Starting the Garden

The Idea 

Designed by Native American architect, Johnpaul Jones, the original plan for the Longhouse ‘House of Welcome’ included a plan for landscaping. However, once the building was constructed in 1995, funding fell short and the landscape was not installed. Ethnobotanist and adjunct faculty member, Marja Eloheimo, had begun teaching ethnobotany––an interdiscipline that explores the complex relationships between people, plants, and environments. At the time, Eloheimo and her students had just helped to design and install an ethnobotanical garden at the Washington State Capital Museum. From this, the idea emerged to create an ethnobotanical garden around the Longhouse. Aside from several big leaf maples (Acer macrophyllum) that stood at a safe distance, the first Longhouse landscape began as mostly mud.  

The Beginning 

Johnpaul Jones’ original landscape plan consisted of many specimens of a few native species, primarily cascara (Frangula/Rhamnus purshiana), tall Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolium), and red-osier dogwood (Cornus sericea). Eloheimo proposed to expand the number of species with a focus on Indigenous cultural significance, and to work with her students to procure, plant, and care for them. Surprisingly, the proposal met with resistance. Perhaps the legacy of resistance to the Longhouse itself  — documented in the 2005 film, House of Welcome, by Upstream Productions — persisted.

It took more than a year to obtain permission to begin. In the spring of 1995, Eloheimo and her students had enthusiasm, energy, and a plan but little funding. They worked with the Thurston County Plant Salvage Project, a branch of the Washington State Cooperative Extension Agency, to salvage plants at risk of being destroyed through development. In the beginning, about 90% of the plants in the garden were obtained through salvaging.  These even included a few sword ferns (Polystichum munitum) that had been salvaged from the Longhouse site before the bulldozers came.

The Garden Itself

Quarterly salvaging and planting became regular activities, providing opportunities for students to develop plant identification skills, observe and study plant ecology, and practice horticultural techniques. Gradually, the remarkable nuances of micro-topography surrounding the Longhouse became evident: in one location, a slope rolling gently to a seasonal creek; in another, a steep, nearly vertical rise; and more. Soon Eloheimo realized that the area immediately surrounding the Longhouse offered the potential to highlight a variety of ecosystems that occur in Washington State, along with the traditional Indigenous relationships associated with the plants they contain.

Over the course of decades of slow intermittent progress, a garden of many gardens began to take form. In 2017, the garden consisted of ten areas in various stages of development.  These included habitat areas reflecting forests, wetlands, South Puget prairies, and high elevations, along with theme areas consisting of a medicinal garden, food forest, pollinator garden, and dye and fiber gardens.

–Marja Eloheimo, Ph.D., Adjunct Faculty