Our Home in the Gardens
A Young City on Ancient Land
Where we are today, in the city of Vancouver, is a young city. Vancouver is a new name placed on this land.
Where we are today, along the Salish Sea, there is a vast and intricate relationship between the land and our Salish relatives. Millenia of lives and generations of knowledge are intertwined into the land we inhabit and enjoy.
čimqƛʔiš ƛ̓aʕiičḥ, ʔukłaas Shaelynn Trottier. ƛaʔuukʷiʔaqsups.
It is a happy spring, my name is Shaelynn Trottier. I am a ƛaʔuukʷiʔatḥ woman.
Shaelynn Trottier
I am new to speaking and learning my family's ancestral language. My grammar may be off, but the intent here is to wish you a happy spring. I am learning the central dialect of Nuučaanuł. I am of Indigenous and mixed European descent, and grew up outside of culture and community. In recent years I have dedicated myself to reconnecting with community, culture and land. Learning alongside my Salish mentors, and building relationships with my family and community in the Nuučaanuł region.
This spring, as the plants awaken, flowers bloom, skunk cabbage fills the air with their scent, and the animal kingdom celebrates the arrival of fresh food, I would like to share one of my interests with you.
Along the west coast of BC we are in a temperate rainforest. In North America there are generally considered three of these rainforests: our Pacific Northwest Coast forest, inland pockets along the Rocky and Columbia Mountains, and one in the East, along the southern part of the Appalachian Mountains.
These are forests with mild temperatures and climates, abundant annual rainfall, and immense biodiversity. We are not only in a temperate rainforest here in the Pacific Northwest but specifically we are in a coastal temperate rainforest. Being on the coast increases the biodiversity, including marine and intertidal plants and animals, and most importantly, significantly increases the nutrients available to our plants and trees. Along our Pacific coast, and up into our streams and rivers, there is an abundance of salmon who spawn. These fish are the primary nitrogen source for our plants and trees, supporting our vegetation to thrive and flourish.
Where you find an abundance of happy plants and trees, you find an abundance of plants that can be utilized as food, medicine, tools and technology. This Coast Salish region is a resource abundant, thriving space where thousands of people can live sustainably. Today, we know this land as Vancouver, and we have the Greater Vancouver Area. Today we see thousands, even millions of tourists enjoying our beautiful city every year. However, before this land was known as Vancouver, even before the thought of Canada was conceived, this has been a place of activity. A place for thousands of people to come to for trade and harvest, for potlatch and ceremony.
Food Sovereignty in a Forest Garden
This land is able to support thousands of people living here year round, this land is able to support thousands of visitors due to the abundance of resources. Not only is this land naturally abundant, but it is intensely cultivated.
With the background laid out I will share with you our topic today: food forests, or forest gardens. How we can increase the natural biodiversity and access to resources in a way that works with nature, and in a way that reflects nature. Forest gardens are layered gardens that are sustainable, low maintenance, and beautiful spaces that provide not only for our human needs, but the needs of all the beings around us. These layered, cultivated gardens provide food and shelter for all of the animals and insects who share this space with us.
Today it is considered a system of permaculture, but really it is just the way indigenous people have cared for and cultivated the land for millennia. Not only here along the Salish Sea, but globally forest gardens are an indigenous approach to the land, and involve an indigenous worldview of balance and reciprocity.
Forest gardens are different to current day agriculture. Agriculture today involves clearing land into fields, leveling land, and planting thousands of acres of monocrops. This monoculture approach is not sustainable long-term. Monocrops disrupt the land’s natural nutrient cycles, strip the land of nutrients and exhaust natural resources. Forest gardens use layers of plants, anywhere from three to seven levels, all incorporated into one another. These layers can include canopy trees, understories, shrubs, herbs, vines, roots, and groundcovers.
In this region, an example of what our layers could be:
Coniferous trees: western red cedar
Deciduous trees: western broadleaf maple
Berry shrubs: salmonberry shrub
Herbaceous perennials: salal berries
Groundcovers: false lily of the valley
Rhizome: burdock
Berry vines: pacific trailing blackberry
Pacific Northwest Forest Garden - Illustrating possible layers in our local coastal temperate rainforest.
This is not an exhaustive or complete list, but is a good idea of what a layered forest will look like in the Coast Salish region. Creating layered and biodiverse gardens makes for a low maintenance garden. All of these plants and trees work in a mutually supportive space, giving and taking for the benefit of the ecosystem as a whole. Specific plants and trees fix nitrogen into the soil, others attract beneficial insects, some act as “trap crops” that distract unwanted pests from more prized plants.
Relationships Rooted in the Land
It is important to acknowledge, as well as appreciate, the human intervention and work that has gone into cultivating the land we live on today. It is important to understand the longstanding relationships between people and place, as place and land are so integral to our development and identity. Indigenous communities have intentionally managed and cultivated these lands since time immemorial; increasing the resources available, prioritizing resource protection and management, ensuring long-term support, stability and balance of ecosystems.
Forest gardens are social, cultural, and provide a deep connection to the land. Families living in the same villages, on the same land as their ancestors did, provide an intergenerational connection to the lands, waters, plants and animals. Your grandparents, your grandparent’s grandparents would have taken care of the same plants and trees that you tend to. The berry shrubs that feed you will be the shrubs that feed your children and grandchildren. The perspective extends beyond ourselves and our present day. The goal is greater than what is immediately before us, beyond human needs.
To Know the Land is to Love It
Ultimately, the goal of cultivating resource-abundant, sustainable land practices is to cultivate connection and reciprocity. This is not just a practice, but a core value held by Indigenous peoples of the Salish Sea, the peoples throughout North and South America, and extending across Australia, Eurasia, and Africa. Worldwide communities striving for sustainability and abundance for all.
