Behind the Springhill Lake Recreation Center there’s a garden that’s at once formal and playful in design. At the garden’s center is a wooden sculpture, showing stylized stalks of corn and birds. The raised beds form a circle around the sculpture with paving stones acting like connecting spokes.
This is one of Greenbelt’s Three Sisters Gardens, which is run by volunteers from CHEARS (Chesapeake Education, Arts and Research Society) and was rededicated June 19 as part of the city’s Juneteenth celebration.
Carolyn Lambright Davis, who manages the Springhill Lake Garden and runs the Earth Squad club of young gardeners, opened the ceremony, welcoming all and introducing Lois Rosado, co-chair of the city’s Black History Committee. Rosado then poured a few drops of water onto the grass “to thank our ancestors for their strength” and as a prayer that in the future “all people of the United States of America can celebrate freedom as we do today, Juneteenth.”
Greenbelt’s day of celebration was planned before the federal government announced the new holiday, and it included a heritage walk at Greenbelt Lake, Regina’s Black Artifacts Pop-up Museum inside the Springhill Lake Recreation Center and a food demonstration: How Much Sugar Do You Consume Daily run by Shaymar Higgs of The Space and sponsored by Beltway Plaza.
It was a festival and a history lesson together.
The dichotomy is at the heart of the day, according to Mayor Colin Byrd, who spoke at the garden. “We need to ask ourselves, are we interested in Juneteenth or are we committed to Juneteenth?” he asked. The commitment, Byrd said, comes from not just relaxing into a holiday, but fighting housing, food and education inequities, and promoting real and meaningful history lessons.
Next, Councilmember Emmett Jordan brought the event back to the garden, reminding everyone that the name came from a Native American legend about three wonderful sisters. Each sister was very different from the others, but each was stronger because the others were there. In this legend, one sister was corn, one was beans and one was squash. In Greenbelt, Jordan noted how the three gardens were each different, as were the three parts of Greenbelt, and yet each is beautiful and important.
The Three Sisters Gardens were the brainchild of CHEARS and specifically Maggie Cahalan, one of the group’s founders. The gardens are designed to be lush and full of color, produce food and be a place for public art, especially sculptures.
But it is the commitment to being good stewards of the land that is ingrained in Lambright Davis’ young volunteer Earth Squad, who were represented by Yudorah and Ezekiel Sancoh as well as the volunteers who work the other gardens.
And that makes these gardens all the more important, noted Councilmember Judith Davis, saying, “Because it isn’t only that they provide a unified environment in the city, but they teach about the environment period.”