It’s been a while, I know, but following the demolition of the Avon Street car park, many of us have wondered which building will take its place as the ugliest and most ill-advised building in Bath, and I’m delighted to announce that the top place (of my long list) goes to the old telephone exchange on the corner of Monmouth Street and Princes Street, built in the days when Crown buildings were not subject to planning permission. It’s always been a bit of a shady place as to its purposes, and it’s about to be anointed as Bath’s new police station – plus ĉa change etc.
Anyway, we were in the centre of town yesterday and as we passed the building I noticed this redemptive clump of Coltsfoot growing through the cracks in the neglected paving. As ever, Nature is quick to reclaim any neglected spot and I suppose we should record and enjoy this brief moment before it’s designated as a weed and summarily removed. Bath deserves its John Clare and I’m holding the place open until somebody better qualified turns up to celebrate the invisible residents of the city. In 2020, during the lockdown, I listed 26 wild plants growing in and around our car park – once a builders yard – and there are probably as many again waiting for someone to notice.
I know I write a lot about Cornwall and Wales and their wildflowers; but when push comes to shove there’s plenty going on in our own backyard – it’s just that the sunsets aren’t as good! As it happens it’s been a bumper year for Coltsfoot now I’ve got my eye in for likely spots. Their technical name is “ruderal” which means, well …… rude I suppose, in the sense of unkempt rather than wild; neglected rather than protected, and scarred rather than ploughed or dug. It’s the botanical equivalent of the favela or the refugee camp and it’s a great environment for dodgy characters to melt into the background. We even had a Sea Spleenwort hiding on the basement wall of the Guildhall – all washed up I suppose.
We’ve got a few guerilla gardeners in our neighbourhood too. Last summer we put some large compost filled pots outside the block and planted them up. This spring we see that invisible hands have planted tulip bulbs and even a bay cutting which seems to tolerate the extreme environment. The same invisible hands watered the pots when we were away in the campervan. Every year a solitary council employee hacks off the pavement squatters and sprinkles rock salt over the remains. Every year they return undiminished and sing their colourful madrigals to those with ears to hear and eyes to see them. It’s a dog eat dog existence for the rough sleepers of the plant world, but they seem miraculously to get by, and until you learn to distinguish one from t’other you won’t be able to understand their colorful histories. Railway trucks loaded with grain, bird seed imports, wool, and poorly tended compost heaps; even winter salted roads and lorry tyres all add their pennyworth to the diversity of the neglected environment. Old factories, mills and dyeworks cast off their workforce and their raw materials. These plants are evolutionary heroes, rapidly adapting to the new, often tricky places, where their better heeled cousins deign to set up home; on slag heaps, coal tips and mineworks; quarries, gasworks, docksides and railway sidings not to mention empty buildings like the old telephone exchange. Sadly, no-one is going to block the road marching for Whitlowgrass or Wall Barley, but they’re all part of the vast interconnected network of living things we call Nature – capitalizing the word although we have no idea if it really is a thing at all.
Still, we felt blessed by the Coltsfoot yesterday and celebrated with a pint at the Grapes; two old people drawing energy and hope from the crowd of young bar staff beginning their shift. We wish them the greatest happiness knowing, (as they have yet to discover), that in the end we’re all pavement dwellers.
