written by Ken Cooley - Grounds Committee - 2011

The Capital City Allotment Association Gardens occupy a tract of land comprising over 3 hectares that was given to the Municipality of Saanich by the provincial Government on March 9, 2005.  The Municipality in turn has an agreement with the Capital City Allotment Association to allow the land to be used for public gardening.  The Gardens are situated on the banks and flood plain of Swan Creek, a small stream that empties out of Swan Lake to the East, flows under the Patricia Bay Highway and makes its way North under Mackenzie Avenue and ultimately into the Colquitz river system.   This area has a lengthy history of agricultural activity both before and after the arrival of Europeans on Southern Vancouver Island.  Both the vegetation and the physical landscape have undergone significant change, some benign but some that has been definitely destructive to the ecosystem of the waterway;  understanding some of this history places concern about management of the creek into a historical continuum that substantiates the concern and clarifies our responsibility for caring for this beautiful little stretch of open land.

For anyone interested in more detailed information about the natural history of the Swan Lake/Swan Creek waterway, I recommend taking a look at Urban watershed health and resilience, evaluated through land use history and eco-hydrology in Swan Lake watershed, a thesis written by Lise Townsend at the University Of Victoria and available at the following link:  http://hdl.handle.net/1828/1741 I found a great deal of useful information in this thesis.

Archeological findings indicate that Native populations moved into Southern Vancouver Island approximately 8000 years ago.  These populations supported themselves through basic practices like hunting and fishing but are also believed to have encouraged the growth of native willow in areas like the Swan Creek valley.  Early maps indicate that the entire area beginning at the Swan Creek outlet from Swan Lake to well beyond where McKenzie Avenue now slices through the valley was covered by a large swamp that supported extensive groves of willow. It is possible to get a notion of the original look of the area by walking to the other side of the entrance across Kent Street where some actual restoration work was done several years ago.  Native people harvested the willow whips  and fashioned them into fishing nets. The tough and supple nature of the willow was important in weaving nets strong enough to handle water currents and fish.  Controlled burning of the willow swamps discouraged invasion by larger trees and preserved the open swamp character of the area.

The maps also indicate that at this earlier time, just at the point of European in-migration, the creek had no particularly defined stream bed but rather the entire area was a swampy plain.  Later efforts to render the land arable included dredging a straight ditch that channeled the creek through the area and effectively drained the swamp, desirable form the point of view of farming and gardening but with negative consequences for the natural ecology of the area.  

The era of European settlement opened in about 1843 on Vancouver Island and was the beginning of decades of aggressive activity aimed at clearing and draining areas like Swan Creek swamp in order to make the land available for pasturing animals and planting crops.  In the case of Swan Lake and our own Swan Creek valley, it is likely that virtually all original vegetation was chopped, ploughed, burned or otherwise removed.  What exists today is either vestigial remains of the original cover or has grown in over the last thirty or so years.  Early in this period, Kenneth McKenzie, who had arrived on Vancouver Island as the manager of Craigflower Farm, bought 200 acres of land in the vicinity and named it Lake Hill.  The farm was roughly contiguous with the area from Lake Hill through to Tillicum and included the Swan Creek valley.  Fifty years later, McKenzie’s farm was divided into 5-acre lots and sold.  In the early 1900s the first houses appeared on Kent Street, some of them still stand and have been written about by Valerie Green in the Saanich News.  It is probable that the swampy nature of the area now occupied by the Gardens may have been less desirable as a location for houses and was left relatively undeveloped.  It was at this time that the beginnings of the urban road grid began to develop as well.  A process culminating today in the outsized, noisy and traffic choked highways that cut through the area on two sides.

However, the more problematic development, also dating from the early 1900’s, was the incipient degradation of the water quality in Swan Lake and its inevitable route down Swan Creek and through the area in which we now garden.  A number of manufacturing undertakings, including two wineries were once located near Swan Lake and dumped very significant volumes of organic waste into the Lake; as well, primitive sewage systems continued to drain household pollutants into the lake until as recently as the 1970s.  In her informative thesis, Lise Townsend notes that fish die-offs in the water system began occurring the 1950’s and that by 1970 the water in Swan Lake, from whence our creek originates “had shifted into a turbid state, trout were rarely seen, summer algae blooms were common, and the lake exhibited low dissolved oxygen, and a simplified plankton and macro-benthic biotic community.”  While we may not understand precisely the implications of this evaluation, whatever it means it doesn’t sound good.  At this time Saanich was galvanized to improve the municipal sewer system and to begin some, albeit piece-meal, restoration initiatives including purchasing land along the waterway for a linear park system.  Water quality in the system has improved but one wonders, without significant and suitable vegetation, how long the natural sieving and purifying process will take to eliminate pollutants deposited over nearly a century of human activity.

This brings us to the present and situates the problem in our stewardship of the area.  The Association cooperates with the Municipality of Saanich in caring for the allotment garden tract.  Responsible gardening as practiced by renters is not hugely destructive but there is agreement with Saanich that the quality of water in the creek and the number and diversity of animals living in it could be improved by planting of natural vegetation along the banks.  The Association plans to work with interested gardeners to encourage restoration of the banks in a manner that will allow gardens to flourish but will also help in the continuing process of ridding the system of contamination.  Given the annual flooding that occurs in the Gardens and the relatively high water table during most of the year, it is in all our interests that this water be as free from pollutants as possible as it flows over or seeps into the earth we garden in.  This summer a number of large non-native trees were removed as a beginning effort to encourage native vegetation to re colonize the creek banks.  These efforts coupled with by-laws stating that gardeners are to place nothing in the creek – a concept based in common sense and decency – are important steps in cleaning up the creek.  We look forward to your interest and co-operation in this undertaking.