Garden in bloom (Aster), September 2021
The Indigenous Butterfly and Pollinator Garden was initiated by the Dalhousie Art Gallery in conjunction with the exhibition Plant Kingdom, curated by Frances Dorsey. The garden honours the spirit of Mike MacDonald (1941-2006), a Mi’kmaw artist, who planted multiple butterfly gardens across the nation(s).
Designed by Dalhousie Art Gallery guest curator Frances Dorsey, in consultation with Mi’kmaw artist and scholar Michelle Sylliboy, this garden is a living interpretation of MacDonald's original project. Catherine Martin, Director of Dalhousie’s Indigenous Community Engagement, and Michele Graveline, Advisor for Dalhousie’s Indigenous Student Center, are also collaborators in this project as representatives from Dalhousie’s Indigenous Advisory Council.
Garden in bloom (Zinnia), September 2021
Garden in bloom (Echinacea), September 2021
Introduced in June 2021, this site will continue to develop into a pollinator-friendly green space that will be a welcoming place for butterflies, bees, birds, and all other creatures that the garden attracts, including humans.
Affiliated with the current exhibition at Dalhousie Art Gallery titled Plant Kingdom, 6 May – 10 July 2022, guest curated by Frances Dorsey.
Dalhousie Art Gallery is located in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq. We are all Treaty people.
Initial planting
June 2021
At the centre of the garden’s design is the Mi’kmaw glyph jiksituinen which translates into English as “listen to us”. It is surrounded by a mosaic of plants that can adapt to this particular disrupted built landscape. The garden is a community of plants sympathetic to one another’s needs, including both native plants and a few carefully selected exotics.
Garden in bloom, September 2021
Apple tree in bloom, June 2022
In future years, parts of this plot will evolve into a medicine garden, and as the site matures, will be used for student-based, multi-level, experiential learning.
At all stages of its development, this site is a place where we can stop, look, smell, listen, touch, taste (the berries when juicy and ripe), think, and meditate about how we are intertwined with plants and animals, birds and bees, pollen and the stars.
