There are gardens (and landscapes) whose importance is disproportionate to their size. Many of these were created and tended by women. While often overlooked, their importance is increasingly recognized, and many have been brought back to life through preservation efforts.
This includes the house and garden of internationally known African-American poet and civil rights activist Anne Spencer in Lynchburg, Virginia. I visited the property as a participant in Monticello’s Historic Landscape Institute, a week-long educational experience in the theory and practice of historic landscape preservation.
The garden is sited on a narrow lot behind Spencer’s modest family home in a quiet neighborhood and is hidden from the street. It was created by Spencer and her husband Edward collaboratively, beginning in 1905. Edward was responsible for the garden’s infrastructure while Anne tended the plantings. A place of refuge, it represents the unique creative talents of each.
Spencer, an important figure of the Harlem Renaissance during the 1920s, was the first African American woman to be featured in the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry (1973). Her home was an important salon for leading intellectuals. Sociologist and civil rights activist W.E.B. DuBois, a friend and colleague, was a frequent visitor and gifted Spencer a fountain sculpture. Among others, Langston Hughes, Marian Anderson, Maya Angelou, Thurgood Marshall, and Martin Luther King, Jr. were guests.
Comprised of a series of intimate outdoor rooms, the garden is defined by colorfully painted architectural features designed and built by Edward. These include a wisteria-covered pergola and grape arbor. A one-room garden cottage named Edankraal, a combination of Edward, Anne, and kraal (the Afrikaans word for enclosure), was Spencer’s writing studio and retreat.
Edward was Lynchburg’s first African-American postal carrier and repurposed materials into the garden from people he met and places he visited along his route. These include the turned posts that provide a framework for the pergola and arbor as well as the stained-glass window in Edankraal. There is something magical about the built elements in the garden, which are carefully detailed. They provide a charming framework for Anne’s colorful plantings.
Much has been written about the role that the garden serves as a refuge for creative women. For Spencer, the garden was inextricably woven throughout her personal and creative life. While her poems embraced complex themes, including those of race and gender, she returned frequently to her garden for inspiration and many of her poems include references to plants that she grew.
In 1983, eight years after Spencer’s death at the age of 93, Lynchburg’s Hillside Garden Club adopted the garden as a restoration initiative with a goal of capturing its spirit as recorded in the 1937 photograph seen below.
During the first phase, the garden’s framework was restored using Anne’s bulbs, flowers, shrubs, and roses. Twenty-five years later the arbor, pergola, and pool were restored. The Garden Conservancy continues to provide preservation guidance to the garden as well as raise financial support for its long-term management and maintenance.
Spencer dedicated her life to supporting the rights of all beings and was an outspoken advocate for civil rights (she and Edward worked to develop a chapter of the NAACP in Lynchburg, Virginia) and women’s rights. Her garden, which she lovingly called, “half my world” provided the restorative space she needed to counterbalance the challenging times in which she lived and worked.
Anne Spencer was featured as part of a series of 20 stamps honoring Harlem Renaissance figures in 2020. She is the subject of Half My World: The Garden of Anne Spencer: A History and Guide (2003), by Rebecca T. Frischkorn and Reuben M. Rainey and Lessons Learned from a Poet’s Garden (2011), by Jane Baber White. Lessons Learned from a Poet’s Garden can be purchased at the Anne Spencer House and Garden Museum website.
The Historic Garden of Anne Spencer, Lynchburg, Virginia, a gallery of selected and annotated images by DHR in collaboration with Jane Baber White is available at: https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/SlideShows/SpencerGarden/spencerTitleSlide.html.
The garden as depicted by artist Kelly Martox
Copyright © 2020 Patrice Todisco — All Rights Reserved
Reading this post leaves me aching to see the garden. I graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in Lynchburg in 1965 and while I was not the avid gardener I am now during my college years, I was interested in gardens and garden design. Yet shockingly, during my years at the college I never heard of Anne Spencer, as poet or gardener. So much has changed in the intervening years, yet regretfully, too many things remain the same.
Thank you for this post. Seeing the photos makes me feel as if I have some sense of what this talented couple created.
When I was a graduate student I spent time researching and writing about the relationship between gardens and landscapes on the work and lives of female poets and artsts in New England. At the time it was uncharted territory. Much has changed since then, but there is still much to explore.