Weeds and wildness

Every farmer and every gardener knows the curse of weeds. Only this morning as I was at the allotment, I could not believe how quickly the weeds had grown since my last visit, undoing all my hard labour.

We read in Genesis 3:17-19 about how thorns and thistles were part of God’s curse for Adam’s disobedience. I don’t believe that thorns and thistles sprang into existence as a result of the Fall, it’s more that farming became toilsome and burdened by them as humanity attempted to fulfil God’s command to ‘fill the earth and subdue it’ (Gen 1: 28). Even thorns and thistles have their place in the scheme of Creation; for example, thistles are a source of nectar for insects, their seeds are loved by goldfinches and their leaves are food for the caterpillar of the painted lady butterfly.

As every gardener also knows, a weed is just an ordinary plant in the wrong place (and I picked far more blackberries from the thorny brambles next to my allotment than from the spineless cultivated variety).

An alternative perspective on weeds and wildness was brought home to me forcefully by reading Isabella Tree’s Wilding: the return of nature to a British farm (Picador, 2018).

To quote from the blurb: ‘Forced to accept that intensive farming of the heavy clay soils of their farm at Knepp in West Sussex was driving it close to bankruptcy, in 2000 Isabella Tree and her husband Charlie Burrell took a spectacular leap of faith and handed their 3,500 acres back to nature. With minimal human intervention, and with herds of free-roaming animals stimulating new habitats, their land is now heaving with life. Rare species such as turtle doves, peregrine falcons and purple emperor butterflies are now breeding at Knepp and biodiversity has rocketed.’

I don’t know if Tree and Burrell have a Christian faith, although the opening words of the book are from the Song of Solomon: ‘Flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land.’

Their ‘leap of faith’ was something of a conversion experience which Tree describes as an epiphany, following a visit from tree expert Ted (no pun intended) who came to advise on saving the ancient oaks in Knepp park and encouraged them to see their land with different eyes.

What we see as a typical English farmed landscape is the product of centuries’ effort to subdue the earth, to combat the thorns and thistles. But what if subduing, over time, became little more than rape of the land?

We have forgotten how rich in nature our countryside used to be and how much we’ve lost. Tree catalogues some of the catastrophic declines in British wildlife, including the turtle dove (Solomon’s ‘turtle’), which is now on the verge of extinction in the UK.

Changing attitudes

Our society often seems to have an ambivalent, even hostile, attitude to wildness. It’s not just some farmers (thankfully not all), but local councils who assiduously mow verges which could be wildflower havens, developers who see scrubland as waste, or homeowners who lay artificial grass (this last one a pet hate of mine).

Attitudes are changing, which we can see in the trend towards wildlife-friendly gardens, perhaps as we realise we’ve exterminated much life in the countryside. In places, lost wildlife is being re-introduced, such as beavers in Devon and Scotland, although not yet at Knepp. (C.S. Lewis, by the way, did beavers a disservice – they don’t eat fish.) ‘Rewilding’ the countryside is currently a fashionable topic in nature conservation, although it has been controversial with some, and in reality there’s a spectrum of approaches.

Knepp challenges us to change our perspective about weeds and wildness and shows that it’s possible to do things a different way that is perhaps more honouring to the intent of the Creator, even in a world marred by thorns and thistles.