Plant something

“Tend your own garden” ~ Voltaire

I am a great believer that the future we get, is in large part, a direct reflection of firstly, our degree of optimism about where we are headed, and secondly our aptitude to act on our optimism (in other words, our agency).

Now, if you are looking for a proxy for both optimism and agency, I have a good one for you : trees. People who plant trees believe in investing in their own, and their community’s future, and those who don’t (or who chop them down and don’t bother to replace them), don’t. Societies who understand the intrinsic value of trees.

We can see this with real estate. Leafy green suburbs have higher property values that those without communal and domestic natural shade and lush plant life. It is fairly easy to predict whether property prices will incline or decline in any given street by simply noting whether the number of trees being planted exceeds the number of those being cut down, or not.

Gardening is an expensive hobby, no doubt, it costs time and money to plant, water and nurture nature, especially in a climate that works against green abundance. It takes effort to work against entropy. Likewise, it takes commitment and patience to plant a tree and nurture it over time until it’s full height. Trees also grow roots that make boundary walls and plumbing more complicated and expensive than can be justified by pure capitalist reasoning. As such, residents and communities that invest in greenery in this way are, very tangibly, committing too and investing in their neighbourhood’s future - and to the joy and wellbeing of future generations and future home owners they may never meet. They are also romantics that understand that the individual cost of planting and maintaining trees is justified by the collective good the comes from living under an urban canopy. In other words, good neighbours make good trees.

And that is why am resolutely optimistic about Johannesburg. The trees. And the fact that people are still planting them! It does not surprise me that more people are moving to (and back to) Gauteng again when we consider the trees. Johannesburg, in its natural state, is uniquely inhospitable when it comes to growing much of, well, anything. And yet the city is world-famous for being the world’s largest human-made urban forest. We, collectively (I too am guilty here) have planted and watered, even with our water restrictions, over 10 million trees in our gardens, parks and streets. There was no mandate that forced us to plant. We just did, millions of us, going to shop for saplings at nurseries our of our own free will, and contributing to our collective canopy, at least in the suburbs where optimism remains strongest. It gives me immense joy to see how even the residences of low-cost and informal housing across Johannesburg join in this collective hobby. To see the trees planted by the residents of Cosmo City in almost every lot slowly grow and shade what was once a dusty building site is as delightful as gazing over the top of Rosebank during Jacaranda season. It is a testament to resilience, optimism and a delight in beauty and growth that stands in stark contrast to what I’ve seen in countless less stubbornly hopeful nations where, by all accounts, it would be much easier to growth things. Take Northern Ireland for example, which is constantly wet and where things love to grow, there, reflecting the pessimism of the population, yards are empty of anything other than concrete and weeds…

Written by Bronwyn Williams