British Native evergreen trees
December 2022
The conifer is synonymous with Christmas of course, though this is a relatively new tradition. In 1841 Queen Victoria’s new husband Albert introduced a German Christmas tradition into the British royal household. From that point on the Christmas tree has, apart from a small dip in popularity after the death of the Queen (Victoria), been on the up and up in this country, Western Europe, America and many other parts of the world.
The history of the Christmas tree’s origins are many and varied, but essentially evolve from the Pagan and Druidic celebrations of the Winter Solstice (21st December), this being the shortest day. The lack of daylight inspires the ‘celebrations of light’ with the encouragement of sunlight for the next half of the year and the hope for a fertile time to come.
To symbolise this a sprig of something green was brought into the home, which represented eternal life and the promise of replenishment during the winter months. Over the years this evolved into the tradition today of the evergreen tree.
The Christmas tree is also a Christian symbol and is said to have originated its religious roots through the English monk St Boniface who in the 7th century went to Germany to teach the word of God. Legend has it that he used the triangular shape of the Fir tree to describe the Holy Trinity.
The fir tree that we historically associate with Christmas is actually a Norway spruce Picea abies a native species of Germany, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe. More recently the Nordmann or Caucasian Fir Abies nordmanniana native to the Caucasian mountains has become popular for its tendency to hold onto its needles.
Here in Britain we have only five native evergreen trees, but not all evergreens are conifers and not all conifers are evergreen. Of the five, two are not conifers - box Buxus sempervirens - typically a large bush when left to its own devices and holly Ilex aquifolium that we all know and love this time of the year (unless you need to pick up their fallen leaves).
These are both angiosperms, whose seeds are held within their fruit and differ from conifer trees (gymnosperms) that have naked seeds; angiosperms are more recent on the evolutionary scale than conifers by approximately 200 million years.
Our native conifer juniper Juniperus communis is a low growing spreading shrub or small tree and famous for its use as the flavouring ingredient of gin, indeed in the 17th century it was one of Scotland's largest exports, mainly to Holland for the production of jenever, the forefather to gin. What we call a juniper berry is in fact a tiny cone with fleshy scales.
Just to confuse the issue further, another of our native conifers, Yew Taxus baccata bears a single seed in a modified seed cone resembling an open ended berry called an aril.
Photo by Mark Timberlake on Unsplash
Native plants for autum colour
November 2022
OK, I’m coming out as a weed lover!
I’m interested in something that I’ve come to term ‘natural gardening'. This, in its essence, is the use of wild plants and where possible, natural systems in the garden. Looking at the landscape as I travel through it with my garden designer's cap on, I’m keen to see what interest I can bring into the garden and just like any other garden at this time of year the changing colour of the leaves can lend great interest.
I find it fascinating that all the colours that reveal themselves in autumn are hidden there all the time just waiting to have their brief moment before they fall.
In the language of my schoolboy biology and greatly simplified, I think it goes something like this: the leaf's primary function is photosynthesis - capturing energy from sunlight to convert water from the soil into oxygen, and carbon dioxide from the air into sugars, producing oxygen as a byproduct.
In order to do this the plant wants to use all the light energy from the sun that it can. This energy is held in various wavelengths and their subsequent colours, the colours of the rainbow as we see them. What we are seeing as green when we see a leaf is the reflected light from that object that has absorbed its opposite colour, In this case the tree through its chlorophyll pigments absorbs red light most efficiently. In short, the colour an object appears to be is the colour complementary to the one it most strongly absorbs.
Other pigments such as carotene and xanthophylls absorb only blue/green light and reflect an orange/yellow colour. In autumn as the process of photosynthesis slows down, and the leaves of a deciduous tree turn yellow/orange in colour, they simply lose their chlorophyll which had previously masked the other pigments. The red that we sometimes see in a leaf comes from a pigment called anthocyanin but this does not participate in photosynthesis.
I digress…
With their yellow/orange autumn leaves, I’m confident that the wild trees, beech Fagus sylvatica, ash Fraxinus excelsior, white willow Salix alba pussy willow Salix caprea and field maple Acer campestre could find a home in most gardens, space permitting. Should we want a touch of red, sycamore Acer pseudoplatanus, wild cherry Prunus avium and bird cherry Prunus padus or hawthorn Crataegus monogyna give a good display.
Elder Sambucus nigra goes through a lovely range of pink to deep red this time of year. And for a double whammy of colour and berries, a personal favourite of mine, the spindleberry Euonymus europaeus really does come into its own in autumn.
There are a few wild herbaceous perennials that could add some subtle colour into the garden now, amongst them bracken Pteridium aquilinum that goes through yellow and deep orange, hairy willowherb Epilobium and even dock Rumex obtusifolius turns the most remarkable colours as it goes into dormancy.
Finally, and I would imagine controversially, Bramble is not an easy plant to contend with in the garden but we all love a blackberry and what an amazing range of autumn colour.
Understandably, gardening to include plants like these many of which are considered weeds does take a slightly different outlook but there is a wealth of riches in our wild flora that I find challenging and compelling and I've always got an excuse for not having done the weeding!
Whether we want these plants in our gardens or not, they’re a pleasure to look at in the countryside at the moment.
NB, remember that it’s illegal to dig up any wild plant and always make double sure that the plant is what you think it is if you’re going to eat it.
Sweet chestnuts, conkers, oaks and beech trees
October 2022
At this time of year, as I stand and gaze upon the woodland in front of you, it appears as if decorated in a multitude of bright green baubles. What with this and the nostalgia of roasting chestnuts over fire at Christmas time, I think that the sweet chestnut Castenea sativa trees may signal, I hesitate to say, for fear of getting lynched, the run up to Christmas, or at least the entry into autumn.
It is commonly thought that they were introduced to Britain by the Romans in circa AD 100, to provide a supply of chestnut flour or coarse meal for the legionnaires. The nuts being as high in starch as wheat and twice as high as the potato, it is also the only nut to be a good source of vitamin C. The sweet chestnut, though non-native to Britain, has become a naturalised species and is generally welcomed in the landscape as it behaves much like a native tree as opposed to an invasive species.
Sweet chestnut trees propagate mainly by seed, which are their nuts, a nut merely being a seed with a hard shell. All nuts are seeds, but not all seeds are nuts!
Each bright green and very spiky husk contains two or three nuts which start to fall from late September, though the nuts at this time will not be mature. The best nuts will be those that hang on only to be brought down by frost.
The sweet chestnut is not to be confused with another species, the horse chestnut (conker tree) Aesculus hippocastanum, which was introduced to Britain as late as 1616 and is from a completely different family more closely related to the lychee, but horse chestnuts are not considered edible. The conker was not always their most famous attribute. They were introduced, for their size and stature but mainly for their impressive flowers and have been used widely as avenue trees, a well renowned one being the mile long chestnut avenue at Bushy Park north of Hampton Court, which was designed by Sir Christopher Wren in 1699. People still meet every year on Chestnut Day (the nearest Sunday to 11th May) to celebrate them. You may notice that our horse chestnuts don’t look very well these days, with brown blotches on their leaves, this is due to a leaf mining moth whose caterpillars mine inside the leaves, this was first identified in Wimbledon in 2002 and spread across the country at a rate of 30km a year. Another lesser issue they have is leaf blotch fungus, neither of these are fatal but will reduce photosynthesis and so possibly weaken the trees own resources.
Interestingly, sweet chestnut is a cousin of both the beech tree Fagus sylvatica and the oak tree Quercus robar. Each of which have nuts of their own.
Looking at the nuts on the beech trees, I wonder if we might be having a beechmast year this year, where once every 5 years or so all of the beech trees drop a heavy crop of seed. The seeds being a desirable food source to animals such as mice and squirrels and young saplings being very attractive to deer, this is done so that through sheer number, some seeds and saplings may grow to maturity. If you can gather enough of these nuts and have the equipment to press them, then it is said that they make a very fine cooking oil.
Beech is recorded as a native tree to Britain, though I’m not sure how the people in the know about these things have slipped this through as it’s only a comparatively recent one, the pollen record showing it to have been present for approximately 3000 years.
The subject of whether a plant is native or non native is a tricky one but as a starting place the BSBI (Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland) would describe a native plant by definition as ‘either a plant that arrived naturally in Britain and Ireland since the end of the last glaciation (i.e. without the assistance of humans) or one that was already present (i.e. it persisted during the last Ice Age)’. The end of the last ice age was approximately 11,700 years ago.
Oaks also have mast years as acorns are of course nuts too and though technically edible are very bitter and high in tannin that requires leaching in order to make palatable. Perhaps the most well known use for acorns, apart from animal fodder, is coffee, something promoted during the war when supply chains for real coffee were limited, but once processed acorns can be roasted or ground into flour for a multitude of uses. I recently saw a recipe for acorn brittle that I’m interested to try!
NB, remember that it’s illegal to dig up any wild plant and always make double sure that the plant is what you think it is if you’re going to eat it.
Photo by Hugo Le Cam on Unsplash
Ground elder, buttercup and marsh thistle
June 2022
What did the Romans ever do for us I hear you ask! Roads, sanitation, underfloor heating, yes, yes, but no one ever mentions ground elder Aegopodium podagraria, they kept that one quiet!
The Romans brought and cultivated ground elder as a pot herb for culinary and medical purposes, being used mainly for gout (one of its common names being goutwort) and to eat as a vegetable. The use of ground elder carried on through the ages with the Anglo-Saxons using it to clarify beer, so not all bad then. The plant, seemingly bent on liberation, soon escaped its confinement and, as shown some time later in the 1962 Atlas of the British Flora, is recorded as covering pretty much every part of the British Isles.
Ground elder, which spreads by creeping roots (rhizomes) and also by seed, can be found mainly (as the Biological Records Center tells us) in a wide variety of disturbed habitats, especially hedgerows, road verges, churchyards and also neglected gardens, no offense taken!
As you might have noticed by now, I’ve decided to talk about some plants that we could easily see in our garden (which some of us will be happier about than others) as well as when we’re out and about.
Next up, and looking amazing at the moment in my garden if I do say so myself (though I’m not sure that it’s anything to be proud of), is the creeping buttercup Ranunculus repens. I’ve fully embraced this native plant's creeping habit which it manages by sending out stolons, overground runners that then root at points along its length as strawberries do.
The name Ranunculus comes from the latin rana meaning frog, while culus indicates the diminutive form, so ‘little frog’. Saying goes that it’s named that because the buttercup is often found in damp places, as are frogs, but that takes a bit of a leap of the imagination. Maybe Carl Linnaeus, the 18th century Swedish botanist/zoologist who basically invented taxonomy was having an off day. Repens by the way, refers to the plant's habit of creeping.
The creeping buttercup is one of only a couple of buttercup species to host Hydrothassa glabra, a sweet little beetle 3 or 4mm in size and coloured dark metallic blue and orange.
Lastly the marsh thistle Cirsium palustre. Apparently the word thistle comes from the Old English thist-ley meaning ‘to prick’ and as the name of this species would suggest, this thistle grows mostly on damp ground and reaches approximately 1.5m tall. It’s a biennial so flowers in the second year then dies. The main reason that I wanted to talk about this thistle, besides it growing in my garden as yet another experiment, is that it is a super pollinator attracting bees, flies, moths, butterflies and beetles. It was rated to have the most nectar production (nectar per unit cover per year) by a project supported by the UK Insect Pollinators Initiative. Also in the top five were the grey willow Salix cinerea, common knapweed Centaurea nigra, ball heather Erica cinerea and common comfrey Symphytum officinale. What’s more, the marsh thistle can be used to eat. I’ve not tried this but I read that you can strip the plant down to its stem, peel this and then dip it in sugar a little like rhubarb…No no, after you! You might have to speak to Nicky, our local forager about this.
NB, remember that it’s illegal to dig up any wild plant and always make double sure that the plant is what you think it is if you’re going to eat it.
Bluebell, Wood sorrel and muskroot
May 2022
If, as the song goes, you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise…well if that surprise is that you fall over, then you may be lucky enough to end up at eye level with some of the plants that I’ve been checking out this month.
All of these plants can be found without too much difficulty in either (and almost certainly both) the woods at the end of Pottle street and up towards Heavens Gate.
The first to catch my eye were the delicate lilac veined, five petaled flowers of wood sorrel Oxalis acetosella. This plant, flowering around Easter time, is known in much of Europe as ‘alleluia’. It has almost clover-like three lobed leaves that apparently act like a weathervane, folding up before and during rain and when it gets dark. Well, one of those might be useful, I guess the others you could work out for yourself. The leaves have a lemony flavour but should be consumed in moderation. Wood sorrel was in the past used for treating scurvy due to its high vitamin C content.
You’ll need to stay very close to the woodland floor to see the tiny flower of ivy-leaved speedwell Veronica hederifolia. This plant is an archaeophyte apparently (a new word for me) meaning it’s non native but introduced in ‘ancient’ times, so some time before the 15th century (pre early modern period). The name describes the leaves Ivy Hedera and leaf folia.
If you still can’t get up, you’re in luck because you’ll be face to face, as it were, with muskroot Adoxa moscahatellina, also known as moschatel or Good Friday plant (as it nearly always comes into flower by the beginning of April) This plant’s not showy but really subtly beautiful when you look closely. I guess when it was given its genus name they had this in mind as Adoxa means ‘without glory’. The other (specific) part of its name moschatellina means musk, referring to the musky smell it can emit when damp. Another of its common names is Town hall clock, so called because of the flowers that sit at the top of the stalk, four forming the (clock) faces of a cube and the fifth above.
Having eventually got to our feet and not needing to be quite so close to the floor we can enjoy the wood anemone Anemone nemorosa. The sight of this lovely, early spring, white flower always makes me happy. It is a good indicator of ancient woodlands or hedges as its seed is rarely fertile and therefore relies on its root system to spread, which it does at a pace of approximately six feet each hundred years.
Last but by no means least! I can’t not mention the bluebell Hyacinthoides non-scripta which is looking great, and not to be mistaken for the invasive, non-native Spanish bluebell Hyacinthoides hispanica, the former being smaller and a more intensely coloured deep blue/purple; is stronger scented and all the flowers grow on one side of the distinctly drooping stem. If you want some bluebells in your garden these are the ones to buy or gather seed from.
Have fun in the woods and please watch your step!
NB, remember that it’s illegal to dig up any wild plant and always make double sure that the plant is what you think it is if you’re going to eat it.
Primroses, ramsons and nettles
April 2022
On my dog strolls, I’ve been interested to see what wild plants are emerging. Especially as spring finds its feet, not before time as far as I’m concerned! It has to be the primrose Primula vulgaris that are front and centre through March and continue strong into April. Unsurprisingly I guess with the name prima rosa, or first flower of the year (although that’s not strictly true as the beautiful snowdrops on February’s cover show). But I can’t let those little yellow faces go unmentioned, not least because it’s Primrose Day on the 19th April, or so Richard Maybe tells us in ‘Flora Botanica’ with the botanist Sir George Birdwood apparently suggesting this after Benjamin Disraeli’s death in 1881 as the former Prime Minister had such an admiration of the flower.
I wonder if I’ve spotted a couple of the similar plant oxlips Primula elatior, which would be exciting as they are a vulnerable, near-threatened species usually confined to the area where Suffolk, Essex and Cambridgeshire meet, but I’m not entirely convinced that these are not an ornamental escapee from a garden, perhaps a local botanist can put me straight on this?
The ramsons or wild garlic Allium ursinum are getting well into leaf in the woods in the north of the village above Newbury and there's a little to be found on the road to Maiden Bradley. We like to make a pesto out of the wild garlic, freezing this in an ice cube tray is a great way to get a portion that you can easily throw into pasta or mix into a dressing for a salad, but this year I’m going to make some green garlic butter by simply beating the cleaned and shredded leaves into butter for a fresh subtle alternative to traditional garlic butter.
I’ve had a couple of passes over the nettles Urtica dioica in the garden already, picking the tips, blanching and freezing for later use in anything that we would use spinach in, I’m pretty fond of a smoothie made with any berries, fresh or frozen, a handful of greens, usually spinach but nettles in this case, milk and water then blend. I’ve also used the cooking water as a hair tonic so if you see me around the village with green hair don’t be alarmed!
According to the Natural History Museum our stinging little friends have been reported to have over 100 different insect species feeding on them alone and they are host to the red admiral Vanessa atalanta (I think I may have gone to school with her) small tortoiseshell Aglais urticae and peacock Aglais io butterflies as well as moths such as the Burnished Brass Diachrysia chrysitis, the angle shades Phlogophora meticulosa and the ruby tiger Phragmatobia fuliginosa to name just a few of the more charismatic species. And to name a few of the less charismatic species; the brilliantly named golden-bloomed grey longhorn beetle Agapanthia villosoviridescens, and Parethelcus pollinarius no funny common name I’m afraid but this little guy’s only source of food is the roots of stinging nettles, look him up, I mean if a weevil can be cute…Old longhorn’s a good looking chap too.
Talking about early flowering wild plants, another that flowered alongside the early primroses but who’s flower has now gone over is the winter heliotrope Petasites fragrans, this has a great scent and maybe presents a food supply for early pollinators, though this is an extremely invasive non-native species. Being new to the village I’m not sure about the pace of its spread where I see it on the bank along from the island, but I’m surprised, on my travels slightly further afield how quickly this is populating ground.
Just to see everything bursting into life at the moment is very exciting and I look forward to more walks and observations, maybe with a bit more sun, over the next month.
NB, remember that it’s illegal to dig up any wild plant and always make double sure that the plant is what you think it is if you’re going to eat it.
Ficaria verna - Lesser celandine
To look at lesser celandine, you’d have thought that this cheerful little flower said to be the ‘spring messenger’ as one of its common names suggests, would be uncomplicated and its message simple.
Nothing could be further from the truth. For Ficaria verna, one of approximately 700 plants in the Ranunculus family, being renamed in 2010 and formerly known as Ranunculus ficaria L. It seems, is just the start of the confusion that seems to surround this plant.
For a start there are two very similar plants, Ficaria verna ssp fertilis, the ’true’ lesser celandine formerly named Ranunculus ficaria ssp ficaria and Ficaria verna ssp verna formerly known as Ranunculus ficaria ssp bulbilifer, a subspecies of lesser celandine that has bulbils that break off and arguably spreads wider than the bulbil less form, these little tubers are where the plant gets its other common name pilewort from. It is thought that the bulbil subspecies is under-recorded because the bulbils are not straightforward to spot. Simple right?
On top of that celandine comes from the Greek word chelidon which refers to the bird swallow. There is some dispute as to whether this name refers to lesser celandine as it has usually been in flower for a while before the return of the swallows. It could be that lesser celandine is a sign of spring as is the swallow, but also that lesser celandine was confused with greater celandine Chelidonium majus whose other common name is swallow wort.
Lesser celandine Ficaria verna, found in woods, on hedge banks, in meadows and on roadsides, likes damp soil that’s not too acidic. The flower has a charming habit of closing its petals before rainfall, so in folklore it is said to predict the weather.
Ficaria verna is host to the leaf mining larvae of two flies that can only feed on a few plants from the ranunculus family and two beetles including the jewel beetle Anthaxia nitidula.
Is a host plant also to one of the rarest of Britain’s butterflies, the heath fritillary Melitaea athalia and six moths including the charismatic Yellow shell Camptogramma bilineata.
Galanthus nivalis - Snowdrop
Yep, I know, I know, this isn’t a native…or is it? In Flora Botanica, Richard Maybe alludes to a doubt about this saying ‘Yet this history of deliberate introduction and cultivation [In church yards and gardens] does not mean that snowdrops are not authentic wild natives in some parts of the west and south. And even where their origins are doubtful, they always have a wild cast about them.’
The snowdrop is a perennial bulb that grows on moist woodland and in other shaded places, spreading mostly by division; it is often found in gardens, parks, churchyards and on road verges; it was known to be in cultivation in Britain in 1597 but was not recorded in the wild until 1778.
So I’m curious to see what benefits these ‘February fairmaids’ used to celebrate the Feast of Candlemas on the 2nd of February, have in the ecology as, if not native, they are widely naturalized. Here in my wiltshire garden in mid February, it’s pretty much the only thing out apart from a few primroses. In the wider countryside the gorse Ulex europaeus is flowering bright and yellow as it almost always seems to do, does it ever stop flowering?
It seems to be difficult to find much information on where the snowdrop fits into our ecology and as this is such a showy plant, if native, it’s surprising that earlier written records of it growing in the UK haven’t been found.
It does have the interesting ability to open its petals upwards and outwards when temperatures reach 10°C and above and pollinating insects are likely to be flying.
Even if not previously native, It’s a plant that we seem to accept as our own, as a welcome introduction. With a native colony as close as Brittany and being widespread on the continent this could well be a plant that can help us to confront the challenges of climate change and an upwards move of wildflowers and their animal associates as temperatures rise.
Primula vulgaris - Primrose
Primula vulgaris is the first plant to flower in my garden this year which is not surprising as it’s all in the (common) name, primrose - prima rosa, or first (native) flower.
This starts this series where I aim to post every native plant in my 1/4 acre Wilshire garden. Last year I counted 77 so buckle up!
Primula vulgaris is an herbaceous perennial plant and is found typically in woodland, hedgerows and on North banks but also in grassland though they’re not super keen on hot sun, so no danger of that in the UK at the moment.
The primrose is recorded as hosting 31 British insects including two Diptera (flies) for which Primula is the only host and 29 Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) most of which are moths and a couple are butterflies including the beautiful Pearl-bordered fritillary (Boloria euphrosyne) and fascinatingly the Duke of Burgundy (Hamearis lucina) whose larvae’s only food plant is the Primula the primrose and cowslip species.
Richard Maybe tells us in ‘Flora Botanica’ that we have Primrose Day on the 19th April which is a little way off but demonstrates just how long these little rays of sunshine stay in flower and all the early nectar they will supply to our hungry insect pollinators. Primrose day came about with the botanist Sir George Birdwood apparently suggesting this after Benjamin Disraeli’s death in 1881 as the former Prime Minister had such an admiration of the flower.
Brambles are incredible warriors
Originally posted February 2010
It struck me, when in a position of being somewhat powerless over a circumstance at work, that I found a renewed zeal for my allotment.
Some of this I’m sure was to ‘dig out’ my frustration, but on reflection I wonder if the planning and structuring of my allotment was a subconscious desire for order.
I wonder how much our life situation relates and reflects on our need to control or place order on our environment, in turn allowing us a feeling of regaining our power by taming the wild.
Of course, the fresh air, exercise, centring of focus, time for reflection and the hopeful and optimistic feeling gained from planning and working towards a fruitful future are all part of the joys of allotmenteering and, I’m sure, are all factors in why we have allotments apart from production and yield.
In gardening for instance though, I’ve always been interested in the strength of the desire to create a tidy edge and have a clean path, and when ‘weeding’ have noticed that the more clear of ‘weeds’ it becomes the clearer we seem to need it to be.
Most Human Beings, in my opinion, by nature (or at least in our age) have an overt desire for cleanliness and/or tidiness. This is not something in my experience found in the way the landscape behaves, at least not on the level that we are dealing with it. There is I am sure an immense order in the structure of a forest, but to our eyes a bramble is wild.
It is interesting how our language changes around this, with the bramble being a good example. If the bramble Rubus fruticosus is acceptable in its setting it is called a blackberry. If it is unacceptable, and therefore a ‘weed’, it remains a bramble.
A weed, by the way, is merely a plant that is not in the desired place or, as the Oxford Dictionary would have it, ‘wild plant growing where it is not wanted’.
When one works a lot in the garden environment one can start to have a kind of dialog with plants. By dialog I mean that one can become appreciative of a particular plant’s traits or characteristics, what it’s good at and how it responds to interaction.
The bramble is again a good example. Brambles are, in a sense, incredible warriors. They are tenacious in their advance, reaching out and layering (taking root, when in contact with soil) with the tips of their vigorous shoots, growing tremendously hard and sharp thorns and clinging to their territory with great strength by way of their root system.
One cannot help respecting them for being great at what they do.
I have a rule when working with the land that it is not acceptable to work in anger. If I am working in anger, I have stopped listening to the land. And in this, I have lost respect for and sympathy with my surroundings.
Brambles, or for that matter, nettles, hogweed or goose grass, to name but a few, are not ‘bad’. It is we who commandeer more and more land as population grows, whether this be in the form of an office block, a car park or for residential use.
Sometimes we act in our gardens as if the bramble, or pretty much any other wild plant for that matter, has a personal vendetta against us. Yet it is us who encroach, advance and strive to ‘clean’ the natural environment.
If one looks at ‘weeds’, they don’t take over as we seem to think. They will be prolific in an area perhaps but then will give way to another plant which is slightly more suited to the setting, creating swathes.
On our micro scale of gardening we can lose touch and sympathy with this and because we have a restricted plot in which to create order we often leave no room for disorder. Or put another way, we mistake what looks like disorder for that which is natural harmony.
It is, I know, a difficult conundrum of what to do about the growth of population and the strain on the land. Of course we need shelter, homes and industry. I would just urge anyone to relinquish their borders a little to the wild. Spare a wild plant for an ornamental. Allow the native bio diverse insect and bird supporting ‘weeds’ a chance to do what they do best – supporting our precious environment. And finally, allow a bramble the status of blackberry in your garden.
Elbow grease vs engine grease
I’m very aware that I am somewhat behind on my blog feeds, although I am hesitant to name it as a New Year’s resolution I do feel that I would like to put more energy into it this year and would hope to add something once a month. Something that would help me do that is, if you have read the blog, please do leave a comment, it’s lovely to have any feedback and know that someone may be reading it. So that being said, this year I’m going to start off with something that feels apt to me for January with the new year, but rather than being something that is new it is more something we may have forgotten.
‘Naturescaping’ is the term I seem to have coined for a way in which I strive to work.
This is an evolving philosophy centred around working with nature in a sympathetic way.
I have built up some guidelines for myself that have come about in order to feel more comfortable about the sense of balance and force engaged in working with the land.
Fundamentally I feel that human beings practise such ‘detachment’ on most levels and on a daily basis that we don’t even realise that we do it. By ‘detachment’ I mean we become far from the source of things, far enough to not have to feel the effects of our decisions. I don’t think we do this on purpose, at least not on a present conscious level.
This detachment could relate to the food that we buy from the supermarket that is possibly and probably from far away. From someone you have never met and in all likelihood will never meet. Someone that has grown, caught or cooked that food, not for you but for a middle man or a co-op then a middle man, then a freight carrier and so on and so on until it does eventually reach us. Someone they have not met and in all likelihood will never meet. This kind of system does not encourage the feeling and subsequent thanks that growing, catching or cooking for your loved ones provides. It has created a distance. You as the producer have not grown for your loved ones. You have grown for the profit gained to buy food for your loved ones.
As with most of our food, the same process of evolution of product could be applied to clothing, or cleaning materials, or the water that we drink or what happens to our toilet. Of the things we build, the products we put on our skin or the presents we buy others.
When I say that we don’t realise that we do it, I mean that generally most people have good intentions and want to do the best by others, but we work and exist within such systems that it makes it almost impossible to know the source of the things that we use and eat on a daily basis.
Since the industrial revolution and our departure from the culture of the cottage industry, that which we have gained from mechanisation and mass production has been offset by the lack of providence we have of the things that surround us.
What does this have to do with the garden?
I have, in the last blog entry, gone some way to express my feelings on giving native ‘wild’ plants some space. In this entry I hope to expand on this in terms of actually physically working in those spaces with those plants.
When I started working with gardens I practised mainly garden maintenance. I found that more and more I didn’t want to dig ‘weeds’ out or cut plants unnecessarily. I still have a tidy nature and struggle with it continually, wanting to create straight lines and tidy edges, but I want to let things grow, give them a chance, let them find their shape in their world.
I went on to build gardens more, and again often I find myself clearing a ‘wild’ space to ‘put it in order’, a very human perception of order. It was whilst building one of these gardens and having designed into it as much meadow and native plants as my patient and sympathetic clients would allow me that my Stihl power tools were stolen. I lost a chainsaw, a hedge trimmer and a strimmer/brushcutter. Although I was fairly upset that these expensive tools were stolen and could ill afford to replace them, I had already started collecting and trying to use, where possible, hand tools. We found that a 5ft two man crosscut saw works almost as efficiently as a chainsaw in certain circumstances. I made a conscious decision that I would not replace the power tools that are used on living things. I do where necessary use a lawn mower but justify this as basically artificial grazing. This is more complex and I could easily argue myself out of lawn mowing with the space lawn takes, the mono-cropping, the lack of natural manure and natural meadowland provided by animal grazed land, but at the moment apart from on small plots like my allotment where I use a non-powered mower, sickle and scythe, the lawn mower still has a place in my garage.
As for everything else I see real positives in using traditional tools and methods on the land.
For me it is about setting a fair playing field between us and the plant. Destruction is made too easy by artificial means.
Let’s start off with a fantasy that we as humans had no tools, not even hand tools. I like playing with the idea that I have a piece of land, and on that land I use no tools. Everything made, moved, grown or harvested has to be done by hand. It means that if there is a tree there that has matured to the degree that we cannot bend or move it, then there it stays. Sure you could bend the newer branches or even lever, or perhaps pick off smaller branches, but you would be very much restricted, you would have a very different amount of power. A smaller tree, a sapling for instance could be dug by hand and replanted or it could be bent to a shape. You would still have an awful lot of power as you could plant seeds, or move plants to make them more accessible to you, but you would have to be careful on this land of yours that you didn’t move too many plants into the system or they may colonise and extinguish the existing ones and you may not be able to find the first plant again. You might be better off keeping the original plant and going farther afield to find the second one. Perhaps I, or someone cleverer than me, could model a computer game to express this theory. Essentially the idea of facing the world around us with only that with which we entered it is appealing to me, and that every step further away from that we make comes with a responsibility. If as human beings our gifts are forethought and hindsight then we have a responsibility to weigh up the consequences of our actions.
‘Effort’ is something that I have come to speculate as being a major contributor to our distance from nature. There was a very Victorian ideal that we must have power over nature, and on a micro level we have achieved that. We can import plants from overseas environments and have them grow in our country, we can create chemicals to give advantage to one plant over another, we can ‘clean’ plants of ‘pests’ and disease. We can change the molecular makeup of a plant. All of these things being very serious and in fact very avoidable in a garden. One thing that we do often and think less about is the embracing of the power tool, the labour saving device. Men traditionally love them, it has become a joke that they make power drills to look a bit like guns and men all over the country who have lost the skills of being able to make and fix things put up lopsided shelves like some heroic gesture.
I digress slightly and sound more cynical than I would like to but I feel every day we move further away from the source of things, we spend time in our offices, managing projects, working on spreadsheets, getting paid and paying someone else to do the things that we haven’t had the or time or the guidance to learn how to do ourselves.
Hence the labour saving device, I can’t think of one power tool that we use in the garden or around the house for that matter that can’t be replaced with a hand tool.
Whether it is a desire to conquer nature, a lack of time, or just what we have come to accept as the norm’. The effort involved in chopping down a tree is far reduced with a chainsaw. I know this sounds like an incredibly obvious statement but actually it’s not the only approach available to us.
When we use a non mechanised tool, we have to assess the material upon which we are going to use that tool. It is in this assessment that we start to close the gap of detachment from that we are working with. When we face a tree holding a cross cut saw, a pruning saw, a felling axe and a hatchet we have a very different attitude towards the tree. It is something ominous, huge, something commanding respect. You think about the years in its making, cutting it becomes a grave act. You weigh up whether it really does have to be cut down, or whether perhaps a prune may suffice, you understand that the ‘effort’ involved will be considerable, the exchange becomes tangible and the force involved goes some way, though not very far, towards being more equal.
You think, ok if it does have to come down what can we do with it? Can we build something with it? What is the tree? What are the attributes of the timber in the making of things? Over the years and years of working with wood what did our ancestors do with this tree?
Not least because ringing the trunk for firewood takes an awful lot of ‘effort’ but also because once you have had such an interaction with a plant, you feel less removed from it, have a respect for it and want to honour the plant by working with it and giving it another life in the means of an object or a tool, with the remains of that becoming firewood. And if you are cutting up a tree or part of a tree for firewood by hand, you really do economise on the fuel that you are using because you are conscious of the effort involved to supply more.
Some of the benefits of working in this way might be:
Through the employment of effort one may gain strength and fitness in a natural environment, bending, stretching and exerting one’s self over the course of a few hours, at one’s own pace, allowing steady exercise, perhaps lessening the stress on the body
With the work being carried out outside one can breath fresh air and stay warm in the cold weather
No need for protective clothing except perhaps steel-toe-capped boots
The omission of the motorised element cuts down on noise pollution, enabling one to go about one's work whilst listening to the birds or the radio
Potentially less risk of serious injury
No use of petro-chemicals and or power bills
Tools and equipment are cheaper and last longer
On that last point, most of the tools needed are thought of as being of little use and are either sold as curiosities or nostalgia, and it is likely that they could be found at auctions or car boot sales, though there are a few shops still selling traditional tools.
A couple of my cheapest, most effective and most treasured tools are a sickle and a billhook. I use them regularly and the use of them is always made more special with the knowledge that they were made by a company called ‘Fussels of Mells’, this was a forge in Mells, Somerset (known for its annual daffodil festival that is well worth going to – basically a massive village fete in a beautiful setting). The company supplied trades, mainly agricultural, with specific hand tools for specific jobs. They are superbly made, are strong and stay sharp. The knowledge that they were made locally, and that because of their age will probably have passed through many capable hands makes me proud to use them and want to look after them. I know they are old because the production of these wonderful tools halted in 1895 when the forge closed.
I’m going to leave this post here now because this is a big subject and something I am likely to revisit as I continue to practise and think about it. I hope to be able to explain another of my guidelines next time.
I hope you’re all keeping warm.
When you force things they tend to break
Last time I spoke of ‘effort’. This time I would like to start with ‘force’.
I believe that it is Newton’s third law of motion that gives us the well known premise that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. I have this theory tucked away somewhere in my mind when I enter a garden. In fact I carry this around with me a lot, for although I cannot really purport to understand the physical law, I do feel that with most things, if you force them they tend to break. This can be anything from the nut that won’t come off the bolt, that if not done properly and patiently with the correct tool will almost inevitably end up with either the nut being rounded off or the taking off of the skin of your knuckles.
Or that the tapping over and over of a key on the computer when it won’t respond doesn’t tend to end in a satisfactory resolution, more likely in your continued and heightened frustration that, once it has led to the thought of throwing the damn thing out of the window, most people realise that that probably wouldn’t be the best course of action under the circumstances and go and have a cup of tea instead.
What I’m getting at is that when we force things, they tend to break.
At the risk of being profound, this can, in my opinion, happen when you try to force someone to try and think the way that you do, leading to any manner of conflict.
It is this that I take into the garden with me, the thought that when we use excessive force we have stopped listening.
When working with the land and that which is rooted in the earth there can be a temptation to think that because we are sentient we know what is right. We can go in there a bit gung-ho and then when a plant doesn’t yield immediately to our will, we get agitated, frustrated or angry.
In my opinion it is not really our right to be masters of the land and so one of my guidelines is “Don’t bring anger into the garden” this in my opinion extends to the wider and larger land as a whole, the moving of land, the suffocating it with concrete, the chipping away at it and digging the goodness out of it. From the smallest of interactions with the earth, we tend not to work with it as a partner and a resource as would our ancestors, but seek to dominate it.
I am in no way trying to be pious, judgemental or to set myself up as an example, I am in this blog trying to explain the feelings and thoughts that arise for me whilst I go about my work. I do not have the answers, save to say, maybe take some time when the occasion should arise that you are interacting with plants or the land to endeavour to study yourself and to see if you feel heavy handed, impatient or careless.