Inspired by ballast flora
Ballast Botanicals is about blooming where you land, while remembering the ancestors and journeys that brought you there. It is about healing and connecting across migration, diaspora and colonization.
When ships would leave a port without cargo or people, they would fill the ballast with dirt from the places they sailed from to balance the ship. Upon arriving in a new place, the ballast would be emptied, unloading soil and seeds from across the world and altering the landscape and environment. These plants are called ballast flora.
When records are hidden and destroyed or there were none to begin with the soil holds the stories.
In the interstices
Nicole comes from generations of land tenders and coastal migrants who have made their homes on islands and shores along the edges of the Atlantic Ocean and across the Sargasso Sea. Based in New York with roots in Puerto Rico, Ireland, and Eastern Europe, Nicole is most at home in the in between spaces looking for the unexpected connection or through line.
For many years Nicole taught history and literature with a focus on global migrations, national imaginaries outside of nation-states, empire building and breaking and the affective communities we build as our bodies move across time and space.
Since 2016, she entered into a deep study of plants, apprenticing with Karen Rose at Sacred Vibes Apothecary in Brooklyn and continuing her study at Pacific College of Health and Sciences. Her first plant teacher is her mother, Dolly, a magical gardener who created a paradise in exile in the suburbs of New Jersey.
