The North Carolina Botanical Garden is offering a virtual option for its daylong symposium on the “African American Legacy in Gardening and Horticulture” set for the last Saturday of March in Durham.
The event being held at no charge from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. March 29, in the Hayti Heritage Center on Fayetteville Street will be livestreamed. Registration is required to attend in person or virtually.
The symposium “explores the unsung historical legacy of African American plantspeople, horticulturalists, residential gardeners, and gardening clubs. These personal narratives and generational gardening practices have all too often been ignored, overlooked, or not fully appreciated within the framework of American landscape history, global ethno-botanical viewpoints, and contemporary environmental writing,” organizers said.
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The schedule includes panel discussions on urban forestry and Black land ownership in the subaltern south, ethnobotanical and horticultural influence of Africans, African Americans and immigrants on the American landscape, and centering African American narrative stories in contemporary environmental literature and media.
“This one-day symposium brings together a cadre of horticulturalists, historians, beautification advocates, and plantspeople to celebrate the contributions made by these gardening innovators and modern-day practitioners, while further educating and enlightening the public and future generations of plant lovers,” organizers added.
The mission of the university-affiliated botanical garden in Chapel Hill is to cultivate connections between plants, people, and place through science, engagement, and conservation.
