Maplewood Flats demonstration garden

 I was pleased to be involved in the late stages of developing a grant proposal for a heritage / commemorative garden and learning space at Maplewood Flats, alongside landscape designer Taylor Boisjoli, Wild Bird Trust executive director Lianne Payne, president Irwin Oostindie, and WBT staff. The goal for the site was to affirm Tsleil-Waututh ownership and right to the lands from the deep past through to present day while marking and interpreting the site’s industrial past. Program for the site is a medicine and craft garden, a gathering space with plant processing table, and a bird blind mimicking the squatters’ shacks that once stood along the shoreline. This program animates the living history of this place, finding ways to reimagine conservation on occupied Indigenous land. Materials choices reflect the stories in the land: crushed oyster shell references the richness of theclam beds and nearby midden piles at Whey-ah-Wichen; blocks of stone recall the adjacent aggregate quarry and its barge channel that cleaves the site; cedar for the forests and timber industry.