Amphitheatre Restoration Project
Gzhe-Mnidoo Gi-Ta-Gaan – Saugeen First Nation Creator’s Garden
Your support can help breathe new life into places that hold history, culture, and meaning for generations. By donating to our restoration project, you’re not just funding repairs — you’re preserving stories, protecting heritage, and creating spaces where communities can gather, reflect, and thrive. Every contribution, big or small, helps safeguard these irreplaceable landmarks for the future, ensuring that the past remains a visible, living part of our shared landscape. Join us in honouring history and building a legacy worth passing on.
Contact us today to make a difference.
To learn more about the project contact, Brittany
Brittany.roote@saugeen.org
519.797.2781 ext 1501
Financial contributions can be sent via e-transfer to, donations@saugeen.org
The Gardens offer multiple types of experiences and the potential for varied programming. Sever landscape ‘rooms’ are created moving from east to west with each room celebrating one of the Seven Grandfather teachings with custom stone inlays relevant to the specific teaching. Signage in Anishinaabemowin indicated the name of each teaching and is accompanied by interpretive signage explaining the significance of the teachings and their relationship to the garden and plant design.
These outdoor ‘rooms’ offer unencumbered vires to the river valley and provide seating as well as culturally-significant elements like fire, water and medicines. The gathering places vary in size, with appropriately sized spaces for different ceremonies and public events.
A healthy and thriving landscape is necessary for the good of all beings whether they come from the human, animal, plant or spiritual realm. The Garden’s emphasis is on medicine knowledge and land-based learning through interpretation and story-telling across the site. This emphasis heightens the potential for future programming based around medicine knowledge from a health, healing and horticultural perspective.
A revitalization approach will be applied throughout the GZHE-MNIDOO GI-TA-GAAN (Creator’s Garden). The approach takes time, as soil health is restored and the plants and animals that are native to the region are invited back to the land. The introduction of shrubs and trees help create a suitable environment for the growth of native Ontario plant species. Initial plantings include ground covers that require less shade combined with planting of a variety of trees that will ultimately support a wider range of plantings and medicine.
