Living Archives at The First Nations Garden, Montreal

Because they include living materials and are influenced by the fluctuating conditions ofnature, gardens activate another kind oftime. Working with living materials entails a certain relinquishing ofcontrol, and despite the meticulous care bestowed on the gardens, there remains an inevitable uncertainty about outcome (Johnstone 2,007, 9). A garden should present a correspondingpuzzle to be fathomed, some things veryr clear and others veiled (Jencks 2,003, 2,5). T he First Nations Garden in the Montreal Botanical Garden is a municipally-funded horti-cultural site situated within the tradition of botanical gardens as public areas for leisure and eco-tourism. It is a pastoral garden consisting of indigenous plant species from Quebec, set on an area consecrated by the botanical garden's founder in 1934, Frere Marie-Victorin, to the botany of Quebec. The garden was inaugurated in 2,001 as part of Montreal city-wide commemorations of the 300th anniversary of the 1701 Treaty, La Grande Paix (The Great Peace), between French colonizers and thirty-nine aboriginal nations (Havard 2,001). This inception immediately situates the garden within colonial history and colonial relations-interpreted as an economy of negotiation and exchange, a relational rhetoric repeated in a number of ways throughout the garden's design, didactic materials and extended publicity. Lucille Brockway (2,002,) has rigourously explored the role of botanical gardens in European colonial expansion, showing how they have historically served as repositories for the 'collection' of flowers, plants and trees within colonial and imperial regimes. One of the oldest botanical gardens, Le Jardin des plantes, housed within the Museum national d'Histoire naturelle, was established under King Louis XlII in Paris in 172,6 as the Jardin royal des plantes medicinales, then as the Jardin du Roi in 1739, and finally, as the Jardins des plantes after the French Revolution. The history of the famous Royal Botanic Kew Gardens in London demonstrates its conversion in 176