98. BUSH NOTES
notes from the garden "bush" and beyond.
A couple of weeks ago, on a sunny Wednesday afternoon, I stumbled on a building that really caught my eye. It is easy to miss, tucked away behind shrubbery on a residential street, but if like me you often glance at the top of buildings for their architecture or to note their esoteric, occult symbols (featured heavily in the city of London, btw), you would have read a sign and stopped solid in your tracks.
‘A centre dedicated to the study of botany?!’ you exclaim. ‘In this area??’
Within minutes I had signed up to their next workshop. The description read ‘we will explore weeds and elements of nature recording as a practical way to imagine plants as co-participants’
Sold.
What is botany?
/ˈbɒtəni/
[noun]
the scientific study of the physiology, structure, genetics, ecology, distribution, classification, and economic importance of plants.
the plant life of a particular region, habitat, or geological period.
So a bit about me. I’ve been volunteering at local community gardens since 2024, and at the beginning of this year I vowed to be way more intentional about learning how to grow food or identifying different medicinal or edible plants in the wild in response to the uncertain times we’re living in. Since setting that intention, there have been a lot chance encounters like much like the botany centre.
I come from Jamaican parents and a long line of people who know how to farm. My paternal side are country folk, and with that comes a lot of knowledge on natural, herbal remedies. Tummy ache? Constipation? Bunning out crassis? There’s plenty including ‘bush’ teas like cannabis or cerasee for digestive issues; the more bitter the better. My dad knew a lot about agriculture and kept a thriving garden, growing everything from callaloo to pumpkin, corn and thyme. He also built raised beds and installed a bird bath.
The seed had already been sown.
I’ve been keeping my own growing diary where I capture practical horticultural information that is useful to me – a future ancestor – and my future descendants, who will inherit all my handwritten notes. I’ve also started sharing some of this on BUSH NOTES, a page where I share my observations from the garden ‘bush’ and beyond. The illustrations and scribbled notes are scans from my actual physical diary or digital illustrations I’ve done on my computer.
Come and learn with me.
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