African-American Gardens - Design and Development: Part 3

Richard Westmacott, professor of Environmental Design, University of Georgia (Athens)in his book African-American Gardens and Yards in the Rural South, begins to put together answers to these questions. To accomplish this, he conducted a study with participants from the deep South - places in the low country of South Carolina, the southern piedmont area of Georgia and the black belt of Alabama.

He organized descriptions and analyses of yard space and use in forty-seven homes from these southern rural communities. He breaks down and analyses the design of these living and working spaces - everyday gardens that demonstrate customs and traditions that the owners probably use without thinking too much about them.

Westmacott, born and educated in Great Britain, maintains interests begun there in rural history and development, and vernacular gardens. Now living and working in the United States, Westmacott brings fresh eyes in his observations of gardens in the rural south. Smithsonian Institution anthropologist Theresa A. Singleton, in her preface to this book, compares Westmacott's observations to those of Frederick Law Olmstead who recorded, in the late 19th century, details of southern life that native southerners took for granted. Singleton, author of Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life, also states that Westmacott's work is a major source of information on African-American gardens that will be a foundation for more research.

What are some characteristics of the gardening traditions Westmacott discovered in his work?

• A confident or unselfconscious approach to how yard space is used;
  
• Shrubs set out as individuals rather than in groups, hedges or foundation shrubs;
  
• Yards swept bare;
  
• Discarded household objects used as planters or ornamentation.

I don't do it because it's my way or the African way. I just do it because that's the way I like it being done is the matter of fact or unselfconscious way Sara Johnson (Georgia) describes her garden style.

Westmacott also says he found ...little obvious evidence of African beliefs among black gardeners. A car trip for any traditional gardener through rural areas and neighborhoods also reveals that yard space is most often used without regard to gardening books, magazines, or other conventional exchanges of ideas.

Mary Miller (South Carolina) says, What I do in my yard I do because I like it nice. The way I arrange it, I didn't give that a thought.

Plants in rural African-American yards are appreciated as individuals rather than massed. Factors such as soil type, slope, and nearness to structures, drives and roads are also criteria at work here. Gardeners placed plants where they thought they would grow well or there was space. Sometimes, if the gardener grew grass - an expensive rarity - and mowed it, plants grew in relaxed rows so they were not damaged by mowing.

Perry Royal (Alabama) says, I just put them when there is space, you know. When it's blooming it really looks good.

The swept yard, although it probably originated in West Africa, was at one time an ever-present yard and garden feature for all cultures throughout the South. In most African-American families, sweeping the yard was a Saturday morning task for children. Ironing the yard is what some called it. Everything was clean underneath the house also - Iron it out. Handmade yard brooms were common. The worldwide and accepted reasons for this routine are to reduce insects and have a place where children can play, and adults can work and gather socially.

Inexpensive mass-produced yard ornaments and found objects placed alongside various combinations of flowers generate yard art. When gardeners like Susie Evans (Alabama) don't have spare cash and want something, they do as she did - use something else. When I moved here I didn't have the money to buy things like I wanted. I wanted big white posts on the side of my gate. I get out there (a mile in both directions along the paved road in front of her house) and when a wheel (hubcap) rolled off I stick it beside the gate. I call them 'old slave-time junk.' Gateposts at the entrance to Susie's yard are now decked out with hubcaps.

Westmacott, though searching for typical yard ornamentation, found many unique and high-spirited collections of recycled and found objects. His photos illustrating some of these are enchanting. However, to their makers, these groupings are deeply personal, individual and unselfconscious expressions. In no way are they seen as tacky or kitsch, or from another point of view, as trendy. 25 Years of Landscape Architecture at Dumbarton Oaks shows that many cultures other than African-American in the U. S. south also made yard art from similar objects.

Part 1 and Part 2 of African-American Gardens - Design and Development make it clear that yards in the rural U.S. south were used primarily as extensions of the house, especially when quarters were small, but secondarily, vegetable and herb gardens were necessary for food and folk medicines. Decoration and display, the third function of colloquial gardens, were not initially very important to their makers. Westmacott, in African-American Gardens and Yards presents a timeline that begins in 1800 and ends in 2000. It points up simple changes made in these three garden functions over two centuries.

Shortly after the War Between the States, gardens for subsistence began to increase and flourish, rising above need for a house extension. Subsistence gardening peaked in 1895, then dipped in 1910, to rise to even greater importance between 1930 and 1940, during the Great Depression. The need for subsistence gardening gradually tapered off until it ranked third in importance in 1975. Meanwhile, the need for a yard as house extension stayed stable until it began dipping sharply in 1975 and became second. For those gardeners with air conditioning, the yard as house extension ranked third by 1990. When free time and personal mobility began to increase in 1975, the desire for decoration and display in yard and garden greatly increased to become a prime necessity.

Rural electrification and indoor plumbing are some reasons why activities traditionally done out in the yard now are done indoors. Furthermore, abundant jobs and discretionary money meant having means to purchase automobiles and to shop at large urban centers with their big box stores.

Sweeping the yard is quickly disappearing, and taking its place is planting grass and mowing it with gas-powered machines. To accommodate the mower, shrubs and large perennials are no longer scattered but grouped along edges of the yard. Food is easily bought, so the importance of a garden and raising small livestock is disappearing.

Individuals and families taking part in Westmacott's study lived during a period of dramatic social upheaval. He believes that for those who stayed, the garden and yard were places of survival, both of body and spirit. The garden became a demonstration of industriousness and resourcefulness, a symbol of resilience and will to survive in spite of hardships; the yard, a gesture of graciousness despite daily drudgery.

One yard characteristic that has remained is the carefully arranged seating area, often on a porch, decorated with plants in containers. However, these areas, symbols of leisure and graciousness are always placed in available shade within sight of the road.

This book will be, as definitely as the gardeners whom Westmacott interviewed and befriended, a foundation for more research about African-American gardens. Westmacott closes African-American Gardens and Yards in the Rural South by saying, Just as the study of the effects of change on the garden and yard gives insight into the values and beliefs of the owners, so does the gardeners' belief in their own resourcefulness and independence make change in the garden an inevitability. Like the gardeners in this book, let us watch these changes with eager anticipation and delight.

Additional Sources of Interest:

• Southern Visions, Traveling Exhibit Information.
  
• African-American Gardens at Monticello, an article by Peter J. Hatch, Director, Gardens and Grounds, January 2001.
  
• Opinion from the NY Botanical Garden Shop guide, "The Literature" does not yet reflect the historical and actual diversity of American yards and gardens. We've got to get out there and start doing the writing and research! In the meantime, incredibly, this important book is the first and maybe the only survey of African-American gardening traditions. They are beautiful sites indeed, uniquely and inventively planted, ornamented, and designed.
  
• A partial review of African-American Gardens and Yards in the Rural South by Richard Westmacott from about...Time Magazine, June, 1994.
  
• The New Georgia Encyclopedia, Folklife - Vernacular Gardens.
  

• Part 1 of African-American Gardens - Design and Development answers questions about changes in interpretation of historic garden design, use and development. Emphasis is on African-American gardens in the rural American south.
  

• Part 2 of African-American Gardens - Design and Development answers the question on how African-Americans shaped and formed their domestic living space as their relationships to slavery, tenancy, and land ownership changed.

©Text by Georgene A. Bramlage, March 2005. Reproduction without permission prohibited.