When Paul Mirocha first got the client's sketch for this piece from Bioneers Collaborative Initiative, a group of pragmatic visionary planners, for the cover of their report, "Dreaming New Mexico," he hesitated to take it on for a few days.

"I thought it would be impossible to paint," he explains. "There was so much scientific detail that it seemed to need a boring and textbook-like map or diagram of some kind with symbolic pattern fills, if the viewer was going to be able to identify the plants in each bed. Yet the whole purpose was to make the abstract idea seem real and appealing to the imagination, even to the taste buds!"

There is no mistaking this local garden for big agribusiness. It is designed around the shape of a traditional Zia Pueblo sun symbol, the same one that appears on the New Mexico flag. The garden is still a concept and a symbol in itself of the interdependence of nature and cultures. If it is ever built, it will feature a meticulously thought out display of traditional and modern New Mexico crops arranged according to nutritional content, and cultural importance--like the "Three Sisters," corn, beans, and squash planted in the central spiral.