Hampton Neighborhood Receives First Community Resilience Action Plan

In collaboration with the amazing residents of Aberdeen Garden, our academic partners, and inspired funder, the Blocker Foundation, Wetlands Watch is proud to announce the creation of a Neighborhood Resilience Action Plan for Aberdeen Gardens. This unique document is both a celebration of Aberdeen Garden’s history and an actionable strategic guide that will help protect this important Virginia community. The plan identifies the community’s top resilience priorities and maps out a series of strategies that will increase flood resilience and overall community strength. 

The Neighborhood Resilience Action Plan is the culmination of a community-driven resilience planning effort, still underway, that involves civic leaders, City leaders, and academic partners in a sweeping collaborative effort facilitated by Wetlands Watch. At the center of the project is Wetlands Watch’s Resilience Research and Design Collaborative Laboratory, or Collaboratory, which pairs specialized academic teams in the design-build disciplines with community residents and local governments to co-produce neighborhood-scale resilience designs.

The Action Plans that result from these collaborations are used by residents, community organizations, and local governments to understand the wide array of available resilience options, aid in the design and implementation of specific solutions, and identify potential external sources of funding.

Our community partners for this project are The Historical Foundation of Aberdeen Gardens, Aberdeen Gardens Historic and Civic Association, and the Greater Aberdeen Community Coalition. Our academic partners are the Virginia Tech School of Design (Landscape Architecture), Hampton University Architecture Department, Old Dominion University Civil & Environmental Engineering Department, and the Christopher Newport University Communication Department. Our government partner is Resilient Hampton. 

Challenges & Solutions: Aberdeen Gardens is a New Deal resettlement community that was established to provide African American workers and their families with better living conditions and employment opportunities after the harrowing years of the Great Depression. Designed for and by African Americans starting in 1934, the community was originally composed of 158 brick houses, a school, and general store. As the infrastructure ages, the community, like many neighborhoods along the Virginia coast, is struggling to adapt to a significant increase in flooding events. During and after storm events, Aberdeen Gardens residents regularly experience flooding in the streets, their yards, and occasionally their homes.

Aberdeen Garden construction in 1934. Photo: Hampton University Archives, via Aberdeen Gardens Heritage Committee, Aberdeen Gardens, Arcadia Publishing, Images of America series (2007), p.10.

Aberdeen Garden’s legacy of unity and self-sufficiency has been a cornerstone of its identity throughout its history. As a direct consequence of this, the community has actively defined its own vision of resilience and set the parameters of the Community Resilience Action Plan. The Plan is thus deeply rooted in the social fabric of Aberdeen Gardens, and represents a way for the community to keep faith with the past and help realize its dreams for the future.

For instance, we explore how rain gardens and bioswales, permeable pavement options and rain barrels aid in resilience efforts, and describe how to design, install, and fund these projects. We show how pollinator gardens, native plant buffers, a restored Aberdeen Creek, and community gardens can help forward resilience efforts while simultaneously increasing the richness of the lived experience for Aberdeen residents.

Student designed example of an engineered creek stabilization for Aberdeen Creek.

One project about which we are particularly excited is the Emancipation Oak Project. 

The Emancipation Oak is a historic tree that is located on the campus of Hampton University in Hampton, Virginia, and was the site of a groundbreaking event in American history. On May 24, 1861, shortly after the outbreak of the American Civil War, Union General Benjamin F. Butler declared that enslaved peoples who reached Union territory would not be returned to the Confederacy but considered “contraband of war.” As a consequence of this, Fort Monroe, located at the southern tip of Hampton, offered a haven for enslaved people seeking freedom. Two years later, Hampton residents gathered under the Oak to hear the reading of the Emancipation Proclamation, the very first reading in the South. The Emancipation Oak remains as a powerful reminder of the resilience of the African American people in their pursuit of freedom and equality.

The canopy of Emancipation Oak on the Campus of Hampton University. Photo by Erik Soderstrom.

The Emancipation Oak Project seeks to propagate seeds from the Emancipation Oak and use its saplings for tree plantings in Aberdeen Gardens. There is no small amount of enthusiasm for this project in the Aberdeen community, and Wetlands Watch is actively working to recruit the Green Infrastructure Center to identify the best places for the saplings in the Gardens. We are also connecting with Hampton University to gain permission to harvest acorns for the project.

Acorns for the oak have been harvested in the past. One sapling was given to President Obama in 2010 and was subsequently planted on White House grounds.

The Emancipation Oak Project is of particular interest to Wetlands Watch because it shows how community-led resilience efforts can be used to express essential, indomitable truths. Propagation of the Oak throughout Aberdeen Gardens would unite the community’s past struggles with its hopes for the future, and demonstrate how the lessons of history take root and flourish in tangible, living forms. It would express the unyielding optimism of those who plant seeds of freedom and resilience, and the ultimate recipients of their actions will be generations of Americans they will never see.

We are grateful for the generous contributions of all of our partners in this effort.