People in this land cultivated plants long before European farmers arrived, surviving with them, telling stories about them, and celebrating these humble resources around them. The garden layout reflects a design widely used by Arkansas Indians to symbolically portray linked communities of plants and people on the earth's surface. When pottery with this design is viewed from above, the interlocking scrolls create a square, and the jar's mouth creates a central circle symbolizing a portal connecting communities to an invisible spirit world through which life-giving forces were made accessible. The garden is based on the archeological study of plant remains documented at Woodland period archeological sites in Arkansas, including Toltec Mounds, and highlights some of the plants vital to past peoples, how they may have been used, and how modern researchers understand the long relationships between people and plants.