Apothecary Installation at Walkers Reserve, St. Andrew, in collaboration with Kevin Talma and the Walkers Institute for Regenerative Research Education and Design (WIRRED)

The inaugural ceremony for this project took place on January 28th, with the special participation of Ireka Jelani, her two children Subira and Baruti Jelani and Ras Ils, as part of the blessing of the garden in the African tradition. The opening remarks for this event can be accessed here.

Access the press release here.

Access the webpage for WIRRED here.

This plot highlights the revolutionary and subversive history of plants, acknowledging them as agents of restoration and reparation while insisting on the need for us to remember valuable systems of knowledge that are being erased or forgotten.

As we recover from a health crisis of a global scale, A Garden of Hope is fitting for several reasons. Firstly, this apothecary sits within the larger hopeful vision of a post-plantation, sand quarry site, using permaculture as a tool to regenerate a landscape that has been eroded by centuries of extractive farming and mining practices. Its aim to plant more trees and to offer educational resources through workshops and online programming will empower Barbadians to think about this landscape, farming, and food sovereignty in more progressive and mutually beneficial ways.

Additionally, the naming of the garden refers to The Hope, a 17th-century, 80-acre plantation amalgamated into the larger Scotland plantation listed in the Hugh Queree papers lodged in the Barbados Department of Archives. Once owned by Judith Powrey this is the current location of WIRRED and Walkers Reserve.

Given that the garden has been designed with a focus on the reproductive and post-reproductive phases of women’s lives, it will be dedicated to the unnamed indentured women who would have lived in this part of the island in the 17th century, and the 160 girl children and women listed in the slave register for Walkers. The women who comprised the slave society at Walkers ranged in age from 5 months to 101 years. This register was made by Joseph William Jordan for Walkers Plantation in St. Andrews in a claim submitted on 28th, February, 1834.

This garden is dedicated to all of these women–the early owner of the plantation, the indentured women, and the enslaved women and their children. They were all part of the colonial machinery controlling both the landscape and women’s bodies in violent ways. I imagine that some of these women would have used wild botanicals growing in this area to heal themselves from a wide variety of illnesses, and as acts of resistance and self-preservation in response to slave owners controlling their bodies and their wombs. Acquiring knowledge of plants and their medicinal uses was an act of empowerment and agency for these women.

A Garden of Hope acknowledges that all plantation lands on the island are embedded with traumatic histories based on the extraction of physical labour from the human labour force transplanted from around the world and the exhaustion of the soil as a result of mono-crop farming practices. This living apothecary is intended as a sacred space of healing, regeneration, and contemplation, honouring the traditions of bush medicine and recognising this site as hallowed ground.

Lastly, the plants in the garden will also be available as a natural first aid kit for those living and working on site.

Opening Ceremony:

Image credit: Andre Forde of UltraLens Photography, courtesy of Walkers Reserve.

Image credits: Annalee Davis & friends

Video clip of ceremonial song led by Ireka Jelani, her two children Subira and Baruti Jelani and Ras Ils:

Phase 2:

Image credit: Walkers Reserve.

Phase 1: Progress is well underway with constructing the garden beds using the cobwall method. This involves a natural building process including limestone, clay, soil, water, and organic material–typically hay or dried khus khus grass. This is being undertaken with excellent results by Richard White and the team at Walkers.