of constant return.

I don't like cut flowers. Only the ones that grow in the ground.”

Here we hear a deep empathy for plants—as beings who live, suffer, and return, much like ourselves. The love for rooted growth over fleeting cut blossoms speaks to a grounding in life’s cycles and enduring connections.

In Makoons, the garden becomes a sacred resting place, a living memorial:

“The family took all the seeds from the garden and then they buried Nokomis there, deeply, wrapped in her blanket with gifts and tobacco for the spirit world.

They buried her simply.

There was no stone, no grave house, nothing to mark where she lay except the exuberant and drying growth of her garden.”

Nokomis’s words echo softly:

“I do not need a marker of my passage, for my creator knows where I am.

I do not want anyone to cry.

I lived a good life, my hair turned to snow, I saw my great-grandchildren, I grew my garden.

That is all.”

It is a moving reminder that gardens can hold love and legacy better than stones or monuments ever could.

Louise’s The Blue Jay’s Dance honors the garden’s imperfect and ever-changing nature:

“Full of the usual blights, mistakes, ruinous beetles and parasites, glorious for one week, bedraggled the next, my actual garden is always a mixed bag.

As usual, it will fall far short of the imagined perfection. It is a chore.

Hard work.

I'll by turns aggressively weed and ignore it.

The ground I tend sustains me in early summer, but the garden of the spirit is the place I go when the wind howls. This lush and fragrant expectation has a longer growing season than the plot of earth I'll hoe for the rest of the year.

Raised in the mind's eye, nurtured by the faithful composting of orange rinds and tea leaves and ideas, it is finally the wintergarden that produces the true flowering, the saving vision.”

What gardens of the spirit, dear reader, have you cultivated in the quiet corners of your heart?

In moments of storm, where do your thoughts find fertile ground and fragrant blooms?

May Louise Erdrich’s words remind us that gardens are never perfect—and that is their grace. Through imperfection and toil, they sustain body and soul alike, blossoming in earth and imagination.

Explore her profound works here: (books by this person).