There is something about the corner of a small park next to our apartment. People love sleeping there. Every few weeks, I’ll peer out the window next to my desk and see someone snoozing away on a patch of grass under a young but growing ginkgo tree.
The sleepers are, I imagine, looking for a mostly quiet and shaded place to rest unperturbed. They sleep during the day, probably because it’s safer and warmer for someone who’s unhoused, as most of these visitors appear to be. And while these neighbors should have access to proper homes, I appreciate the small courtesy of a comfy spot to slumber. I’m glad they can rest.
Nature offers us — all of us — so much in cityscapes. Our small park has nothing but a couple of benches, and one of those cylindrical, concrete-encased government trash cans. But the trees (including the jacaranda that creates purple petal rain) offer a lovely sun-dappled shade, and the breeze sweeps through just right in the afternoon. And there are grassy lawns where dogs do their business and passersby often stop for a break. It’s evident how our community is better off having this small slice of shared green.
I didn’t start thinking critically about urban green space until a few years ago. I can’t remember what exactly raised my consciousness. Maybe it was a long summer visit to New York City, where people clamor for tree canopy in the oppressive mugginess of July. Maybe it was covering local politics in Santa Cruz, where tree hugging is a competitive sport.
Now it’s something I think about often. Beyond the mere existence of parks and scenic hiking routes, I’ve been thinking a lot about the cultural priorities — and resulting political maneuvers — that determine what our public spaces look like.
Behind every grove of trees lies an unsexy history of land use policy, development, and probably a few lawsuits. I’ve already mentioned the recent fight over Compton Community Garden, which is a prime example of the tensions at play between developers and longtime residents in a lot of midsize-and-above cities. These are valid, tough questions communities must answer: If we must grow, how do we do it well? How can our physical space benefit the most people? What are our values as a city/town/region?
Compton and South LA more broadly are fascinating case studies. But I want to zoom in on a few other places this week.
First, Atlanta. Tensions have been flaring for months over a proposed law enforcement training facility, dubbed Cop City. One of the best things I read this week was thoughtful, in-depth reporting on the issue by David Peisner in Bitter Southerner (although the story’s from December). The long and short of it is this: a wooded area in the outskirts of Atlanta has gone from Indigenous land to slavery plantation to prison farm. Then it was a dumping ground. And now Atlanta police want to turn part of the property into a vast training facility for officers.
Activists have protested, squatted on the land, taken up residence in the treetops, burned construction equipment. One of them was killed by police in January, a predicted outcome that heightened people’s anger. This week, protesters filled the atrium of Atlanta City hall to voice their dissent as city council voted on the project. After more than 14 hours of heated public comment, council members approved $30 million in public funding for the massive complex.
When I stop to imagine the forest, by filling in the corners of my peripheral vision with tall trees and pine needle-covered earth, it invites a complicated feeling. I see the brutality this piece of earth has witnessed. My sentimental core thinks the trees must weep sometimes. We’re lucky they don’t exact revenge. And I see how uniquely, violently American this blend of issues is. How tragic it all is.
And yet, let’s be real. The conflict in Atlanta isn’t new. It’s not so far removed from the violent “timber wars” in the Pacific Northwest. Even in two places so culturally and historically distinct, both were wars between the state and the people, and among the people, and against the environment. It’s about forest, about trees, but it’s really about so much more.
Plants are political.
That becomes very clear in a place like Manhattan, developed within a square inch of its life. Think of plant life there. Central Park, of course. But step outside the park. Nature still persists.
Marielle Anzelone knows it. As an urban botanist in NYC, she’s devoted her career to finding and studying the plant life of one of the most populous places in the world.
Her interview with Matt Candeias on the “In Defense of Plants” podcast was illuminating. There are forests and marshlands and more in and around New York City, but it’s under threat. Wildlife is pushed out by strip malls and parking lots. And she makes the point that taking stock of our natural surroundings is critical at this point in the urbanization of the U.S. If we don’t collectively educate ourselves and rally to protect plants — especially those unique and native to the areas we live in — we’ll lose them.
We’ll live in cities without public green spaces and community gardens and shady trees if we don’t assert their importance and guard against their destruction. These resources are already precious and rare in cities, and often exclusive.
“If we think of cities as only being built, and there’s no nature, then it allows our political leaders to do whatever they want in our natural areas. Now you have no say, because you have been hoodwinked into thinking there is no nature to save.”
— Botanist Marielle Anzelone, on “In Defense of Plants”
There she rises, defiant in a bed of heart-shaped leaves.
In Search of a Certain Eden, by the photographer Chanell Stone, captivated me at SF MOMA last month. Part of Stone’s 2019 series, Natura Negra, it showcases the beauty of urban plant life. This portrait in particular echoed my own feeling while walking the neighborhood. Something might be awkwardly sprouting from a little patch of grass or squeaking out a life with the tiniest bit of water. But it’s there.
I feel grateful recognition when I come across plants in a city. They do so much for me just by existing: I’m more connected to my surroundings, momentarily pulled out of self-preoccupation and into awe, tickled by a flamboyant leaf even while on a Bad Mood Walk™.
The more I learn (with the help of the NatureID app) the more I wonder. This plant is native to southern Australia? What? How’d it end up here? How can it grow so well along this street? Like so many of us, these species are descended from migrants — part of a flora diaspora. When I come across an expressive flower that I know, I see the whole flow of human and plant history intertwined, crisscrossing the globe for millennia.
I used to find trees rather boring. But now I can see them as stately recorders of history. We’re born, we live, we die; they remain. One oak could see my bloodline through from start to finish. So I’m looking to my environment for lessons in patience. That jacaranda outside my window is gonna bloom the day she wants to and not a moment sooner. Even if she bloomed a few weeks earlier last year. Last year isn’t this year, she says, and I agree. Some years might be without flowers but that doesn’t mean she’s dead. Same for me. Patience.
Some of this is hippie granola stuff — spent too long in California, you might say. But I’m in good company. From Sasha, a local herbalist who led our beautiful wildflower walk, I’m learning about other dimensions of earth knowledge, like plant medicine.
She told us how Los Angeles was truly wild until less than a century ago. The wildflowers are a reminder of that. In the parking lot, she pointed us to soft pink California Rose, a native and natural five-petal rose species that is both edible and medicinal but hard to find these days. We come across several varieties of sage plant, and smelled “cowboy cologne,” California Sagebrush that was crushed and used as a natural deodorant.
She encouraged us to touch and smell and sometimes taste various plants. And we did, forgetting about bugs and allergies and how we might look.
Six years ago, in June of 2017, I got one of my first assignments as an intern at WLRN, Miami’s public radio station. I was sent to cover an orchid-planting day at a retirement community. A slow news day, made even sleepier when I arrived to find the orchids were diminutive baby plants. No flowers. The community residents were walking around the property, attaching the mini orchids to trees.
And while I was initially unimpressed, I soon learned the point. This event was part of a massive effort by a local botanical garden to repopulate South Florida with orchids, over 100 species of which are native to the area. Magnificent orchid species used to grow wild in the swamps and forests around Miami. Then they were decimated because people wanted to harvest, cultivate and put them on display in their homes. I never knew this. It made sense suddenly why the store-bought orchids my mom attached to trees in our backyard flourished the way they did.
I walked around that day, taking some pictures of tiny orchids and interviewing people, notebook in hand. One man, who was 85, told me, “It’ll probably be five years before they bloom. But maybe I’ll be here.” I still think about it.
He was holding these two things at once: the ending of his human life, and nature’s unceasing capacity for rebirth. It was a passing of the torch — you keep going, little orchid. Grow for the person who will admire you in six years, after I’m gone.
Plants are a radical hope.
Thanks for reading. Have a great week,
Isa
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