From Dungeness – a letter to Derek Jarman

By Jen Green:

August 6th, 2021

Dear Derek

I thought I’d update you on your garden, as you often wondered what would become of the flowers you planted in the shifting shingle. I’m sure though, you know exactly what’s going on at Prospect Cottage because part of you is still there. 

I drove to Dungeness through the marshes, along roads with vast horizons that have the feel of dead-end tracks. After a seafood lunch at The Pilot and double checking the direction with the landlady, I walked up from there, battling blasts of wind. Trying to comprehend the basic elements of my surroundings; sky, sea, shingle, road, flatness, perceiving little more  until reaching Prospect Cottage. I too dislike rules and boundaries but in a landscape it’s a strange experience, questioning what is seashore, what is inland, where gardens begin and end. A fishing boat rides a wave of pebbles. If I’d turned back for home now, I’d say Dungeness was monochrome, exposed. But I’d seen it through your eyes and it was never bleak, there was a lifetime of curiosity.

Your house is well kept, yellow window and door frames are bright against uniform black wood. My visit feels intrusive as I approach, so I busy my eyes with plants at shingle level and avoid looking inside. Tall fennel and salty-green domes of santolina fly flags of dry flowerheads. The wild mint you found on the Ness is still here, flowering purple amongst a Mediterranean aroma – but one I can never place or track down to an individual herb. Dots of magenta from sweet pea to roses to knapweed. Low-growing plants in front of the house are well suited to winds, tiny sedum and silvery sea kale. Behind, a fig tree claims the inside corner, covering a wall, palms curling with each gust. Is this the fig you nurtured from a cutting taken on your way home? It’s flourishing. Elder trees still guard the house, their old growth a crown of sticks covered by mustard-yellow lichen, and new growth rising. Just a rose bush between you and the power station prospect; the other way, the sea. Garden and creativity unbound, like the fun you and your friends made in the freedom of these waves and levels.

In between pebbles and plants are your markers of flotsam, driftwood, scrap metal triangles, hoops and spirals, all rusted. I imagined it as if you were a giant turnstone on the shore, gathering the best of Dungeness; armfuls of stones and pockets of shoots from rubbish tips and roadsides, for restoration back in the garden microcosm. Shells and stones elevated on sticks furnish the land with shape and relief. I can see how gardening gave you hope, taking action with tangible results, of some kind. Like an alchemist planting prescriptions with the guidance of Culpeper, for protection, for healing, for sleep. A guardian creating a living, vibrant memorial, each oval flint stone a friend, a life, standing in shingle as dolmen circles of moon and sun, with the resonance of being adjusted by your hands. As dragon’s teeth they deter a foot from stepping inside the jaws, defending sedum and poppies. Sempervivums live on. With sadness I see many stones, for friends who died young. Revolutionaries like yourself braved the wilderness of a new virus. Did you imagine that people living with HIV live full, long lives and with medication, HIV is untransmissible? Perhaps you did, as 30 years on is a long time. There’s one red hot poker, encircled by a rusted chain. When asked in an interview how you’d want to be remembered, you said a flower - a red hot poker so perhaps HB kept this one for you. 

Climate change is a climate crisis, the years were getting hotter like your sunny, sweater-free birthday in January 1989. Nuclear power was not the answer and Dungeness B is now decommissioned.

Leaning to look into raised beds where terracotta pots are stacked, I find a musty but purposeful smell that could be my grandad’s shed. He kept a straight-lined, weed free vegetable garden, the kind that were common in suburbs but now replaced by driveways for cars that bring home vegetables from seasonless supermarkets. 

Other uninvited visitors nose about and sneak between plants but don’t stay for long. Four children shelter from the wind by the house, pushing each other into the gusts where they struggle to stay upright, stomping in the pebbles. I worry about the proximity of a pink mallow at foot height, but it survives their game. Wind, with free rein over flat terrain, howls in telephone wires that cross to all the houses, reminding me of the Kansas tornado that lifted Dorothy’s house. I’m not sure I could live here, but you described so much beauty over the years. Sparkling dew on shingle, the theatre of a landscape with unimpeded sunrises and sunsets, where scenes can change with just one cloud. 

When I left, with ears cold from the ceaseless blow, I snapped a poppy head and put it in my pocket. All the seeds fell out on the way home. My partner hasn’t tidied our garden since I’ve been away. July’s growth is too much to keep up with so Augusts are scruffy - ragged plants with dead sticks - out of proportion without foliage, overblown fluff, flattened long grass, half-eaten leaves and withered flowers. There is green but it’s tired. In the spring my neighbours shared their excess of spring shoots, of borage, nasturtiums and jasmine. Borage raised blue stars skywards one by one, raining seeds which I saved. Nasturtiums were quick to bloom and curl all over the hanging basket, but by late summer, their leaves and flowers are deformed and nibbled. What did you do about slugs? I tried Vaseline around the plant pot lip. One snail tried to cross but stopped, turned eyes inward, processing the gunk. The sunflower prematurely soured anyway, perhaps the pot was finally too small. It had been a seedling I’d saved from grass under the bird feeder, cupped in my hands like an ember to rekindle. Now, I’ve noticed seeds dislodged by chewing snails were caught by bare soil in a pot below, and summer’s flames are refuelled. The rose bush blooms regardless, sending out fast, straight limbs and as many bunches of fuchsia-pink roses as it can, long after all other flowers are over.  

Oh I almost forgot, Prospect Cottage has been saved from private buyers, by friends and an organisation who will dedicate it to public interest. Seeds from your garden are free, germinating in all kinds of unusual places.

Yours,

Jen

***

Jen Green is a writer based in Bristol, UK. With a Masters in Travel & Nature Writing at Bath Spa University, she explores the role that nature plays in people’s lives; of trees, parks and a view of the sky. Jen has a portfolio website at jencgreen.com

In my wild urban garden

At the height of summer, Gerry Maguire Thompson is looking back across the year as he works on his forthcoming book Wilding the Urban Garden. In an exclusive extract for Elsewhere, he takes us back to the very beginning, and January in the garden…

Jan 1st 

A cold, bright day. I love watching the diverse life in this wilded garden in the city. It’s remarkable how many species are attracted here, mostly brought about by just getting out of nature’s way. 

Jan 2nd 

Mild weather today. A large bumble bee is visiting the flowers of Mahonia Japonica for nectar. At this time of year it’s got to be a queen – the only one who survives through the winter – needing nourishment to get through the cold months.

I’m sitting in the garden, just quietly observing; it becomes a kind of meditation. For a while it may seem like nothing is going on; but really there is never nothing happening. There’ll be an animal or a bird or an insect doing something, or a new plant that you hadn’t noticed before. And there’ll be sound; the longer you listen the more layers of sound you realise there are. The intricate web of nature is always there and is always amazing in its workings.

Observing this challenges me in how I evaluate what is significant and  worthy of attention. I realise more and more that the everyday and the mundane are in fact extraordinary: the amazingness of the commonplace. The seemingly prosaic or unglamorous species like the sparrow or earthworm or dandelion can reveal itself as charismatic when we give it our full attention. It makes you question the whole concept of what is conventionally charismatic or appealing

Sensing all this, for  this moment of time I suddenly feel that transcendent momentary sense: that nothing could be changed to make anything any better. This is the Tao of wildlife gardening.

Jan 5th 

The sparrows are out in force today, with fine weather after a day or two of rain. I never tire of watching them in the garden. There’s a large and growing flock who seem to never leave the place. All their needs are met here: food, protection, nest-sites, safe roosting – and lots of opportunities to bicker at one another. There is  immense joy to be found in this connexion with the inhabitants of our little wildlife haven and the intimate insights into their lives.

Jan 6th 

A woodmouse (Apodemus Sylvaticus: ‘one who goes abroad among the sylvan glades’) has been popping into the conservatory on the odd sunny day when we have the doors open to the outside, looking for something to eat. 

This little creature tends to look in each day for a couple of days, and is surprisingly undaunted by  our presence. It’s quite happy to move around our feet, picking up whatever bits fall from our plate, as long as we don’t move suddenly.

Jan 7th 

In the late afternoon I notice numbers of redwing gathering in the big ash tree just outside our garden gate; as the sun goes down more and more of them gather until there are well over a hundred. 

Jan 8th 

The redwings are still gathered in the ash tree in large  numbers, now  covering its whole canopy.

Jan 9th 

I look out first thing in the morning to check on the redwings: they’ve  gone. And so has every berry that was on every holly tree in the garden. They probably departed in the middle of the night.

Jan 12th 

The resident male blackbird is stabbing at windfall fruit from the apple tree that have remained intact on the ground into the winter. He’s starting to look glossy and his beak is turning a brighter colour: preparing to defend this very desirable territory, I imagine. 

Jan 14th 

The blackbird is now systematically eating ivy berries all day long; the visiting redwings didn’t take these. 

Jan 16th 

I’ve been watching the sparrows feeding today. It’s mysterious. They often leave a full feeder for hours, while at other times they pounce on it as soon as you put it out. I suppose it could be about the availability of other food sources, but at this time of year there isn’t an excess of other food around.

Jan 18th 

Taking the dog  out for bed-time walk and toiletries last night, I spotted a fox across the road. This one I recognised: a big old dog fox with a woolly face that makes him look like a bear. I’ve seen him around here for a long time, and I know where he lives – under an unused shed at the nearby allotments. He’s wary of people and dogs, which is probably how he got to be big and old. Tonight, as usual, he keeps his distance, then moves away.

Jan 20th 

Two bluetits are forming a promising relationship, hopping round one another on the apple tree when the sparrows are not in evidence – they seem to keep away from those slightly bigger and more assertive birds.

Jan 22nd 

I’m watching the sparrows as they finally settle down to roost in the holly tree as darkness falls. All has gone quiet. Then I notice one bird hop down to the lowest branch of the tree, do a poo, and hop back up to where it was before. Seems like this is sparrow etiquette: you just don’t poo on someone else’s head while they’re asleep. We’ve all been there.

Jan 23rd 

It’s particularly dark this evening, completely overcast. Taking the dog for her night-time outing we encounter a different fox – a lot younger and sleeker than Big Old Bear Fox – and a lot less wary of people and dogs. Has this one taken over the territory?

Jan 25th 

I’m delighted to hear  – from the dog-walking fraternity, who spot more wildlife than everyone else in this neighbourhood – that Big Old Bear Fox is still  around. Maybe he’s been pushed into an adjacent territory – or maybe he’s being tolerated by New Young Fox– maybe as a relative? Maybe even as proposed father to offspring?

Jan 26th 

Big Old Bear Fox and New Young Fox have been seen – together. So now I’m hoping they’re a couple. Sentimentally. I’d be delighted for Big Old Bear Fox to become a father once more…probably for the last time.

Jan 27th 

This evening I heard the first twilight mating-plus-territorial song of the year from the resident male blackbird: it’s beautiful and uplifting as ever. I know this bird is  probably saying, “This is my territory so don’t even think about coming into my space or you’ll seriously regret it” but I never fail to feel joy from listening to it, especially just before dawn and again at dusk. Who knows, perhaps the bird feels joy too: the joy of telling others to **** off? That’s a sentiment I too sometimes experience.

Jan 29th 

Big freeze. Now the ground is covered in hoar frost. Looking out my upstairs window at dawn, I see a dead fox in our next door neighbour’s garden, lying frozen and covered in white frost crystals. The neighbours let me into their garden. I’m pretty sure this is New Young Fox. She clearly didn’t die of hunger, because she’s in otherwise pristine condition. Incredibly beautiful and heartachingly sad.

Jan 31st 

Sun shining warmly today.  First male song-thrush of the year starts singing on the highest tip of the highest holly tree in the garden. Perching on the highest viewpoint in the vicinity – as thrushes are wont to do – and singing your heart out for a long time is a high-risk strategy, and numbers of thrushes are taken this way every year by sparrow-hawks or other birds of prey.

The sparrows are having their first splash of the year in the birdbath, always a joy to watch. They’re so exuberant and noisy that I can’t believe they’re not having a terrific time. My beloved sparrows continue to bring joy, so full of vitality and effervescent chattiness are they in any weather and any time of day. I love listening to them; they sound cheerful and optimistic to me, though I’m also perfectly aware that they’re mostly bitching, arguing, fighting and complaining to one another. I don’t care; cheerfulness, optimism and full-of-life-ness are still the effects their chatter has on me. Anthromorphique, moi? Certainement.

As January draws to close I’m reminded once again of the immense benefits urban wild gardening can bring: to the individual, to the local wildlife, to the cityscape, and indeed to the planet.

***

You can get free advance extracts from Gerry’s book “Wilding the Urban Garden” by signing up at urbanwildgarden.com
The book also has a Facebook page, at facebook.com/UrbanWildGarden 

There are Different Kinds of Sense

By Helen Sanderson:

Putrid mushy apples sink underfoot, orange with decay, and the smell of fermentation has become like strong cheese. We're cutting down trees like old woodsmen. I romanticise what I'm doing like that in order to feel better about it. Turn it into an image from a painting or film or something, you would probably admire the people in it, and then see yourself in a better light. Art gives dignity to the desperate and desolate. Or makes them more palatable. It's really forestry not gardening, this. That's what Derek says defensively and repeatedly, although I don’t know how it defends him or from what. He trudges slower and slower dragging branches along behind him, hood up and head down, shoulders slumped. Branches hit him in the face, his foot catches on the precarious moss-covered fabric of the ground. 

Derek may be confused about why I am there. I haven't been working there for 30 years like he has, I'm not local and have dropped into this sphere from an entirely different one. He could think that shows commitment, or, as I imagine, he could think that I may have the point of view of a tourist, choosing the novelty of this undertaking out of the blue for some unusual image I want to cultivate. I am certain a number of jokes have passed his mind about being alone together in the woods, but he must know he wouldn't enjoy my faked amusement. 

We tread on twigs and moss-covered rocks and it's a relief to be somewhere less manicured than the formal gardens of the same estate where I normally work. It's still not exactly wild though, most things have been planted deliberately. Next to the trees we are coppicing, the landscape is feels almost industrial, which is strange considering it is entirely vegetation – rows and rows of dull unidentifiable crops, presumably to feed livestock. Trees tower in the distance, and where the trunks are thickly covered in ivy, or have strangely shaped stunted branches or lumps, they appear as the forms of giant men, hanging from the tree canopy or standing awkwardly with bent knees. The kind of landscape that makes you think you can see someone or something moving out of the corner of your eye, especially in this dull weather. Like there's a presence in the air, somewhere just out of sight.

“Look, he's having a hard time putting anything on him.” It takes me a while to realise Derek is talking about a tree, and a further few seconds to conclude he was pointing out the tree isn’t growing leaves very well. I have started to find that it is easier to understand him if I listen to the words without attaching them to their meanings - to allow each word, or combination of words, pull waves of feelings and thoughts through me, and without thinking about what they meant, allow them to create dreamlike images floating in my brain like a reflection of the surface of some rippled water. Maybe I am here as some kind of tourist, enjoying colloquialisms, deciding they're very poetic.

We drive back through fields to eat in the mess room. The men, the innocent men, you can tell they're trying not to appear lecherous, avoiding coming within a few feet and moving their hands away quickly from anything near me. I should think of some kind of joke to make so we can all be more comfortable. I have the impression they're muting their own jokes for my benefit, unsure of what is acceptable.

Gardening is more sensual in a lot of ways than other jobs - roughly, physically sensual, pain from scratches and bruises and muscle aches, the smells and sounds of outdoors, birds and wind and machinery, unstifled belches, things coming out of people into the open without a second thought, less hidden. Now the sounds of eating, garbled, unintelligible words caught in throats with the unswallowed food, smells of petrol and grass cuttings, old sweat and stale damp. I imagine judgements of what’s meant to be beautiful or repulsive blur over time when dealing with sludge and decay and strange looking slimy insects alongside ethereal blooms and the freshness of plants. Either that, or perhaps sometimes more of a forced need to separate the sludge and freshness, acceptable and not. Or neither.

The small room we eat in smells of something not quite dirty or bad, but as if something small had rotted there a long time ago, or there had once been a lot of something very unpleasant there which had long ago been removed but left something of itself behind in the air. Grimy baked bean smears and distant, stale, savoury food mixed with moss. It is in the walls. This room, and times like this, could make me wonder what I'm doing here. I can come across as a pretentious snob even to my friends, but I’m just here. I didn't go into whatever was expected, I'm just sitting here in a weird smelling room with my colleagues. But I've got used to wondering what I'm doing anywhere. Might as well be here. There is that sphere of Gardener's World and the Chelsea Flower Show, people with gentle voices who will always make sure they are in beautiful places but uninterested in how enough wealth became accumulated to create them, exclaiming over the beauty of a flower, as toddlers over a new toy, without wanting to know about the colonialism associated with it being here. And then there are people with physical labour experience, hired because they can use machinery and lift things. People who own gardens and people who work in them, or on council owned grass verges or hospital car park gardens. But that's far too simplistic, I know, and some days it feels like something vital but usually unspoken unites all of us. I assume they don't know how my being out of place accentuates the assertion of my own existence, proof of the force of my will to make internal ideas become external reality, to connect the two realms as we must. But maybe they do know. 

On my way home the pavement seems to radiate humidity - that warm damp hard dusty smell after a certain kind of rain on warm day. Redundant seeds are scattered around each tree in the pattern of sparse chest hair. Seeds that will lie dormant until some kind of change in their environment triggers their germination and growth. I now know about the hormones auxin and giberellin and abscisic acid involved in the development of these seeds and their dispersal onto the ground. It's just a mechanism, it's just hormones making the plant do things, do things to attract pollinators and then sense when conditions are right to procreate. There are journeys going on all around me that I was previously unaware of, whole new worlds and systems right there next to me, which have provided relief from the ones I already knew about and lived in. 

I wanted to leave once, go back to the worlds I already knew. But I've grown used to the intentional miscommunications, grown to expect them. So much that I feel affronted by a genuine response, or expectation of one from me. It becomes more obvious that language is a manmade system of signals, not the holder of innate meaning. We build something rooted yet transient. Tucking little bedding plants into the earth, picturing myself as a child tucked between faded cotton sheets in my darkened childhood room. Teasing out the roots of larger shrubs and imagining the underground networks of roots reaching all the way to friends and family back in the city. Sometimes it seems I’ve moved my life closer to nature to find it fully inhabited by man. The inner-city community gardens felt more of an idyllic wilderness, felt more free of human hierarchies.

I’m exhausted in the evening, as every other evening, but for a second I catch the scent of decay on the cool air coming from an open window and feel a shiver of excitement. After the rain it smells like the early nineties again. Still-warm air holds only the sense of a chill, eventually to bring smoke and fog, fire and ice, and the soil will grow still and grey like a face tense and drawn. But for now the damp warmth still holds an excitement about the death of the year. It holds the memory of excitement for something, maybe for the future regardless of what it is, even if that future is death, the memory of looking forward creating a loop connecting my entire life since becoming conscious of the change in the air. It makes me picture daddy longlegs on an old school wall and I wonder why everyone had always seemed to like them but not spiders. Maybe we knew their presence was fleeting. Too bumbling to pose any threat. Spending a lifetime attempting to fly, never quite reaching their goal, learning by banging into the walls they try to follow upwards to the sky.

***

Helen Sanderson studied English Literature at UEA before becoming a Gardener. Originally from Nottingham, she now lives and works in South East London. She is currently working on novels, short stories and a Garden Design PGDip alongside her gardening job.

The Quarantined Photographer

By Stuart J. DuBreuil:

Nature is impersonal, awe-inspiring, elegant, eternal. It's geometrically perfect. It's tiny and gigantic. You can travel far to be in a beautiful natural setting, or you can observe it in your backyard...
– Gretchen Rubin

My time in Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks was inspirational. The abundance of wildlife, in their own unique habitat, far exceeded this photographer’s expectations. Now, like most of us, for the last several weeks I’ve been in self quarantine with my wife at our townhouse in the west end of Richmond, Virginia.

So, what’s an amateur wildlife photographer to do? I found that while I couldn’t venture out to find the animals, they kindly came to me. Or rather, I discovered that they had always been around, but that I just hadn’t seen them. Isolation has taught me to slow down and observe my surroundings. As it turns out, the backyards, front lawns, and surrounding grounds and airspace in the neighborhood is teeming with wildlife. 

We have a bird feeder on a pole in our backyard, just beyond our deck. We fill it with black oil sunflower seeds, approved by the National Audubon Society – you know, the good stuff, that the birds love. It attracts cardinals, robins, finches, sparrows and other birds I haven’t identified yet. It also attracts squirrels and chipmunks, who can’t get to the feeder directly because we have a conical guard on the pole that prevents them from climbing up.  But the birds are generous. While they are feasting at the feeder they also flick out seeds onto the grass and deck so other creatures can share in the banquet. 

I witness this activity daily from inside the house, behind the sliding glass doors that lead to our deck. I will peer through the vertical blinds so I won’t frighten off the wildlife, and then take my photos through the glass door. Recently, I’ve found that I can walk out onto the deck, and if I walk slowly with no sudden motion, I can photograph the creatures without scaring them off. 

My next door neighbor, Scott, is also a keen observer of wildlife. He is working from home, but seems to have plenty of time to look out the window and spot interesting things going on. He will text my phone to let me know when he sees something that I may want to photograph. He told me about the  robin’s nest under his roof gutter, nestled on top of the curved section of the down spout. I was able to get some shots of the mother robin feeding worms to her baby chick. 

He also texted me about two other baby birds that were on his back lawn. One managed to fly up onto the brick wall that divides our yards. I carefully followed this tiny creature’s journey as he plopped down onto our deck and walked across towards the other side of our yard. I was outside, taking lots of photos, until he disappeared into heavy foliage. I spotted him squeeze through a small hole in the wooden fence leading to my other neighbor’s yard. Looking over the fence, I could see him meet up with a larger bird, who I assumed was his mother. I’m not sure what type of birds they were, but it was rewarding to see the reunion.

This is only a sampling of the drama that plays out daily in our yards. Sometimes it is life or death. I once saw one of the neighborhood cats on top of the brick dividing wall staring intensely at something on the other side of my deck. There was a chipmunk backed up into the corner against my house and the other neighbor’s brick dividing wall. Suddenly the cat pounced, and in the blink of an eye he had that chipmunk trapped in his jaws. He hesitated for a second and then bounded straight up the brick wall, prey in mouth, and was gone. 

By far the most amazing spot by my neighbor, Scott, was outside his front door steps. He texted me to look outside at his front steps railing. There, perched on the black wrought iron railing, I saw a magnificent hawk. It must have been 15 to 18 inches long including the long gray and black striped tail. I had never seen one like it before. I later identified it as an adult Cooper’s Hawk, with it’s reddish-orange barred chest and legs and gray back feathers. The head was capped black, and the eyes were bright red. I grabbed my camera and starting snapping away, hoping he wouldn’t fly off too soon.

Turns out he was not skittish at all, like the backyard feeder birds. In fact, it looked like he was poising for me. With his extremely flexible neck, he moved his head to see in any and all directions, while keeping his body perfectly still. He looked left, right, up, down, and behind and down so the head disappeared completely!  When he got bored with that, he flew off the railing onto my front lawn, startling me, so I stepped backwards. From there he pranced across the grass like a runway model, as I snapped away, hardly believing my good fortune. Then in an instant, he flew off.

My neighbor and I would also scan the skies for large birds flying by, like the Turkey Vulture or Blue Heron. Capturing birds in flight with the camera can be challenging, but I’m getting better at it with practice. Scott noticed that a Blue Heron flies over our houses twice a day, in the morning and in late afternoon, going and coming from somewhere close. I’ve been able to get a few good photos of the bird passing overhead. 

The life and death struggles of wildlife can remind me of what’s going on outside our little oasis. My wife and I are among the lucky ones. We’re healthy, retired senior citizens and we’ve so far been able to escape the harsh reality of getting sick, like so many others all around us. Just a few blocks down the road is an elder rehab center that has lost over 50 people due to the COVID-19 virus. We try not to forget them, nor the brave medical professionals who care for patients every day while putting themselves at great risk. Quarantine time has given me the chance to slow down, observe, and reflect on what’s important in life; and for that I am grateful.

***

Website for Stuart DuBreuil and Yoko Gushi