At the start of the year, when the only thing getting me out of the house on cold and rainy weekend days was my Wandle Wardrobe lost clothes project (“think of the muddy socks and old gloves you can pick up if you go out for a walk during this 6-hour window of daylight!”), I saw a tweet about London National Park City, and found out that they were recruiting for new Rangers. Being out in nature was pretty much the only thing enabling me to cope with the stress of an ongoing global pandemic, and I wanted everyone to have access to that source of beauty, wonder and resilience.
London National Park City’s mission is to make London greener, healthier and wilder. Having a network of Rangers across all London boroughs means that LNPC can share knowledge and resources, champion local projects and get people of all ages participating in activities like growing food, guerrilla gardening and learning about nature. London has large, impressive green spaces that everyone knows about, like Hyde Park and Hampstead Heath, but smaller, local spaces like community gardens, allotments and patches of no-man’s land are also vital resources, both as habitats for wildlife and as places where people can get closer to the natural world.
LNPC has recruited 110 Rangers over the past two years (including me!) with an impressive and diverse range of skills. Wildlife experts, foragers, community organisers, teachers, educators, gardeners, artists, storytellers… all ready to share their love and enthusiasm for London’s green spaces.
The link between fashion and being “greener, healthier and wilder” might not be immediately obvious, but fashion has a huge environmental impact, and is also a powerful resource for visual storytelling. Our current overconsumption of clothes, and some people’s habit of discarding them after only a few wears, means that clothing is now a source of rubbish, just like single-use plastic. Indeed, over 50% of clothing is made from polyester, which means it IS plastic, and will shed microfibres into any water source it ends up in. It will also take hundreds of years to decompose. It is vital that we start taking better care of our clothes to minimise the amount that end up in landfill.
Presenting my Wandle Wardrobe finds on “quilts” as though they were precious heirlooms rather than scraps of discarded clothing will hopefully help some people to rethink their attitudes about the clothes they own. My “Rainbow Remnants” quilt will be on display at Honeywood Museum as part of the Carshalton Artists Open Streets Exhibition from 17th June to 25th July.
I am by no means an expert on London’s extensive flora and fauna, so I’ve set myself a challenge to improve my ability to identify wild flowers and plants this year. I am taking part in wildflower surveys for Verging On The Wild Side, a Sutton-based group gathering evidence in the hope of persuading local authorities to allow roadside verges to be left as wildflower habitats rather than sad strips of scorched grass. I spent rainy weekends in May researching London’s plant life, and creating my own florilegium in fabric form, consisting only of roadside “weeds” to emphasise what beautiful and interesting plants they are! This is currently an ongoing project, but expect a blog post about it soon.
Now that pandemic restrictions have eased a bit and the weather is perfect for spending long weekend days outdoors, I’m really enjoying volunteering again; helping out at the Carshalton Lavender farm and going on local litter picks. I’m looking forward to meeting my fellow Rangers outside in our natural habitat, and dreaming up projects to get plenty more people feeling as enthusiastic about London’s green spaces as we do!
The pictures that illustrate this blog post are close-ups of the scarf I embroidered as part of my LNPC Ranger application. I love the idea of London becoming as well-known for its green spaces and wildlife diversity as it is for its historic buildings and monuments. Everywhere the two can coexist makes London a healthier and more pleasant place to live and work.
