Rambunctious Garden

Emma Marris

I’ve read this book twice.

The first time, I thought it was going to affect my approach to restoration as deeply as Crow Planet had (which was my first encounter with a critique of the false dichotomy of the urban/nature divide). I even said to myself (rather embarrassing to admit) “How shall we tend the rambunctious garden of this crow planet?” Everything felt like a revelation, this was a manifesto that was going to crumble the walls of the prison and free all within.

The second time, I did get a deeper understanding of the ideas of the book, and why the author presented them.

One important challenge is the idea of the “baseline.” How far back do we reach? The problem of “the baseline” is a difficult one. In North America, it appears easy: first European contact. But “first contact” might be after smallpox had wiped out most of the population; Europeans making first contact were already finding degraded cultures with most of their practices reduced or even lost. First contact might have included some botanic experts, but as often as not, it was fur trappers. If the first attempts at scientifically describing the landscape occurred after fur trapping wiped out the beavers, the hydrology has already been severely disrupted. Between smallpox and beaver extirpation, we have two layers of disruption before our supposed baseline.

Let’s not forget the racist implications of thinking that pre-European contact the Americas existed in a state of nature. Increasing evidence indicates that, in fact, in North America lands were settled soon after glacier retreat and were managed right from the start. One of the habitats that people are putting a lot of effort into restoring, Garry Oak savannah, is completely anthropogenic. The idea that the Americas, before Europeans, were “pristine” and unmanaged excludes the roles that Native Americans and First Nations peoples played in managing the environment.

The baseline for park restoration efforts is 1850. This is after smallpox and beaver extirpation, true; but it’s between botanizing and settlement. It’s a useful fiction because it gives us a target, but it’s not an absolute truth.

Once we realize that the “baseline” is a useful fiction, then we need to think about novel or hybrid ecosystems – that is, ecosystems based on combinations of native and introduced species, or completely new assemblages. What if a tree is a weed in one ecosystem but endangered in its native range? What about plants that have no native range as such? Is there value to the increasing expense of fighting back the increasing list of invasive species?

These are only some of the questions that Marris raises in “Rambunctious Garden.” Each chapter looks at a different aspect of restoration – restoring to a baseline; natives vs. introduced; pristine vs. modified – looking at what people are doing, what the challenges are, how problems might be approached differently.

For my own part, all I can say is “the journey continues.” I’m more interested in getting ivy, blackberry, and other monocultural weeds out than I am in meeting a “baseline” community or replicating an historical example.

Mirrored from Nature Intrudes. Please comment over there.

Joaquin

Joaquin had one job: to climb the outside of the cathedral every Sunday and, when the priest raised the host for consecration, to lift a shade such that a shaft of sunlight fell upon the priest's upraised hands. The priest devised this plan because the faithfulness (and donations) of his flock were diminishing.

The priest chose Joaquin in the hopes it would give purpose to a life otherwise lost to wine and sloth. It did: The few centimes a week were an untold luxury to Joaquin, he never missed a Sunday.

And the plan worked, after a fashion. Sometimes weather meant there was no shaft of sunlight. Frequently the sunlight missed the priest entirely, landing somewhere along the altar. Sometimes it was just next to the priest, and he quickly shifted to the left or right. Sometimes Joaquin was just a little late, and the priest had to repeat the incantation and raise the host again. Maybe twice. Almost never three times.

But twice a year, on the equinoxes, the heavens and earth literally aligned and the shaft of sunlight fell on the priest as he raised the host and even the most skeptical was moved by the beauty.

What the priest never told Joaquin is that this was all completely transparent to the flock. Joaquin's movements across the roof of the cathedral, during the most hushed and reverential portions of the mass, were loud and thudding. His actions were cast upon the windows like a giant shadow puppet, the angle of the sun and the pitch of the roof making all comic. Tension built in the cathedral as all eyes were upon the shadow. Would he be late? Would his mutterings and imprecations, echoing through the pipes of the rain-sluicing gargoyles, reach such a pitch even fishwives covered their ears? The tension was redoubled by the need to suppress any outward reaction: not a single gasp or giggle ever escaped the flock's lips. And the flock grew in attendance, soon filling the cathedral so that latecomers stood. The pews with the best sights of Joaquin's struggles were filled hours before the service began, wealthy townspeople paying the indigent (rather more than the priest payed Joaquin) to reserve them.

These pews, alas, were not those closest to the altar. They were rather back, and to the left. Sometimes the priest looked out at a distant clump of congregants, a few tendrils of parishioners radiating out. But attendance was up and donations were fabulous, so the priest let it all stand.