Ruth Alliband. Photo: Chris Emeott
Stillwater resident and volunteer Ruth Alliband cooks with wild ingredients.
Master naturalist Ruth Alliband doesn’t let life in the suburbs stop her from making sustainable strides. The Stillwater resident of more than 40 years has passionately pursued ecological health on the West Hill and beyond, from declaring war against invasive garlic mustard to coordinating Sustainable Stillwater MN’s (SSMN) rain garden maintenance initiative.
“Her creativity and commitment are unmatched—from organizing flash mob rain garden cleanups to quietly supporting neighbors who need a hand,” says Andi Arnold, executive director of SSMN. “She brings fresh ideas and steady leadership that make a lasting impact on our community and environment.”
Ruth was born into a farming family in Northwest Iowa in the ’40s. Her father “did a little bit of everything” on their family farm. Her grandmother, Augusta Plagman, had some burr oak woods on her property, as did her uncles, Paul and Ted Plagman. The family would often have picnics on the bank of a little creek, “… and then my dad and I would go walking in the woods,” Ruth says. It was on these strolls that Ruth’s interest in flora and fauna bloomed.
“Growing up on a farm was an important pillar. Exploring the out-of-doors, learning the names and calls of the local birds, finding out that some of the plants growing in our windbreak grove were edible,” Ruth says. When a relative mentioned that elderberry plants grew wild in the understory of the family’s windbreak, she began harvesting the berry clusters. “My mother and aunts would make elderberry jelly and, once, an elderberry pie,” she says.
“That’s a gift, having grown up in the country,” Ruth says.
During her undergraduate studies at the University of Iowa, she pursued sociology and met her match in Terry Alliband, an English student and Iowa native. It was the mid-’60s, and the Vietnam War was intensifying. “It seemed to us as if the Peace Corps might be an alternative to the draft,” Ruth says. “Two days after we got married, we filled out applications for the Peace Corps.”
In 1966, the pair joined 1,000 Peace Corps volunteers responding to a severe drought in the states of Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh in India. For two years, the couple worked on self-directed community development projects in the district of Jhansi, in a village near the town of Chirgaon. Ruth’s work involved nutrition augmentation and public health. Along with connecting people with chronic diseases to area resources, she supported the development of kitchen gardens and sold fruit trees in the community. “[The trip] changed my life,” Ruth says. “A lot of what I’ve done probably piles on top of having been a Peace Corps volunteer.”
Ruth and Terry returned to India in the years that followed, working on and studying rural development. In 1981, Ruth earned a master’s degree in plant genetics from Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and the Allibands and their daughter, Savanna, settled in Stillwater in 1984. Ruth was joined there by her second husband, Robert Bergfalk, in 1991.
Since retiring from a career in administration at the University of Minnesota, Ruth has been on numerous volunteer trips with International Habitat for Humanity and The Fuller Center for Housing. She’s been to Costa Rica, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Madagascar and Nepal—and Ghana, twice. “I don’t have a bucket list. It’s more like, ‘Surprise me!’” Ruth says.
Ruth has spent decades tending to the trails and gardens near her Stillwater home. Her interest and passion led friend Louise Watson, the former executive director of SSMN, to ask her to take care of Stillwater’s community rain gardens. Ruth took up the task and started by inventorying the gardens and finding volunteers to support the initiative. As the number of gardens on the inventory has grown, maintaining the gardens and educating homeowners has become almost a full-time job for Ruth.
“Ruth embodies the very heart of our mission,” Arnold says. “Her dedication to caring for Stillwater’s rain gardens not only protects our waters but also inspires our community to see the beauty and purpose in stewardship. Her leadership shows us how one person’s commitment can ripple outward, creating cleaner rivers, stronger ecosystems and a healthier future for us all.”
