Language of Land and Water

When people move, they carry with them cultural knowledge, symbolic ties, and physical pieces of lands left behind.
In designing the African Ancestors Memorial Garden, Walter Hood thoughtfully considered multifaceted ways to link Charleston to a network of global sites of memory connected by the history of slavery and its legacies. From its Palm Grove studded with Canary Island Palms, a reflection of the African Diaspora, to its Sweetgrass Field filled with waist-high grasses that serve as the foundation of Lowcountry basket weaving traditions, each feature of the African Ancestors Memorial Garden tells its own story.