With a hit podcast, “Black in the Garden,” Colah B. Tawkin connects Black people to the healing properties of plant life and nature, dispelling stereotypes in the process.
Tawkin is a self-taught expert on gardens, flowers, horticulture, botanicals and different types of plants. Her relationship with nature began with her childhood in Jacksonville, Florida.
Each week, Colah B. Tawkin takes to the digital airwaves to celebrate Black people’s relationship with nature, dropping knowledge about plant life.
Tawkin — that’s a stage name, if you haven’t caught it — is host of “Black in the Garden,” a podcast heard by thousands of listeners in more than 90 countries. Part instructional, part racial healing project, the top-ten, 100-percent organic podcast is an extension of a larger brand Tawkin has been building around nurturing plant life.
And it all happened somewhat by accident.
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“I remember being so obsessed with being when I was getting into growing …I did not want to go inside. I was obsessed with being out there, even if I was in the hot Florida sun,” she says.
From then on, Tawkin has kept her thumbs green and hands dirty.
“They Weren’t Talking to Me”
For more than a decade, she’s learned all aspects of plant life — from home gardening to more advanced concepts around botanicals, horticulture and arboring. In the process, she’s grown her podcast, launched in 2019, into one of Apple Podcasts’ top 10 home and garden programs. And she has found a production partner with radio station WABE, Atlanta’s NPR affiliate.
“It really started with me taking a look at the media landscape — the garden media, horticultural media landscape,” says the woman born Ticole Smith in Jacksonville, Florida. What she noticed was a cohort that was “very white, very old and definitely out of sync and out of touch with the tone that Black people speak in, the style that [resonates with] black people.”
I just remember having a very specific moment where I was, like, ‘I get to do this.’ At that moment, I felt connected to the ancestors.
Colah b. Tawkin, podcast host
As she listened, “I just didn’t feel like they were talking to me.”
A former truck driver, Tawkin says her primary goal is to celebrate the stories of Black people and their relationships to plants and trees without diluting them, nor watering down her voice for non-Black listeners.
“It’s easy to to think that the beginning of Black history starts with the transatlantic slave trade,” Tawkin says. “The term ‘environmental trauma’ comes up in relation to just knowing that [our ancestors were] being forced to do labor and pick cotton and things like that.”
Countering Narratives
Even after emancipation became official, the bondage of Black Americans — linked to the responsibility of working the earth and caring for plants — wasn’t over, she says: “Slavery didn’t end. It just was converted to sharecropping.’”
“’That’s some slave sh-t,’ is what I hear people say a lot” when she talks about her work, Tawkin says. To counter those narratives, Tawkin reframes the discussion, approaching the benefits of plant cultivation from an educational lens.
Though she serves as the liaison between listener and scientist, Tawkin herself does not have a formal education in horticulture, agriculture or plant science. But she has been in plenty of rooms with accomplished specialists and cutting-edge researchers, and she knows how to translate academic jargon and concepts to the uninformed.
“There is a lot of complex terminology in horticulture and agriculture, and it can get deep,” Tawkin says. Therefore, when talking with professionals for her broadcast, she says she is “very intentional” about explaining language “that could easily go over a lot of people’s heads. I’m rephrasing it or reframing it in a way to make sure that my listener can keep up with what we’re discussing.”
Telling Positive Stories
Tawkin’s episodes have been featured in college syllabi, referenced in other media, and have led to appearances all over, including a TED talk in 2023. “But at the end of the day, for me, it’s really about telling stories that are positive and celebratory about black people’s connection to plants and nature.”
And she is grateful for the privilege.
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“I just remember having a very specific moment where I was, like, ‘I get to do this,’” Tawkin says. “At that moment, I felt connected to the ancestors. And I tried to keep that on top of mind when I am tending to my garden, especially outside.”
Now, connect Black plant nurturing to slavery, “I’m just, like, ‘Well, they were forced to do it, but there are so many other ways that we can connect with the land.’”
“I just want them to know that it really is a privilege to be able to do that in this land.”
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