The Living Pavilion

Australia. Wild plants. Indigenous knowledge. The Living Pavilion at Melbourne University 2019. The book ‘Plants – past present and future’. Plant blindness – our loss.

Recent travels [1] to see again the River Red Gums, Boxes and Ironbarks and all the other plants around the Murray River in Australia, led first to the Botanic Garden in Sydney [2] where among hundreds of species grew the grass tree Xanthorrhoea, famous for its gum but having many other uses, and the hairpin banksia Banksia spinulosa in full flower.

This Banksia, native to eastern coasts, was given its Latin name after botanist Josef Banks, who travelled with James Cook in the late 1760s, but the continent’s many Banksia’s – like many other Australian plants – had been known, named and used for tens of thousands of years before then. 

Which thoughts were present on seeing a series of books on Indigenous knowledge [3] at the Garden’s shop. And reading one named Plants – past, present and future [4] was a revelation.   

Plants by Cumpston, Fletcher and Head (2022) introduces many of the species that have sustained people in Australia, and makes the case for returning to these well-adapted forms as climate, habitat loss and soil degradation expose the limitations of some current agricultural practices. That’s for another article ….. but finding more about Plants led to the web presence and reports on Melbourne University’s Living Pavilion.

Living Pavilion 2019

The Living Pavilion [5] was an exhibition and centre of learning built in 2019 as a space, primarily occupied of plants, in which people could walk, see, touch, smell and wonder. It was part of CLIMARTE’s ‘ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE’ festival, 1-17 May 2019 [6]. Here’s an extract from page 9 of the the Living Pavilion report [5]:

“The landscape design transformed a seemingly unspectacular part of the campus into a haven of biodiversity and Indigenous stories through the installation of over 40,000 Kulin Nation plants, artworks, gathering spaces and soundscapes. It brought together Indigenous knowledge systems, community arts, performance, music, sustainable design and ecological science to showcase how transdisciplinary initiatives can sow the seeds of community vitalisation and environmental stewardship.”

The plants were the central feature of the Pavilion, assembled in a way that people could walk and sit among them, see, touch and smell them. Descriptive signage explained how Indigenous communities cultured plants in agriculture and aquaculture and derived many useful products from them [7]. A range of edible and medicinal plants, grown in an Indigenous Community Garden, taught the value of plants not only to people but to the wider ecosystem, including insects and other invertebrates.

For amphibian lovers, there was the Frog Fest including the Frog Soundscape which produced calls from a range of frog species in a re-creation of a waterway – the Bouverie Creek – which the university built over but which continues to flow beneath it. And there was more at the Frog Fest in the way of activities for children, like dressing as frogs, face painting and making frog life-stages in clay.

Art, craft, song and dance

Art and music was inseparable from the plants and their uses. Spaces were allocated to craftwork, singing, dance, art installations, demonstrations and soundscapes.

Artists and craftworkers taught the utility of native plants using traditional techniques. Stephanie Beaupark showed how fibres and dyes from native plants are used in weaving; while Katie West recreated a fishing net using materials and methods that few now know about [8].

Song and dance enlivened the festival, including performances from the Djirri Djirri Dance Group, The Orbweavers and The Merindas. You can get a feel for what it must have been like by visiting the performers’ web sites [8].

What resonates with the Living here is the belief that human society and culture are “an inherent and inseparable part of ecosystems”. The Living Pavilion’s logo, which can be seen on the web page is described: “The circle in the middle represents a meeting space. The water represents the creek that once flowed through the space and signifies journey and life. The plants represent flora and fauna and connection to Country and place.”

The Living Pavilion was the seventh in a series of events under the collective name The Living Stage developed during a PhD at Melbourne University by Tanja Beer. This bringing-together of people and culture with ecosystems and artistic performance continues through the project Ecoscenography – adventures in a new paradigm for performance making [9].

First knowledges book series

The book referred to above, Plants – Past, Present and Future by Zena Cumpston, Michael-Shawn Fletcher and Lesley Head, is one in a series titled First Knowledges edited by Margo Neale [3].

Another in the series is on land use and management, titled Future Fire, Future Farming by Bill Gammage and Bruce Pascoe. Here’s an extract from the publisher’s web: (the authors) ‘demonstrate how Aboriginal people cultivated the land through manipulation of water flows, vegetation and firestick practice. Not solely hunters and gatherers, the First Australians also farmed and stored food.’ 

An important theme in these books is that agriculture began tens of thousands of years before modern wheat, rice, maize and the other main cereals were domesticated from wild grasses. Similarly, systematic methods of land management were in place, for example to reduce the ‘killer fires’ that have caused so much destruction in recent years.

Lessons for the Atlantic zone croplands

There is much for us to learn from these books. Little is known of plants and land use in northern Britain and Ireland before to the retreat of the last ice 10,000-12,000 years ago. Modern crops have been grown here for only half that time, but before their arrival, and until recent centuries, people used wild plants for food, medicine, dyes, clothing and building.

Knowledge has been retained in written records, including accounts originating during the monastic expansion from Europe [10] and in more recent herbals [11]. 

Yet while some specialists are re-learning and extending plant knowledge today, the broader existence and utility of plants is unknown to most people [12]. It’s not just the knowledge that is fading – the plants themselves have also been made rare or extinguished. The recent Plant Atlas 2020 by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland [13] shows loss and extinction are continuing. 

One of the main aims of the Living Field has been to show people the wealth of plant life in our region, especially the older crop species and varieties that are no longer grown and the many native plants and long-term introductions that have been used in various ways since the retreat of the ice. We will continue with that work.

The Living Field here could also learn from the Living Pavilion in Melbourne. We could bring in far more plant species and varieties for people to learn about. We could restore forgotten uses of our native and introduced species and link them to our cultures and places. And perhaps more than anything, we can feel we are not alone in the restoration of our botanical diversity – people throughout the world are doing the same.

There are organisations in the UK to help if you want to know more about plants and get involved in their conservation [14]

Sources | links

[1] The editor writes of a visit in March 2023 to Australia. 

[2] Royal Botanic Garden Sydney: https://www.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/

[3] First Knowledges series edited by Margo Neal. For details on all books in the series: Thames and Hudson Australia web site.

[4] Cumpston Z, Fletcher, M-S, Head L. (2022) Plants – past, present and future. Thames and Hudson Australia, 212 pages. 

[5] Living Pavilion at the Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub where a substantial report on the project can be downloaded (cover shown above). Citation: Beer, T., Hernandez-Santin, C., Cumpston, Z., Khan, R., Mata, L., Parris, K., Renowden, C., Iampolski, R., Hes, D. and Vogel, B. (2019). The Living Pavilion Research Report. The University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.

The web link left describes how this image is made from weather data.

[6] CLIMARTE an Australian charity founded 2010 ’harnesses the creative power of the arts to inform, engage, and inspire action on the climate crisis’. Web site: https://climarte.org/  The group’s ART+CLIMATE=CHANGE 2019 Festival ‘presented 33 socially engaged exhibitions and events … across Melbourne and regional Victoria’. The Living Pavilion was one of them. Festival web site:  climarte.org/project/artclimatechange-2019 where there are links to the full programme, podcasts and other resources.  

[7] Cumpston, Z. (2020). Indigenous plant use: A booklet on the medicinal, nutritional and technological use of indigenous plants. Downloadable at Living Pavilion web page at Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub [cover shown right, see also 5]. 

[8] Performing at the Living Pavilion 2019 – some current web links : artists in residence Stephanie Beaupark and Katie West || Singing and dancing from Djirri Djirri – Wurundjeri Women’s Dance group || The Orbweavers – their song Reeds Rush links several features of the Living Pavilion || and The Merindas.

[9] Ecoscenography by Tanja Beer: blog, reading group, articles and artworks, ecological design for performance.

[10] Living Field articles on the uses of medicinal plants and the transmission of plant lore at religious sites: Medicinals through the Ages 1; Medicinal Forage – Kinloss Abbey; Labours of the Months – the Easby Murals

[11] Modern herbals and books and plant lore are listed at the end of the Living Field’s Garden/Medicinals page.

[12] Plant Blindness – a human inability to see plants, differentiate between them, understand what they do, accept them as the basis of animal and human life. More at Wikipedia including pointers to research and teaching material e.g., Wandersee, J. H., & Schussler, E. E. (1999). Preventing plant blindness. The American Biology Teacher, 61, 82–86.

[13] The recently published Plant Atlas 2020 by the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland details the serious declines in native plants and plants introduced in the distant past, contrasting with the spread of recent introductions. See the Living Field’s notes on the latest and previous atlases at BSBI Plant Atlas 2020.

[14] Want to get involved with plants? In the UK, find out more through the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland and Plantlife – both organisations promote plants through learning, training, meetings and visits, and welcome plant enthusiasts from absolute beginners to experts.  

The Garden at Hospitalfield

The renewed walled garden at Hospitalfield, Arbroath. Monks and medicinals. Artists and gentry. Now community art, a great diversity of plants and a welcoming place to relax.

The Living Field’s experience with medicinal plants led to an invitation to talk about the history and present uses of plants for health and healing at the Beer and Berries Festival to be held at Hospitalfield on 21 August 2021.

The old walled garden there has been re-designed and replanted. It’s had a history from 1260 when Hospitalfield was founded, some time after monks from Kelso Abbey in the Scottish Borders travelled north to establish Arbroath Abbey.

Given all this history and the clear success of the new plantings visible on the Hospitalfield web site [1], it was timely to see the garden first hand before sharing knowledge of medicinals.

A great diversity of plants

In late July 2021, the walled garden nurtured hundreds of flowering species (and some yet to flower), some native to the region but many from Mediterranean and even sub-tropical climatic regions – a great range of textures and exotic smells, teeming with bees and other insects.

Some of the original medicinals recorded from the 1200s had been planted, but also notable species from later in the garden’s history. Their story is related, with drawings, in a book by Laura Darling [2] describing the garden’s history, published this year.

Beer and Berries Festival August 2021

The festival of Beer and Berries will be held at Hospitalfield on 21 August 2021. From the web site [3]: “It’s the height of summer and Angus is bursting with fruit and full of grain …

” Beer and Berries is a “regional festival showcase, connecting food and drink producers and suppliers to buyers and customers, set alongside a programme of talks, workshops, events and music.”

Hospitalfield garden is a gem of a place, where art, horticulture and science come together.

Thanks to Laura Mansfield, for the original invitation to contribute to Beer and Berries, Gillian Stirton from the Hutton communications unit for suggesting the Living Field’s input, and Kate Robinson, head gardener, for correspondence on native and introduced medicinal plants in Scotland.

Author / contact: geoff.squire@hutton.ac.uk or geoff.squire@outlook.com

Sources | links

[1] Hospitalfield at https://hospitalfield.org.uk/

[2] Darling, Laura. 2021. In the garden at Hospitalfield. Published by Hospitalfield, Arbroath, Angus.

[3] Beer and Berries Festival, 21 August 2021 – booking essential: https://hospitalfield.org.uk/visit/events/beer-berries-2021/

Fearnag Growers – a Community

Raghnaid Sandilands describes a community growing project in Strathnairn and introduces a new venture with ancient cereal grains.

Fearnag Growers is a communal growing project based in a beautiful old walled garden at Farr estate on South Loch Ness. It has been worked by the community since 2016 and treasured by the allotment holders, a life line through the lockdowns.

Over the years we have become a small hub for cultural and communal events, hosting a wide variety of events – a Gaelic plant lore walk at midsummer with expert Roddy MacLean, drawing the garden days with artists Sarah Longely and Maureen Shaw, a hut raising day, a woodworking workshop for children and an alfresco traditional music session, are among some of the community building days we’ve had together. 

Some of the photographs on this page show the Fèis Farr ‘Mapa Mòr’ – a huge charcoal map showing some characters from local stories and wildlife too, along with places that are important to the children, the allotments among them. 

Ancient and unusual grains – April 2021

In late April a gathering of individuals of all ages came together at Fearnag Growers to communally sow and plant a number of different types of ancient and unusual grains. The sun shone and we had a morning to gladden the heart, working together and planting small patches of emmer, eikorn, naked barley and oats, Bere barley, Shetland Aets, and other heritage varieties of wheat and barley. Col Gordon from Easter Ross, grain expert and enthusiast, gave us direction and spoke with conviction about his passion for grains. 

Grains are the staples foods of most of our cultures, but the growing of them today as monocrops or monocultures has become something very far removed from most folk.

Our major grains have very long histories. Barley and wheat began to develop in the Fertile Crescent around 10,000 years ago and are directly tied to the spread and development of Eurasian civilization. Rye and oats came later to our lands.

Easy to transport and store and very adaptable, these grains migrated across the globe, developing alongside peoples and their cultures. There are thought to be tens if not hundreds of thousands of cereal landraces globally. Landraces are now critically threatened.

In recent decades, more of the world has abandoned traditional farming and seeds and adopted more industrial systems and modern seed varieties. When this happens, the genetic diversity built up, in some cases for millenia, can disappear very quickly. Today very few grain varieties are commercially available and all have been bred to work alongside high-input chemical farming.

Whereas in the past, every region in the British Isles would have a few locally adapted varieties and landraces and maybe some local customs and traditions that would accompany them, these have practically all disappeared now. Luckily, some folk had the foresight to see this happening and began to gather as much of the world’s genetic material as they were able to preserve in gene banks.

If it wasn’t for these people we truly would have lost most of these varieties. But as John Letts used to say, a mentor for Col Gordon, rather than in these gene banks “the safest places for these seeds are the farmer’s fields.”

Grains in tradition

Farmers and crop scientists are starting to understand that modern varieties, which are bred for yield above all else, are not suited to low input growing or changing climatic conditions, not to mention flavour and nutrition. But we don’t often consider the damage done by disconnecting our grains from their histories, places, peoples or cultures. Each of these older seed varieties belongs to a distinct culture and place. There are likely all sorts of traditions, stories and myths, rituals, songs and festivals that are associated with a lot of them.

Col spoke to us about the need to stop thinking about grains and farming purely in terms of production and instead rediscover and repair once again the cultural aspects that make old agrarian systems beautiful. To do this may require us to question the limits of, for instance, efficiency and try to find a scale where grains are able to be surrounded by song again. While Rachel Carson’s “the silent spring” has made us question our trajectory of progress from an ecological point of view, Col suggests there may be need for a title “The songless harvest” from a cultural point of view. 

Looking at all the things that have been lost in the name of speed, yield and efficiency, Col suggested that these are the kind of questions we need to be asking more. 

Reconnecting with our farming culture

At Fearnag Growers we hope to play a small part in passing on some of this seed but also try to reconnect with some of the cultural aspects of grain. In September we hope the build another communal event around the harvesting and preparation of the grain. There may be food and songs too. 

Col Gordon – hear more from Col and his own story in his recent Farmarama podcast series ‘Landed – the family farm (episode 1)’ He speaks in episode 2 to Raghnaid Sandilands of Fearnag Growers about her creative ethnology work and Gaelic.  

Sources | Links

[1] Fearnag Growers Facebook page.

[2] Farmarama: more at https://farmerama.co/

Contact: raghnaid@icloud.com

Editor: The Living Field thanks Raghnaid for telling us about Fearnag Growers. We look forward to hearing more at grain harvest later in the year.

Please note that the photographs taken in the garden pre-date social distancing.

Click the map to see a larger image

Edible campus

Following contacts made at the Nourish Conference in November 2019, Andrea Roach from Edible Campus at Transition St Andrews organised a visit to the Living Field and the Hutton Institute farm, both at the Dundee site, in January 2020.

We also welcomed two of her colleagues: Helena Simmons who coordinates the Transition St Andrews Eden Campus, and Kaska Hempel who handles climate communications. The visit added to the current thinking on Where next for the Living Field?

Our visitors (Kaska) wrote a blog on the occasion, highlighting our work on Farming for a zero carbon future. Thanks from the Living Field and the Farm for your encouraging comments about our work.

Carved wood model of a dragonfly by Dave Roberts for the Living Field.
Growing and eating Local Food

Transition University of St Andrews formed in 2009 is a ‘hub for sustainability across the town’. They are broadly based in a range of activities including waste and travel, but the prime reason for the visit was our shared interest in local growing.

The Edible Campus part of Transition runs 14 community gardens across the town. The work of planting, weeding and care of soil is done through daily sessions (in season) with local volunteers, many of whom are students. Produce of the gardens is offered for free, it seems. Volunteers can learn to take a leading role at one or more sites or else just drop in now and then for a bit of weeding. That’s a lot of interaction and activity!

Not far from St Andrews town is PLANT or People Learning About Nature, operating since 2011 as part of Tayport Community Garden. encouraging the community to grow fruit and flowers, reduce carbon emissions and enhance the natural environment. They have a weekly stand at Tayport Harbour selling produce and offer advice on how to grow more or better in the home garden. Support from the Climate Challenge Fund is allowing PLANT to link to other growers’ groups to raise their activity in Carbon Conversations. (All links below.)

One of many paintings and drawing by schoolchildren inspired by the Living Field’s Beans on Toast project.
Some questions

A meeting of Edible Campus visitors and some of Hutton’s Agroecology group lasted well over an hour at the Living Field cabin and took in some major current issues. For example ……

  • The ongoing research on agriculture and food here that’s aiming to test better practices, e.g. for conservation and improvement of soil, through raising soil carbon stores, reducing agronomic inputs, encouraging coexistence of wildlife and production.
  • The Farm’s efforts to make large-scale improvements in such as water management and wildlife corridors and its connection to the surrounding landscape.
  • The current low provision of human food directly from agriculture in the northern part of the UK, and people’s reliance on imports; for example, the near-absence of bread-quality cereals and the minor production of pulses (peas and bean) for human consumption.
  • The potential major role of the small-in-scale enterprise (cooperatives, growers groups, and farm shops) in raising local production, but the need for better recording of their output and contribution.
  • Measures and metrics for a more holistic appreciation of production – quantifying cultural landscape, place, food and nutrition, the therapeutic value of growing food.
  • The need to reward agriculture – and especially small to moderate scale enterprises – for operating sustainably and not just for owning land or producing bulk output.
  • And quite a bit more …
Collage of Living Field habitats and occupants.
Where next for the Living Field?

There is clearly a rising interest in local growing and nutritious eating. Our experience is that many community growers and home gardeners are pretty good at what they do. They have tuned their practice and plant varieties to the local conditions. Many community projects already have a range of learning and outreach activities.

The Living Field can share with these enterprises and learn from them. The Living Field could perhaps interact most effectively with local growers by advising on matters like soil quality, conservation and use of water and nutrients, the yielding potential of crops (and the yield gap) and estimates of carbon footprint.

Research organisations such as the James Hutton Institute have primarily worked on food and drink production with farms and the farming and food industries as the main beneficiaries. That’s where the funding has been directed. Yet food collectives and community growers, many operating on a very small scale, would in total and if operating more cohesively, have a major role in a sustainable future. Science needs to learn how to interact with these small-scale initiatives.

To date, EU funding has been the most effective route for such collaborations, both here and throughout Europe. But the future’s uncertain.

Cauliflower, carrot, onion and beet all grown in the Living Field garden
Links

Andrea Roach is Edible Campus Coordinator at Transition St Andrews: Andrea’s page. Transition web: http://www.transitionsta.org where you can also sign up for their newsletter, and Edible Campus showing an interactive map of the gardens.

Kaska Hempel works on climate communications with Transition St Andrews: Kaska’s page. She also works at PLANT at Tayport Community Garden: tayportgarden.org. Their web site shows much activity – growing, learning and useful links to e.g. Carbon Conversations (a psycho-social project).

Helena Simmons is a Community Grower at Transition St Andrews, coordinating the Eden campus: Helena’s page. She also works at the Community Garden at Ninewells Dundee.

Joining the debate from the Hutton were Cathy Hawes, Pete Iannetta and Ali Karley, all from the Agroecology group.

Contact/author/photographs: geoff.squire@hutton.ac.uk

Diversity of crops in the north: some cereals, legumes, dyes, medicinals, and vegetables grown in the Living Field garden over the years.