I have recently reclaimed an area at the back of our garden which had been used as a dump for various waste for a long period of time. The area had become very overgrown with lilac trees and brambles which dominated the area like so many tentacled sea beasts half buried in the soil. I began clearing the overgrowth within the first weeks of us moving in; cutting down vicious looking branches of bramble over an inch thick that reached out from the suspicious looking mound which began about twenty feet from the back. Once that was done, I began digging.
This process would reveal over months the extent of the dumping which evidently had been going on for a number of decades. The house is Victorian and some of the building waste was datable to the 1960s and 70s. Fragments of a Wedgewood bowl featuring classical scenes in relief were a highlight. As I cleared more of the soil and root network of the larger plants this revealed a large deposit of smashed bricks and concrete. The more I cleared the more I discovered. At times it seemed as if the chunks of concrete were growing in size the closer I got to the back fence. By the end of it I was pulling up pieces of such weight that they had to be rolled next to the pile that had grown over the spring and summer.
Digging was a massive chore, as the spade was impeded by the shear mass of rubble just beneath the surface. In the end I opted to use a large garden fork to prise up the hardcore from the soil then move it by hand. The record breaking hot Spring and Summer this year helped the process insofar as it dried the ground so much that material came out quite easily. The downside was the dust kicked up by all this which stuck to me as I sweated. After an hour or so I would literally be two-tone and have to shower and wash my clothing.
I frequently reflected on the mentality of those whose mess I was clearing up. Why treat one’s own land with such disdain? Why discard paint, carpet, scrap metal and even some asbestos at the back of a garden as if it were a landfill site? It could be laziness, or lack of money for appropriate disposal; but the fact that my excavations revealed different layers of rubbish strongly pointed to a policy of using the area in this way that had been going on for a very long time, likely across several different owners of the house. I lamented the attitude of people who don’t care for what is bequeathed to them, especially in the form of land and heritage. But am I too harsh, or perhaps not harsh enough on myself? Since was I not too in the attitude of trying to ‘master the space’?
I recall my thoughts when I first saw the garden: this is my land and I’m not letting any go to waste. I will reclaim this territory for us. I could reasonably argue that clearing away the mess of two prior generations is a venerable thing to do, not least considering the physical effort involved, but this impulse also instantiates what we might call the ‘technological attitude’. The weight reported from the skip hire company was nearly two tonnes of hardcore pulled from the soil. That’s not nothing. But would the lilac agree? Would it even care? Nature had no such aesthetic qualms when it came to colonising this ugly space, which it did with rude creativity. It was only unutilised from the perspective of a human property owner. The lilac tree I progressively chopped back with my extended loppers before switching to a hand saw had grown wild and untrained up through the buried rubble and even a stack of railway sleepers, up out of the ground at a number of crazy angles stretching across the width of the garden and over the fence. Some attempt had clearly been made to cut it back before, but all this had done was leave the hardened shells of former trunks abutted against the still living tree. All this had to be removed along with the rubbish until finally I found myself wrestling fork in hard with the vast mass of its root ball. Straining against the steadfastness of the remaining roots which tried in vain to cling on to this now desertified patch I twisted the fork one way then another in motions of increasing violence until the whole lot shot out from the earth in one. I dragged the woody corpse away before continuing to probe the place it had vacated for any lingering traces.
During all this my wife frequently reminded me of the habitats I was trashing. I was no more or less a master of this place than the previous owners. From the point of view of the stag beetle or the hedgehog it was I who was the vandal. When I removed the pile of rubble to the skip I discovered an extended family of tube-web spiders, all of which were chased from the property. So now the job is done. Tools are back in the shed, woodstore stocked with bounty, dormice driven into the wilderness. I’ve expanded our territory by a good 20 square meters. Lebensraum for the human. Unruly nature tamed. I pat myself on the back but can’t help but wonder on my motivations.
We intend to install a wooden structure and a pond and I’ve no doubt that we will make good use of the space. We will then do what most people do when they have land; after grasping it as a thing to be used, we will put it to use. I’m not complaining about having a bit of land – so many people do not – but I can’t help but think I showed a lack of gratitude for the brambles and the wild untamed lilac and all the living things that having adapted to someone else’s lack of care over a period of decades has now had to succumb in a period of months to mine. We are but stewards of our little parcel of this world and perhaps stewardship can never fully be disentangled from domination, no matter the intentions. I will endeavour in future to be less Lord of the wasteland and more Shepherd of the pond. I owe it to the frogs and the sticklebacks.
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