In honour of the year of the wood snake I’m shedding this IG skin and renewing my intention for this space. It’s time to let go of what was and stretch into what I’ve been (in @celestialpeach_uk impeccable words) “gestating and observing in the undergrowth”.
When I was a child I tried to learn how to write the characters of my Chinese middle name, 慧雯 wai mang (cantonese) or huì wén (mandarin). As I struggled with the number of strokes, I asked my dad if my name had any meaning. Examining his weathered Chinese-English dictionary he explained “wai/huì” means “bright, intelligent, wise” and “mang/wén” means “beautiful cloud”. I was chuffed about the smart part, but baffled by the puff of visible vapour. So he continued his translation, “like a cloud with a silver-lining”.
Many children of immigrants are given English names to help them fit in to western life. My parents decided on Stephanie because my mum liked watching the actress Stefanie Powers in the mystery TV show ‘hart to hart’. While the name doesn’t resonate with me, it served its purpose. My ethnicity disguised in registers among 3 other Stephanie’s in my school year and friends pronounced my name with ease. But when I learnt my Chinese name, I felt my parent’s hopes and dreams in me. I found a meaning to live up to; to be wise and hopeful in hard times.
Last year, I met a moth in Scotland called Green Silverlines. Its name describes its green block coloured wings broken up by thin white diagonal lines. Found in woodlands of oaks, birches, hazels and elms, it is common but like many moths often goes unnoticed. While we adore the 17,500 species of butterflies around the world, we tend to villainise (thanks to Hannibal) or forget the 160,000 species of moth that contribute to our ecosystem under the cover of night by pollinating plants and feeding wildlife. But in its name like the one my parents gave me, I found meaning - glimmers of hope in our green spaces, more-than-human stories that inspire a sense of belonging - Green Silverlines. And that is what I wish to share with you here.
Images and videos are of my meeting with the Green silverlines 💚
RESCHEDULED
Spring is going to be a beauty! 🌼🌷🥾
We can’t wait to host our first Book Walk in April this spring on Robin Wall Kimmerer’s ‘The Serviceberry: An Economy of Gifts and Abundance’ 🍓🫐🕊️
We’re excited to offer our community free entries to Kew Gardens for this walk and forest therapy session on The Serviceberry 🦋🍄💕💗🌱
Our community events are for those who self-identify as mixed, dual heritage and multicultural people of colour. 🌈🌞
We belong outdoors 💗🌸🌺🐞🦎
Link in bio to book on our free event via Luma (Subscribe to our Luma calendar in bio) 💌
About The Serviceberry:
“As indigenous scientist and author of Braiding Sweetgrass Robin Wall Kimmerer harvests serviceberries alongside the birds, she considers the ethic of reciprocity that lies at the heart of the gift economy. How, she asks, can we learn from indigenous wisdom and the plant world to reimagine what we value most?”
#rootsofbelonging #diversifyukoutdoors #foresttherapy #community
@rootsofbelonging@kewgardens
Green things I saw in NYC (caught on film)
1. Blue morph in the vivarium of the
American Museum of Natural History
2. The High Line
3. A serviceberry growing on the High Line
4. Conifers dressing up brown stones
5. The Rockerfella Christmas tree
6. Manhattan side of Brooklyn bridge
7. Central Park fountain
8. Silhouettes in Central Park
9. Me enjoying green things I saw in NYC dressed like Harry in Home Alone 2
Is any greenspace ‘sustainable, joyous, and biodiverse without good gardeners to care for it? Are we mad to continue to spend all the funding on greenspace design and build without any honesty about who will look after it. Does this front loaded system of design, poor care and then redesign make any sense?
We’d love to know what you think.
We trundled down a gentle hill listening to Robin explain the size of the original stream was no bigger than a meter wide, until we saw a large body of water emerging from the base of a woodland. It seemed unassuming at first. But as we carefully weaved our way through the moss covered willow trees, watching our step to not let the water get above our boot lines, there under the canopy of bare branches the full-scale of the beaver dam was revealed. A sight so beautiful it felt unbelievable. 5 conflict beavers rescued from Scotland had made this dam in under 2 years. Turning a small stream into a collection of water pools at different levels and depths that support an abundance of aquatic and botanical life. And with it brings more insects, birds and mammals to the water who survive off them too. No wonder the beaver is a keystone species in our ecosystem. There is so much we can learn from them in the way we engineer our landscapes; creating spaces to support life beyond ourselves. Isn’t it about time we give a dam?
Welcoming in the year of the wood dragon 🐉
1. Reflecting auspicious-ness as much as possible
2. Translation of the duilian (Chinese couplets): @cymbalhands dad vs. my dad’s translations
3. Love up in the air
4. Bonding with my godson
5-8. “Spring filling the world”: Camellias, edgeworthias, crocuses and cushions
9. On tree time
10. “Greetings to the people on earth” moment at home
Fledglings on film. ‘Fledglings are young birds that acquire the feathers necessary for flight or independent activity’. Upon doing so they leave the nest. Not knowing when they’ll return, home becomes the place we meet to rekindle our friendship, a podcast marathon of voice notes, texts and emojis and a warmth inside my heart in-between the silence.
Nevertheless this trip will remain seared into my memory for causing a chain reaction to my deeper questioning of our relationship with plants. I’d like to thank @the_botanicgardener for this catalyst and the chance to watch her live out her dreams and see the plant that got her excited about pursuing a career in horticulture out in the wild. It is a beautiful reminder of how important accessibility is. Be it a pot plant or a park, those encounters with nature allow us to enter into relationships with plants that can change our minds, question ourselves and hopefully do a better job of caring for them and protecting what we can.
I might never have enough patience to understand how genetics works or to even count the number of ribs on a cacti, but perhaps for now it will be enough of an endeavour to greet a plant with presence, without needing to name it, but with the awe it deserves for surviving.
(3/3)
It’s quite something to collect a plant in the wild for scientific research. There was an unconscious egoic moment, a secret hope you’ve discovered something new, followed by a knock of the heart asking to what end? Next was Neil, and then me. With each collection, the more the question grew - why? Who are we to decide which plant species are worth protecting over others? Who are we to give them names? Is there value beyond our prescriptive economical or desirable lens? Are we able to protect them without these categorisations and justifications? It’s complicated.
Science has helped us understand the intricate web of relationships one plant might have to another; their ingenious adaptations that might serve us as we race to save our own plants inabilities to keep up with climate change; and that the decline in one species will likely have an impact on another, their habitat, their ecosystem. This science can return us to prioritise care not just for the environment but for us too, but I can’t help that it still feels like an extractive approach. How can we stay curious to serve the whole rather than one?
I am becoming comfortable with not having any answers in an attempt to navigate through complication. Opting to understand our history, continue to turn towards the confusion and participate in the conversation, while hoping for radical change from a system that still feels colonial.
(2/3)
5 months ago I was invited to Bolivia by Fay to observe her favourite cacti, cleistocactus winteri in the wild; a plant whose populations have been devastated by expanding urban infrastructure and the rise of its desirability as a houseplant through social media.
Our search was led by Bolivian botanist and cacti expert, Moises Mendoza. His most common phrase on our trip, two simple words “it’s complicated”, initially became a jokingly beloved response to our incessant questioning. But reflecting back it has evolved into an undeniable truth that has diffused into every aspect of my exploration into the industry we have created around our love for plants.
What started as a romantic adventure into the wilderness of Bolivia, actualised into a bizarre race to catalogue species that reckoned with our purpose. Students of RBG Kew are encouraged to do a travel scholarship, a generously funded trip to pursue our personal interests in horticulture. So what might it be like to see the plants we love in their natural place and experience a slice of a botanist’s life?
10 hour car journeys with our unstoppable driver Eliana Calzadilla (who is also a botanical illustrator) were peppered with abrupt stops whenever we shouted “Pare!” from the back seats of our puncture-proned truck. Our broken backs and numb bums would be rewarded when we’d scramble out the car to look at what Moises had spotted. We delighted in seeing a different genus or species of cacti, took snaps like we’d seen a Pokémon, then hopped back in the car ascending into the Andes and down to the tropical lowlands of the Amazon basin following the same rhythm. Stop. Snap. Drive. Repeat.
As my vocabulary expanded with a myriad of botanically descriptive words like tubercles, arioles, glochids, ribs and spines, I was able to tune into Moises and my peers enthusing over plants that didn’t subscribe to the categories we place them in. On those rare occasions we carried out a collection to aid Moises research. I watched Fay make a careful cut with a sharp knife, disembodying the unidentifiable cacti from the place it had been growing in. “How did it feel?” I asked her. “Strange”, she replied.
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Portaits of the Inner Hebrides on film
1. N and the Fairy Pools
2. Moss on rock
3. Small loch by the fairy pools
4. Portree houses by the sea
5. N and Diego walking on Eilean Shona
6. N and Diego on Eilean Shona white sand beach
7. Old oyster farm
8. Foraging for oysters with Ali
9. Mossy lumps in the temperate forest on Eilean Shona
