The Roots of Races

Trevor McDonald

This project is dedicated to using landscaping along the black heritage trail to show the trail path. It only uses African plants to symbolize where the African-American people came from. Like all landscaping, it is meant to be beautiful and catch the eye, but once you look deeper into it, you find that it is a lot more than the beauty on the outside. A rich past with so much more to discover about these people along the trail.

Inspired by Rashid Johnson and his piece, Antoine's Organ, is almost a way of covering the history and allows the user to interact and find the story for themselves. The goal is to have The plants and trees cover plaques and passages that lead you to discover more about history as a way of uncovering it. This is similar to Rashid's piece because Antoine's Organ is "a sprawling, heterogeneous ecosystem into a rigid armature of black steel scaffolding," quoted from artbasel.com. 

Since most of these African Plants can't survive the harsh climate, they would be in a greenhouse on Louisburg Square where people can go into the greenhouse and take a trip back in time. These landscaping greenery might be beautiful, but that isn't their only job.