Salome Arriaga, 11, and Allison Santana, 10, take part in preparing Aztec marigolds for a Dia de los Muertos celebration. (Patty Wetli / WTTW News)

For the past six months, staff and students at the University of Illinois Chicago have been tending thousands of marigolds on the grounds of the school’s Plant Research Laboratory, sowing seeds in the spring and nurturing plots of the flowers throughout the growing season.

The brilliant orange and yellow blooms aren’t part of an official scientific study, but they do represent a cultural experiment of sorts.

“Through plants, we’re making a connection to a community,” said Matthew Frazel, UIC greenhouse manager.

Turns out the marigolds in UIC’s garden — specifically the species known as Aztec marigolds (Tagetes erecta) — are destined for use during Dia de los Muertos.

These particular marigolds, native to Mexico and Central America, are integral to Day of the Dead celebrations: The flower’s intense scent and color are believed to guide the dead back to their loved ones. 

UIC’s blooms carry additional meaning for members of Chicago’s Mexican community — a piece of home taking root in their adopted country. 

While they’re widely cultivated in Mexico, and they even grow wild in mountainous areas, Aztec marigolds, also known as cempasúchil, aren’t easy to come by in Chicago.

“Everybody (here) just sells the plastic ones,” said Elise RoBison, agricultural foreman at the UIC greenhouse. “If you go to Mexico, there's fresh marigolds everywhere.”

UIC began growing the marigolds at the request of the Field Museum, which is one of the partners in a collective known as Roots and Routes. For the past several years, Roots and Routes has hosted a Dia de los Muertos event on the lakefront, at the La Ronda Parakata sculpture near the 31st Street Harbor.

Artist Alfonso “Polito” Nieves, along with Hector Duarte, designed La Ronda Parakata — a ring of interlocking butterflies — as a gathering space for Chicago’s Mexican immigrants and their families. It’s one of five such spaces along the Burnham Wildlife Corridor, each with a connection to a different lakefront-adjacent community, be it Bronzeville, Pilsen or Chinatown.

It was Nieves who had the idea for Roots and Routes to grow its own marigolds, and Lorena Lopez, then an employee at the Field Museum, obtained the first batch of Tagetes erecta seeds planted at UIC, buying them online from Mexico.

For UIC, supplying the flowers for a Dia de los Muertos celebration is a way to open the door to neighbors and say, “You’re welcome here, we want you to be here,” Frazel said.

Marigolds woven into the La Ronda Parakata sculpture, built as a gathering space on the lakefront for Chicago's Mexican community. (Courtesy Roots and Routes)

This past Wednesday, Lopez stood in UIC’s sunlight-bathed garden as a group of volunteers prepared to harvest the Aztec marigolds for Roots and Routes’ event set for Saturday.

“You can literally see Sears Tower,” Lopez said of the skyscraper looming to the north. “It’s amazing we can grow these flowers in Chicago.” 

But before people got to work with their pruning shears, dancers, musicians and elders from Tiahui — a member of the Roots and Routes collective — celebrated the marigolds and blessed the earth and flowers.  

“I get emotional when we do the blessing for the earth,” said RoBison. “This, to me, this is what culture is, not an iPhone. This is what’s nice about life.”

On Saturday, people will carry the marigolds in a procession from DuSable Lake Shore Drive’s 35th Street bridge to the Parakata, where they’ll weave the blooms into the butterfly sculpture.

“We make it like a big altar (or ofrenda),” said Rene Diaz, program director at Tiahui.

This unique Chicago take on a centuries-old tradition might not look the same as Dia de los Muertos celebrations in Mexico, but that's sort of the point.

“It is an evolution, through our migration,” said Lopez. 

For Nieves, there’s pride in having created a place in Chicago that honors the essence of Dia de los Muertos. 

“It’s beautiful to see ... abuelitos walking with their grandsons, their granddaughters, and be like, ‘This is what I have been telling you about,' with tears in their eyes,’” Nieves said. “To have something that we have been missing from Mexico for a long time. And it’s so beautiful. It’s like as immigrants, gathering all of our pieces, putting them together.”

Saturday’s Dia de los Muertos event at La Ronda Parakata, noon to 4 p.m., is open to the public. Click here for details and to register (participation is free but organizers need a head count).

Here’s video from last year's celebration.

Contact Patty Wetli: @pattywetli | (773) 509-5623 |  [email protected]