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Plant's that just want to grow, and colonise urban environments. They remind me to never give up even when life can be difficult and environments are harsh to thrive in

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People have realised that engaging with nature can improve health. Dr can actually prescribe it. Advising people to take a walk in a park, garden to be incontact with beneficial organisms in the soil, sit in a garden. But many people walk past nature e everyday without noticing. Plants can be growing a few feet from their homes. Encouraging people to look, notice and observe these plants can be easier than travelling to parks, or for people with limited mobility who can't garden or people without gardens.

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The crack

The gap is so small

It goes unnoticed

in the garden wall

Stones placed tight together

For many a year

Standing tall and strong

Then a tiny crack appears

So small

But the plant seed finds

that hole in the wall

The possibility of a new home

It decides to move in

Held firm and cozy

Nestled deep within

Soon it grows

Stretching out towards the light

Leaves emerging

Bright and healthy

Determined to have a life

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Neat and tidy world

I hear the dreaded sound

Advancing down the road

The buzzing and grinding

Of the deadly strimmer

Man in orange

glimpsed through the hedge

The council worker of death

Slicing the heads off the poppies

Clearing the grass

Orchids cut down in their prime

Wild flowers that have grown in the cracks

Beautiful flowers

Bringing colour to the drab paths

All gone now

in the blink of an eye

Because people have decided

Sometime In the past

That plants and nature

Are untidy

and look such a mess

Spoiling the paved paths

Too green for the road side verges

They want them sterile

Then the people disconnected from nature

can't figure out

Why they are miserable

and suffer from depression

Feeling hopeless in the now

With no worthwhile future

They stay in their homes

Lost without life

Or any appreciation of nature

Then advised by medics

To garden or visit a park

But the nature that surrounds them

is still ignored

Lichens and mosses

That grow on a wall

Tiny flowers that live in the cracks

Sturdy plants that push through the concrete

Ferns and liver werts

that cling to the sides of walls

So now I will go out today

To see the strimmer damage

The wild flowers

that have been torn and shredded

And live no more

I will mourn their passing

I will apologise

I will ask for human forgiveness

And hope for a future

Where people are better informed

And appreciate nature

That lives near their own door

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Sharing a link here to information about some work I have been doing - making drawings of our close & local plants - with 2 other artists, Roz in Burry Port (near Llanelli) & Jen in Eagle Rock (in California).

Siân 🌱

https://www.drawingtogether.art/

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making drawings together | drawing together

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We are three artists connected by meeting each week online and drawing together: Roz Moreton, Siân Barlow & Jen Herzig Smith.

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First there was the moss, then there was the primrose. Lisa

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First there was the moss, then there was the primrose. Lisa

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Infiltrating the wall in Manchester. Lisa

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Infiltrating the wall in Manchester. Lisa

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Standing tall, growing through garden membrane and gravel

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Standing tall, growing through garden membrane and gravel

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The canal trust will send volunteers to clear this, so that it does not damage the structure of the bridge, but until then it is living its best life

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Lichens that have created a city

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Fence of growth,

needing to look carefully

as you pass by

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Plants 'n weeds, textiles - growing in the cracks

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Should all turn to wreck and ruin, buddlia will reclaim the hights. I've seen them in the rafters of railway stations, fraternising with the pidgions. Ti's the green revolution, begin with the most common and least cherished. The commoners have escaped the common and are heading for the towns.

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I found a wonderful reader's digest book in a charity shop last week, titled 'Wildlide on your doorstep, the living countryside' from 1993

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This year, this beautiful sunflower grew impossibly from concrete/bench leg! Lindsey xx

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A piece of knowlage picked up from a youtube vidio on how to use chinise watercolour. Sounds transferable but im yet to be shore i beleive it. More experimentation is needed, this medium is new too me. This weed flower is made up but we have all trod on them, a bit of a pain but beloved by cynabar moths. 

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A piece of knowlage picked up from a youtube vidio on how to use chinise watercolour. Sounds transferable but im yet to be shore i beleive it. More experimentation is needed, this medium is new too me. This weed flower is made up but we have all trod on them, a bit of a pain but beloved by cynabar moths. 

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I wanted to try to express a bit here what I was also attempting to say in the collaboratory earlier today, about how "weeds" might self-structure themselves, taking as my starting point the land at the abandoned opencast in this valley, and how it islands itself into plant communities. I am not even sure this is a good way of understanding what is happening up there - but I think it's fair to say that clustering happens. How the islands compose themselves seems to be very specific and at the same time wildly opportunistic and surprising, also far too complex for me to grasp. Actually, honestly, I go up there probably several times a week, and have been doing so for quite a lot of years now, and the more I go the more I realise just how little I know about what is happening on the land up there.

I tried to find one of my (thousands of) photos, to see if I can share a photo of an islanding happening. The one in this photo perhaps doesn't look much like an island - but I picked the photo to share because everyone who is in it is in a celebratory mood, so, you know...

To give you their names - for those who don't know these ones - it looks to me like this island has a lot of mouse-ear hawkweed and some birdsfoot trefoil in its community.

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the Nettle poem I read in the collab yesterday-weedwonderful ubiquitous x

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Traveller's Joy or Old Man's Beard. Delightful this time of year and loves the limy soil round here-but can grow too far too fast and choke out the light for other plants.

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Former Mid Wales Hospital site, Talgarth, Wales

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Rosebay Willowherb and other plants growing over a tarmac carpark, thanks to moss starting the process of regrowth. Beneath the carpark are 1000 unmarked graves of former hospital residents, but as this is private land, it has not yet been possible to create a memorial garden. Maybe this is more beautiful, fitting and poignant? From A Private Land / Tir Diarffordd, a community, collaborative project funded by Arts Council Wales in 2023. Thanks Utopias Bach and every-one posting here.

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…

What would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

From Inversnaid by Gerard Manley Hopkins

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The singular and cheerful life

of any flower

in anyone's garden

or any still unowned field--

if there are any--

catches me

by the heart,

by its color

by its obedience

to the holiest of laws:

be alive

until you are not.

…

The Singular and Cheerful Life

By Mary Oliver, in her book “Evidence”

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Brother Ivy, by Denise Levertov

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Found this yesterday in the hinge of church hall front door, holding on. View of open door

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When reading the entries above of plant reclaming land i was reminded of the disused mine where i grew up. It became quite an eddible garden, with wild strawberries mushrooms and blackberry bushes making a habitat suitable for rabbits in the mostly barron gravel.  There were clusters of young birch and leggy grasses at their feet. The mine reopend as a open cast so the evolution of that habbitat has been stalled for another 100 years. 

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When reading the entries above of plant reclaming land i was reminded of the disused mine where i grew up. It became quite an eddible garden, with wild strawberries mushrooms and blackberry bushes making a habitat suitable for rabbits in the mostly barron gravel.  There were clusters of young birch and leggy grasses at their feet. The mine reopend as a open cast so the evolution of that habbitat has been stalled for another 100 years. 

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My pond is small and sits in a corner of my small garden.  I've planted a few marginals and odd plants around it. The water is clear with recent rain.  Last month the glorious, fallen acer leaves floated on its surface, face up or down.  I loved the colours then.  Inside my pond there are some plants, stepping stones and shells.

I have created an Invitation for you ...

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Nettles seem able to grow anywhere.

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If a weed is a plant growing in the wrong place ...? 

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If a weed is a plant growing in the wrong place ...? 

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A few days ago I went on a little walk towards recovery. Along our slate garden wall, down the back lane to the lamp post and back. I thought I’d add some photos of my noticings along the way. The sycamore tree lives in our garden but also within Lisa’s heart.

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This little one has snuggled

Into the corner

Of the front steps

Squashed into the crack

Hoping the weed cleaner

Will not notice its presence

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Growing in concrete

Bold and strong

Showing myself

Tall and straight

A pollinator

For insects

And bringing

colour and joy

To every paaser by