FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact:
David Anderson, President, Sacred Lands Preservation and Education
Email: sa****************@***il.com<\/p>\n
Free Community Event Invites St. Petersburg to Learn \u2014 and Take Home \u2014 the Plants That
Sustained Florida\u2019s First People<\/p>\n
Sacred Lands Preservation and Education hosts \u201cNative Plants and Native People\u201d on August 1, with
support from a Florida Humanities and The Mosaic Company grant<\/p>\n
ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (July 2026) \u2014 On a 1,000-year-old archaeological site once home to the
Tocobaga people, Sacred Lands Preservation and Education will open its newly planted Indigenous
Peoples\u2019 Garden to the public on Saturday, August 1, for Native Plants and Native People \u2014 a free,
hands-on morning exploring how Florida\u2019s First People used native plants for food, shelter, and
medicine, and how those same plants can serve home gardeners today. The event closes with a free
native plant giveaway, so visitors leave with more than a lesson \u2014 they leave with something
growing.<\/p>\n
Florida Humanities, the statewide, nonprofit affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities
(NEH), has awarded Sacred Lands Preservation and Education an Environmental Humanities Project
Grant to help fund the program.<\/p>\n
Florida\u2019s First People used plants for food, shelter, and medicine. The native plants they used can be
just as helpful for us today \u2014 Native Plants and Native People was built to show how, pairing
archaeology with practical, take-it-home gardening skills.<\/p>\n
Native Plants and Native People | Hosted by Sacred Lands Preservation
WHEN: Saturday, August 1, 2026, 9:00 AM \u2013 1:00 PM
WHERE: 1700 Park Street North, St. Petersburg, FL 33710
Register here: https:\/\/www.eventbrite.com\/e\/native-plants-and-native-people-tickets-1991917913099<\/p>\n
Program Schedule
9AM \u2014 Welcome, and tour of the newly planted Indigenous Peoples\u2019 Garden. Sacred Lands
Preservation and Education stewards a 1,000-year-old archaeological site that was once home to the
Tocobaga people.
10AM \u2013 11PM \u2014 Guest speakers and presentations on: how archaeologists know what plants were
used by Indigenous people; urban container gardening to grow our own food, presented by Elise
Pickett of Urban Harvest; and soil enrichment past and present, presented by Albert Risemberg of
Little Tree Homestead.
12PM \u2013 1PM \u2014 Free plant giveaway. Apply the principles taught by our guest presenters and grow
your own native plant at home!<\/p>\n
\u201cThis site has been teaching people how to live with this land for a thousand years \u2014 we\u2019re just
continuing that conversation. We want people to leave not just having learned something, but
having planted something that will grow.<\/p>\n
There were people who lived here in St. Petersburg thousands of years before us, and not too much
remains that you can actually see and touch from their culture. But there are a few historical sites,
like this one, that can give you a window into the past. This event is a one-of-a-kind experience to
do just that.\u201d \u2014 David Anderson, President, Sacred Lands Preservation<\/p>\n
Florida Humanities and The Mosaic Company\u2019s Environmental Humanities Program Grants award up
to $10,000 to support humanities-based learning experiences that explore how humans interact with
the environment and how the environment influences our communities. In programming funded
through this grant, Floridians are encouraged to reflect on the changing world around us but also to
celebrate Florida\u2019s diverse physical landscapes.<\/p>\n
This event is free and open to the public. Advance registration is required for the free plant
giveaway; plants are in limited supply and registration does not guarantee availability. Register here.
Funding for this program was provided through a grant from the Florida Humanities with funds from
The Mosaic Company. Any views, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
program do not necessarily represent those of Florida Humanities or The Mosaic Company.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEContact:David Anderson, President, Sacred Lands Preservation and EducationEmail: sa****************@***il.com Free Community Event Invites St. Petersburg to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23567,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-347022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23567"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}