Log Book — Ruari Paterson-Achenbach

My friend Yichen recently drew my attention to the existence of a ‘women’s script’ from Hunan in China -  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N%C3%BCshu - how incredible! I’m now wondering how many of these ‘women’s scripts’ exist or have existed, and whether we can tap into them. I’m also reminded of Polari - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polari - and other slang / languages used by queer people around the world - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pajub%C3%A1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swardspeak - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IsiNgqumo - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gayle_language


In a sense this relates to some other (somewhat tangential but still related!) things I’ve been thinking about in relation to language & fugitivity - obviously there have been incredible texts written about language and anticolonial resistance (‘Decolonising the Mind’, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o etc.) but also thinking about the relationships between language & resistance, blackness, the names we call ourselves and are called by others etc.


There are incredible essays like ‘Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book’ by Hortense Spillers which explicitly refers to language as a means for constructing (or rather denying) womanhood for Black americans. Also Patricia Hill Collins’ ‘Black Feminist Thought’ is always with us as a reminder to interrogate what we consider knowledge, knowing, and truth. I bring these up as we are constantly thinking about how we relate to and interact with the past - how do we forge these connections with historical figures and historical gardens? What does it mean to rediscover and make new these connections through an imagined society? How does the temporality of a garden, of a tree, of soil, challenge our experience of linear, colonial time? Which languages, dialects, vernaculars do we use to communicate with them? With the trees? What does it mean to forge new languages?


There are also connections we can constantly draw between radical feminist acts of gardening and indigenous calls for land back / sovereignty - how can our calls for appreciating radical acts of being with/through the soil extend into an incorrigible solidarity with indigenous people living in settler states.

I’ve added a wide selection of readings and will add more and more as I can. I’ve also reached out to a few places to ask for any leads on specific figures. I mainly spent this week reading through the materials already present in the drive and getting more acquainted with the specific ideas you’ve already come up with around the society. It really is such a beautiful idea and I’m so grateful to be a part of it.

Just noting some leads from an email:

Derek Jarman (obvious and male but still significant in the world of queer gardening!)

Organisation - https://blakoutside.org/ - someone to get in touch with! - run by Carole Wright (https://twitter.com/blak_outside) London based gardener - Blak Outside is a Black & LGBT led community gardening project

Quote from this email:

“I remember reading something about David Wojnarowicz too which said he would often carry flower seeds when he was cruising and hustling, or just walking, around the old docks and abandoned waterfront buildings in New York and would scatter them randomly. And then months or years later would find flowers growing in the cracks of amongst the weeds - I always thought that was such a beautiful intersection of queer hustling life combined with the beauty of radical gardening”

Very beautiful - will follow more leads

Quote from Emma Goldman’s essay ‘The Tragedy of Woman’s Emancipation’:

“Emancipation should make it possible for woman to be human in the truest sense. Everything within her that craves assertion and activity should reach its fullest expression; all artificial barriers should be broken, and the road towards greater freedom cleared of every trace of centuries of submission and slavery. This was the original aim of the movement for woman’s emancipation. But the results so far achieved have isolated woman and have robbed her of the fountain springs of that happiness which is so essential to her. Merely external emancipation has made of the modern woman an artificial being, who reminds one of the products of French arboriculture with its arabesque trees and shrubs, pyramids, wheels, and wreaths; anything, except the forms which would be reached by the expression of her own inner qualities. Such artificially grown plants of the female sex are to be found in large numbers, especially in the so-called intellectual sphere of our life.”

Some links

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patience_and_Sarah - “Patience and Sarah is a 1969 historical fiction novel with strong lesbian themes by Alma Routsong, using the pen name Isabel Miller. ... Routsong's novel is based on a real-life painter named Mary Ann Willson who lived with her companion Miss Brundage as a "farmerette" in the early 19th century in Greene County, New York. ... It tells the story of two women in Connecticut in 1816 who fall in love and decide to leave their homes to buy a farm in another state or territory and live in a Boston marriage.”

Just a nice little piece about a gardening parent who has a trans child - https://www.loghouseplants.com/blogs/greengardening/2020/02/queer-plants-odd-people/

*** Seems like this is an interesting research project on Queer Nature by Céline Baumann - https://futurearchitectureplatform.org/projects/83ae7dde-8344-4021-a011-4148ca0aa6b9/ - “The Queer Nature project result is a living collection of items: pressed and dried specimens, illustrations, pictures, and stories. It addresses persons with interests ranging from art, architecture, botany and sociology, and those curious by the nature of queerness in general.”

In fact it seems like Baumann does some interesting work on queerness / nature generally - http://studiocelinebaumann.com/ - I’ve been perusing through her website. Maybe she would be someone you both would be interested in meeting with?

I’ve just read her essay which is available to download on this page - http://studiocelinebaumann.com/current/archithese/ - she references Donna Haraway (who I’m sure you’ve read already but have uploaded her recent book ‘Staying with the Trouble’ to the drive - sidenote - I actually made my way through the whole thing last year and, my honest verdict is that it’s not worth it! Just read the intro and maybe the first chapter and you’re sorted!)

Anyway - some quotes from Baumann’s short piece:

“While the Anthropocene fosters the myth of human supremacy, a post-Anthropocene view embraces the notion that plants are our oldest teachers and share stories about their more-than-human knowledge”

“The Queer Nature project is based on field observations informed by botanical knowledge. Twigs, flowers, leaves, needles, seeds and acorns are collected in the outdoor parks, gardens, riverbanks, meadows and woodlands of Basel. The samples are then flattened, dried out and pressed between herbarium folios, forming a dry garden of vegetal matter. Together with illustrations, pictures and stories, they constitute a cabinet of curiosities addressed to those questioning binary, patriarchal or heteronormative gender constructs, as well as those curious about the nature of queerness in general.”

“Unisexual, bisexual and hermaphroditic features are not fixed, however, and queer nature likes to transgress its own rules. The wild carrot ( Daucus carota ), for instance, commonly found on the Rhine riverbanks, holds fragile pompom-shaped flowers arranged into umbels. While the inner rings are composed of male flowers, the outer ones are hermaphroditic, making the wild carrot both a hermaphroditic and a male being. The bladder campion ( Silene vulgaris ) is another herbaceous perennial growing along wild meadows and the edge of woody areas, carrying beautiful bulbous-shaped flowers that can simultaneously be hermaphroditic, male and female, all together on one plant. Plants’ genders can also evolve with time. The previously mentioned yew tree, for instance, often begins in its youth as a male until it reaches so-called sexual maturity, when it then turns into a female, thus exhibiting sequential transsexualism.”

“Queer Nature allows the emergence of a redefined idea of the world, not as something separate and dominant, but as relational and queer. City planning can also benefit from this emancipating process. The public realm is a prominent space of expression for civil society and deserves to be placed under scrutiny. How compliant are our open spaces? Is the way we build our commons emboldening for all, including sexual minorities?”

“Queering the public realm – that is, fostering gender and sexual minorities within our open spaces – can address both plants and people. Unseal the soil; make it porous and permeable to create a welcoming ground for all. Grant spaces for roots to grow in all human and nonhuman communities. Promote a wide diversity of beings that will grow and mingle, exchanging and caring for each other. By exploring the power of trees, shrubs, flowers and herbs as a source of inspiration, we can find alternatives to the way we design and act – whether on the scale of a private garden, a public space or a national territory – in order to shape truly inclusive metropolitan ecosystems.”

There’s also this really fascinating interview Baumann did with Ethel Baraona Pohl which is well worth a read! https://www.akademie-solitude.de/de/solitude-journal/the-parliament-of-plants-and-other-cautionary-tales-where-stories-make-worlds-and-worlds-make-stories/

A nice quote: “Trees perceive one another and sometimes avoid physical contact: a phenomenon called »crown shyness« where trees conspicuously avoid touching each others’ canopy. This is meant to let sunshine reach the forest ground and allow saplings to capture the necessary daylight vital for photosynthesis and growth. At a time when we are required to enforce social distancing measures, it is inspiring to realize plants also apply such mechanisms. While forest protagonists avoid touching each other above ground, they have intense exchanges underground. Their root systems are connected thanks to a web of mycorrhizal fungi, allowing exchanges of water, carbon, nitrogen, minerals, and other nutrients between individual plants. This phenomenon is referred to as »wood wide web,« a term coined by the biologist and forest ecologist Suzanne Simard.”

I’ve uploaded PDFs of both of these files to the ‘reading list’ drive folder, which I’ve also organised into folders for specific (albeit overlapping!) areas - it’s almost if we need to present them in some sort of rhizomic formation... maybe an idea for website design which I don’t have the technical expertise to carry out!

It really does seem like Baumann would be worth contacting. I’m happy to email her to ask for further research leads, but I wonder if actually I / we would benefit from a discussion if we could organise one. I think this is something for us to talk about, and that I’m happy to organise if you want to go ahead! People tend to be quite generous with their time these days which is nice!

Really wonderful meeting session yesterday - feels like we’re starting to make a real community!

Still struggling with the wrist, so this will have to be sparse (but hopefully in a few weeks I can at least properly type again.

I reached out to Ros Gray, Shela Sheikh and Marie-Gabrielle Rotie - all academics at Goldsmiths working on / around critical ecologues, gardening as artistic practice etc. Ros and Shela both edited ‘The Wretched Earth: Botanical Conflicts and Artistic Interventions’ - special issue of the ‘Third Text’ Journal (all essays uploaded to drive). Ros has agreed to meet and chat (at the Goldsmiths allotment!) so I will let you know when that happens.

A member! - the one and only Jamaica Kincaid (b. May 25, 1949) - “Antiguan-American novelist, essayist, gardener, and gardening writer.”

Most notably wrote My Garden, available at https://archive.org/details/mygardenbook00jama/page/n5/mode/2up

I’ve uploaded ‘Jamaica Kincaid's Practical Politics of the Intimate in "My Garden(book)"’ by Agnese Fidecaro to the drive.

I’ve also uploaded Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s ‘Unbecoming Claims: Pedagogies

of Refusal in Qualitative Research’. Favourite quote: “There are some forms of knowledge that the academy doesn’t deserve. This axiom is the crux of refusal. The university is not universal; rather, it is a colonial collector of knowledge as another form of territory. There are stories and experiences that already have their own place, and placing them in the academy is removal, not respect.”

I’ve also now attended the first two (1.5hr long!) sessions of Other Voices in Garden History - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/other-voices-in-garden-history-tickets-139078965931 - and, honestly, it’s not been great thus far. It hasn’t been as in-depth, expansive, or radical as I had hoped, but they are trying at least. I think we would do a much better job... But I will persevere!

I’ve also started reading ‘Art and Postcapitalism: Aesthetic Labour, Automation and Value Production’ by Dave Beech - whilst not directly about gardening it actually has a lot of useful frameworks for thinking about it - unalienated labour, art’s historical hostility to capitalism, the ‘genius’ lone artist with many poorly paid ‘assistants’ model...

After our discussion yesterday, I think I will try and find more readings about cities, public space, allotments etc.

I think the fact that allotments are so restricted says a lot about the state’s need to restrict any potentials for communality and social life which break down notions of private property, alternative forms of knowledge etc.

Couple of comments from Sophie: I just wanted to add the link to the pansy project here: https://thepansyproject.com/
Also: London based musician Sarah Angliss responding to Hildegard for a podcast at Camden Arts Centre https://www.botanicalmind.online/podcasts/hildegarde-von-bingen-the-threads-of-the-air
Maybe we should write to Camden Art Centre and tell them about our project?

Will try and collate different scraps and bits of information that I’ve been gathering recently here as they’re all in different pots

An update - My cavolo nero plant is doing well! It started as a seedling given to us by my partner Joanna’s dad who’s basically been living off cavolo nero for the past year. They’re very hardy so I can’t be too impressed with myself but still chuffed nonetheless.

Every now and then I stop and think about the strangeness of growing plants indoors - these tiny bits of earth and soil contained and displayed, sometimes purifying air, sometimes inadvertently poisoning it.

There’s an interesting need to collect ‘weird’ or ‘exotic’ plants, that others might not have. There’s some kind of ‘show’ of intellect or ‘worldliness’ among the (predominantly affluent and white) neo-collectors of our gentrified urban landscape. From my recent research and newly gained knowledge about British horticulturalism, garden landscapes etc. - it seems there’s no other lens to view this practice through other than as a function of neo-colonialism. Both in its preoccupation with retreading colonial possessiveness, the need to own and contain orientalised others in the form of plants, and thus stifle them, but also the ways it functions in the geopolitical frameworks of contemporary late capitalism.

But then there’s also seed sharing networks, free planting giveaway groups, shared forms of knowledge springing up through social media. Ways to resist essentially, to propagate without the need for profit.

And all of these colonial gardens are still here - and still being maintained! All these university botanical gardens, all these big country houses with greenhouses for each continent. I’ve been so frustrated in these big zoom calls / lectures with ‘big figures’ in the horticultural history world who attempt to engage with anticolonial thought, but at the end of the day have too much attachment to these colonial institutions that they can see no other future for them other than keeping them just as they are, but maybe with some more information placards.

A thought experiment: every country house, every big mansion with a big garden, becomes a place for houseless people to live. To stay as long as they please, to use all the libraries and fancy showers and pantries. And the gardens become places to grow and cultivate sustainably, ways for the residents to keep the house going so to speak. Why shouldn’t a houseless person be given a mansion! There’s plenty of them around, with plenty of space.

Another idea for engaging with colonial gardens full of stolen plants: steal them back. At least, that’s what someone decided to do in Kew Gardens in 2014 - “World's smallest water lily 'stolen' from Kew Gardens” https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-25717643#:~:text=A%20rare%20plant%20has%20allegedly,of%20Wales%20Conservatory%20last%20Thursday. - now on one hand, it’s amazing that the team at Kew were able to cultivate such a difficult plant to grow. But on the other, why is that knowledge so hidden and kept under lock and key. Why has Kew become one of the only places where this special plant - which was ‘discovered’ by a German botanist in Mashyuza, south west Rwanda - can be grown.

Yet again I think of all these forms of indigenous knowledge which have been lost. And how these knowledges are subsequently ‘discovered’ by affluent imperial powers. Take this article for example: ‘The rice of the sea: how a tiny grain could change the way humanity eats’ https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/apr/09/sea-rice-eelgrass-marine-grain-chef-angel-leon-marsh-climate-crisis

A Spanish chef ‘discovers’ a new grain which might save the world after it’s already been destroyed by rising sea levels. But the article acknowledges that “it was an important part of the diet of the Seri, an Indigenous people living on the Gulf of California in Sonora, Mexico, and the only known case of a grain from the sea being used as a human food source.”

We already figured out how to survive, and live with the world - “tread carefully on the earth” as Fred Moten might say - but chose to destroy this knowledge for capital and imperial gain.

Gardening, cultivating plants and the earth, along with practically everything else, lives in this constant tension. How can we use the forms of knowledge available to us against themselves. How can we manipulate colonial knowledges and resources in ways to work against them and ultimately destroy them.

On my daily walks I pass by a number of allotments. There are quite a few around the area where I live in North East London. They are beautiful and varied, and also all full. No one has a hope of being able to access one any time soon - the waiting lists can be about 10 years long. A considerable amount of people living in London are precarious, and have the knowledge that they will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Always moving, never sure that the place they live in will last, or they won’t get evicted, or have to leave because the rent increases. Our plants die because they have no space to grow, they are walled in. Our air becomes more polluted and no amount of snake plants will make it better.


God this is depressing. Another bastian of working class culture corrupted by the neoliberal city. Why, when cities have so much radical potential. When cultures and identities have flourished in and amongst the jumbled, densely populated streets. Whose sounds and music emit from flat windows on the top floor.


I have a soft spot for the small nature reserves / ecological parks that you find in London. Often in very inconspicuous places, areas of reclaimed land turned into places of education and biodiversity. Sometimes it’s where some plants decided to grow between the cracks. Others a more deliberate effort to use disused land. There’s one very near me called Gillespie Park which grew / emerged around a railway track. (I’m trying to upload some pictures but google docs isn’t letting me.) Often they are run by volunteers, are where schools can go and learn about ecology, try out different things, engage with nature in some form. They also function as spaces where people can sit, socialise, or just be. These spaces are so essential!!! In the city we need places to just be!!!


Spaces like these remind me of the Greenwich peninsula ecology park, near where I grew up We’d often walk down to the river in Charlton, where the riverside is this sort of industrial wasteland. Lots of factories and processing facilities. By the thames you see shopping trolleys poking out of the mud. But there’s also this little boardwalk which leads you through the reeds to a small lake with ducks and coots. When I was younger, because I was so short, it felt as if I was leaving the city into a different world. You heard the sound of seagulls and insects buzzing around. We befriended a small baby Coot which we called Nigel because one day it came over when we called that name, and we imagined Nigel was the bird that came to say hello to us every time we went.


I treasure that space as I treasure the other limited spaces we have which are made to give a sense of freedom and separation. For a few moments you step into another world, some sort of prefigurative place of harmony and balance where relations between animals and the earth grow into new ecosystems. This is the closest we can get.


I’ve spent so much time lately talking to my friends about hope. Thinking about the worlds we might make together if barriers and hurdles didn’t exist. We always come back to some for of communality, spaces of abundance where we can use what we need and always know others will be around to help us.


Maybe this is why these projects of speculation and imagination are so important. If we believe that yes, a bunch of women and queers got together through time and made music and gardens together, then we can do it too. Because linear time doesn’t help anyone anyway. It’s too restrictive, too boring. In these projects of imagination, we’re really just hoping to find a place for ourselves in and amongst others. They nourish us for we find ourselves in them.