Botanical Walk, Harmondsworth Moor, Saturday 14th September, 2024

Photo: Nick Ferguson. 2024. Harmondsworth Moor.

About

This walking tour, led by artist Nick Ferguson and ranger and naturalist Rebecca Harris, looked at the floor of Harmondsworth Moor. It was organised as part of London Open House and generously supported by Richmond, the American University, London.

The tour took as its starting point a short text by amateur botanist Richard Mabey dating from the early 1970s. He wrote:

“This was the Middlesex borderlands, a huge area of wasteland being slowly overtaken by hi-tech industry… […] … To the west [of my office] lay a labyrinth of gravel pits, now flooded, and refuse tips whose ancestry went back to Victorian times. […] The whole area was poked with inexplicable holes and drifts of exotic litter. And most thrillingly to me it was being overwhelmed by a forest of disreputable plants.” (Mabey, 2012, pp. 1–2)

Below are some notes on just some of the many things we discussed:

We unlocked a wealth of botanical knowledge, and set adrift on the River Colne numerous philosophical reflections, representations, points of view. We thought about how and why the local is not sexy in arts and culture. We looked up Jacques-Louis David’s dramatic representation of Socrates being passed a chalice of hemlock. We tasted wild hops but not the hemlock. We heard about the differences between a botanical survey commissioned in the context of a planning proposal and one undertaken by existing users of the land. The former is reductive, limited not even to what can be quantified, but what needs to be quantified in the eyes of the law. Noticing floating pennywort and Himalayan balsam, we thought about the proximity of invasive species and migrant discourse in the context of an airport landscape. Might flora be thought of as climate migrants?

I was touched to learn several plant names that represent all that remains of an intimate relationship with cattle. Ox tongue, whose elongated leaves are rough and raspy was perhaps a favourite. Knowledge is indeed all around us.

Thank you everyone who came on this walk and for so many extraordinary insights. Thank you @roz_fletcher_fine_art @nickirolls Satyam Yadav @positivelydazed for your photos.

Botanical Walk, Harmondsworth Moor: Photo: Satyam Yadav, 2024

Botanical Walk. Harmondsworth Moor: Photo: Killian O’Sullivan, 2024

Ox Tongue. Harmondsworth Moor: Photo: Satyam Yadav, 2024

Botanical Walk. Harmondsworth Moor: Photo: Nicky Rolls, 2024

Thistle. Harmondsworth Moor: Photo: Nicky Rolls, 2024

Robin’s Pincushion. Harmondsworth Moor: Photo: Nick Ferguson, 2024

Saxon Lake Harmondsworth Moor: Photo: Roz Fletcher, 2024

Duke of Northumberland’s River with floating pennywort Harmondsworth Moor: Photo: Nick Ferguson, 2024

Nick Ferguson. 2024. Harmondsworth Moor.

Further Reading: 

Corder, K. 2018. “HOW – Heathrow Orchard Walks, observations and explorations of vibrant land, Studies in Theatre and Performance,” Studies in Theater and Performance, vol. 38, no. 3, (2018), 267-277, https://doi.org/10.1080/14682761.2018.1506967. ↩

Ecology Handbook 7. 1987. Click here to download a botanical survey of this area from 1987.

Mabey, R., 2012. Weeds: The Story of Outlaw Plants, Main edition. ed. Profile Books, London.

Mabey, R., Sinclair, I., 2010. The Unofficial Countryside, Revised ed. edition. ed. Little Toller Books.

A TV version of the Unofficial Countryside is available on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=0C3nTmF6zzc