Homegrown Diversity
By Krishna Ramanujan MA'01

Isabel Echeverria and Ranjeet Tate

"All my life, I always wanted my own garden," Isabel Echeverria says.

Last summer was her first full season of realizing that dream. In the early mornings as she biked to work, she often stopped to water the plants and sometimes ate a tomato or cut flowers for the office.

Both Echeverria and spouse Ranjeet Tate had secondhand experiences with gardens before coming to Eagle Heights. Echeverria grew up in Madrid, where her grandfather had a garden with grapes, roses, lilacs, and tulips. Tate was raised in India, the son of a pilot in the Indian Air Force. The family moved frequently, living in military bungalows. Wherever they were, he recalls, his mother kept a vegetable garden.

When the couple moved to Madison to begin working as research associates in the physics department, it seemed natural to both that they take on their own plot.

Their first season had its share of surprises. When a package of squash seeds suggested spacing seeds a few feet apart, they thought there was no way that such little seeds would take up so much room, and so they planted them close together. Not long after, their garden was overrun by large squash.

"We had an attitude of whatever comes out, we'll just make do with it," Tate says.

"I consider the opportunity to garden here a luxury, an absolute luxury," Echeverria says. "I would like to keep this as part of our lives, to continue gardening."

Krishna Ramanujan, who received his master's degree in May from the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, enjoys writing about science, nature, and the environment. Connie Haag '01, who gardened at Eagle Heights during her UW-Madison career, took the photos for this article with the help of a Wisconsin Idea Fellowship, which supports student research projects.

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