In the parking lot of the Lakewood Shopping Center on Chapel Hill Road, you expect the smells of cars idling and food cooking at nearby restaurants. Soon, in what’s now a nondescript grassy median, you’ll instead find scents more like that of your grandmother’s garden – rose, gardenia, rosemary, and countless other fragrant flora — in what is known as a scent garden.
The project is the latest work of Tiffany Griffin, the owner and founder of Bright Black. Her shop sells custom perfumes, candles and body oils in the shopping center. The curated collection of plants is designed to tell a story and evoke emotions, while focusing on smells rather than visual aesthetics.
Griffin views her work in the garden and the shop as a celebration of Black culture and life as told through scent.
“Almost all of our storytelling is confined to consumer products, and it would be great to turn this pretty crappy parking lot into a scent experience,” she said in an interview with The 9th Street Journal. “The impetus of Bright Black was the scent, not really about candles or perfume making or things. We started in our basement, telling stories of Black culture and place.”
A diverse group of family, friends and customers of all ages joined Griffin Sept. 13 for a work day to officially break ground.
The project is both by and for the community, made possible, in part, because of donations from individuals and local businesses. The garden also received $2500 from the City of Durham’s Love Your Block grant. It is one of several resident-led neighborhood revitalization projects that was approved during the grant’s second year. Others already completed include an outdoor extension of the Walltown Children’s Theatre and Sedgefield Community Place, a nature-focused play space and gathering area.
The scent garden, entitled Proud Roots, will honor the legacy of renowned civil rights activist, legal scholar, feminist, poet, and Episcopal priest, Pauli Murray, who was raised in the nearby West End neighborhood. Although she has long respected Murray and notes that Bright Black even has a scent in Murray’s name, Griffin wanted to do something different through honoring Murray’s caregivers.
The garden’s name draws inspiration from the physical roots of planting a garden, celebrating the Black diaspora and Black culture, community, and history in Durham, as well as referencing one of Murray’s books, Proud Shoes.
“The installation investigates who is there to nurture the nurturer,” Griffin said. We wanted to pick plants in a space that will be resilient.”
The garden will pay tribute to the four people who nurtured Murray, including a section that will be symbolic of the house Murray grew up in, which is only one mile away. Griffin did a consultation with the community to ask if there were any plants that made people feel nurtured or at home, and tried to include those.
She emphasizes that the plant selection is still a work in progress, made challenging by the median having varying levels of sunlight. For now, the plans include lavender, sweet grass, fig, marigolds, wild bergamot, anise hyssop, swamp rose, Carolina roses, witch hazel, thornless blackberries, Carolina allspice, and spicebush, among others.
Sarah Cross was among roughly 30 volunteers who came to the work day after learning about the opportunity through her involvement with another Love Your Block community project at a nearby school.
“I’m here specifically because I’m really moved by the vision that Bright Black has for a space to hold space for Black heroes of Durham,” Cross said. “We need native plants and trees and we need to be growing food hyperlocally.”
Two volunteers hopped into the back of a blue 1980s Chevrolet pickup truck, atop a bed of garbage bags. Another volunteer and owner of the car, Dave Ostrovsky, drove them around the back to the dumpster.
“They’re literally in a parade float,” one volunteer joked as she and others trailed behind the truck on foot toward the dumpster to help.
“We’re getting our workout in!” Griffin said as she hauled garbage bags out of the truck into the bright green dumpster, some ripped, and all full of the rewards of the day’s work: dirt and grass picked up from the median for the garden to have its fresh start.
When asked what brought him out to the work day, Ostrovsky kept it simple.
“I just like their store,” he said. “I’ve been shopping there forever.”
Liz McFarlane, another volunteer, was motivated to join in because of the satisfaction she feels from volunteering, despite it being tough physical work.
“Bermuda grass is a bitch,” she said.
Griffin initially estimated that the project would take a couple months to complete, but she says that “to date, I think the biggest lesson that I’ve come out with is you can’t rush nature.”
Griffin will hold another work day Oct. 11, and expects to complete the garden in the spring of next year. It will take a lot of community support to get there, and she is grateful to have that.
“One of Bright Black’s superpowers is convening, and I don’t fully know why we’re able to pull such a representation,” she said. “But we are, and I think it’s because we’re very compassionate, and we really live our values, and we also hold space for folks for whatever journey they’re on.”
Photo at top: Volunteers prepare the median for planting. Photo by Fiona Shuldiner – The 9th Street Journal
fiona shuldiner
