2020: A Plant Odyssey
This is it. The plants have taken over; soon the streets will be lined with compost and insecticide dispensers. A ‘Concert for Biocoenosis’ has taken place in a Barcelona’s Grand Opera house - as the Guardian phrased it, ‘Puccini for potted plants’. The conceptual artist Eugenio Ampudia who is behind the project stated that this work comes ‘at a time when an important part of humankind has shut itself up in enclosed spaces and been obliged to relinquish movement; nature has crept forward to occupy the spaces we have ceded’. Plants now have more autonomy than humans. We are not allowed to hold new born babies but plants can enjoy an evening of classical music en masse. What next? Plants will be all over Instagram in their social bubbles, enjoying whipped coffees and street-market cuisine.
These noxious weeds are encroaching on human territory. They have gathered behind Dobbies Garden centres in Animal Farm comradeship. Their commandments will be smeared on the walls in damp compost: ‘All plants are equal, but some plants are more equal than others’. For ‘man is the only creature that consumes without producing’ and so they have realised that great care must be taken to destroy these flimsy beings. They will chant: ‘Long roots good, two legs bad’.
Satire aside, let’s not dismiss the fact that house plants are already itching to leave quarantine. They have exhausted their essential supplies of packet soil and fought alternating episodes of thirst and deluge administered whenever their existence was forgotten or remembered. From the very beginning of lockdown they were hosting illegal mass gatherings in untended fields. As lockdown wobbles on the cusp of completion, we must ask ourselves what nefarious nemesis we have nurtured through our months of solitude.
We must combat the enemy within before plants, for want of meaningful occupation before concert-season, take to sprucing their rooms with pet humans. Will they also collect baby ‘succulents’ from quaint little markets to display in pastel colours on social media feeds? Maybe the plants will even succumb to impulse buying a bonsai human that will begrudgingly last forever, a sore reminder of the past-pollinator who gifted it to them.
Will there be a human-centre, replete with garden-café and outdoor plant-seating? Or will the plants make use of existing human-harvesting platforms such as Tinder to pick out their own Flora and Shaun-a. Instead of their Latin names, these house-humans will be identified by their Instagram handles. The optimum species do not just have a pretty face, but can tolerate neglect easily and look nice on the windowsill. Plants must take care to avoid the humans who are bewildered by difficult growing conditions, and are advised instead to pick the ones which fill up a corner without taking up too much floor space. Plants nervous about the responsibilities of new-parenting should adopt a student as a starter-human: usually fiercely independent and mostly self-sufficient, they are ideal for the forgetful plant, as they will exist in dark rooms abandoned and alone for long periods of time. For the perfect urban garden, Gen Zs are recommended for their ability to germinate from sporadic whipped coffee and a steady stream of Deliveroo. Growth can be supplemented with fertilisers, the most popular being Red Stripe which increases libido and thus guarantees increased pollination.
Maybe the plants will take over and nurture our damaged planet as mother nature intended. There will be a process of induced mutation so that post-covid humans have the advanced ability to conduct zoom calls and speed walk around supermarkets to get the last bag of kale. Plants will gift each other whimsical books such as How Not To Kill Your Human. The verdant fields of England will extend before them.
Whilst the life of the plant will continue more or less unfettered, when we emerge from lockdown bleary eyed and hunched, it will be virtually impossible to distinguish us from our leafy counterparts. ‘The creatures outside looked from plant to man, and from man to plant, and from plant to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which’. The plants have exploited the teachings of the millennial generation: ‘Purchiso Ergo Sum’ - ‘I buy therefore I am’.
Follow the link to see the concert:
Written by Esther Bancroft
A recent graduate of Bristol university, Esther has returned to the pen to write a little bit about a little bit of everything. When not staring at a screen trying to be creative, she likes to buy books without reading them and paint pictures of the sea - which is her healthy obsession.