In Unusual Places

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One of the most hopeful sights to me is finding plants growing through, on and around human built structures. Given time and neglect, plants will reclaim the land, turning ‘order’ into ‘chaos’, or maybe ‘chaos’ onto ‘order’, but whichever way we view this, it is ultimately the stuff of life. We see evidence of the vitality of plants if we walk around the symbols of industrialisation, the railways, canals and bridges of the midlands and the north in the UK. Ivy takes a hold, covering bricks in green leaves and providing food and habitat for animals, buddleia grows out of cracks between bricks where mortar has failed. Before that, ferns and bryophytes germinate and spread on the surface of the bricks and in the spaces in between. Given a chance, plants reclaim their world. They have adapted to us, but ultimately will survive long after we have gone.

 

Around 300 years ago the great Mayan civilisation in central America, that had existed for thousands and thousands of years, ended. Pyramids, cities and roads ceased to be occupied by humans and fell into ruin. The forest returned and for many years, signs of this world became lost among the trees. Walking through the forest in Belize about 10 years ago, I realised the hill I was climbing was in part a human structure built of stone. It felt like I was walking in primary forest, but it was once a place where humans lived and loved and died. How long did it take for the forest to come back? I don’t know the answer, but after a few hundred years, the forest had clearly returned.

 

Nature is indomitable. Spores and seeds find a foothold and succession marches on unless something intervenes. We have to work hard to ‘stop the rot’ and maintain our artificial order and I take hope from this knowledge, as it means that with a pause, and with small interventions, the forest can return. So what will the treescape look like in 200 years from now? I don’t think we will see the scavenged landscapes of dystopian books and films, because without some green, we cannot survive. A world without plants is a world without humans, so for there to be a future for us, there must be a future for trees.

 

If we look back 200 years and think about the changes we have seen, these have been large, but the world is still recognisable. One thing for sure, is that we have lost green space. Looking forward 200 years, I hope to see that returned. This is not a return to the past, but a return to the future, where built structures include space for plants, and we have green patches throughout urban areas that are not managed within an inch of their life. Instead they are connected and contribute to larger patches of forest across the landscape.

 

Expanding urban forests provides an opportunity to relearn about and reconnect to trees. Urban forests provide refuge to harassed wildlife and sources of seed to recolonise patches of bare ground. They help to cool the heating world and provide some protection from storms and floods. Outside the city, if we let the forest grow and breathe, and flex its timber once more, it will also provide. By replanting hedges around fields and trees along streams and rivers, we provide easy habitat for a host of species and help control water flow and runoff. Reducing grazing pressure, particularly in uplands, allows some space for trees to establish and forests to grow and expand. The simple act of relinquishing some of our incessant control allows the recovery of lost and declining habitats and enables us to survive into the future.

 

So in my hopeful vision, in 200 years, I see cities domed by trees, green when seen from above, with buildings nestled under their shade. I see fields surrounded by hedges with neighbouring patches of managed woodlands that stretch into larger, less controlled and wilder forests that manage themselves. I see humans working with trees, understanding, using and valuing their resources and a kinder, cooler world where green not grey is the dominant colour and the trees, along with the other plants, have re-established their hold. 

 

Jennifer Rowntree

 

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