White Supremacy and Gardening

I’ve been thinking a lot about white supremacy and systemic racism, and all the ways it shows up in American life. Even something as simple as gardening is not untouched by white supremacy. The truth is most experts and master gardeners you meet or see on TV and the internet are white. Even garden bloggers (myself included) and influencers on Instagram are overwhelmingly white. I can’t believe I never made that observation before.

I came upon gardening by accident. I was trying to deal with an unruly front yard that had already earned me a summons and a court visit. I put in some plants to spruce up the front yard and happened to notice some garden bugs one day and my interest in gardening grew. I learned a lot though trial and error and decided to start my own gardening blog a few months ago, since now I had more time due to the quarantine. I have to admit that I had never even considered that I might be yet another white face in the crowd. I’m a fair skinned Latina that grew up in a racially diverse urban area of Queens, NY and a semi-urban town in Colombia. When I think back, gardening was not something that anyone around me was doing or talking about, not even in school. The closest I ever got to gardening in school was sprouting a bean in a jar. Where I grew up there were no community gardens or information at all about the importance of gardening and the direct effect it has on the world around you. Now I wonder if that was by design.

White Supremacy and the Lack of Gardening in Racially Diverse Areas

Today, I live on the Westside of Long Island bordering Queens, and the area I’m in is a racially diverse mix of urban/suburban/commercial/industrial properties. I still notice a big difference in how people engage in gardening, landscaping, and community gardening around here compared to other areas of Long Island. I don’t think I have ever seen any of my neighbors gardening outside. Still, a few people in my town (which is 57% white) have been trying to start a community garden for years to no avail while the next town over (85% white) already a has community garden of their own. Maybe it’s just a coincidence. Maybe it’s not. Fresh, organic produce is expensive everywhere and our community would definitely benefit from a community garden. My area is not a food desert area per se as there are several supermarkets and fast food restaurants around, but this changes if a person doesn’t have access to transportation since most of our supermarkets and restaurants are located along two main roads, not scattered everywhere. A community garden would be a boon to our community and there are actual plots of unused land owned by the Town, but the local authorities seem uninterested in a community garden. Are they worried about ruining the “suburban” character of this community? Are they worried about people from other (intentionally separate) sides of town suddenly walking by their home to visit the garden? I think it’s a mix of both.

White Supremacy and the Lack of Gardening Education

Last year, I began looking into going back to school for Landscape Design but the closest program I found was at a state college about 45 minutes from me. The other program I found was in a ritzy area of the Bronx, which is quite far as well. However, if I search for landscape design programs further into Long Island, in Suffolk County (which is 80% white) or upstate, there are many more landscaping and gardening programs available. So it seems to me that gardening programs are not being offered in urban or suburban areas with high racial diversity. The argument could be made that they don’t offer these programs here because people are just not interested, but I tend to think it’s the other way around: people of color are perhaps not interested in pursuing degrees in this field because they are not exposed to gardening to begin with. Aside from the lack of programs near me, the few available programs are expensive and taught by mostly white male teachers in a suburban setting, which is exclusionary in and of itself and brings me to my last point:

White Supremacy in Current Garden Aesthetic

Lots of folks around my neighborhood hire landscaping companies to create or maintain an aesthetic that is rooted in white supremacy and classism: the lawn. Lawns were spawned from a desire to copy Royal English gardens of 18th century England and here we are hundreds of years later, throwing herbicides and pesticides down and wasting water on this sterile, useless crop partly because we have been taught that this is the only “right” look and also because it has been codified in many cities and towns that houses must have grass lawn or very short greenery in the front of the home. It doesn’t stop at grass. There are a million and one articles and books written by white authors describing the perfect plant selections, garden designs, and best practices- all filtered through a white lense. Even information about restoring ecosystems and helping wildlife by gardening with native plants is dominated by white experts. That’s not to say that the information is not useful and educational- it is- the problem is that it’s too one dimensional and forgets that not every gardener is a white, able-bodied person in the suburbs or in a rural area with acres of land and disposable income or even the desire (culturally) to design “white” gardens. I think of extraordinary gardeners like Ron Finley, who have created beautiful and bountiful gardens in urban areas full of pollution, and they have done so in the face of great opposition by local authorities, who would have preferred that those hellstrips remained vacant and full of grass and weeds instead of vegetables for the community. Growing vegetables on the curb would cause a ruckus in most American communities because of the white supremacist aesthetic that preaches grass, grass, and more grass, and don’t you dare do it any other way!

There is probably a lot more to be written about this subject, but right now, my head is spinning. I’m hoping change can come soon but I know it’s going to take a lot of work. Part of the first step is acknowledging the problem of white supremacy and it’s many tentacles that touch every single aspect of American life. If we can identify the problems, we can take steps to correct them, and right now, gardening is far too exclusive just like virtually everything else in American culture. I encourage my readers to look up Black and Brown gardeners on Instagram and in their local areas, or better yet, become that gardener that inspires others. Change is needed at every level!

Police brutality and systemic racism in the USA have a very long and twisted root that has grown for hundreds of years and has set the path for all the discord and rioting that we see today. In the last few decades, cellphone cameras have captured so many incidents of police brutality and murders of Black civilians by police officers, and sadly, even this large number of videos are just a drop in the bucket compared to what actually happens to Black and Brown people in this country every day. We shouldn’t ignore or dismiss these incidents. People of Color are in intense pain and they are fearing for their lives (rightfully so) and we should stand together and do what needs to be done to dismantle white supremacy, systemic racism, and police brutality in this nation. I urge everyone to get involved. Look up your local NAACP chapter, look up racial justice and social justice organizations in your community, attend peaceful protests, educate yourself about racism and white privilege, and demand better from your elected officials and the police, especially after incidents of police brutality.