Image Credit: Diana Velasquez-Munoz
This fall, something pretty special ripened in the Institute of Applied Agriculture’s (IAA) Teaching Garden located between the School of Public Health and the Eppley Recreation Center. Alongside tomatoes, eggplant, garlic, basil, and beans, soft buds of cotton bloomed.
Cotton is not your typical crop for a hand-scale, Mid-Atlantic vegetable garden and yet, student volunteers harvested multiple pounds of fuzzy bolls throughout September and October. It was pretty, but… what to do with it?
This wasn’t just any cotton either. This was an heirloom variety called Arkansas Green Lint. Heirloom varieties are vintage strains of garden plants that have been preserved by seed saving over many generations because of special characteristics – purple potatoes, uniquely-flavored lettuces, culturally significant types of beans. In the case of cotton, heirloom varieties are significant because of their colors and historical importance. The Arkansas Green Lint cotton was – you guessed it – green! It was historically grown by slaves in their personal gardens, prior to the Civil War. Most cotton used to be pink, yellow, green, or blue in color rather than white. Slaves grew the traditional colorful cottons in their own gardens so that it could be easily distinguished from the white cotton grown on plantations for the market.
Considering the special qualities of this cotton, the IAA put out a call to campus artists: could anyone find a creative way to serve this cotton justice? Enter John Ruppert, professor of sculpture and chair of the Department of Art at the University of Maryland. Professor Ruppert is working on a project in collaboration with the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College and the director of the Kent County Arts Council in Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. The group is now turning its attention to “how this cotton could be used as a catalyst for programing… both at the College and in the community,” says Ruppert. At this early stage, the group is considering how art, science, and honoring the legacy of Eastern Shore slaves could be expressed in gardening. Ruppert is considering growing more heirloom cotton in Chestertown.
From its humble beginnings in the IAA Teaching Garden, this is one cotton harvest that is poised to receive a lot of attention!
