We Just Called It All Grass

Written By Jane Morrow

It seems there is not a lot you are officially allowed to do on Annadale Embankment next to the River Lagan. Stickers on a noticeboard prohibit activities. They are hard to make out, the decals cracked and peeling like old Letraset, the whole piece of signage to which they still cling blackened by flames (it would seem lighting fires was not one of the prohibited activities). The schematic diagrams in red strikethrough circles seem to say: no drinking beer from dimple-glass tankards, no four-legged animals, no gifting of flowers, no queasy attempts at sexy dancing like John Cusack in High Fidelity when Jack Black takes to the stage – no hang on, no, it’s golf, no golfing… although given the large quantity of golf balls I found on my last attempt at 'Lagan-larking', it seems this one at least is being ignored.

Further along, I discover that you are allowed, within certain strict parameters, to fish. A riverside notice identifies this section of the river as a ‘coarse fishery’. Fish species you might expect to find here include roach, bream, sea trout, brown trout, mullet and salmon. Below, running along a dead-end pathway, are so-called ‘fishing stands’, concrete platforms filling gaps in the railings and jutting out over the river’s edge. Apparently, these are policed by ‘water bailiffs’ checking for rod licences, fishing permits and written permission from the Department of Communities. I have never seen anyone fishing here, despite the generous times the activity is permitted: ‘Winter and Autumn – half and [sic] hour before sunrise and half an hour after sunset’ and the rather more specific but equally broad Spring and Summer hours ‘Between 06.00 and midnight’.

I am here because some friends, after hearing about my last mud-larking escapade on the Lagan, recommended an area of woodland near here which had previously been an old i.e., 19th century, dumping ground / brickworks, before nature reclaimed it, and where they had found antique bottles and bricks and other curios over the years. At least that is what I think they said; as I type it here now, it seems like wishful thinking on my part. Either way, I have not reached that spot yet, it is further upriver.

Walking along the embankment I see more fishing stands, then patches of wild nature in the no-man’s land between the embankment railings and the river’s edge. There are sycamore, oak, lime and beech trees; nettles, horsetail, brambles, cow parsley, goosegrass, vetch and rosebay willowherb. Growing up, apart the ubiquitous back garden daisy, buttercup and dandelion (and the stinging nettle) I never knew the names of any of these wildflowers. Almost everything I know now comes from one or two (they are that dense and informative) foraging walks with the wonderful Clare McQuillan who goes by the handle @feastingonweeds. The only plant ten-year-old me would probably have been able to identify in the wild, but never did see in the wild, would have been shamrock because that had a religious teaching attached to it that was drilled into us at school from a young age. My brother Dylan Brennan has a poem in his collectionLet the Dead that touches on, among other things, our wildflower ignorance entitled ‘After an Ultrasound’, in which, after running through a litany of flora from woundwort to yarrow to ribwort plantain, concludes with the lines: ‘and to think of how / as children / we just called it all grass’.

More plants: groundsel, clover, herb-Robert (I need to reverse image search that last one) until, yes, there it is, towering over everything, the hideous giant hogweed, its bulbous egg-shaped head ready to hatch a foaming splurge of florets. My brother (another one) had a run in with some of these that he found growing in his back garden. Unaware that the giant hogweed juice spattering over his arms as he went at it with the electric hedge cutters was making his skin lose its innate ability to protect itself from direct sunlight, it wasn’t long before he was erupting in blotches and blisters. He made it worse by trying to cool his arm down by letting it dangle from the rolled-down car window in the breeze (alas also in the sun) as he drove to the pharmacy. I have seen these creatures in this part of the embankment before as I tiptoed around them trying to find my way back to the path, like looming triffids ready to strike. Incidentally, apart from their scale, they have something else in common with triffids – they are both Russian escapees (sort of). In Wyndham’s novel, The Day of the Triffids, a Soviet biological experiment is released accidentally into the wild, while our giant hogweed, native to the Caucasus region, was brought to Europe as an ornamental plant and garden curiosity before it escaped.

I leave the nauseating giant hogweed to lord it over its horsetail minions and head in the direction I was tipped off about. There is a dusty path, like powdered cement, directing me in specific directions. There is another Belfast City Council sign proclaiming this area as ‘Laganlands East’ – it also looks like it has suffered fire damage. A laminated page glued underneath reads ‘Lagan Lands Lost’, followed by three QR codes: one a link to a Facebook group of concerned residents living in and around Lagan Meadows; another to a change.org campaign about the recent felling of mature trees by the Department for Infrastructure and arguments and confusion over whether sufficient environmental assessments or consultations with Stranmillis residents had taken place[i]; and one to a now defunct Twitter account called @Seven_of_9ine. A quick trawl through the Internet Archive’s ‘Wayback Machine’ shows the account’s owner was active from 2021 and then suddenly gave up in 2023 – presumably jaded after shouting into the void for two years at TERFs, evangelical Christians, Jamie Bryson, and grammar pedants (these are just some of the tweets I uncovered – I also picked up a great love of trains and obviously, given the social media handle, Star Trek).

I leave the dusty path towards the place I think my friends mean. My dog is not sure about this sudden plunge into the undergrowth, his long hair is already caught on some thorny creeper, but I untangle him and we press on. I wander about for a while on woodland track, catching that soapy IPA whiff of elderflower that has been toasted in the sun for half a day but, apart from the odd half-embedded Belfast brick, I don’t find anything. There is too much lush growth – it’s probably the wrong time of year with everything so intoxicatingly overgrown. The track leads back to the dusty path and I change direction. Breaks in the trees show some wonderfully wild vistas – I want to try to draw them, inspired by large-scale Santi Moix pencil and charcoal drawings of rock formations on Menorca I recently came across.

The path turns and reaches a fenced-off field and then abruptly turns left and leads to another fenced off dead-end blocking access to a lavish half-built housing estate named ‘The Hamptons’. Although the name Hampton seems to pre-exist in this area, referring to a housing estate as The Hamptons, presumably after the Long Island holiday spot for wealthy New Yorkers (which I can only ever associate with George Constanza’s long drive with Laura Palmer’s mother[i]) seems a bit of a stretch. And if that were not aspirational enough, some of the vast £1.2 million dwellings of reclaimed brick seem to be designed from scratch to look like grand old residences which have had modern extensions put on.

I backtrack and take another path which feels like it was made yesterday. There has obviously been a lot of development taking place in the area as part of ‘Lagan Gateway Phase 2’. It seems that in this case, the concerned residents on the Facebook group were consulted and their concerns responded to in the Belfast City Council report.[i] Two queries mention The Hamptons, but the council can only infer answers from the plans associated with this ‘private scheme’ because ‘a private developer is currently undertaking [the] construction works’. This light touch landscaping is beautiful, but it also feels suspiciously like a theme park – fields closed-off by fresh fences: one full of buttercups and no ox-eye daisies, another full of ox-eye daisies and no buttercups. I am not really sure what is going on; I suspect things need a while to bed in and I veer off following another desire line through the long grass. It leads back to that fenced-off field.

 

Thinking about the decapitated trees, the housing developments seeping towards the river’s banks, and the destruction of habitat[ii], makes me feel powerless. I am glad there are groups out there ready to protest and make their voices heard, and I know that the eventual planned path from here to Belvoir Forest will most likely be a wonderful resource. However, my thoughts drift towards a more general sense of environmental destruction and species collapse that shows no sign of slowing. And it is not as though this tiny area in a corner of a tiny city in a corner of Europe means much in the grand scheme of things when, for example, concurrently in Belfast, there is a screening of Richard Mosse’s film documenting illegal mining, logging and burning in the Amazon over a ten-year period. And also, how should trees rank in one’s list of concerns when a genocide[iii] is taking place in the Middle East. But to be honest, I don’t feel all of this while looking at the fenced-off meadow; that comes later. For now, I want to see my dog doing his funny loping jump that he saves for long grass. I follow the desire line around the galvanised fence mesh and let him off the lead. It is not long before I lose sight of his tail amongst the nodding meadow soft grass, but he is old enough now to know to come back when I call him. Unless he spots a squirrel… then I’m really fucked.

Jane Morrow
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