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Along Canada’s northwest coast, ancient Indigenous forest gardens untended for more than 150 years continue to thrive. Ts’msyen and Coast Salish peoples once planted and cared for plots of native fruit and nut trees, shrubs, and medicinal plants and roots along the north and south Pacific coast, a new Simon Fraser University study finds.
Forest gardening is a common method of food cultivation and agroforestry in Indigenous communities around the world, especially in tropical regions. But the findings published in
Ecology and Society mark the first time these lush, open, orchard-like plots have been studied in North America.