The Public Gardens & Environmental Sustainability Project

For centuries, African Americans have relied on the natural world and the arts to develop a resilient culture rooted in new lands. The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is exploring the traditions and the ongoing influence of cultivating natural resources for sustenance, empowerment, and community with the Public Gardens and Environmental Sustainability Project.

This multidimensional project integrates gardens, an outdoor classroom, education and public programming, and improved sustainability practices, blending botanical knowledge with STEM, arts, and cultural heritage.

Our Vision

NMAAHC’s Public Gardens and Environmental Sustainability Project is a multi-faceted, multi-year initiative that will continue to exemplify the Museum’s mission of uncovering untold stories and illuminating connections that shape our understanding of history, while transforming the Museum’s campus and informing solutions to a changing environment.

With your investment and support, we will tell a more comprehensive story of African Americans’ relationship to the land, steward this remarkable site even more sustainably, demonstrate culturally grounded climate resilience, and advance scholarship in partnership with universities, botanical gardens, libraries, and other community organizations.

Architectural rendering of the garden, highlighting the planned memorial and outdoor classroom.

Project Components

The Public Gardens and Environmental Sustainability Project will highlight the physical, intellectual, and spiritual contributions Black people have made to the agrarian practices of America. Building upon the Museum’s existing Café Harvest Garden and Hope and Optimism Reading Grove, this innovative initiative will celebrate the roots of the gardening and environmental sustainability legacies of African Americans in six key areas.

Ancestral Memorial Garden

This garden will help us explore spirituality and wellness, providing a space for reflection and communion.

The Ancestral Memorial Garden will allude to the wilderness that has historically served as refuge for African Americans — hush harbors, church camp meeting sites, and secret weddings in the woods. Plantings in this space will tell the stories of how African Americans provided medicines, balms, and salves for themselves in the face of medical systems that failed them.

Outdoor Classroom

We’re creating an outdoor space optimized for teaching and learning demonstrations.

Standing upon the long traditions of African American growing and foodways, educators will be able to teach a wealth of environmental sustainability lessons, such as nutritious cooking using local ingredients; food preservation; gardening; climate resilient strategies; and a host of other horticulture, floriculture, agriculture, nutrition, environmental, and STEAM curricula.

Public & Educational Programming

We are poised to tell a wealth of stories pertaining to the botanical legacies of African Americans.

We are developing public, curatorial, and educational museum programming with themes that include Afrofuturism, botany, urban farming, health and wellness, and environmental stewardship and justice.

Improving Environmental Sustainability

Our aim is to make the Museum’s grounds as green as our LEED Gold Certified building.

To preserve our campus for future generations, raise awareness of environmental topics, and support climate resilience, we will model sustainability practices. While innovating to reduce water consumption and lessen chemical inputs to the turf, we will increase the landscape’s biodiversity by growing a wider range of native and culturally meaningful trees, shrubs, and other plants.

Internships & Fellowships

We are creating more pathways for students, artists, scientists, and other scholars.

Fields such as horticulture, botany, public health, environmental science, and landscape design and architecture must more equitably include and represent African American intellectual and cultural contributions.

Art in the Garden

We’ll enhance the museum’s landscape with commissioned works of art.

We will install sculptures or other art works to be designed by specially commissioned artists to use the power of art to communicate cultural messages of health, healing, and land wisdom.