Black Flora: Profiles of Inspiring Black Flower Farmers + Florists

Teresa J. Speight is a mother, grandmother, steward of our land, garden writer, and a history lover devoted to her community. Teresa is the Urban Gardening Chair and the liaison to the National Butterfly Garden at the U.S. Botanic Garden for National Garden Clubs Inc.. She is the founder and president of the Jabali Amani Garden Collective, a garden club for African American women in gardening and growing a stronger community. It is the first ever online Federated Garden Club. Teresa is an estate gardener and co-leader of the Fiesta Place Community Garden, District Heights, Maryland; one of the founding farmers of the Eitt CSA in Stafford County’s first Transitional Organic CSA Farm; and former Head Gardener for the City of Fredericksburg, ​Her blog and podcast Cottage in the Court offers curated garden experiences for small groups and one-on-one garden coaching, specializing in earth-friendly practices. Reconnecting average people with the soil is extremely important to Teresa, as she believes when people reconnect with the soil, nature, and their roots, they can begin to respect all that the earth provides. Dawn M Trimble is an artist, designer, and writer whose work initiates a dialogue that shifts subtly from the vulnerability of humanity to a critical reading and response to the world through architecture, design, and her faith. Dawn’s earliest desire to express can be traced to drawing simple floorplan diagrams in a notebook in her Albany, Georgia childhood home. Envisioning how one would experience space physically and emotionally led her to pursue interior design, then architecture in her academic studies and professional career. After spending time in the design industry, Dawn discovered that she didn’t like sitting behind a desk for hours on end and began searching for a more dynamic and authentic way to create. She was strongly drawn to watercolor painting because of the patient and more personal way this practice allowed her to explore without limits. Forever interested in the spatial intricacies inherent in the design and the sensitivity of human emotion, Dawn tests these complexities through abstraction. She purposefully breaks away from the traditional manner in which watercolor (and sometimes paper) is used and instead engages the intimacy of emotion. Seeking spatial harmony and composition, she translates emotion by creating intense and saturated moves that complement the more ethereal and quiet ones, forever negotiating with her keen, intuitive eye. Through each uniquely created and original work, Dawn seeks to communicate a beautiful and stirring narrative available to us through the lives we experience. Abra Lee is a national speaker, writer, and owner of Conquer the Soil a platform that combines Black garden history and pop culture to raise awareness of horticulture. She has spent time in the dirt as a municipal arborist, extension agent, airport landscape manager, and more. Lee is a graduate of Auburn University and alumna of the Longwood Gardens Society of Fellows, a global network of public horticulture professionals. Her work has been published in the New York Times and she is the author of the forthcoming book Conquer the Soil: Black America and the Untold Stories of Our Country's Gardeners, Farmers, and Growers (Timber Press, 2022) Myriah is a storyteller and producer. Her work has supported the production of virtual reality storytelling and nonfiction shorts for African/American: Making the Nation's Table - the nation's first major exhibition to celebrate Black farmers, chefs, food and drink producers and their contributions to American cuisine. As director/producer, she is leading a legacy project, Black Farmer Stories, which leverages multimedia storytelling to document and preserve the history, legacy, cultural heritage and agricultural knowledge of Black farmers across the U.S. through storytelling. She has developed and produced podcasts for the Emmett Till Project and the Schomburg-Mellon Humanities Summer Institute series. Her editorial work has been published in Street Fight, The Content Strategist, The Newcastle Chronicle & Journal, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail and Mail Online. Nicole Cordier is a floral designer and shop manager at Grace Flowers Hawaii as well as botanical artist for Cordier Botanical Art.