The Chatham Arts Council is investing in artists through our Meet This Artist series, introducing you to 12 Chatham County artists each year in a big way. The fine folks at Hobbs Architects in downtown Pittsboro are powering our Meet This Artist series this year. Architecture is art, and the Hobbs crew values art in our community. So, take a look. Meet your very inspiring neighbors.
Guest writer Corbie Hill penned this Meet This Artist feature. Corbie is a writer, musician, runner, and Star Trek superfan who lives in Pittsboro. Listen to Corbie’s music here, and find him on Instagram here.
We meet at an unassuming little property just southwest of Pittsboro.
It’s minutes from town, but quiet. Trees surround the house and outbuildings on three sides. For Deena Class of Word & Plant, this place is the future. Garden Haven and Farm has only been hers since April, but Class is already hard at work bringing her vision to life on these three-and-a-half acres.
The non-native privacy shrubs behind the split-rail fence: gone. They were blocking the southern sun. Pallets of seedlings slosh under too much water from recent torrential rains. Class tilts the pallets back to drain them, but isn’t worried. They’re plants. They’ll be fine. She shows me around. One day the singlewide nestled near the house will be ready for people to do farm stays. One day the demonstration gardens will thrive. Class will nurture a beautiful chaos of plants here. She will be right at home.
Class, an herbalist whose Word & Plant offerings range from workshops to plant magic pop-ups to handcrafted plant goods, wasn’t raised on plants. When she was eight or nine, sure, her parents tried a tomato plant (it lived a short life on the back edge of their new construction lot in Pennsylvania), but Class is among the many people whose interest in plants wasn’t matched by access.
Now, when she works with green spaces, she stresses moving away from the idea that plant knowledge is somehow dynastic—that it’s something people can be born into. For those who don’t fit the stereotypical image of farmer, of herbalist, of plant person, this can be a brick wall.
Yet Class rejects these lanes. We caught up with her to learn how she cut her own trail—and continues to—despite stereotypes and barriers.
Can you talk a little bit more about barriers to plant access?
It’s not just with plants.
Even when I got this invitation, for example, [for] Meet This Artist, I was like, “Oh God, but I’m not an artist.” That, again, is an area where I think there are just a lot of barriers thrown up, a lot of gates, and people keeping the gates. I have all this baggage around calling myself an artist. Just one teacher was all it took in high school to just be really nasty. I have a visceral reaction to getting called an artist.
I think that’s something that people can experience for all sorts of reasons. There’s this whole look the part thing to it. I struggle with that on the daily. Wherever I go, in all of these different worlds I move through, I don’t look the part. I often would say to folks, when I would do equity work and inclusion, “Look, I’ve lived in seven countries, and every country I’ve lived in, I’ve been a different race.” That is not up to me. It’s in the eye, the mind, the preconceptions, the experiences—all the stuff in the eye of that person across from me determines what race I am.
I would say that’s for anything. It determines if someone thinks you look like an artist, if someone thinks you look like a plant person, if someone thinks you look like a farmer. Do you think anyone would say I’m a farmer? You think of a farmer, you think of John Deere tractor, old white guy.
Can you tell me about becoming an herbalist and getting into natural skincare remedies?
I moved when I was 18 or 19. I started at Penn State, and then decided, as one does, to move out to California. I took a Greyhound and hitchhiked part of the way. I was in an apartment. It was one of those places that opens to the outside, and I had plants there. I had already started making soap at that point, because I had lifelong eczema and skin problems.
It was mainly for my own skin stuff and I just found it helpful. I’ve really never had those problems again. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, I would say the products were pretty harsh.
I could also see very clear connections between what was happening with my body in general, internally and how it manifests on my skin. That’s how I really got into herbalism. A lot of herbs that we use externally—calendula, plantain—are also really good to work with internally.
How did you get to know plants this well? Did living internationally help build that?
Somewhere like Brazil or Mozambique, the plants are just spectacular. There’s also the added challenge of there are so many plants and things that I don’t know what the English name might even be.
One of the best ways, and especially for me, is just my style of gardening. I’m a lazy gardener. I do not do fussy high-maintenance plants. Even then, I find that they’re not fussy and high-maintenance if you set them up in the proper ecosystem. Usually, if a plant is fussy and high maintenance, it’s in the wrong situation. Maybe I dig it up and move it, but a lot of times they will spread themselves into where they want to be.
My favorite game is in early spring or late winter, going out there and being like, what is that one? These are things that most people would just weed. It turns out to be some amazing native plant. I found tons of baby coral honeysuckle. I had read that they’re really tough to germinate. Obviously, I don’t believe it when people say that. I have hundreds of them now.
If you were to see my home garden…it’s a lot of flowers, a lot of density, a lot of chaos, but it’s beautiful. I don’t think about competition. My dream is to write a book about plants for kids or adults that’s about how there’s no competition in the garden, and there’s no competition in gardening.
I did really realize this living abroad, because you got to be outside of America to see your own culture. We Americans are so competitive. I can just imagine all caps, like 72-point font—so competitive. I remember being in a kids’ gardening forum and there was a discussion about how to design school gardens. I would say nine out of 10 of the responses and things that people were saying were to have a competition. Why a competition? This is a perfect opportunity to teach kids to collaborate and work together and get to know the plants.
Let’s talk about Garden Haven and Farm, because this is fresh and exciting. How’d you find this place?
Last February, I was at the peak of my research and leadership career, and I ended up with long COVID. It knocked me down, back to start. Don’t pass Go; don’t collect $200. I had to leave on disability and I had to just pivot.
For a while, I was doing professional consulting, which I still love to do. I was working on a book and interviewing lots of folks about equity and inclusion in green spaces. I was like, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just like in my midlife crisis. Maybe I’m just sick of always being on the outside trying to help other people to do it. Why don’t I just do it myself and model that and help teach people that in my own space, instead of always just going into their space?
I started looking around in the late summer. This one popped up. This is the only property that I fully visited, like, with an agent.
This is the place. It’s a bit of a diamond in the rough situation. I look at this place and I can see what it’s gonna look like, what it’s gonna feel like.
What can you tell me about your different offerings through Word & Plant?
I feel like my offerings don’t have nice, neat lanes. Like, some of the same plants you’ll see on an eco-print are also ones that you can eat and ones that you’ll see in the gardens. It’s all connected.
I don’t love making the same thing over and over. I always want to make products, because I do love making things. I don’t like making commodities. That’s why I love the farmers’ market, because I’m there talking to people. I’m explaining this essential oil blend and why this goes with this. It’s more than just, here, buy some soap. It’s like, when you do this, how does your skin feel?
It’s not one size fits all. That’s going to be one of my early classes, like a fun class with for people to blend their own essential oil blends. I do have a soft spot for those old magazine quizzes, where you fill it out and get your score. So we’re gonna do it. You’re not gonna get just one, but it’ll tell you kind of where you lean in terms of earth, air, fire, water, and then connect that with the plants that might appeal to you. Then this is how you might want to put them together.
My offering is really trying to help people find their way to plants in a deeper way. I think beauty and something like natural dyeing and eco printing is like a hook, almost, right, something that smells amazing. All these sensory things with plants are the way to help people connect.
I should write that down.
Your nine-year-old daughter helps you with Word & Plant. Do you raise her without a concept of lanes?
People will put her in lanes, but she doesn’t have to put herself there.
I feel like all I can give her is acceptance and encouragement and just keep telling her that the way you are isn’t just okay, it’s good. It might take a long time for people to appreciate her. I just have to help her understand that you’re not going to be for everybody, and that’s okay, because some people really like being in a lane.
That’s all I can really give her. I think hopefully that will help—just knowing that like she has at least one person, even if just in her memory one day, who just thinks that she’s hot s–t. I just think you’re hot s—t. I want to be that person for her, even when I’m gone.
That’s what you do as a parent, you become the voice in your child’s head. You create their self-image, and that matters more than all of those things put together.
If Chatham Arts Council Arts + Equity Artist Deena Class has you considering a little plant and art exploration, you can find info about her workshops, her naturally dyed functional art, and Garden Haven Farm on her Word & Plant website. Or find her on Facebook or Instagram.
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