From 2021 to 2024, Holly Schmidt’s Fireweed Fields took place outside the Belkin. The outdoor art project transformed the lawns in front of the gallery into a fireweed meadow, encouraging biodiversity through gradual succession as a metaphor for the resurgence of life after a crisis. The project addressed the climate emergency in order to catalyze change, promote dialogue and undertake creative experimentation, research and learning opportunities. During this period, Fireweed Fields and its diverse plants – including fireweed, yarrow, sea blush and self-heal – were stewarded by Schmidt, the Belkin and other campus and community collaborators.

Beginning in May 2024 with the end of Schmidt’s residency, the gallery’s surrounding grounds returned to UBC’s soft landscape team’s management. The area is now in transition to become a permanent meadow that will be maintained by the gardening team, with sowing of meadow barley, red fescue and camas to begin in May 2025. The meadow transition will continue to promote biodiversity, which connects not only back to Schmidt’s project but also forward to a network of meadows and biodiverse zones on campus; an increasingly critical shift to address our changing environment.

It is Schmidt’s original Fireweed Fields project and the artist’s thoughtful stewardship that sowed the initial seeds of change by which UBC has been able to further its commitment to biodiversity on campus.

IMAGE: Holly Schmidt, Fireweed Fields, 2021-24