June - a love letter to your local park & organically grown textiles
Written for and originally published by Homes & Gardens
Owning a dog is wonderful. Every morning, regardless of the weather, I am drawn into my nearby park in South East London for walkies, allowing me to observe the daily change on my doorstep. We’ve had our terrier Willow for four years now, so I have at least three years of observations and mental notes of the conditions of trees and locations of patches of wildflowers each season. It’s not a nature reserve, but passing the same points each day reveal ordinary but beautiful things like sparrow habits or wildflower multiplication.
Come June, it has knee-high grass with an abundance of grass-tolerant wildflowers (too often referred to as ‘weeds’). Grass still struggles in patches scorched by the heatwave in 2018, making them favourable for native flora intolerant of hardy park grass. I’m not sure if it’s because of limited mowing budgets or a letter that I wrote to my local parks’ trust requesting the stowing of mowers until June, but either way, it feels wild and abundant before that first petrol-powered smash and slash.
It’s remarkable just how much life some scruffy unmown park can provide, even in urban areas. It would not be farfetched to suppose that my park could contain more insect life than an intensive arable field. Organic food, which is grown in ways that allow wildlife to thrive, is increasing in popularity, but are people taking organic as seriously when it comes to our clothes and textiles? Perhaps it’s hypocritical to revel in the joy of weeds and bees while wearing non-organic clothes?
Last year I published a manifesto on nature-first land and resource use. During my research, I found that we use about 20 million hectares of other people’s land to grow fibre for the textiles we consume in the UK. Only a small percentage of these hectares are cultivated organically, meaning most of that overseas land will be in some way hostile to the creatures and plants that otherwise might have a home there.
My experience last year as a judge on the Homes & Gardens design awards highlighted that interior fabrics have even further to go than fast fashion. Of the almost endless scores of swatches and samples of competition entrants, less than a handful were organic. Ironically, I thought, some depicted romanticised imagery of plants, birds and bees. Ian Mankin was an entrant which stood out as organically grown, low waste, and made in Britain. I hope to see more entrants that consider the environment as we go to judge this summer so that wildness emerges as a theme at the heart of our interiors and gardens, both in imagery and production, this year and beyond.
Oh and by the way - if you’re considering writing a letter to your council, you can download a template here.