“Rest.”
This one-word verb is a clear instruction to cease work or movement in order to relax, refresh oneself or recover strength.
That is also the word painted in black on the seat of a chair planted firmly in the rich, dark brown soil at Virginia Park located on the north side of New Center in Detroit.
The chair, named the first Ancestor | Posterity Chair (which has the faces of multiple Black people painted on it), is one of the many aesthetic and practical features located at the Healing Garden. Ancestors past and present are welcome to sit in the chair and take their proper rest.
The City of Detroit commissioned the Healing Garden, a three-year project that will provide a public space for spiritual release and healing.
Detroit artists Douglas Jones and Errin Whitaker took it upon themselves to creatively reimagine the park through the revitalization project to include marginalized voices in their curated garden design process.
With flowers planted by the Virginia Park community, it was a community effort to rebuild love into a space where, well, healing could take place.
On Sunday, October 3, at the Joseph Williams Walker Community Center, the artists had the community plant flowers within the garden to grieve and honor those the local community has lost. Purple Coneflowers, among other flowers, are in bloom.
The garden was made possible through the Ancestor Posterity Garden Project, (APP), which is a space designed for bounded communities to find solace and healing from distressed environments. The material works for the APP project commenced by Jones and Whitaker will be a direct culmination of their creative expressions, ancestor lineage and beliefs using botanical design and the creation of an ancestor posterity chair meant to inspire self-care through resting.
Jones told the Michigan Chronicle that the garden is a culmination of talent, time, community efforts and reverence for the ancestors.
“Our Ancestor Posterity garden coincides with other timely botanical installations including Piet Oudolf’s perennial garden on Belle Isle,” Jones said. Oudolf and Nigerian playwright, Wole Soyinka, were the inspirations behind the garden.
Whitaker, a Flint native, told the Michigan Chronicle that he became a part of the project because he calls Detroit his home away from home.
“Detroit is very much a part of my roots,” he said, adding that his roots run deep. “One of my ancestors, Joe Parker, played a large part of getting my family [via the Whitakers] from Columbus, Ga., to Detroit years before I was even thought of.”
He added that from his family, (some who literally built parts of Wayne County during the industrialization and General Motors/Ford boom era) said that he and Jones have been continuing the work of building up the community.
“[We are] actively involved in doing our part to add to this land with a garden honoring the ancestors and linking the grounds for family members coming forth as descendants; our legacies and those who have not quite reached this physical plane yet,” he said adding that he played a part in the project by bringing forth the ancestor chair constructed specifically to honor the ancestors to take a seat and rest in the garden, “visiting us and allowing us to know that ultimately, they live on by and through us.”
“I want the community to be able to share in the glory and pride of the garden as a sacred space, filled with richness spiritually but also a place to gain strength when we are weak,” Whitaker said. “I would love for the community to expect a beautiful space where they can come celebrate, reflect and pay homage to the ancestors and the strength attached to our bloodlines.”
For more information find the Healing Garden on Facebook.
