Black women: the vanguards of horticulture

Talia Boone, a Los Angeles native, has arranged flowers for years as a way to relieve stress. Whenever anxious thoughts creep in, she heads to the vast L.A. Flower Market, a wholesale market that caters to professional florists — and picks whichever flowers make her feel good. 

Back home, over a cup of tea or a glass of wine, Boone loses herself while arranging the fresh-cut flowers. But she’s also reversing a stereotype: that floral design is only for white people. 

“Let’s be really clear: our ancestors built this country,” said Boone, a Black woman who turned her passion for flowers into a small business, Postal Petals, during the pandemic. “You really think the enslavers were planting gardens, cutting flowers and making arrangements to put them in the house? Absolutely not. That is something that belonged to us as a people.” 

That the art form “has been whitewashed and forgotten is just disappointing,” she said.

Boone is part of a small but growing community of Black women who are reclaiming the floral space once occupied by their ancestors — not just in flower arrangement but also in the science and art of growing them.

Postal Petals, founded by Talia Boone, a floral wellness company that sends fresh-cut flowers and allows customers to make their own arrangements. PHOTO: COURTESY OF POSTAL PETALS

“Flowers feed our soul. Flowers feed us mentally,” said Teresa Speight, an author, horticulturist and gardening podcaster. “They give us our energy. It’s a great way to heal and help us with stress.”

A Washington, D.C., native with ancestors who were sharecroppers, Speight’s work highlights the experiences of Black floral designers, activists, farmers, and entrepreneurs. Her “why” is simple: “You don’t hear about them.” 

So, she wrote a book, “Black Flora: Inspiring Profiles of Floriculture’s New Vanguard,” centering the mostly Black women who are thriving in a space that hasn’t always included them.

The history of horticulture in the Black community is rooted in resilience and resistance. When enslaved Africans were forced to carry out agricultural labor in Southern states, they brought their expertise and at times seeds to cultivate the land. 

According to the Smithsonian Kaleidoscope website, free and enslaved African Americans in the 18th century used gardening to feed themselves. They often grew collard greens, watermelon, okra, black-eyed peas and sweet potatoes.

With a history of cultivating the land for others, Black women continue to lead the way in floriculture — the practice of growing flowers as a means of economic independence. In Southern states, Black women have a rich history of arranging flowers for gravesites and selling them in markets and as street vendors. 

“Most people would not think that we would consider having beauty in the midst of our pain, in the midst of our struggle, but we always find a way to make a way,” Speight, founder of Cottage in the Court said. “And part of that is bringing beauty inside our homes.”

The first time Speight published her book it sold out and became a distant memory, she says. Then an editor at Timber Press told Speight she was tired of seeing white men get accolades for everything in horticulture. It was republished last year.

“It’s like a match has been lit again, and this time we’re not letting it go out,” she said. “We’re here to stay. They thought they buried us. Here we are.”

Flower arranging is an act of self care, love

For Boone, the Los Angeles flower arranger, flowers mean healing. 

In 2020, during the COVID-19 lockdown, she found herself stressed and in need of flower arranging. While she could find companies that could deliver flowers to her door, the bundles weren’t always the freshest cut. And she wanted to be a part of the experience — arranging the flowers herself.

By the end of the summer, Boone founded Postal Petals, a floral wellness company that sends fresh-cut flowers and allows customers to make their own arrangements. The DIY approach, she says, is an opportunity for them to practice self-care, mindfulness, and creative expression. 

“The art truly does belong to us,” she said.

This January, Boone was one of hundreds of Los Angeles County residents forced from their homes due to wildfires. Although her home is intact, hundreds of families in historically Black neighborhoods like Altadena and Pasadena lost everything. 

An ode to the history of Black horticulture

Born and raised in Atlanta, Abra Lee spent her weekends as a child in Barnesville, Georgia, a rural town where she was introduced to agriculture and horticulture. Her mother, a historian, and her father, a director of parks in Atlanta, helped spark her passion for nature. 

Abra Lee, horticulturalist and historian, holds a rare copy of the “Handbook of the Negro Garden Club of Virginia” after one of her lectures on Black garden history. COURTESY PHOTO

After completing her degree in horticulture, Lee got her first big break at 26, as the landscape manager of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Shortly after, imposter syndrome followed: not because she was a Black woman, but because she was young. 

Her mother, however, who reminded her that it was African Americans who took care of Moton Field for the Tuskegee Airmen.

“Even though I didn’t know their names, I was not the first person, young person, Black person to be at the intersection of aviation and gardening,” Lee said. “I just needed to understand the shoulders I was standing on.”

Now more than 25 years later, this is all she knows. This is her life. 

At the root of Lee’s research is how after emancipation, formerly enslaved Southern people often returned to the plantations for their plants, cuttings and seeds, then brought them back to their plots of land to sustain family farms. She learned about the practice from a 1940s interview with William Lanier Hunt, a white horticulturalist from North Carolina.

“That blew my mind, because two things can be true: the horrors of bondage, but also, ‘I’m going back for my rose,’” Lee said. “That helped me understand Blackness not just in the agrarian way, but the importance of beauty in all parts of the puzzle for us to live as whole human beings.”

Yet African American communities also have experienced racial oppression tied to nature.

After slavery was abolished, lynchings became widespread in Southern states and often took place in the woods. And Jim Crow laws kept Black people from public beaches, national parks, pools and other public lands.

Lee recognizes that not every Black person grew up in the South or understands the historical connection between oppression and nature. Still, she makes it a point to help folks in the community embrace their own relationship to the land.

Now, as the director of horticulture at Oakland Cemetery, she educates visitors about the gardens planted by family members and descendants of Black residents. 

“Black garden history in the United States is American garden history,” Lee said. “There’s no real conversation about American gardens, if you’re not including Black people in that. Let’s just be for real.”

This article was originally published by Word In Black.