kahn's technological nature experiments

So, yes, among the books I've been reading this year is Technological Nature - Adaptation and Future of Human Life. I picked it up after I read about the lead author's nature window experiments, where workers in internal offices (with no outside walls, or windows) were given a plasma screen "window" showing them a live feed from outside their building. Their satisfaction was measured against people with a real windows. The study found that they were better than no nature but not as good as actual nature.

So far, so much as expected. But here's really where the interest starts. The people with the technological windows really liked them. The felt like a significant status item. They would invite people in to look at them. And they could be used for work, too, and as anyone who during lockdown has plugged their work laptop into the TV knows - a biiiiiiiig screen makes such a difference with a complex spreadsheet. The fact that they could be switched to a webcam pointing at a nice exterior view was lovely, and interesting, but it felt invasive of the privacy of the people outside, in a way that a window would not be. He didn't get as far as putting up an exterior screen (window simulator?)  so people outside could see into the building. That may have equalised the power imbalance, or made the experience even stranger. But - as his evidence showed really quite strongly - people would probably have gotten used to it.

Adaptation is what Kahn is talking about. How people become accustomed to fewer animals, less greenery, smaller numbers of insects, less birdsong, screens of nature scenes instead of windows looking out onto greens, tidy robot pets instead of  furminators like this floof:



In the intriguingly entitled chapter, Thoughts about Windows, Kahn talks about how some people felt manipulated by their nature windows. It felt like a rip-off, a trick. They would prefer a real window. Even one looking onto a brick wall.

There's more in the book. My favourite chapter dealt with the Telegarden, an early internet art/gardening project where people could join a community looking after a (partially!) robot-tended garden where they could make decisions, look at their plants, and even manipulate a robotic planting arm. Kahn lead research on the chat logs, where people mostly talked about the usual stuff they do online, and noted that it didn't seem to be helping people connect with nature very much. But then, aren't gardens more about the flight from nature into a kind of aesthetic playground? Here's Ken introducing his innovative use of an industrial robotic arm:

The chapter where my bookmarks start to forest, though, is the one where Kahn talks about "environmental generational amnesia"which is his own adaptation of Jared Diamond's "landscape amnesia", where people forget the background environment that they or their parents lived in, and accept the current state as baseline normal. Because natural environments are seen as generous and abundant, small changes, little depletions, minor exploitations are conceived of as small harms, not important, and therefore continue until collapse. This is the ultimate outcome of human adaptation, where we adapt to a steadily degrading natural environment, celebrating weeds in cracks in the concrete where our great-grandparents swept hands through fields full of butterflies and wildflowers. And maybe we get as much pleasure from that, who knows?

More significantly he notes that "each generation of ... scientists accepts as a baseline the stock size and species composition that occurred at the beginning of their careers, and uses this to evaluate changes" - depredation and degradation becoming the norm, accepted, as a matter of course. The proposed solutions don't shy from the banal (get children into nature, tell children how it was - something that is getting easier, perhaps, with immersive high quality video) but also extend into the speculative - imagine the future, develop a descriptive nature language.

Imagining the future is a career in itself nowadays, of course. This one's pretty! I wonder how we can get there from here.

The final chapter is a lovely tangled weedbed of loose shoots heading off in different directions. In it we return to the idea of a descriptive nature language, and try to put a taxonomy onto human/nature interaction. There are interrogations of some ecological concepts - how does "leave only footprints, take only memories" interact with the human inclination to take home interesting stones, seed cases, pine cones, bones or even (as once memorably happened with my sister) an entire dead weasel? How does ecological management of an area for a particular outcome (as our local nature park is managed, to promote diversity, encourage butterflies and fat caterpillars to nurture Cuckoos and ultimately Marsh Harriers) support the human need to feel awed and humbled by the wildness of nature in an enveloping natural, unmanaged landscape? Is putting in an accessible path to a secluded, wild space so everyone can enjoy it the beginning of the destruction of that space?

Kahn's proposed nature language reads like loose poetry:

travelling the winding path, travelling off path, the hunt, waiting, prospect, refuge, investigating, artisitic expression, solitude, approaching carefully, in the flow of nature's dynamics, water on feet and hands, immersed in water, plunging into water, moved by water, playing, dying, gardening, foraging, tracking, combating the destructive forces of nature, using nature to find respite from nature, climbing, running, following the light through a thicket, around a campfire, under the night sky

He has several hundred of these terms, but looking the list already betrays his interests; American, interested by hunter gatherer societies, active - probably prefers trekking holidays. My list would be different, and so would yours; individual nature languages specific to our own environments, interests and upbringings. Perhaps we might both include some things, though I suspect my list will rapidly stray into my own interests; seeing light on running water, picking up an interesting stone, finding a plant that is different to the other plants.

Clipsham Yew Walk

I came across a quiet reference to a village with an avenue of yew trees sculpted into shapes like foliage chess pieces, once part of a stately home now "open to all but oddly adrift". As a self-taught home practitioner of vernacular topiary (meet Spriggy Stardust, my front garden chameleon) I'm always curious to see other peoples' conversations with foliage.

So I went looking for views, and while there are some great ones on the Clipsham Yews website, including some deliciously shaggy views from a period of neglect, this gives you a short sharp view of the curiously clipped trees.

There's a sense of the Alice in Wonderland about them, of the Edward Gorey - a wandering line that merrily defies expectation in a flamboyant, albeit somewhat gloomy, flourish of eccentricity. How, you wonder, why?

Enter a short documentary slot rescued from an old video tape recording from a BBC series called Castle in the Country, which celebrates, through the technicolor snow of re-recording artefacts, the weird world of the plummy, chummy, shabby, snobby world of British aristocracy.

The basic brief in place: cut them any shape you wish but no two must be the same as each other, each year, each cut compounded by other ideas; characters from the village, but absolutely no women; the signature initials of gardeners and royalty; some animals; a building or two. At one time, tiny benches nestled in cutaway niches in the trees, cool in the yew shadow, but the recent fly-bys don't show these. They're a popular subject for drone flight videos - here's one from this year, parched by drought, but there are lots online.

I like to describe topiary as a conversation with the plant. I doubt I'm the first, but this is based on the first hand experience; of going in with plans of a smooth abstract shape, like a wave made of foliage.... and coming out with a huge comedic chameleon with a curly tail, the tail in particular feeling like it had already been in the hedge, just waiting to be picked out by my shears.

But the other thing you are conversing with, always, is the cuts of the years before. This year, for the first time, as I celebrated the end of sparrow breeding season (they like to set up in his head) by chopping in Spriggy's lines, I felt the weight and spread of the years before; the head bulging, the back drifting up out of reach in a slow upwards wave of green, eyes and legs heading off sideways in their urge to be just, you know, branches.

I'm on privet, which is a much less dense hedge-type than yew. I wouldn't be able to do relief work like this on my hedge, and it's machine cut - I use hand shears. But he's certainly starting to look a bit poddy, although still, recognisably, a chameleon.

oxford botanic gardens are open again

My pick for the first day out after lockdown eased needed to be somewhere outdoors, that I am fond of, that I know well, so I can avoid the weird little bottlenecks that these places always have. Oxford Botanic Garden ticks all boxes, plus I hadn't been for a few years so there was sure to be something new.

Actually, it seemed like there was a lot new, but as I check back, it looks more like I've not been for a while, and the changes have added up. At one time, I'd buy a local resident's season pass. That was back when I was in a 90s rental house, built in the aftermath of a bonfire of building regulations that saw houses made smaller, lower and with more substandard materials than ever before. This one was nominally a two bedroom house, but I slept in the living room as you could not fit a bed into the second bedroom. We used it as a walk-in wardrobe. The back garden was similarly tiny, but had been planted with huge, oversized shrubs; most of the garden contained a massive municipal shrub with flowers that stank of cat pee; there were two column-style cherry trees, desperately competing in the rain shadow of a tall wall; and a rambunctious huge-leaved ivy that forced its way into the roofspace and through the gaps in the window frames (which were all warped, as though they were double glazed, they had been constructed with unseasoned wood). I couldn't change any of this as it was rental, so I bought a pass to the Botanic Gardens, and when I wanted to sit in a nice garden, I went there.

No spoiler to say that it's even nicer than I remember it being. Recent innovations include the Merton Borders:

These are densely and intensely planted, with weed toleration, and they buzz with native insects. One narrow walk allows you to brush past plants on both sides, as if you were pushing through the meadow. Everything about them is amazing, including the fact that they come with a plant list, like a show garden.

Another new addition is a section called Plants which changed the world, where pergolas and iron frameworks have been allowed to proliferate wildly, and productive plants grow sheltered by frames and wall, evoking the practicalities of a kitchen garden. Bits I remembered fondly are still there; the Herbaceous Border, still looking like a picture from the Ladybird Guide to fancy gardens. The rock gardens, the lily pond, the chunky Gunnera sheltering a tiny pond.

The glasshouses, wonderfully, were actually partially open. It's tight in there, so there's a shortened, one-way route (you can see them all in Google Street View but sadly without the smell of them) but that included some luscious plants and views:




My co-visitors, being fans of the Dark Materials books, also had me looking for Lara's bench. I won't give anything away, but it's quite easy to spot; you'll know it when you find it.

jack shadows

I let my Jack-in-the-Hedge go wild this year. I wouldn't want you to think I've been selective here, so I should add that I have also let my Dandelions, Bindweed, Herb Robert, Creeping Violet and Herb Bennet go wild.  Turns out being confined to quarters does not make an amazing garden suddenly appear. I've grown more plants, but weeded? Not so much.





I really liked how the seedheads looked, so I left them up. I'll pay for it over the years, I'm sure, but it was worth it for the Jack Shadows photos I took one very bright morning before work, as the seed heads spilled across the patio and flowerbed.

Here is how my morning workspace looked. The paper is a sample of super-reflective printer paper gifted to me by a friend.

some visions of the future green city depress me

Another day, another article reading how rooftop hydroponics will feed us, from their miraculous plastic pipes. Read a little closer, and you find that Nature Urbaine (for this spectacular Parisian roof-top garden, a must-visit for 2020 (if you can get to it), complete with its own restaurant serving some of the grown produce, is what this article is about) "most significantly is a real-life showcase for ... [a] flourishing urban agriculture consultancy" and ho-hum, more of my interest peels away.

It's true that doing away with soil does lose some of the loading issues with rooftop gardens. The pipes are lightweight, and the electricity need to run the system is (relatively) easily tappable from the building systems. Harvesting is easy as there's only one plant in any one place. It's a clever trick, growing plants with their roots hanging in damp space. Aquaponics, which puts fish into the system, is perhaps cuter, but base hydroponics like this have the edge on simplicity. It's the minimum moving parts type of agriculture. In fact, forgive me, mea culpa. The system in this article isn't even hydroponics, it's aeroponics. Less water, more sprinkling. Even fewer parts.

I get definite pleasure from the ambition of Les Parisculteurs and the powerful aim to cover at least 100 hectares of Paris's roofs, walls and facades with greenery. If the green roofs and walls don't die, they can help cool the lethal heatwaves that sweep our cities nowadays. If their hydroponic sprays and their clever drip irrigation systems don't clog and fail, and they don't catch a dry wave that locks their compost solid, then there is enormous joy in a green wall. But I have seen some sad dead green walls - I was too heartsick to photograph the ruin of the Oswestry M&S Simply Food green wall, but someone else has - and failing hydroponics, too, drippling rank water over browned plants.

So wherein my distrust? I think it maybe arises from the limited palette, the small number of parts. This isn't an ecosystem, it's more a short green line from A to B; and if any part fails, all fails. The parts, too, are custom-built by your eco-consultancy, a fancy plumbing system of plastic bits and nozzles, all requiring regular maintenance, all prone to system failure. The plants are fed by proprietary nutrient systems, bought in drums and sachets off the internet and mixed with water. This is the opposite of ecology; insects are a problem, as they throw off your balance. Birds may come, but they won't stay. The only animal presence is the human animal - and their chemistry set.

I do prefer the world where the wardrobe bong farm has taken over our rooftops to the one where they are blank concrete, tile and tar wastelands - but only marginally, and partly, I suspect, because my thoughts run like this; where there is water transport, there will be raised humidity and occasional leakage and that will drive organic plant growth, in roof-corner dirt traps and cracks, and that will be a stepping stone to the upper storey wildflower meadows our building crave and our bees are waiting for, that will surely come eventually.

And in our march towards the green striped city, any stepping stone will do.

Happy National Meadow Day

Other things are celebrated today, but I'd like to spend today on my one of my lockdown heroes, the local meadows. We go to a few, but Iffley Meadows is the constant companion. Here are some of the highlights from the Meadow and its bounding areas (Tow Path, Bypass, A Road, River) from Lockdown 2020:

The willows are falling down. They're designed to do this; it's a feature, not a bug. This one in a backwater by Iffley Weir has been in the river for a while now. We've had some storms!

There's always a flower of the moment in Iffley Meadow. At the moment it's Knapweed. In among the standard purples I found a colour sport, with a little halo of white petals. There were a few of these dotted around, so clearly the bees don't mind.

Fasciated thistles are having a bit of a moment this summer. Maybe it's the uneven rain, but clubbed, split and freaky otherwise freaky blooms are having a year this year. I love this one, it looks like Poison Ivy spitting a curse at Batman.

Pyramidal Orchids don't grow in the Nature reserve itself, but off to one side, where Abingdon Road meets the Bypass, near Redbridge Park and Ride they grow plentifully in the verges.

The meadow walks got more worn in as the lockdown went on. There's a second path sprung up now, 2m apart from the first; a social distancing path. We tried (and failed) to find the cuckoo, but spotted Reed warblers and Grasshopper Warblers, and a Treecreeper, creeping around a tree. We've seen fledglings and swallows, mayflies and muntjac. Happy National Meadow Day, Iffley Meadows.

the joy of stem and softwood cuttings

I love this time of year. The sap has stopped rising and is churning around in the stems, feeling a bit bored.  Shrubs and woody plants are covered with soft fresh growth full of possibility and unfocussed ambitions. Everything has leaves and flowers out, which means that everything is displaying its identity brightly and proudly; and those with a touch of colour variation, a hint of variegation are twinkling like fairy lights in a June garden. It is time for softwood and stem cuttings.



One of the delights is that you never quite now what will gaily throw out roots at the first hint of moist soil and what will sulk, turn sad and die. But it's a twig. What's to lose?



Well, you do have to snip the top-growth, or essentially the plant will operate as a cut flower - attempt to make a flower and seed (this can also be magical - I found a discarded pelargonium stem in a heap of laurel leaf sweepings, flowering with zero root in soil, the other day, a bright pink flower poked up incongruously through the coppery dead leaves - it was a decent chunk of stem I'd knocked off the plant and it had just enough resources to throw up a flower). But here you are capitalising on the plant's ability to mend damage, along with its granular nature - each part of a plant is also a plant, and if it has nothing better to do, it will try and repair itself.



With the top-growth snipped and decent soil contact and just enough moisture, lots of plants happily shoot roots from the stem. Not everything (I have doubts about this one - waxy leaves don't like being cut) but a snapped off chrysanthemum stem following a round of vigorous cat romping in the garden has already produced five new plants this year. It's also, of course, a way to feel much better about the situation when you accidentally take the secateurs to the wrong thing; ah! A cutting!



Though both these are incomer plants; twigs sourced from shrubs in other places. That can work out very nicely; I have a stunning Black Elder, a sweetly fragrant Jasmine and a lovely Flowing Currant that started as twigs in jars (my "technique" for cuttings involves sitting the snapped off stems in a jar of water for as long as it takes me to get around to putting it in soil).

The failure rate is high, but each time it works is a little miracle. A fragment of green becomes an entire plant, whole and beautiful.