Irene is an urban farmer, plant-medicine maker, and curator of outdoor spaces that enhance people's ability to commune with nature and experience the earth’s wondrous and regenerative healing powers. Her works weave elements from the natural world together with rich cultural traditions and social practices to create intimate and joyful encounters between people and their environment.

Irene works in community to create places that honor and celebrate the sacred web of life on earth and beyond. She enjoys creating opportunities for folks of all ages and generations to deepen their awareness, understanding and relationship with our plant relatives. Her current interests are collaborative endeavors to build communities of learning that cultivate confidence in our innate plantcestral wisdom and knowledge. 

Drawing inspiration from her childhood experiences with her abuela Manuela, affectionately Nani, Irene learned at a young age to appreciate the healing power of plants. From natural kitchen remedies like raw garlic rubbed into the earth and then massaged onto her skin to sooth insect bites to the 100 year-old botica liniment, Aceite de Volcanico, for relief of childhood bumps and bruises, Nani Menela always had a remedio on hand to fix life's ailments.

Irene’s education and professional experience as an urban planner and director of a nonprofit organization provide essential tools for effective project management and execution. As the Executive Director of Proyecto Jardin for 10 years, she managed five site improvement projects on a communal farm that included public art installations, rebuilding medicinal herb spirals, construction of a rain harvesting system, bio-remediation of lead in soil, and construction of an aerobic composting system.

Irene’s vision for Sacred Earth Farms is rooted in her Raramuri ancestral heritage and her father's experience as a Bracero farmworker toiling in the agricultural fields of California. Her mother has been her muse and motivation in the beautiful struggle for social justice and environmental equity by modeling a fierce and tangible resolve to transmute bumps in the road into glorious opportunities for rebirth and regeneration.

Sacred Earth Farms is the magical alchemy of many ancestral lives and countless lifetimes held with loving care and joyful anticipation in the sacred seed of an idea whose time has come.

Come on and grow with us!