1 of 4
The Sankofa Community Orchard grand opening was held on Oct. 30.
2 of 4
The project is led by food justice advocate Duron Chavis (center).
3 of 4
The 2-acre green space is located in Richmond’s South Side on Covington Road.
4 of 4
The orchard includes more than 80 fruit trees, an outdoor kitchen, murals and event space.
On Oct. 30, local food activist Duron Chavis held an open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony at Sankofa Community Orchard, marking the latest achievement of a movement that has been growing since he launched the McDonough Community Garden in Reedy Creek almost a decade ago.
“Doing these community garden spaces has always been about creating gathering spaces more than even having the food there,” Chavis says. “Food is the way that people are magnetized to the space because everybody has to eat — food breaks down boxes. Bringing people to a shared space to forge relationships across class, gender and generations is super important for mobilizing folks. It’s the rubric of community organizing.”
Now having launched five green gathering spaces replete with raised beds, free food and fruit trees, the gardens’ leader isn’t shy about why he does this work.
“It’s interesting to me that more people don’t know the annexation of South Side was an effort to dilute the Black vote that literally shut down city government for years,” Chavis says. “There is no reference to that today — it’s a cognitive dissonance, like when people go through a head trauma and have amnesia. Only now is this legacy coming up in the city’s conversation around the lack of green spaces on South Side. We center that history explicitly because it’s important for people to understand the trauma annexation caused and why these inequities exist today.”
The fight for resilience and resourcefulness in the face of discrimination and disinvestment remains all too common on Richmond’s South Side, but it also represents the driving force behind Chavis’ growing tally of community gardens south of the James.
At around 2 acres, Sankofa is the single largest community garden created as part of the city’s Richmond Grows Gardens program, through which residents can establish shared green spaces on underutilized plots of publicly owned land. Chavis, the founder and director of The Happily Natural Day, had been in search of a large space that could support a full orchard, so when this particular parcel, tucked away in the Westover neighborhood off of Midlothian Turnpike, became an option, he pounced.
“This new orchard allowed us to create a space that speaks to multiple causes at one time: food justice, community building and even stormwater management given it’s right next to Reedy Creek,” Chavis says. “It was that intersectional nature of the space that attracted us. This is 2 acres of green space where, if you come here, you will be undisturbed the whole time you’re here — just surrounded by growing things, birds chirping and pure nature.”
Chavis chose the name Sankofa, an Akan word from Ghana, to symbolize his desire that the new community orchard will help people find the answers to today’s crises by gleaning the wisdom of the past. The literal translation of the word is “go back and fetch it from the source,” hinting to visitors that solutions to pressing problems such as inequity, food insecurity and climate change already exist, if only one is willing to look for them.
With 80 fruit trees, 30 blueberry bushes and countless other plants growing, Sankofa certainly offers answers to those in search of healthy food and a lush space in which to connect with nature. Thanks to a $25,000 grant from the Virginia Outdoors Foundation, Sankofa also boasts an outdoor kitchen space with a grill, shade structures and even solar panels. Roughly a dozen murals by local Black artists honoring innovators and freedom fighters such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Assata Shakur and George Washington Carver welcome visitors to the space and center its legacy of Black liberation.
Every Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., volunteers gather to continue improving Sankofa; however, visitors are welcome whenever they would like. Signage is also coming to present to people ideas on how to best use the space, from yoga and meditation practices to lessons on cooking healthy meals. Although the increasing activity at the space will hopefully bring ever more people out to enjoy Sankofa, the orchard’s sheer existence is enough of a win for Chavis.
“In terms of organizing a community, you have to have wins for people to claim, even if it’s just the planting of a single tree,” he says. “That one tree symbolizes an ability to transform a space and make it lush and green. Creating spaces like Sankofa allows people to feel that collaborative and collective victory. I hope even more folks show up.”
