When I saw that the Berkshire Botanical Garden’s ecological plant conference was featuring my friend Abra Lee, I was at first puzzled that Garden had chosen a keynote speaker who was really more of a cultural historian about the African-American landscape than a standard speaker on green approaches to horticulture. But in talking with Abra, the connection was stronger than I imagined and became more apparent as we talked.
A trained horticulturist and daughter of a historian, Abra connects a narrative history of landscape with the practice of gardening, and in many ways sees the cultural history of African-American gardens as deeply intertwined with the practices and approaches to the creation of landscape. Abra is from Georgia and is the director of horticulture at Atlanta’s Oakland Cemetery, which, with its historically segregated sections for African-Americans and other cultural groups, tells a history of the region that some may prefer to leave behind. But for Abra, the story of African-Americans and their connection to the land, both in America and in Africa, is a defining narrative to be examined thoroughly.
This connection to the landscape can be seen in the stories of the enslaved, whose strength and force, in the words of W.E.B. DuBois, helped to “conquer the soil.” Abra takes the connection further by examining the landscapes of a range of people, from Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer, whose poetry was inspired by her garden, to her own great-aunts and uncles who cared for the land they owned outside of Atlanta, and to which her family still remains connected.
It is here where Abra pulls in a connection not just to cultural ecology but to a practice that was ecological in its approach. For in her forbears, Abra saw something more. Not just simply an effort to merge aesthetics with practicality—using what was on the land to build a beautiful landscape that could include bottle walls, old wash tubs and simple painted stone edging from rocks collected on the site—but also using the art of observation to determine best practices for growing plants successfully and to identify species that would do well in the landscape. When she came back to the garden of her family with her degree in horticulture, she at first felt that she had a leg up on her family with her new terminology for the plants that they were growing, only to discover that she could still learn from her family, who had spent decades observing and experimenting on their land. Folk practice meets science, one might say, and both can inform each other. She recalls with a laugh how her family provided “space and grace for those just learning.”
In this sense, Abra’s speech next Sunday will bring something new to the audience at Rooted in Place—an understanding that the art and science of gardening the land we cherish can be learned both in a classroom and on the outskirts of a farm.
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A gardener grows through observation, experimentation, and learning from the failures, triumphs, and hard work of oneself and others. In this sense, all gardeners are self-taught, while at the same time intrinsically connected to a tradition and a community that finds satisfaction through working the soil and sharing their experiences with one another. This column explores those relationships and how we learn about the world around us from plants and our fellow gardeners.
