Council workers and contractors across the UK are currently spraying the weeds on our pavements, parks, playgrounds and other public green spaces with toxic herbicides. Author and artist, Anna Chapman Parker, provides us with a glimpse of the under-appreciated beauty being lost. Not only are pavement plants vital in supporting our wildlife, there is so much to observe and enjoy if we just know how to look for it.
Glyphosate (herbicide) application along a wall in Brighton.
By Anna Chapman Parker
A few years ago, beginning a year-long project that became my book Understorey: A Year Among Weeds, I set out to observe and record the common wild plants or ‘weeds’ in the streets where I live, following them across the seasons. The project began with drawing the plants wherever and whenever I could find them, scribbling notes in the margins of my drawings.
Once you start to tune in to these plants, you become alert to them almost everywhere. Head out to work: at the corner of the street, a sowthistle is gripping a crack in the kerb with impressive tenacity, its onion-domed buds about to burst into tiny dandelions. Nearby a line of shepherd’s purse fringes a lamp post, the spindly stems bearing heart-shaped seedpods – leather ‘purses’ of a bygone time. A patch of grass is parched and threadbare, allowing tender new leaves of dandelions to come through. Powder-blue remnants of forget-me-nots quake in the breeze.
Mustard and other plants growing along a wall. Credit Anna Chapman Parker.
Keep going. Further up perhaps you cut through a carpark. Fringes of knapweed, topped with rubbery magenta, intermingle with the acid-yellow ragworts, alive with insects. At their feet a tumble of gravel, leaf litter and brownish moss sprouts wiry remnants of hedge mustard.
Other plants are pushing through the railings. A zig-zag line of cleavers reaches out toward the parked cars, its seeds held out in fuzzy, sticky pairs. This is the weed that clings to anything that passes; a brilliant strategy for seed dispersal, as well as for children’s games (how many handfuls can you velcro to your friend, before they notice?).
Taking the time to sketch pavement plants. Credit Anna Chapman Parker
You’re nearing the station now, and there in the shade of a bus stop is herb Robert, one of many exquisite forms of wild geranium or cranesbill. Look out of the window as your train pulls away: bright spots of golden autumn hawkbits dot the tracks, and thriving in the ballast, swathes of the fireweed, rosebay willowherb, colour your departure.
Most of us make repetitive journeys like this each day, many of them dully routine at best. But even the most urban commute can be enlivened by the micro-wild; looking out for small plants like these can make it new each time, or at least offer new routes for your imagination.
Sketch of Herb Robert by Anna Parker
Anna’s wonderful new book, Understorey: A Year Among Weeds, is out now in paperback. Part diary, part sketchbook, Understorey shines a light on our common urban plants, celebrating their extraordinary abundance, resilience and value.
You can also find some limited edition, organic cotton apparel in our online shop featuring some of Anna’s designs.
