Rooted in Representation 

How Amber Grossman grew a thriving gardening community

By Katie Schmidt

When Amber Grossman first started gardening in 2019, she noticed something missing amongst the green thumbs she was looking to for inspiration. “Whether I was scrolling on social media or at the bookstore looking at gardening books, I wasn’t seeing a lot of color,” she says. “There wasn’t a lot of diversity. I had wanted to start a gardening page on Instagram anyway just to show myself gardening but then I was like ‘Well, it’d be nice to have a community for other Black women gardening.” 

And so Black Girls Gardening (@blackgirlsgardening on Instagram) was created. 

Amber’s first post went up on July 2, 2019, with the caption, “Welcome to my new page! My love for gardening has taken over my life & I want to share [with] others who have the same love! Tag your most lovely gardening photos and ideas #blackgirlswhogarden.” As of this writing, the post has a humble 275 likes compared to the 97.2K followers the page has gained in the intervening years. 

One factor in the growth of the page early on — besides of course filling a clear content gap and appealing to other Black gardeners — was COVID-19. “Everybody picked up on the gardening thing and it just got way bigger than I thought it was going to get,” Grossman says. “I was expecting a small community; a couple thousand people maybe just chatting about gardening. But then it kind of blew up so I went with it and created a business.”

While Amber lives in Wilmington, her following is global. In addition to sharing stories of and inspiration for other gardeners, the page is also a resource, recommending Black-owned businesses gardeners would be interested in, like seed companies. “It’s also a place where you can find women in your city who are gardening or farming and support them,” she says. A natural progression she has been able to witness as @blackgirlsgardening has grown is the connections her followers make via her page. Her followers will find each other virtually and then connect in one way or another. “I’ll share someone and then I see my followers become their followers,” she starts. “Then I’ll notice they’re gardening together or hosting community events in their city. Maybe they would’ve found each other eventually, but it’s cool to be able to share a photo of one girl and then another one finds her and then they team up.”

The community Amber has created is soon to not only exist in the digital space of Instagram but also in the physical world, as the “Black Girls Gardening” book is set to release on March 4th thanks to the independent publishing company Chronicle Books that reached out to Amber in 2023. “They saw me on Instagram and everything I was doing and asked, ‘Would you ever want to put this into a book?’” she says. “I honestly thought it had to be a joke!”

The book contains 31 stories including hers and the women she’s connected with online, along with gardening tips and inspiration. “I am so happy with it,” she says. “I think visually it’s so pleasing and is an easy read. It’s like putting my Instagram into a physical copy forever.”

For a self-described introvert, the entire experience of launching the page and developing the book has stretched her far past how she envisions herself. “I’ve definitely stepped outside of my comfort zone with this,” she says. “Typically, I am home, in my garden and I like to be in that comfort. I like people, but sometimes from a distance, you know? So, an online community was great for me, but I never thought it would reach this far.” 

Shortly after launching the page, though, Amber saw her following climb and her inbox notifications grow. Other Black women interested in gardening tips and tricks reached out with emphatic messages of gratitude for the page’s existence and as a home for their own gardening stories. 

“I knew it’d be cool if you could scroll through gardening pages online and see someone who looks like me” she says. “That’s why I wanted to push so hard on Black Girls Gardening. I do still get people who are like, ‘Why do you have to put color into it?’ I’m not taking away from anybody else who is gardening. This is to highlight people who I didn’t feel had a place in this space before.” 

Little did she know that intuition would blossom into thriving gardens and a growing community, both in her own backyard and beyond. 

Join Amber for a Black Girls Gardening Book Signing on March 8 at Azalea Station. Find details at blackgirlsgardening.info.