THE GROWING THINGS (2020)

Commissioned by GRAIN Projects in 2020, The Growing Things was produced during a six-week walk of over 500 miles. A journey through the West Midlands region that at times felt like a search – for fragments or vestiges of land where it seemed as though natural processes were occurring unhindered, pockets of wildness that are increasingly rare in agricultural areas.

Habitat loss, whether due to intensive farming practices, forestry, or construction, is one of the most significant factors driving the global mass extinction which is currently underway. Most populations of wild species in the UK are on a downward trajectory as result of our intensive land-use. In nature there is a tendency towards growth, diversity and abundance. The suppression of that tendency and its replacement with monoculture leads to a spiralling decline of biodiversity. What we allow to grow and where has implications for what can live in a given area. In a landscape dominated by monocultures, wilder areas are geographically isolated from one another in a sea of inhospitable land and ecosystems cannot properly function.