Gitigaan

Gitigaan is a Michi Saagiig word that translates to Garden or Gathering Space. The Gitigaan at the Mitigomin Native Plant Nursery is designed as an Interpretive Garden and was created with the idea to bring native Ontario plants to an accessible and educational platform. The Gitigaan is divided into 4 garden beds, each with its own unique theme. With the development of the Mitigomin Native Plant Nursery, the Gitigaan will also begin to act as a seed source for Nursery production, and a place to conduct experiments surrounding seed dormancy, germination, growth rates and other aspects of native plant cultivation.

One of the themed beds in the Gitigaan is called the Backyard. This is a demonstrative space that has been designed to showcase how a small urban or suburban space can be transformed into a beautiful area that is also eco-friendly and sustainable!

This bed has a Garden Shed to represent a house/garage, a composter, and a large rain barrel. The planting components include a pollinator garden/habitat (pictured right), a Rain Garden (pictured below) and a small pond. The Backyard is alive with pollinators throughout the growing season.

Have an area of your yard that is chronically wet or damp? Consider turning that area into a rain garden! Rain gardens can solely rely on falling rain, or they can be fed through a rain barrel. The Rain Garden in our Gitigaan (pictured left) uses a rain barrel to collect rain from a roof and channel it down through the rain garden area and into a small pond. Throughout the garden space, we’ve planted a selection of native plants that like to have wet feet! These are plants that would be found in riparian areas or mesic prairies in the wild.

When designing and planting a Gitigaan or garden space, it’s important to consider the wildlife that will live there when selecting your plants. Many of our native pollinators co-evolved with our native plants. This means that the two species reciprocally affect each other’s evolution through the process of natural selection. For example, the photo to the right shows a native Common Eastern Bumblebee feeding on a Bottle Gentian flower. Bumblebees are the only pollinators that have evolved to be strong enough to open the petals of the Bottle Gentian flower, fully climb inside, and successfully pollinate it. This means the Bottle Gentian will always provide nectar for the bees and the bees allow the Bottle Gentian to reproduce by spreading pollen from plant to plant.

Alderville Black Oak Savanna | Alderville First Nation