I wonder what it feels like to be buried alive.
That was my thought as I pushed the tiny yellowish chili pepper seed into the moist and dense dirt. My nose filled with the oddly refreshing musky smell of my grandparents’ yard. Beads of sweat formed on my forehead as the sun forced its presence through the shade of sky-scraping Oak Trees. The cool feeling of grass on my bare feet refreshingly contrasted the temperature as I stood and watched my grandfather plant this year’s batch of plants.
No words were spoken between the two of us while we worked to plant and repot plants. But it’s one of my favorite memories.
Now as a young woman, it is these moments that I reminisce when I think about being happy or my favorite parts of childhood.
My question was “Where are the young Black people who garden?” I knew this was something I enjoyed but I felt conflicted about. Like most young adults, I don’t own a house with a backyard, and for the last four going on five years, I have spent most of my time moving in and out of student housing.
Sadly even in businesses full of beautiful plants winding down up and down the show cases. Some multiple colors of orange, yellow, and green somewhat like a fall day. Others sharp and pointy. I felt disconnected. They were all nice of course but I was disheartened when I noticed that no one that worked at or owned these small mom and pop shops looked like me.
When I first started my plant journey I wanted to understand why I always had a strong passion and connection to plants and gardening. So I start my journey with my own family history.
My mother often talks about her memories of growing up in San Antonio, Texas with peaches, pecan and plum trees in her family’s backyard. If they wanted a snack they could just climb up and grab one. Her grandmother would cut pieces of the cactuses that are native to the region and salute them down for dinner. Even though she grew up poor she never felt like it because they had so many different types of food growing right in her backyard.
Her eyes still light up like a five-year-old when she talks about her favorite great-aunt, Aunt Dora, who would cut off pieces of her plants to give to my mother to take back home and grow her own.
My dad told me the stories of his father who was born the son of a sharecropper and spent his youth in rural Mississippi picking cotton. My favorite story was how his father had figured out a way to trick the people he worked for by adding rocks to the bottom of the bag of cotton so when it was weighed at the end of the day he would get paid more.
I listened in horror as my dad described his first time picking cotton. My grandfather had worked hard and went back to school and was now a professor at a local college in Mississippi. He took my father along with him and his students to show them first hand how harsh the conditions of picking cotton were. My dad discovered quickly that picking cotton was torture to all the human senses. His fingers were raw and bloody from the sharp edges of the cotton plant. His nose and eyes are on fire from a mixture of loose pieces of cotton, dirt, and pollen. His skin blazing from the heat of the sun that sat high in the sky without a single cloud in site.
My second step was researching gardening and plants in the Black culture.
It would be impossible to understand Black culture and its ties to gardening and plants without talking about slavery.
It is no secret that millions of Black people were stolen from their homelands in Africa and forced into chattel slavery for over 400 years. Enslaved people were forced to work and tend to crops from sun up until sundown, sometimes on hundreds of acres of land. Bones aching and fingers raw from hours of endless picking and pulling.
While facing the horror and torture of slavery, Black people still held onto cultural practices of gardening and farming from back home. Some popular dishes brought to America during the Transatlantic Slave Trade are rice, black-eyed peas, yams, okra and watermelon.
Blacks both enslaved and free also used herbs and plant based remedies for a wide variety of things from religious to medical uses and as a form of pesticides. According to a piece written by Colin Fitzgerald “African American Slave Medicine of the 19th Century” it states “... plant-based remedies by slaves of the early to mid-nineteenth century were equally as effective in treating ailments of the body when compared to commonly practiced white medicine of the same time era…” The article even states that there were cases when African American herbal remedies were more effective than traditional white medicine of the time.
When slavery was legally ended, sharecropping forced many formerly enslaved Black people, who were not able to leave the South, financially dependent on the people who formerly enslaved them.
For some newly freed Black people, growing crops helped them gain economic prosperity. According to Nation Park Service " About thirty percent of black homesteaders filed on federal lands as individuals remote from other African Americans. They had to overcome severe challenges in the harsh climate just to survive. Many persisted and succeeded.” Universities like Tuskegee University, Florida A&M University and of course my alum Prairie View A&M University were created with the intent to educate newly freed slaves on working and profiting off the land.
An often undiscussed part of Black history and the Reconstruction Period is the prosperity many Black people found in growing and selling their crops. In fact watermelon, a crop that has had a long history of being used as a racial stereotype against Blacks was a cash crop for many. Watermelon was a sign of freedom. But white people threatened and angered by this newfound freedom took this new sign of freedom and used it to chastise and mock Black people.
Fast forward to the Great Migration when thousands of Black people migrated out of the racist and violent south moving West and North. During this migration Black people took their culture with them. With limited access to land many turned to Urban Gardening.
Many Black people ended up in the concrete jungles of places like Chicago, New York, and Los Angeles, far from the vast open landscape of the rural South.
While now out of the South, Black people were met with a new form of racism like Redlining, lack of jobs, and over-policing. With a lack of resources and access to land, Black people did what they have always done: Made something out of nothing.
While urban gardens have been around for centuries now, Black communities used them as a means of survival in low-income neighborhoods. Black people were able to provide a cheap and efficient source of fresh fruits and vegetables for their families and neighborhoods during a time when it seemed the government and those in power could care less about the well-being of their communities. An article by the Economic Policy Institute “...historical record demonstrates that residential segregation is “de jure,” resulting from racially-motivated and explicit public policy whose effects endure to the present.”
Sucked into a new way of life and possibly home sick. The comfort of back home was found in the plants they brought with them. When talking to Julia Jackson who was born and raised in Tallulah, Louisiana and moved to Los Angeles in her early 20s in the late 1960s. She explains “ I was so happy when I found collard greens and green tomatoes”. These plants that are bitter and tough are delicacies in the south and for those like Julia sense of comfort and a reminder of home that was now thousands of miles away.
Michael, who proudly proclaims himself still an urban gardener, explains “ It was my grandmother who introduced me to gardening. We lived in Michigan and she would go outside and pick food out of the garden to make dinner. I enjoyed spending time in the garden helping her.” Proudly he talks about the different things that he was able to grow in his home garden. You can often find Michael in his garden kicked back smoking a cigar admiring his garden like he just won an NBA championship.
After reflecting on all this information I was inspired and determined to keep this part of my culture alive. African Americans who have been stripped of our culture for centuries and are constantly chastised for not having what some believe is an actual culture. I feel even more determined to make sure that these cultural practices and connections to our ancestors are preserved.
While trying to find my way through my plant and garden journey I had the privilege of speaking with Paris Hannon who is the owner and creator of Planting with P. Hannon created the business after struggling with the stress of her job. The business not only sells plants but teaches one-on-one and group classes about taking care of your plants. She too got her introduction into taking care of plants while spending time with her grandmother.
When talking about the representation of Black planters and plants business owners Hannon says she feels the disconnect as well. Even as a Black person when she first started her company she assumed that most of her audience would be white people " You really don’t see a lot of people of color. Black, Spanish, Indian. You don’t see them planting a lot because if they are, it’s something that’s personal that’s happening behind closed doors.” After getting her business up and going she discovered that her customers were very diverse coming from all ethnic backgrounds including Black.
Despite constantly battling as a Black business owner to make sure her content is seen on social media platforms like Tiktok or Instagram. Paris says that business is still good and Black people are still planting and gardening.
Gardening and planting has a history in Black culture that goes back centuries before we first stepped foot on American soil. But since being here it has played such an important part of helping us document and tell our history. From documenting the will to survive during the dark and torturous years of slavery. To the will to overcome the years of the Reconstruction Period and Jim Crow Era. The sense of home and comfort it provided to those thousands of miles away from home during the Great Migration Period. Down to the warm feeling it gives a girl as her mom smiles retelling her stories from her own childhood.
As I sit in my small college apartment and stare at my once tiny plant that I bought on sale at the 99cent store. I am reminded despite what narrative is shown on social media and the internet planting and gardening is very much a part of Black culture. Like plants we are constantly growing and climbing. Bearing fruits despite being neglected and placed in the most hostile environments.