Fireweed Fields

Holly Schmidt asks us to cultivate our relationship with plants.

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The title of the artist project Fireweed Fields fairly bursts with the promise of expanses of vivid colour on sun-drenched days. But it’s no passive traipse among the blossoms. Rather the work is a unique, pandemic-friendly outdoor installation that’s part of Vegetal Encounters, Vancouver artist Holly Schmidt’s three-year artist residency at the University of British Columbia’s Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery. Really, the project is more akin to renewing an important relationship than simply viewing an exhibition.

The title caught my attention immediately. I grew up at the top of Capilano Road in North Vancouver in the 1970s, playing among the plants that were reclaiming the old gravel quarry used for the construction of the region’s Cleveland Dam back in the 1950s. Fireweed was among them. It’s bewitching in late summer as it transforms into waving poles clustered with light-catching gossamer curlicues and a riot of light pink fluff. Those visuals are rooted deeply in my memory.

But perhaps an introduction is in order for those who grew up knowing only manicured suburban lawns. Fireweed is a meadow plant, a member of the evening primrose family, and it likes to populate freshly disturbed areas such as roads, construction sites and forest burns. Great natural stands can be found a stone’s throw away from UBC on Northwest Marine Drive and along the paths of Pacific Spirit Park. 

Schmidt’s project is not focused only on fireweed’s grand, but brief, late-life presentation. It’s a long hauler that asks for your patience and close attention over time, letting you delight as the lawn of the Belkin is transformed into a full-fledged meadow. Ideally, you’ll feel invested enough to keep coming back throughout the summer.

“My projects tend to emerge slowly through building relationships with people and places,” Schmidt said in an interview just as the first shoots were emerging. “There are many distinct botanical sites and situations at UBC, and all of them have layered and complex histories. The most foundational of which is that the campus is on the unceded, traditional and ancestral territory of the Musqueam Nation.” 

Of all the meadow plants, why fireweed? Schmidt says she is interested in its capacity to adapt. 

“It’s the first plant to grow after a forest fire, or major disturbance, and it provides sustenance and habitat for other species. It brings to mind notions of healing, care and the resurgence of life, all of which take on heightened importance in the midst of the climate emergency and the need for climate justice.” 

As well, fireweed is important to First Nations’ cultural practices. It’s used to make twine and in the weaving of blankets. 

The project was partly inspired by the ideas of ethnobotanist Robin Wall Kimmerer of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation in Oklahoma. Schmidt cites Kimmerer’s renowned collection of essays, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, as a key influence on her thinking around the deep learning to be had through strengthening human relationships with plants. 

“There’s also potential here for cross-cultural exchange and learning around the gifts this plant has to offer and how those gifts can be reciprocated,” says Schmidt. “Plants are teachers.”

But the question remains: What will you actually see once you’ve made the trek out to UBC? Well, timing is key. And it will require a repeat visit or two to witness seasonal and successional changes in the meadow from a new cedar boardwalk in a design inspired by fireweed’s delicate, snaking rhizomes.

“Fireweed Fields is intended to provide contrast to the linear arrangement of UBC Main Mall’s vast expanses of grass,” says Schmidt. “These formal landscapes are rooted in colonial histories and values, so by planting fireweed, I’m hoping to initiate a conversation about regeneration.”  

While the work stands in clear opposition to the tyranny of the lawn, I wonder if it will break the bounds of the gallery and spread, especially given the proximity of flower beds and landscaping features. Can fireweed even be contained? 

“One plant can produce up to 80,000 seeds,” says Schmidt. “And they can travel far and wide on wind currents, which is part of its resilience, but also why it causes concern for those trying to maintain those landscapes. But the seeds will be collected and shared in ways that are culturally appropriate and the plants will be cut and composted.”

Ideally, Fireweed Fields will help people imagine spaces around them with less imposed order and with an openness to the flow of the great unkempt garden of life. It seems to me to echo the rewilding movement, which calls for a wholesale return to the natural “wild” states of our environment, wherever possible. But Schmidt rejects that notion. “I appreciate aspects of rewilding, but there can be a tendency to romanticize the idea of nature without humans, suggesting that human relationships with nature can only taint or damage. I think it’s important to look to relationships of respect and reciprocity.”

At a time when people are battling to save British Columbia’s last stands of old-growth forest amidst the quickening pace of global ecological destruction, Schmidt’s message is potent. 

“There’s a need to shift from an extractive mindset to one of interdependence and to increase biodiversity,” she says. “I also want to create opportunities for people to slow down and think of a different kind of relationship with the natural world.”

Fireweed Fields essentially asks people to ponder more deeply the complex web of life and our place in it. In a way, this is a perfectly timed intervention. The pandemic has thrust people outdoors and many are taking an interest in local flora. Furthering our understanding of plant life – and renewing a relationship that’s been left fallow too long – is one way to avoid returning to “normal” after the pandemic. ■  

Holly Schmidt: Fireweed Fields is an ongoing installation outside UBC’s Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in Vancouver.

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