Parched

On finding it hard to see the bright side of all this sun

Being a gardener feels, at the moment, like being a plant paramedic. There is an awful lot of first aid - mainly administering emergency hydration to the base of parched hydrangeas. My own garden is being kept alive thanks to a constantly dribbling hose being left on the thirstiest looking plants¹. There is also a bit of first aid for the actual equipment. I have a very elderly client whose carer had managed to dig out the hosepipe but couldn’t get to grips with reconnecting all the bits that had come off. His face lit up when he saw that I had got it working again.

I’m considering, for the first time, letting my own hosepipe loose on my supposed xeriscape front garden, because while everything is still hanging in there, I don’t think any of us expected drought resistance to be put to quite such a literal test as the one we’re having right now. Should the hosepipes be banned here, most of the plants in my back garden will die.

It’s getting too dry even for the parts of gardening I don’t like. A few weeks ago I had to keep leaping out of the borders in my cottage garden job, having disturbed angry horse flies determined to take a chunk out of me. I came home covered in bites from all sorts of critters - this week, not one. Stinging nettles are wilting. Stubborn sycamore saplings are suddenly easy to yank out of the dusty soil.

Warnings are constant of yet another heatwave. We have fans in every bedroom now. The children have little fans to take to school, or holiday club. I did not have a fan when I was little. Why is it getting hotter mummy? I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to lie. I also don’t want to give them nightmares. My son thinks the planet will be happier if we buy an electric car.

The council were out in force last week, mowing what straw is left of the grass into a fine dust. My own lawn is now a somewhat sickening shade of biscuit. I don’t usually mind a bit of parched lawn. I know it will bounce back in the autumn and I tend to ignore it, prioritising plants that would not otherwise recover. But I am tired of seeing it bleached to nothing. I’m worried that, once people are banned from their sprinklers, they will turn to plastic instead.

In London this weekend, we stayed at a fancy-ish hotel which left notices for us all over the place beseeching us not to damage the environment by having our towels washed. Apparently, it is laundry which is putting the planet in peril. Plastic, in their minds, is absolutely fine. Plastic plants were everywhere, hanging from every ceiling, wall and shoved into planters. They littered the city. We saw plastic palms in beer gardens, plastic flowers hanging from floristry stands. It’s the same at home - my favourite local Thai restaurant chain is stuffed with ridiculous plastic flowers. A new Indian tapas pub beer garden has green plastic plants sticking out of planters. Did nobody else hear that Radiohead song? Are we so willing to play pretend when there could be actual living things that would do us good? Perhaps its easier to look at a sea of fake lushness than see the reality of what the climate we have created is doing to plants that have survived here for centuries - until now.

It must be easier to accept all this if you just don’t notice nature or perhaps, if you actively fear and avoid it. If you never go to a park, let alone a garden. If your food comes in foil trays rather than produce grown from the ground. If you prize spotlessness over muddy fingernails. If you defy the passing of time with injections and treatments to sculpt your body into a strange alien age, rather than celebrate the life you have actually lived. If you live your life through screens and cheer yourself up with bargain basement impulse buys on Temu. If you don’t go for a walk, but spend hours sculpting in the gym, chugging protein nonsense instead of eating food. And that isn’t to pass judgement on anyone who does these things. I just can’t help but feel that they are all part of the same strange addiction - to products designed to isolate us from nature, to see it as something other, something to be feared. These products harm us, harm the world around us, and at the same time numb us to the effects of their damage in one fell swoop.

Twenty years ago, I lived in Japan, in a town called Toyama, teaching English at a now-defunct company called Nova. Postcards for the town depicted snowdrifts taller than houses, with roads literally cut through towering white walls. It didn’t snow like that when I was there. Locals told me it had snowed less and less over the years. The climate has been changing for years and years - but I suppose, it’s only when the wildfires are in your continent, in your country - lapping at the boundaries of city where your friend lives that it starts to feel actually frightening. Am I being dramatic to feel frightened?

We can mulch, and compost, and save our water when it doesn’t stop raining this winter. We can plant different trees, different plants, play around with thyme and clover lawns and grow tropical fruits. But it will never be enough to mitigate what is happening, let alone stop it. This is not the peak of it. The rains and inevitable floods due this winter will not be the peak. There is no sign of this stopping, only of it accelerating. Because we are not stopping. We’re not even trying.

My kids notice if there is litter on the ground. They pick it up, put it in a bin, say it is important to take care of the planet. I tell them that’s right. I don’t know how I will eventually have to explain what a mess the planet is really in.

Photo by Radhey Khandelwal on Unsplash

1. In Birmingham we may not have recycling collections, but we do at least still have water and no hosepipe bans - yet.