A Black urban girl in Upstate New York reclaims ancestral gardening.

WORDS Rehani Tapp | IMAGES Ronke L. Tapp

Rehani and her brothers showing their harvest of homegrown sweet potatoes, a heritage food.

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If something was stolen from you, you would want it back, right? Well, I am a Black urban teen who gardens with her family, and one thing that I’ve realized is that when Africans were stolen from their homeland, their connection to the land (and ours, as their American descendants) was lost, too. These were my ancestors, and they were farming from the beginning. When the captors came, many of my ancestors were forced to work in fields, under horrible conditions, without pay. What was once respected and peaceful had become tragic and looked down upon. It doesn’t surprise me, then, that in the quest for freedom, moving away from working on the land became part of the goal. But in that, we also lost that original connection our ancestors had with the land, and as a result, we now have to deal with stigma and loss of representation of Black people in farming. We also lost the community and food security that came along with us working the land.

The stigma that equates Black people working the land with slavery and cotton is still ongoing.

So how do you restore your ancestral connections to the land when you live in the middle of an urban center? Especially if you don’t want to move to the country (or back to your original homeland)? My family started with a few planter boxes in our backyard, and when the planters flopped my parents went out and asked for help from an urban community garden across from our church. I still recall one of our first meetings at the community garden. My mom kept saying that this was going to be a way for us to “connect with our roots,” but when we got to the garden, we didn’t see any people who looked like us. My younger brother questioned, “This is the place where we are going to be connecting to our ancestors?” That’s how I felt too, confused. Where are the fellow people of color who I thought were going to be supporting us on our journey?

It was underwhelming, but at least the community garden had a children’s area that looked like fun. I was there, playing in the sandbox, minding my own business, when someone walked up to me and said, “You are so brave for coming here.” I was busy trying to win the sand mud competition, so it took me a while to realize what she was talking about. The weird thing was that I wasn’t doing a whole speech about racism in gardening. I was just making sand mud and being told I was brave. Basically, I was called brave for just being Black and coexisting.

More specifically, it seemed that person was calling me brave for being Black and coexisting in a gardening and farming-related space. But why? What does it mean to be a farmer? Does it mean that I have to be White and have access to lots of safe land? That view is what is usually portrayed in gardening stores, online, and even in-person events that I attend.

AfriSTEAM Kids Garden Club members playing in the 490 Farmers community children’s garden, including Rehani and her siblings.

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I saw something different when I was at the Uplifting Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) Gardeners’ weekend event. There I saw a lot of other gardeners who looked like me and had gardens similar to my family’s. I found them to be more encouraging, truthful, and relatable. They had gardens in backyards, abandoned lots, and community spaces, and they used a variety of methods from in-ground to raised beds to containers and bags and more. My family and I got to tour some of the gardens. My favorite was the Sofrito Garden. Not only did it have lots of beautiful flowers, but also the owner had started the garden in an empty lot next door to her house to grow vegetables so she could make meals from her homeland. She even has a banana tree, which she has to take special care of because Upstate New York is not its regular tropical environment. It isn’t uncommon for BIPOC gardeners to grow some of their heritage foods when gardening; our family, for example, has tried to grow sweet potatoes, collard greens, and okra.

Rehani admiring celosia, the “rooster flower,” during a tour of Sofrito Garden at the Uplifting BIPOC Gardener’s event.

The next day at the BIPOC event, a conversation came up that made me realize that there is a lot more to the discrimination than I originally thought. As one person explained, communities welcomed them simply by saying they were “diversified,” but they also did not invite them to events. Sometimes when we went to gardens people would act as if we didn’t understand gardening, even though some of these people had joined later than we did.

The BIPOC members also talked about how different laws block their access to resources. These restrictions make urban gardening harder because not everyone has access to a lot of land where they can plant in the ground, or even their own backyard. Even if you do have a backyard, you still have to be careful. We had to use raised beds because our ground was likely polluted by surrounding factories. And even though we were “just” growing in our backyard, we were still farmers — multiple people in the meeting told us this because they knew what it felt like to be unsure of themselves. At the end of the meeting, everyone was able to walk away with more resources to help them on their journey; people gave these resources out because they knew what it felt like to be denied help at every turn.

Gardening reconnects us to our ancestral values of working together.

Seeing everybody share resources was another example of how gardening brings community and reconnects us to our ancestral values of working together. This was certainly true for us because as we started gardening, we wanted to introduce it to other people in our community. A year after we started our backyard garden, we created the AfriSTEAM Kids Garden Club and began sharing with others in our church and homeschool circles. We organized workshops with community experts and shared what we had learned about growing food at home, container gardening, preparing for frost, managing pests, and so much more.

One workshop I’d like to highlight is the one where we taught people to make a vertical garden. This was a time when we got to pass on the knowledge that an Elder had shared with us about growing lots of food in a small space. I remember talking with a family that was interested in gardening but was concerned because they moved homes a lot. By teaching them how to make a vertical garden I eased some of their worries and I noticed that they came back often.

AfriSTEAM Kids Garden Club members learning about building vertical gardens from community Elder Larry Burnett at the 490 Farmers community garden.

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Another workshop I remember was about bees and honey. This presentation was very interesting and we got to taste raw honey; it was very fun. We learned about the importance of bees . . . and then I got stung. One of the beekeepers helped us get the stinger out, and my mom made a plantain mask (an herbal remedy) for the bump. It stunk and was terrible, but the swelling went away faster. Because of the community support and indigenous wisdom, I healed more quickly. Thankfully, no one else got stung or injured, and by the end of the season, four new families in our club gardened for the first time ever!

What was interesting to me was what everyone was saying throughout the experience. Some people thought that gardening would be very hard labor and were surprised that it was significantly less so. This concern may be tied to Black people working the land being seen as negative due to slavery. Working in the garden helped to challenge that stigma. Another family was proud that their kid grew collards for their holiday meal; they said they were delicious. They also learned about the benefits of growing your own food, like knowing it wasn’t grown with harsh chemicals and being able to use natural practices like our ancestors did.

We can be a positive model of a Black family working the land, even while still living in an urban environment.

At the end of the season, when we were sharing our produce at the harvest party, someone exclaimed, “Do you know how much this would cost at the store?!” Yep, growing your own food can help with rising food prices and food shortages. I don’t know firsthand how expensive food is since I don’t buy it, but my parents often say, “The price has tripled,” and I know some families can’t afford that. Growing our own food also helped the community because we were able to donate our extra produce to Sweet Ida Mae’s, a local food pantry. People loved them. One time when we were dropping off a box, a community member ran up and said that his grandma “really loves those yellow tomatoes!”

Rehani on her way to donate a harvest box to Sweet Ida Mae’s food pantry.

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We made a big change: Sweet Ida Mae’s started their own community garden and we have more people from church wanting to join the garden club. We’ve also learned from the community and now our crops are more successful. And we’ve grown as farmers. Now we have an indoor hydroponic garden, which extends our growing season and saves money on our salads over the winter. My brother says that the hydroponic lettuce was “the best lettuce he ever tasted.”

Rehani’s siblings showing their harvest of homegrown hydroponic lettuce for that night’s dinner.

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We also have a flock of backyard chickens for eggs. They may not save money quite like other homegrown products, but they are certainly much healthier, and they taste better! Learning how to let the chickens range freely in the yard has also helped us learn how to live with the land more. We even have worms for compost. Basically, we have an urban homestead. According to my dad, a homestead is “a place that you call a home that is also a residence for things such as farm animals, agriculture, things that help feed the agriculture (such as worms) and other non-typical residential proclivities.” We certainly have all that.

Rehani and her brother in the chicken run tending to three of their backyard flock.

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Yet, one of the coolest parts of this journey is confronting the stigma around Black people farming, helping other families work the land, and reconnecting to ancestral wisdom in farming and community. We can be a positive model of a Black family working the land, even while still living in an urban environment. This isn’t a small problem — the lack of representation in gardening and lack of understanding of our disconnection from the land is huge. The stigma that equates Black people working the land with slavery and cotton is still ongoing.

Reclaiming our ancestral connections to the land leads to stronger communities with people supporting one another and standing up to discrimination.

And sometimes people don’t understand how disconnected we can be. One day my mom was at church and an African teen asked her why she had an African name if she didn’t come from Africa. She didn’t understand that we are the descendants of people who were stolen from Africa, so we do come from Africa. Although our ancestors were enslaved, and their captors tried to erase their heritage, we can reclaim that connection. And there are a lot of benefits to doing so. Reclaiming our ancestral connections to the land leads to stronger communities with people supporting one another more and standing up to discrimination, and it brings greater food security, independence, and health. I am reclaiming my connection through learning and experiencing, and I hope my story will help other Black American youths and families who’ve grown distant from their ancestors’ connections to the land to do the same.

Support the Cause: Donate to AfriSTEAM Kids Garden Club to directly support Rehani and other children and families gardening. Donations will be collected by Rehani’s church, Baber African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, and used for new garden beds on the church property for the community to grow food and share harvests. Please select “other” as the donation option.

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Rehani Tapp is a Black American girl living in a city in Western New York, USA. She attends high school at AfriSTEAM Academy Homeschool. She aspires to be an author and animal educator and loves caring for her backyard chickens and exotic animals. She helps with the garden at times and wants to end the stigma around Black people and gardening.