East Vancouver healing garden to remediate natural, cultural ‘toxins’ – Vancouver Sun

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A contaminated brownfield site where a gas station was once located is being transformed into a rejuvenated greenfield garden at Commercial and East Hastings.

By later this summer, the corner lot will be covered with flowering, native pollinator plants that sway in the breeze. It will have many other species including huckleberries, salmon berries and elder berries, as well as tobacco, and a nurse log with mushrooms.

Although it may resemble a community garden, it’s something different: An outdoor, Indigenous garden meant to start healing the land by building new relationships with non-human creatures such as butterflies, bees, hummingbirds and insects. Eventually, the site will become part of a new centre for the Urban Native Youth Association.

A Constellation of Remediation is a public art work by T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss and Anne Riley.

Wyss said the main focus is to use plants as remediators to help heal the site and soil. Plants are known to remove contaminants from the soil such as heavy metals.

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