CLACX Ethnobotanical Garden
The Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies (CLACX) Ethnobotanical Garden provides an interdisciplinary teaching resource for university students, K-12 students, and community groups. The Garden features over 40 species of culturally significant plants native to the Americas, most of which are used for medicinal or culinary purposes. Many plants with medicinal uses, such as beautyberries, cacti, sages, and four-o-clocks, are recognized as ornamentals in the southeastern United States.
Other plants in the Garden represent key staple foods or have culinary uses in the Americas, including maize, potatoes, cassava, epazote, and amaranth. This rich 
collection of plants provides a focal point for discussions ranging from relationships between people and plants, diet and health, history and globalization to Indigenous knowledge systems, connections between environment, climate change, and biodiversity, and horticulture.
The Garden has been the focal point of Vanderbilt undergraduate courses, including Commons Seminars (2017 and 2018), LACX 2106W, and is currently integrated into a CORE 2500 course. Students in these courses help develop digital content on individual plants in the Garden and examine the themes described above.
Tours
From August through October, CLACX offers tours of the Garden for Vanderbilt courses, local school groups, student organizations, and the community.
School Field Trips and Community Organizations:
The CLACX Ethnobotanical Garden provides a unique
resource for K-12 students and the general public to learn about medicinal and culinary uses of plants in the Americas, and horticulture more generally. If you are interested in bringing students or community group to the garden for a one-hour sensory-immersive tour, contact Avery Dickins de Girón.
Self-Guided Tours: The garden is open to the public from dawn until
dusk. Visitors can use the Plant Database to enrich their experience. We recommend visiting the garden in August, September, or October when the garden is at its height.
Virtual Tour: Avery Dickins de Girón leads Nashville Public Television on a tour of the CLACX Ethnobotanical Garden, highlighting the medicinal uses of the plants. This 9-minute video aired live in March 2020, and is a great resource for teachers, gardeners, and anyone with an interest in plants!
Other short videos on individual plants are available here.
In Fall 2025, one or more tours were led for the following groups:
- School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt
- Hunters Lane Spanish and Environmental Science Students
- Hazel Green (AL) Spanish Students
- Vanderbilt Association of Hispanic and Latinx Alumni
- Second Sunday Gardeners
- Plant Futures Student Organization
Plant Database
Learn about plants in the CLACX Ethnobotanical Garden, including their native range, common names, cultural significance, and medicinal and/or culinary uses. Content for the plant database is created by Vanderbilt students and is currently being updated.
K-16 Educator Resources
The Garden has regularly been featured in professional development workshops led by Dickins de Girón for educators in Davidson County and beyond (see list below). The Garden serves as a lending garden for local schools that wish to incorporate these plants into their gardens. Our educational resources include video shorts, descriptions of plants, and other materials.
- 2017: Chia, Amaranth, and Chocolate: workshop on significance of these plants in the pre-Colombian and colonial periods; current research on plant genetics that seeks to improve the nutritional efficiency of beans and amaranth.
- 2019: Garden Tour and workshop for educators participating in week-long K-12 Summer Institute, “Central America: People and the Environment.” Participants toured the Garden to learn about the medicinal and culinary uses of the plants and gained a historical context for their examination of environmental issues.
- 2024: Garden Tour for educators participating in week-long K-12 Summer Institute, “Towards a More Equitable and Inclusive Digital World in Latin America.”
- 2025: Plants as Teaching Tools: Edible and Medicinal Plants of the Americas for Overton High School Educators
History and Funding
CLACX Executive Director Dr. Avery Dickins de Girón proposed the establishment of an ethnobotanical garden on Vanderbilt’s campus in 2016 in consultation with University Landscape Architect Robert Waits and Horticulturist Laura Barker. The proposal was approved and the Garden was founded on the western edge of Vanderbilt’s campus with support from Grounds Manager Danny McKissack. Vanderbilt faculty, staff and community members gathered on May 10, 2017 to transplant several species of plants generously donated by the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Institute at the University of Georgia from their ethnobotanical garden that was established by anthropologists Brent and Elois Ann Berlin in the late 1990s. Beyond these initial plant donations, the Garden has been supported through funding from the U.S. Department of Education National Resource Center grant program and the university. 
A grant from the Stanley Smith Horticultural Trust in 2020 funded nameplates, signage, pathways, and a permanent wooden fence around the Garden. Other plants were donated by local community partners: Matthew Blair (Tennessee State University) and Loraine Segovia Paz (Executive Director of the Nashville Areas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce) have donated amaranth, ground nuts and other plants and contribute to educational activities for the Garden. Jonathan Ertelt, the former manager of Vanderbilt’s greenhouses, provided botanical and gardening advice during establishment of the garden.
Dickins de Girón continues to work in close consultation with the University Landscape Architect, James Moore, and Horticulturalist Laura Barker to ensure that the Garden thrives.
In 2026, Dickins de Girón was recognized by the Garden Club of American with the Elizabeth Abernathy Hull Award for “visionary leadership in creating a living ethnobotanical classroom that instills a profound love for the natural world and cultural heritage in the next generation of Earth’s groundskeepers.”
Location
The Latin American Garden is located between Natchez Field and 31st Avenue North, adjacent to Lot 73A, and visible from Blakemore Avenue. Access a pdf map here or use Google Maps.
Follow the Latin American Garden on Instagram for real-time updates and interesting facts about the plants.
Media Features
- Growing Your Own Food in Nashville with This Is Nashville (July 2022)
- Latin American Ethnobotanical Garden Tour with Nashville Public Television’s Volunteer Gardener (May 2021)
- Medicinal Plants Tour at the Ethnobotanical Garden with Nashville Public Television’s Volunteer Gardener (May 2020)
- Discovering the Latin American Garden: Inside ‘Dores Student Blog (September 18, 2017)
- Celebrate the Opening of Vanderbilt’s Latin American Garden September 7: Vanderbilt News (September 3, 2017)
For all other inquiries regarding the garden, contact CLACX Executive Director Avery Dickins de Girón.
