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Aftermath is an ongoing collaborative community project lead by the Eco Team. In 1940 St James’s was badly bomb-damaged. 42 species of ‘weeds’ grew in the nave.
Who We Are
Read more about the Eco Team on About Earth Justice
What We Do
Aftermath is an ongoing collaborative community project lead by the Eco Team
Get Involved
If you would like to write something, make a video, compose some music, make a play, join a sewing group, forage for food, recommend a book, adopt a ‘weed’ then get in touch.
We grew the weeds again in the aftermath of Covid, asking what they have to teach us. Our ‘guest’ plants from our 1940s list of post Blitz ‘weeds’ are three species of grass, which blew in with the mainly herbaceous pioneer-species. Grasses are often overlooked as ubiquitous mown lawns and sports pitches, but they are an interesting study in their own right.
Grasses emerged as a climax steppe eco-system after that last ice-age, when grazing herds of macro-fauna such as aurochs (Wild Ox), horses and mammoths created the extensive sparse woodland/species-rich grasslands of Northern Europe. Climate change, the fragmentation of migration routes due to rising sea levels and hunting by humans, led to the eventual extinction of many of these mega- fauna species.
However, about 7,000 years ago a migration of people from the Middle East introduced farming to Europe and tribes of steppe pastoralists brought their domesticated flocks with them. Theirs is the legacy of grazed pasture and meadows we see today.
Bomb Box
Kyoko and Simon tend to the Harbinger tomatoes on Jermyn Street
Christine has been growing her tomato plants on her balcony and harvested a fine crop of ‘Harbinger’ tomatoes
Corn Chamomile (Anthemis arvensis) was the first species to germinate in the Bomb Box. It was once a very common corn-field annual, but since the advent of herbicides and more intensive farming methods it is now considered an endangered species.
In 2023 the south-facing, sun-drenched curtilage of the church becomes a new Grow Space featuring The Three Sisters (corn, beans and squash) growing on the railings. Many cultures have a version of this staple food combination, which sustainably provides carbohydrates, protein and vitamins/minerals.
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A Triumph of Delights was a month long festival in October 2021 in the lead up to COP26 in Glasgow, providing a variety of spaces to gather in solidarity, and to celebrate the beauty and fragility of our common home.
Daily Bread is a community wheat-growing project connecting city-dwellers with food production, engaging with ecological and environmental concerns and exploring humanity’s 10,000 year relationship with wheat.
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