So you think that you are a sane person, Ed.

That's a good sign that you are an absolute stark raving mad lunatic.

Are you implying that the sane are slow witted dolts of limited vocabulary?

Bet you are a fundamentalist bible thumping fascist too!!!


ed wrote in message
.. .
Does it always take you 1500 words to say the equivalent of a sane
person's
one sentence?

Big Head Ed


"paghat" wrote in message
news
In article ,
(Coleman E. Howard) wrote:

Are there any black gardening organizations? I'm interested
African-American viewpoints on gardening. Any sites you can direct me
to?

Coleman E. Howard

The Georgia Cotton Plantation Society?
The District of Columbia Lawn-Jocky Club?

But seriously.
The Big Lick Garden Club is the oldest continuously meeting black
gardening club, & meets in Roanoke, corner of Lynchburg Ave. & E-4th St,
in a small historical building built in 1837. There are black gardening
clubs in most major cities -- if there's a black neighborhood, there's a
black garden club. As for websites, I just did a quick search & couldn't
find that any of these clubs maintain websites, so you're gonna have to
go
out into the actual world & hang out with actual gardeners. Unless you
live in a "blackless" suburb it should be easy. If your community has a
black-run newspaper (Seattle's is called "The Facts"), you'll find
announcements of garden clubs that are at least defacto black gardening
clubs because of the neighborhood they're in, & a few, especially in the
South, will be consciously culturally African American garden clubs.
Hook
up with any of these, then YOU create the webpage! You can provide a web
presence for such gardening organizations to connect & as a central
clearinghouse for articles & research & information. There are many
really fascinating topics that could be covered at such a website if you
pursued this, & you could put many of the apropos regional clubs in
contact with each other & get new members to the garden clubs.

Despite my jesting allusion to the obnoxioius lawn jocky, there actually
are respectful pride-oriented African American lawn ornaments, marketed
by
a company called Afro-Kin (see musefinds.com). Instead of a lawn jocky
you can get an angel with black features, in your choice of skin tones
from yaller to pure African.

I'm half Jew on the paternal & mongrel on the maternal side, so this
isn't
"my" topic except insofar as any Civil Libertarian had BETTER be
interested in such things, but it's a topic I find interesting. From a
honky point of view, I can say the topic you're interested in is
potentially very important. African Americans even in slave days were
famous gardeners (they wouldn't be fed much of quality if they hadn't
grown their own veggies) & their choices & methods strongly influenced
gardening throughout Europe & American, & were responsible for many
plant
introductions. George "Peanut" Washington Carver is often treated by
history books as some kind of weird exception to African American
interests, but he had a thoroughly black cultural context for his work.
A
garden consisting just of plants introduced by African Americans is
shown
he
http://4hgarden.msu.edu/tour/20.html
or try here if you have Flash on your computer:
http://4hgarden.msu.edu/main.html
This garden was constructed by kids involved in 4H in Michigan.
There's also the African American Garden Project at Pittsburgh founded
in
1996 with help of the Three Rivers Arts Festival, & the African American
Cultural Gardens founded in 1977 by the African American Garden
Organization (supplanted by the AA Garden Federation), but I couldn't
find
pictures of these on the web, & don't know if they still exist. Even if
they're just history, someone with a real interest in this stuff should
do
the research & bring it all together AS history. In the wake of the
University of Michigan's African American Garden planted by children &
volunteers, schools, horiticultural clubs, & public gardens have made
noises of creating new AA Gardens -- Pueblo Gardens in Tucson for
example
wants volunteers to establish sundry ethnic garden areas, & Westminster
Memorial Park (an historical segregated cemetery in California) has been
making noises about adding an African American Garden. Temporary African
American gardens are frquently planted by gradeschool children as a fun
learning event that lasts an entire school year. The Bexar County
Master
Gardeners establish an A-A Garden in San Antonio, with the assistance of
over two dozen master gardeners who came from Georgia to get it started,
incorporating the knowledge of black elders in San Antonio plus
involving
children as gardeners (as an extension of their general "wee tots &
elders" gardening projects). I would call it quite a fad, but it's an
area
of cultural & historical interest that is not being neglected.

Check out this web page for the sculptures & plants Civil Rights Garden
of
Atlantic City New Jersey :
http://digitalphotos1.tripod.com/index.html
It was founded in 1904.

Here's a lovely page from the University of Illinois, about African
American gardening traditions, including some remarkable photographs:
http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/la/LA437-...yan/main2.html
The author of this page is Chinese, & ends his monograph with an appeal
for A HANDBOOK FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN GARDENING reflecting the old
traditions & distinct cultural elements. A handbook does not yet exist
that I'm aware of, but there's one important academic book on the
subject,
AFRICAN AMERICAN GARDENS IN THE RURAL SOUTH by Richard Westmacott, which
is riddled with quotations from extensive interviews with southern rural
gardeners. One of Professor Westmacott's students has added to the
overview with IN SEARCH OF A GARDEN: AFRICAN AMERICANS & THE LAND, by
Elise Eugenia LeMaistre. See also THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GARDENING entry
under "African American Gardening."

A recurring feature of African American gardens is the "swept ground" &
rock boundary surroundings, without lawn turf. It doesn't take a lot of
thinking to figure out why Americans with African heritage might not be
as
much into surrounding their gardens with lawns as are Europeans -- it
just
wouldn't be the method inherited from Africa. African American gardens
also feature plants with "magic" properties, whether or not the magic is
still believed in. Found objects & natural roots seem also to be de
rigour, as well as some of the most remarkable home-made ornaments &
folk
art treasures, or found objects painted to render them into art. Robert
Farris Thompson on Black Art (quoted at the University of Illinois page
cited above) says these garden displays are carried over unchanged from
"the philosophical values of classical Kongo culture." We might add taht
artists long deprived of gallery exhibition either because they are
"outsider artists" or due to outright racism, had only their gardens
wherein to exhibit.

I trust others than myself can see the emotional, political, cultural,
social & artistic POWER that underlies this topic, & I'd be as eager to
tour African American Gardens as I would Japanese Tea Gardens.

Here's a news bit about an African American Garden that has been around
for over a century & only recently threatened by demolition &
development:

WEEKSVILLE, AN HISTORIC AFRICAN-AMERICAN GARDEN

Weeksville is not the typical site of of a demolished abandoned
building,
but a garden that has cultivated since at least the 19th century. Its
fate
has been cavalierly discussed behind closed doors for a couple of
years
now.
The Weeksville garden could be a wonderful showcase for
African-American
horti/cultural history. Instead, politicians with close ties to
developers
have been maneuvering to have it destroyed.

The City of New York has submitted an application in Kings County
Supreme
Court to acquire property for the Crown Heights 4th Amended Urban
renewal
Plan which includes and completely surrounds the historic houses and
garden
at Society for the Preservation of Weeksville (Brooklyn Block 1356
lots
19,21,22,23). The garden is already city owned, so it is unclear what
the
timeframe for construction of this project is. This garden is also
threatened by development under HPD's Neighborhood Builders Program,
and
was
listed in the July 1998 HPD RFQ. We understand that the RFQ was
withdrawn,
but Weeksville is back again on the active development lists.

--
"Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
"Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
-from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/