A sociology of the buddleia — and everyday ecological resistance

I recently got a buddleia plant, ostensibly because it is a butterfly friendly plant but mainly because it looks bloody marvellous. Buddleia are fascinating plants. They are overwhelmingly popular with amateur gardeners because of their insect friendly properties, their fantastic honey smell and their colourful but somewhat dishevelled appearance — the ecological equivalent of an un-ironed shirt. They are also a plant that is seen an invasive foreign species, that spreads widely and often occupies derelict spaces — such as canal sides, building sites and especially the railways. Though still popular with gardeners as part of their usefulness to butterfly revival, DEFRA treats them as invasive and gardeners should be careful to avoid their spread.

As a result of my gardening habit, I’m quite the garden watcher now. My journey to work will see me leave my dwarf sugar plum buddleia and a number of other garden varieties in Glasgow and then via a railway journey to Edinburgh hundreds of plants of the wild, invasive variety.

Part of this garden spotting sees me eyeing up other gardens too when out for walks. One of the things I see quite often — in addition to buddleias — are configurations of rosemary, lavender, heather, foxgloves and others which are often planted together in fairly small gardens. While some of these plants are particularly bonny, they are not natural fits or the most beautiful plants you could put together — there are reasons for them to be put together. As someone who walks to clear my head and think through ideas, it is no coincidence that I start thinking sociologically about these gardens. With the ongoing ecological and climate crises — more widely, the news of insect depopulation but more specifically, the downturn in numbers of bees and butterflies — a lot of advocacy from nature groups has gone out to individual gardeners on how different plants can make a difference.

A friend recently recommended I read Tsing’s (2015) ethnography The Mushroom at the End of the World. I must admit, I’m a life-in-capitalist-ruins kind of guy these days anyway. What Tsing talks about here is how the Matsutake mushroom — highly prized in Japanese cuisine — emerges or thrives in forests that have been disrupted by human activity, such as logging, and how this fits into a global chain of commerce. This book I started after finishing our pilot study into crofting in Scotland, where one of the key things to come out of this project too was the complicated relationship between nature, human development and notions of ‘care’. For crofters, maintaining a croft so that nature didn’t run wild was seen as natural. Here, gardeners put these ‘artificial’ configurations together — the buddleia itself comes originally from China — as ways to help and restore nature.

The configurations of rosemary, lavender and buddleias are not a million miles away from matsutake’s emergence from human activity. For me, these represent a form of ‘assemblage’ — not just the very specific ‘assembly’ or configuration of the plants, but the material plants themselves, the human labour that has gone into planting them, the discourses surrounding ‘butterfly/bee friendly’ plants and ‘doing our bit’ and a number of other social practices — that could be seen as a form of everyday resistance to climate and ecological crisis. While perhaps more discursively produced in a sense, they are also a little bit hopeful too. In such a hopeless time of climate emergency, I cling on to any elements of resistance. It would be easy to see these configurations of plants as another form of governmentality in these neoliberal times — making us responsible for addressing these ecological crises through responsible gardening. There certainly is an element of that. But for me they are invitations. Obviously they are literal invitations to animals for food, but also invitations to act and hope for a solution to our ecological troubles. They act as non-instrumental gifts to nature that, while acknowledging our place within the cycle, do not come with recognition of this labour. Much of this work goes unrecognised — except for the odd garden fan who knows the recommended plants list — and depends on a cycle between paid employment and consumption, which obviously is classed too. Also, while some of the plants are particularly bonny, some are darn right dull in a garden (I’m looking at you rosemary).

These are the initial thoughts I’m playing with anyway, it is a direction of travel that I plan to read and write a great deal more about in future. I’ve certainly collected quite the amount of literature to properly engage with discussions around social (re)production and care, probably as a form of summer procrastination. But I also hope this will occupy my thoughts further when I come to next flowering season and walk to see what new configurations exist or where the next buddleia will emerge from on my next walk.