Landscaping with Native Plants

“The story of our relationship to the earth is written more truthfully on the land than on the page. It lasts there. The land remembers what we said and did.” 

- Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass 

Our new store, Šilšul (the Coast Salish spelling of Shilshole), located across from the Ballard Locks, is in a building that once housed a Native curio shop. We consulted with Headwater People, a Native-led organization, as we worked with our architect, Floisand Studio, on design ideas. We incorporated their suggestions in our remodel. One of those was to landscape with native plants. We chose plants indigenous to the region that were important to the Coast Salish people, the original inhabitants of this area. 

In pre-contact times, the Salish Sea region held a bounty of food riches. Abundance came from the sea, lakes, rivers, mountains, prairie, and forest. Plants like salmonberry, salal, and ferns were everywhere and provided not only food to the Coast Salish people, but also medicine. They used moss, ubiquitous throughout the region, to wipe the slimy coating from salmon before drying the fish. Flexible vine maple served as material to build frames for fishing nets and occasionally for bows. Wayne Suttles, an anthropologist, compiled evidence that Coast Salish people managed and harvested edible roots and bulbs like camas and chocolate lilies. 

The seasonality of traditional plants influenced the Coast Salish calendar, as harvests guided many annual rituals. Coast Salish stories tell the origin stories of essential plants, holding them in reverence and emphasizing how the plants are treated with respect and care. Tribal elders shared harvest ethics, ensuring that gatherers didn’t take more than the plant could handle so that it would continue to thrive. In this way, plants and people lived in balance. 

t̕əqt̕qac 

Acer circinatum 

Vine Maple 

The Coast Salish people make frames for fishing nets with vine maple; the wood is also occasionally used for bows. 

t̕aqa 

Gaultheria shallon 

Salal 

The Coast Salish people eat salal berries and flavor food with them; the plant’s leaves are used for medicine.  

stəgwad 

Rubus spectabilis 

Salmonberry 

Salmonberries are a favored food of the Coast Salish people, and the leaves are used in medicinal teas. 

abid 

Camassia 

Camas 

One of the most important traditional foods to the Coast Salish people, camas bulbs are eaten boiled or baked, or dried for use as a winter food. 

SwordFern 

Polystichummunitum 

The Coast Salish people use the fronds to line food storage boxes, berry picking baskets and drying racks; the leaves are chewed to soothe sore throats. 

Lady Fern 

Athyrium filix-feminia ‘lady in red’ 

These classic ferns are known for their fiddleheads, or curled new growth, a spring delicacy. 

Various Mosses 

Among other uses, the Coast Salish people use moss to remove the oily coating from salmon before drying the fish.