A flower is named after an 18th-century Black child
It’s Black History Month, and I am going to relay a story I read in The Guardian a couple of years ago. It’s about a new rose named after the first Black gardener in the UK (the link is below).
It turns out that an 8-year-old boy, fishing by himself, was taken from west Africa by sailors and brought to Gwynedd in north Wales. Although such abductions usually ended in enslavement for Black people, that did not happen in this instance. The child was trained to be a gardener - a free person, not enslaved - for the Wynn family of the Ystumllyn estate (which is how he came to be named John Ystumllyn).
Ystumllyn went on to become a respected horticulturalist and married a local white woman called Margaret Gruffydd. He has now been honoured with a rose named after him in celebration of his life; in part, thanks to Zehra Zaidi, the founder of We Too Built Britain, which campaigns to raise awareness of the achievements of under-represented groups. She approached the Chelsea flower show winner, Harkness Roses, with the idea to create the rose in the wake of Black Lives Matters protests.
Zaidi explained that it would be important for minorities to learn the story of Ystumllyn. Such histories illustrate integration and the contributions of people of colour in Britain.
You can read more details via the link below, but I really thought it was important to pass this wonderful acknowledgement along, especially in February's Black History Month. It is refreshing to know that in some cases, Black people living in Britain 200 years ago were treated as part of the community. This is not to say he never experienced racism; he did, and this mentioned in his biography. However, it appears that for the most part, he had a happy life.
I admit, I feel sadness in knowing that the 8-year-old boy's parents would have worried, never knowing what happened to their child. I'm only glad that, if this had to happen, it had a happy outcome in the end.
Below, you can see the rose named after John Ystumllyn.
The Guardian article by David Batty:
Of further interest:
https://www.roses.co.uk/product/530997/rose-the-john-ystumllyn-5l-potted
