Ruminations: Original Stewards of the Land

"These plants never grow together in the wild. It seemed obvious that people put them there to grow all in one spot -- like a garden."
"On the north-west coast, conifer forests are stubborn. They will re-establish themselves 20 to 30 years after a disturbance."
"Elders and knowledge-holders talk about perennial management all the time. It's no surprise these forest gardens continue to grow at archaeological village sites that haven't yet been too severely disrupted by settler-colonial land-use."
"This shows humans have the ability to not just allow biodiversity to flourish, but to be a part of it."
Chelsey Geralda Armstrong, ethnobiologist, archaeologist, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia

The Sts’ailes forest garden near Vancouver, British Columbia seen from the air. (Nick Waber)

Forest gardening is practised in Indigenous communities world-wide, most particularly in tropical regions of the world. It represents a common practise of cultivating food combining it with agroforestry. Ancient Indigenous forest gardens which have been untended for over a century and a half along the northwest coast of Canada still thrive. Coast Salish and Ts'msyen peoples once designed these forest gardens, planted and cared for plots of fruit and nut trees native to the area, along with shrubs and medicinal plants. A new study by Simon Fraser University published in Ecology and Society represents the first time these open, orchard-like plots have been studied in North America.

Typically in these coastal forest gardens a canopy consisting of crabapple, hazelnut, wild cherry and plum trees shield understory plants and trees like cranberry, elderberry and hawthorn, along with wild ginger and wild rice root. Greater species diversity than the surrounding conifer forests are to be found in these coastal forest gardens. Patches of diversified food vegetation intentionally planted now provide a habitat for birds, bears and pollinators.

Indigenous peoples practised controlled burning, coppicing (the cutting back of trees or shrubs to ground level to encourage new growth), fertilizing, long-distance transplanting, pruning and weeding. Unmanaged for over a century, evidence of these historical practices can be detected at remote archaeological villages. This varied combination of species planting occupying different niches left little room for new species to take root, given the effective use of space: "There's a canopy, a sub-canopy, a bush-shrub layer, a vine layer going up and around, and then a herbaceous layer", wrote the researchers.

Chelsey Geralda Armstrong, Simon Fraser University

The researchers selected four archaeological sites that had been occupied for over 2,000 years; two Ts'msyen village complexes in north-western British Columbia, and two Coast Salish complexes in the south-west. (Two or more nearby villages each with five to 20 houses comprises a village complex.) These forest gardens were tended on these sites by Indigenous peoples until the late 1800s when the villagers were displaced. More biological and functional diversity was seen in forest gardens than was evident in the dominant evergreen woodlands.

Chelsey Geralda Armstrong, Simon Fraser University

"It's striking to see how different forest gardens were from the surrounding forest, even after more than a century", observed study co-author Jesse Miller, ecologist and lecturer at Stanford University. A swath of conifer forest contiguous with a garden forest, logged decades earlier, then regenerated naturally saw a mere fraction of species numbers present by comparison. Planted originally with a wide number of edible and medicinal flora for human use, forest gardens now remaining present as a rich and varied food source for resident animals.