Reading Green Unpleasant Land

Lucy Pickford is Membership Marketing manager at the Landscape Institute. Lucy has a degree in Landscape Architecture and a Master’s in the History of Art.

Green Unpleasant Land looks at the origins of the money that built the English countryside and its parks and greenspaces. It considers the impact of this on our interpretation as well as the use of space today. Through the investigation of creative responses to this history, it raises many questions about how we not only acknowledge this history, but also ensure that it is contextualised and that its impact is addressed. Fowler’s work has received considerable publicity. In addition to being a research expert at the University of Leicester, she is also Director of Colonial Countryside: National Trust Houses Reinterpreted. The reports published by the National Trust have led to signficant controversy for both the author and the organisation.

Fowler explains her motivation for writing the book is both political and emotional. One of her starting points is a family link to Caribbean sugar wealth. She notes, “our relatives either profited from empire, or were impoverished by it.” The book looks at the opening ceremony for the London Olympics and the National Trust’s publication of a report on the colonial connections of the properties that they manage. It then explores the changing features of rural Britain, and then considers English rural writing in a global setting. There is also an analysis of the country house and of moorlands. One particular area of focus for landscape practitioners that the book addresses is the cultural history of gardens as shaped by empire and migration.

Throughout the book, Fowler highlights the history of forms of control over the use of land employed by governments and landowners over the last few centuries. She looks at the Enclosure Acts of the 1700s as well as changing attitudes to the provision of allotments for those displaced within the UK. She notes that to this day there is still regulation over the use of space. Just recently this has been the case with people being locked out of parks and police officers sent to reprimand sunbathers and benchsitters during the COVID crisis. This may be in the use of public space for demonstrations, or ‘keep off the grass’ and ‘no ball games’ signs employed by the local administrators. Funding and the structural inequality in parks provision plays a large part in access limitations. Fowler cites research that showed “20% of the most affluent wards in council areas has on average five times more green space than the 10% of the most deprived areas.” (1)

The history of parks reflects a constant struggle between users seeking their self-defined pleasures and the municipal and other would-be circumscribers of behaviour in parks

Alongside this, Fowler looks at access to the countryside and explains the way in which many minority groups feel unwelcome in a seemingly open space that should be accessible to all. Fowler notes the experience of poet Benjamin Zephaniah, ‘whose countryside jog launched a police helicopter searching for a ‘suspicious jogger’. She also mentions the experience of poet Lemn Sissay ‘who speaks of the incendiary racism that is in the country and is never challenged’, leading her to the conclusion that “rural belonging is often predicated on people’s sense of historical relationship to the land.”

Much of Fowler’s book explores the influences and interpretations of beauty of landscape in poetry and other cultural responses, demonstrating the breadth and depth of an individual’s response to a landscape. It would be remiss not to note – William Blake’s ‘Jerusalem (And did those feet in ancient time)’ was the inspiration for the book’s title.

Whether it’s the gardens of country houses, parks, or the wider countryside, it is likely that many of the sites on which landscape professionals will work have a complex history linked to the colonial past of Britain, and much of it has been funded through slave-produced wealth. As Fowler notes, a lack of acknowledgement of this will simply support and perpetuate the structural issues that marginalise communities to this day. Penrhyn Castle provides a good example here. It is part of a World Heritage Site, but much of its surrounding landscape and infrastructure was funded by profits from the Pennant family plantations. The National Trust has since revised its listing for the property, prominently acknowledging this history.

The approach to how community outreach and engagement is conducted on a site is routinely a part of the process of understanding that site’s history. A creative response might include improved signposting and accompanying resources such as relevant poetry. Kew Gardens, for example, has taken this approach to its history, and acknowledges it as an ongoing challenge that must be addressed. (2) Another example is the debate on the retention or removal of statues that are a part of a colonial history which, as Diana Crouch (3) noted in an article for the LI blog, was an act “about the need for public spaces to reflect a sense of respect and inclusion for the people who live in and use them.”

As Fowler has experienced firsthand, these issues are complex and emotive, often triggering a variety of, at times, aggressive responses. Ultimately the key issue is addressed in the final chapter of the book. She asks, ‘are our parks and green spaces not a representation of the ‘interconnectedness of continents, peoples and histories? Should they not be for all a ‘green and breathing tolerance’ (4) ?

Green Unpleasant Land is written for a wide range of audiences. There are however specific questions that might usefully be addressed by the landscape profession. Whether these are creative responses to the history of a site, community led development and ownership or signposting to help others learn, a starting point will be to have the questions raised by Fowler’s book in advance of beginning work. It is important to take active steps to ensure that not just the full history of a site, but also the impact, respect and consideration is taken into account.

References

1. ‘Green Unpleasant Land’ book cover - Creative Responses to Rural England’s Colonial Connections - by Corinne Fowler.

2 https://www.kew.org/ read-and-watch/ time-to-re-examinethe-history-ofbotanical-collections

3 https://www. landscapeinstitute. org/blog/ relationshipplacemaking-inclusion/

4 Pg 247 Green Unpleasant Land - Nichols, ‘In the Shade of a London Plane Tree’, Passport to Here and There (Newcastle: Bloodaxe Books 2020), p. 33.