Same Boats Different Stops – Dr Jessica B. Harris curates African American Garden
14th July 2024
OCC Patron Dr Jessica B. Harris, America’s leading scholar on the foodways of the African Diaspora, has curated Same Boats Different Stops, the third and final installment of the African American Garden project at the renowned New York Botanical Garden (NYBG).
Open until October 2024, the garden highlights the plants and gardening traditions that are at the heart of the experiences and histories of people from Africa in the Americas.
Learn more – visit the NYBG website.
Now in its final year, the African American Garden is a three-year collaboration between scholars and local artists to celebrate the history of the African Diaspora in the Americas through the lens of plants and food, presented at NYBG’s Edible Academy.
In 2022, African American Garden: Remembrance & Resilience gave a curated view of the diverse world of African Americans and their foodways in the context of the United States from rice, okra and other grains and greens to cotton, tobacco, indigo, watercress and liquorice root. For 2023, African American Garden: The Caribbean Experience featured more than 140 plant varieties highlighting the plants and gardening histories that are essential contributions to Afro-Caribbean foodways, including those that have been brought to the U.S. by Caribbean immigrants.
African American Garden: Diaspora – Same Boats Different Stops, curated by Jessica Harris, features eight vegetable garden beds arranged in a semi-circle. Some explore plants from different regions – South America, the Caribbean and Central America, and North America – while others spotlight their uses for medicinal remedies, creativity and economic return. The final bed is a recreation of a sugarcane field, an important plantation crop throughout the tropical parts of the Americas, which drove the forced removal, relocation and brutal enslavement of millions of Africans.
“Here in these eight beds, you will find stories of resilience and resistance, modification and migration, remembrance, reverence, and hemisphere-wide connection told through the plants of our world,” said Dr. Harris. “The words ‘Same Boat Different Stops’ speak to the 3 links shared by all of African descent…Over our more than 500 years as inhabitants of this hemisphere, we have with our cultures, labour and agricultural know-how, transformed it. This garden celebrates our presence here in all of its forms.”
Dr. Jessica B. Harris, an NYBG Trustee, has written 12 critically acclaimed books on the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora, including High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, and was recently inducted into the James Beard Foundation’s Hall of Fame. To create the African American Garden, she worked collaboratively with historians, heritage seed collectors and NYBG’s Edible Academy staff.
About the New York Botanical Garden
The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) has been a connective hub among people, plants and the shared planet since 1891. For more than 130 years, it has been rooted in the cultural fabric of New York City, in the heart of the Bronx, its greenest borough. NYBG’s 250 acres are home to renowned exhibitions, immersive botanical experiences, art and music and events, and it is a steward of globally significant research collections.