'Holocaust' of plantlife

It is difficult to imagine a time when Johannesburg was a dusty mining camp with barely a tree in sight. The cultivation of trees was critical in the transformation of the city from grassland into living areas.  

“In Johannesburg, one of the most immediate needs was for vegetation, the bare veld being most inhospitable to European eyes, and early photographs show how quickly this desire to ‘humanize’ the landscape was gratified by the planting of rapidly growing trees to line the streets and squares.” (Dennis Radford) 

Seen from space Johannesburg is considered one of the great man-made forests of the earth.

Over the past few years, tree felling has become a micro enterprise. Tree fellers advertise their services on street corners throughout Johannesburg. In the more affluent suburbs, advertising is more sophisticated and so are the tools.

In suburbs closer to the city trees as old as the city itself are being chopped down for firewood, hacked down in backyards because they don’t suit the aesthetics of new occupants, or in some cases poisoned when autumn leaves become an irritation.  

According to City Parks, citizens who cut down trees in the street without permission are liable for a fine but culprits are rarely reported or caught. http://melodyemmettsbezvalley.blogspot.com/2011/08/jesus-went-out-to-mountainside-to-pray.html

http://melodyemmettsbezvalley.blogspot.com/2011/10/once-there-were-two-rivers_14.html

Since the largely Italian and Portuguese property owners have moved out of suburbs like Bez Valley, and young upwardly mobile South Africans and their families, together with unconscionable speculators from other parts of Africa have moved in, the trend has been for cultivated gardens to be uprooted and replaced with concrete.  This is often accompanied by the deployment of large, miserable looking, blatantly neglected dogs to patrol the concrete in small front yards from morning to night.  I have written about these things on this blog. http://melodyemmettsbezvalley.blogspot.com/2011/09/dog-called-police.html

My own garden in Bez Valley has sustained me and shielded me from the often grim realities of life on the streets. In my door-sized front garden, a gooseberry bush, a bay tree, a lemon tree, granadillas and strawberries flourished and extended their generous offerings through the fence to passersby. 

In a small garden at the back of the house I grew vegetables – spinach, onions, tomatoes, beans, peas, and even mielies - interspersed with herbs of every variety, including a comfrey plant that was practically a tree, roses, hydrangeas and several large trees.

Together with my Muslim neighbours, who have a penchant for palm trees (considered a symbol of affluence by some Johannesburg residents), I continued to nurture and tend to my garden whilst gardens all around me were being uprooted and concreted in.

Two weeks ago, after living in Bez Valley for 15 years, I relocated slightly further north, to a flat with a large terrace. I potted some of my plants and moved them together with my large collection of plants and herbs already in pots, to my new home.

I discussed the garden with the new owner of the Bez Valley house, explaining what I would take and what I would leave behind.  There was no argument, in fact she nodded gratefully when I asked if she would like me to leave this or that plant.  Under the circumstances, I mistakenly thought we shared the same ideas. 

On Tuesday I received a late night call from a distraught Katy Mazibuko, who tearfully told me that the new owner had uprooted the entire garden, back and front, and transported it in bakkie loads to the local dump. I phoned another neighbour to get confirmation. “Yes,” she said, “I was very upset to see all the lemons falling down…There is only one tree left in the back. Everything else has gone …”
http://melodyemmettsbezvalley.blogspot.com/2011/08/katy-mazibuko.html

I asked the new owner why she hadn’t let me know. “I would have taken the plants,” I told her. 

“You should have taken what you wanted,” she said. I am not a garden or a flower person…”

For many people, plant growth is merely a hateful excrescence of the earth, a sign of a lazy householder, and the encroachment of the jungle into civilized life.

With a heavy heart I have imagined my trees and plants, their lifeless arms and legs projecting into the air on a dusty city dump site, a ‘holocaust’ of plant life.