The Final Recommendations for Black Oaks integrate the landscape with the vision for a resilient future articulated by its founders. The plan which will be implemented over a period of ten to fifteen years follows an adaptive management strategy giving Black Oaks flexibility to develop portions of the plan to respond to changes in the economy, climate and most importantly, the needs of their immediate community in Pembroke, and Chicago where Dr. Wright’s medical practice is located. This project can serve as a model for other centers that are looking to create community in the midst of change and sustain it with education, medicine, food and connection.
There is also the opportunity to explore a model of ecological restoration where the percentage of medicinal to non-medicinal native plants in the Black Oak Savanna restoration areas would be elevated to a greater proportion than typically found in the wild. The idea behind this restoration strategy is that those maintaining the restored sites would have personal health related motivations to seeing the restoration area thrive. Currently there are few sites and studies that have documented the success of ecosystem restorations. Tying in medicinal plants to the restoration could be a compelling approach to involving people in restoration projects and landscapes. The proposed restoration test plot areas within the plan are next to proposed cultivated and managed areas to facilitate observation and management. Examining and interpreting the data and results would help advance understanding of restoration dynamics in a model with active human participation.
The world healing garden represents a cross section of healing herbs brought by visitors from around the world highlighting the universality of healing traditions and the importance of passing on that knowledge to all who visit, work and live at Black Oaks. The garden is quartered into Western, Ayurvedic, Traditional Chinese and Native American Herbal Medicine traditions. The entire outer circle of the garden contains herbs that aid digestion, particularly the stomach and liver. The middle circle contains those plants that help respiratory function in particular. The innermost circle contains those plants that help mental and spiritual function. Through this organization, the visitor can see where in the human body the plants can help across the diverse healing traditions. As the plants grow, cuttings and root divisions can be replanted elsewhere on the property or given as starts to other similar learning landscapes.
