Welcome to Seattle University’s taqwsheblu Vi Hilbert Ethnobotanical Garden!

Where Seattle University stands a forest once stood. In and around this forest, people and plants lived closely together for many centuries before the city of Seattle was established. Our ethnobotanical garden invites you to learn more about this intimate, sustainable relationship and encourages you to cultivate your own caring relationship with our native plants.

This ethnobotanical garden is dedicated to the sensitive and sustainable relationships between native plants and the First Peoples of the Puget Sound region; to the Lushootseed language that eloquently expresses these relationships; and to Upper Skagit elder taqwsheblu Vi Hilbert for her work to reawaken the language of this land.

If we learn, we will care. If we care, we can preserve.