What makes UIC’s Atkins Garden special

UIC is home to Chicago's only medicinal plant teaching garden. (Credit: Michelle Wang/UIC) Listen to story summary

Besides its classrooms, laboratories, sports arena and thousands of trees, UIC is home to Chicago's only medicinal plant teaching garden, with somewhere between 150 and 200 species growing year-round.

These are plants that have been used as medicine by Native people and are used today in pharmaceuticals and dietary supplements, including some commonly grown as ornamental flowers.

On Aug. 21, scientists in the UIC Pharmacognosy Institute, which oversees the garden, hosted the 20th annual Atkins Garden walk, an open house where visitors took self-guided tours, learned about the different plants and even completed a scavenger hunt to win a prize. The garden next to the UIC Retzky College of Pharmacy is an island oasis in the busy Illinois Medical District that attracts students, researchers and community members.

The garden is named after the late Dorothy Bradley Atkins, a 1945 graduate of the UIC College of Pharmacy. Her husband, Dr. Robert A. Atkins, who she met in college, gifted it to the college to honor her memory and her interest in medicinal plants. Robert Atkins died in 2022, but today, the legacy lives on and the garden continues to thrive.

"The family is still very supportive. Robert and Dorothy's three children come and visit the garden, and it's fantastic that they're still interested in it," said Bethany Elkington, curator of the garden and research assistant professor in pharmaceutical sciences.

She noted the garden is a nice place for people of various backgrounds to connect. Many students, faculty, healthcare professionals, and passersby stop by for a break there amid their busy schedules in the Illinois Medical District, one of the largest urban medical districts in the United States.

"You can approach medicinal plants from a lot of different places. You can come in from a botany angle, biology angle, medicinal angle or even art," Elkington said.

Hairy alumroot. UIC community members enjoying the Atkins Medicinal Plant Garden. Credit: Michelle Wang/UIC

She highlighted the wide variety of the plants' uses: "It ranges from botanical dietary supplements to pharmaceutical drugs to things that have been used traditionally."

One plant species in the garden is the Madagascar periwinkle, commonly grown in many peoples' yards as an ornamental plant. It also happens to be the source of vincristine and vinblastine, two very powerful and revolutionary chemotherapeutic drugs. Elkington emphasized that many people are unaware of the fascinating stories behind these and other common plants in their yards.

Staff at the Atkins Garden work closely with those at the Odehmenan Health Equity Center, a community space for studying, working and connecting. The center, housed in the UIC Library of the Health Sciences, takes its name from the Potawatomi word that translates to "this heart of ours."

"I hold the Atkins Garden so close to my heart because they were one of our first collaborators and the first people that really believed in us here at the Odeh Center," said Adriana Black, founding director of the center and director of Health Equity Innovation and Collaboration.

During the garden walk event, the Odehmenan Center hosted a related event, a sweetgrass-braiding workshop and a panel discussion on medicinal plants featuring graduate students and researchers at the Retzky College of Pharmacy.

The Odehmenan Center hosted a sweetgrass-braiding workshop. (Credit: Michelle Wang/UIC) The Odehmenan Center hosted a sweetgrass-braiding workshop. (Credit: Michelle Wang/UIC)

Black's goal is to engage the community in meaningful events that are more of an experience than traditional lectures. For instance, the sweetgrass-braiding workshop was held as part of the Atkins Garden Walk to teach others about sweetgrass and its connection between the mind, body and spirit, she said. It was led by Camille "Katahtu'ntha" Billie, a Black Indigenous artist enrolled to the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and garden manager at the Gichigamiin Indigenous Nations Museum.

Black emphasized that the Odehmenan Center strives to create relationships with community partners and businesses.

"When we make a relationship, we maintain it. It's very much like a plant. You have to cultivate it. You have to feed it. You have to check in on it and see how it's doing," she said. "The Atkins Garden laid the foundation for all that we do here at the Odehmenan Center."

She noted the relevance of the Atkins Garden event and how we are living in a time where we should consider what we grow, how it can help us, how it can nourish our bodies and form vitamins and supplements in our everyday lives.

Elkington cherishes the garden's relationship with the Odeh Center:

"Remembering people's relationships with medicinal plants honors the knowledge, traditions, and lived experiences that have shaped health and healing across generations. The Odeh Center embodies this beautifully by providing space where histories are valued and where valuable conversations about culture and health can take place."

Today, active research on plants in the garden continues at the Retzky College of Pharmacy. Elkington encourages others to come and visit the garden, regardless of their background.

"It's not just about history of medicinal plants, but it's actually history in the making as well," she said.

- Sumayya Siddiqui, Strategic Marketing and Communications