Williamsburg Tuesdays

One of the running themes in my life is my complete and infinite wonder, shock, and delight at the paths life has taken me on. And my intent is not to sound like some passive passenger, but some of the best parts of my life are the ones I didn’t particularly plan.

Twice a week for the past few years, I’ve needed to be in Williamsburg, filling a few hours while my kiddo takes classes. Said kiddo is on the verge of driving and sitting in a cafe this morning, it hit me that this might be my last fall having a leisurely breakfast before making my usual thrift and antique runs in town.

In some ways, I have felt like a cultural observer, an outsider. As a creative and a Black woman, in many ways, this has not felt like my place. But it also has been. It’s impossible for me, while driving through CW, not to think about the history when I see the homes, and more especially, the gardens.

I think about the folks like me, those people who my friend Abra Lee would describe as the first landscape architects and horticulturalists of this place whose names have largely been lost to history. I think about who gets to be called a gardener, and with the holidays on the horizon, I think about what we consider traditional Colonial Williamsburg floral design which actually stems not from the colonial period at all, but from Louise Bang Fisher’s work in the 1930s during the restoration. Of course, she referenced historical design, but still.

The gardens those arrangements drew from? Those were planned and tended by people whose names we’ll never know.