If You Want to Visit a Sea Garden
If You Want to Visit a Sea Garden
Listen closely for the symphony of clams, welcoming us to their beach. Here, there and everywhere they spurt and sputter, exhaling right on cue.
Step carefully so you don’t slip on the rocks. Many of them are covered with barnacles — tiny creatures that live inside sharp shells.
Stroll to the edge of the water to look at the reef up close. For thousands of years the First Peoples have constructed these architectural wonders. Some reefs have been built all at once. Others have developed over time, as people clear boulders while digging for clams. But both do their job, creating a healthy habitat for sea life.
Scattered along the west coast from Puget Sound, past British Columbia to Alaska, rock reefs constructed by First Nations as long as 3500 years ago provide sheltered ‘gardens’ for edible kinds of marine life to thrive. The clams that grow inside the enclosed area above the lowest tide line are harvested in a sustainable way to encourage a continual food supply. The sites became traditional community gathering places for coastal First Nations. This nonfiction picture book is an invitation to explore and understand the sea garden concept.
With engaging language, the brief but informative story by author Kay Weisman shares the experience of an adult and child visiting a sea garden by boat. They learn about the sea creatures that inhabit the sloping beach at low tide, participate in clam digging, and ensure the continuation of the garden by adding a rock to the reef and leaving a clear patch of beach for more clams to grow.
Accompanying the text are stunning, digitally-created illustrations by acclaimed Canadian artist Roy Henry Vickers who draws on his First Nations ancestry and passion for nature. Bold colors layered with black and grey silhouette images produce a diorama effect to show the timeless scenes. Readers can readily sense the enduring nature of the sea garden, already tended for thousands of years, still protected behind the wall as the tide ebbs and flows.
More details about sea gardens are shared in a few paragraphs of back matter on the history and creation by Indigenous people of these coastal ‘farm’ sites and their value to the culture. Some are being refurbished to keep the knowledge alive. This beautiful book will enhance awareness of the tradition through its impressive visual presentation.
Gillian Richardson is a freelance writer living in British Columbia.