First Nations Garden

In the beginning, there were only plants and animals on the Earth. The Great Spirit, satisfied but bored, also wanted humans to live there, and so he sculpted them from mkazawi maahlakws, a large, straight ash tree. It was thus that the People of the East were born.

This legend from the Abenaki First Nation in Canada, retold here with permission from the Odanak Band Council in Québec, explains the deep cultural ties to trees shared by many Indigenous nations living across eastern North America. As one of the few woody species that thrives in waterlogged bogs, the ash is particularly important for its bark, which generations have prized for basket-making. By alternately heating the trunk of a fallen black ash beside a fire and beating it with a stick, you can detach the tree’s rings from its trunk one by one, rolling them into long coils before slicing them into “ash splints” ready to be woven into useful and artistic baskets.

Stefano Viola explains this process to me when I talk to him about the First Nations Garden in Montréal. Viola is head gardener for the garden, a 5-acre portion of the 185-acre horticultural tapestry Jardin Botanique, the botanical garden often referred to as the “jewel of the city.” His work exposes him to more than 22,000 plant species and cultivars that make a home on the site—at least