Longhouse Education and Cultural Center Ethnobotanical Garden

"The Longhouse Code of Ethics: There exist between people of significant differences which require alternative education, an internal and external environment designed in consideration of providing culturally referenced opportunity and academic skills to cope with the demands of a plural society."

The Longhouse Education and Cultural Center was designed and built in 1994 by Seattle architect Johnpaul Jones. The Longhouse was built to create opportunities for special exchanges and education. Designed after a Northwest Coast Longhouse, it was constructed from Olympic Peninsula Cedar and contains a large open space for cultural ceremonies, classes, conferences, performances, and community events.

A funding shortfall prevented landscape plans when first built, but through the imagination and innovation of Marja Eloheimo and Colleen Ray, an Ethnobotanical Garden now surrounds the Longhouse.

The Longhouse Ethnobotanical Garden has five purposes: to honor, preserve, and better understand native plants of the Pacific Northwest, to acknowledge the close traditional relationships between native people and native plants, to provide a living resource for learning, to provide opportunity for interdisciplinary, inter-community and intercultural exchange and collaboration, and to restore and enhance the landscape at the Longhouse.

It is important to realize that a garden of this type would not have been traditional at a Longhouse, but it creates awareness of how past generations understood their plant relatives and supports learning and understanding of the importance of sustainability.

On the web: Longhouse Education and Cultural Center