Land where wild things can thrive is vital for biodiversity. Even smaller areas near cities can be islands of life, which help other ecosystems replenish and recover. Through clearing alien vegetation and planting indigenous trees, Connor Cullinan and Janine Stephen, the founders of Ferncliffe forest wilding, are working to expand and restore remnant patches of indigenous Afromontane forest and its grassland fringes on the edge of Pietermaritzburg, a city in South Africa’s KwaZulu-Natal province.
Q > First things first — could you tell us about the Ferncliffe forest wilding: how it came into being, and what your vision was for the project when you first started?
CC > We are both very concerned about the current state of the natural environment and the climate crisis. This anxiety prompted us to do something proactive. We used to live in a flat in Cape Town and our way of being proactive back then was by having “weeding sessions”on the lower slopes of Table Mountain. We got permission from SANParks and spent our afterhours pulling up invasive seedlings that had germinated after fire and were outcompeting the indigenous plants. It felt good doing something positive but it also stressed us out to see how invasive plants are consuming our landscapes, even in a national park.
Then my father, Brendan, passed away a few years ago and his smallholding in Pietermaritzburg was subsequently rented out. In the last years of his life, Brendan was unable to maintain his house and property so we made frequent visits to Pietermaritzburg to help out. It had been a citrus farm, but invasive plants swamped the orchards and killed most of the trees. We decided to transfer our weeding talents to KwaZulu-Natal. The fact that the farm adjoins Ferncliffe Nature Reserve (itself badly invaded by exotic plants) was a big attraction, and so was the mistbelt forest. Our vision was quite simply to restore Ferncliffe by replacing the invasives with indigenous trees. And that is still our vision, although it has become more nuanced: we consider our project to be about restoring the local biodiversity through planting trees because trees provide food and shelter for insects, birds, reptiles, mammals. And, of course, trees mitigate problems associated with climate change. We also propagate other plants, such as ground covers and shrubs because the understory is also vital for a healthy habitat.
Q > How have your backgrounds (Janine — yours as a freelance writer/editor — and Connor, yours as a visual artist) informed your work on the project?
CC > From the beginning, we planned to make use of visuals to add appeal to our project. Not any old visuals: ones that would go beyond merely informing our audience. In other words, the images we chose or created would, hopefully, set our project apart from other green ones and create a look and feel that would appeal to a visually literate audience. My fine art background has enabled me to make screen prints to sell as a means to raise funds, illustrations for our tree certificates, website and collateral. I also drew on my years of teaching visual communication (graphic design etc) to come up with our visual identity.
JS > Telling stories to different audiences is how I’ve made a living for most of my adult life. Ferncliffe forest wilding is about making a real tangible difference by digging in the earth — but also a chance to tell a story about one special place and its creatures and how things can change for the better if you act. So the project is also a way of sending out smoke signals of change? And yes, editing on magazines and writing stories has helped enormously, from finding sources of the best imagery or expert science, to seeing the project as a complex whole that needs to be designed with care from start to finish. So “Plant a tree” becomes “Which tree?”, and we give people choices to find a species with an attribute that touches them, and then tell its story too: the time a storm saw it nearly squashed by a fallen branch; escape from a roving porcupine bark stripper etc etc. We aren’t just about numbers and statistics.
Q > Who and where do you look to for inspiration?
CC > As a visually-driven human, I find inspiration in art. I spend a fair bit of time looking at artworks in books and on the net. There’s no art scene in Pietermaritzburg so I depend on secondary sources. I’m fond of art history and I appreciate the craft and skill of artists from the past who truly mastered observation and technique. There is a rigour to the work of painters from the Renaissance and the Baroque periods, for example, that is rare today. My interest in craft and observation has value outside of art; in our project, for example. I think these translate as caring for the small things, too. And planting judiciously.
JS > Novels help me see how endless the range of human characters can be. They help me understand people a bit more, maybe! Also, they can change perceptions, which isn’t a bad thing for most of us.
Q > Part of your process involves cooperating with life science experts. Could you tell us more about this exchange and how technology might play a role?
A > As non-scientists, we rely on life science experts for advice. This mainly takes the form of botanists helping us decide what to plant, but in the near future we are getting advice on doing a baseline study of vegetation (with luck, other types of studies will follow). Technology enables transparency. Donors (who typically live far away) need assurance that their money is being directed to a legitimate project. Technology allows them to monitor a restoration project from afar with great accuracy. We are partners or have a presence with three international organisations (UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, Restor, Plant for the Planet) and one local one (SAReforest). To be a partner, one needs to comply with some stringent standards, including ones relating to record keeping and management. We use Plant for the Planet’s TreeMapper app to record the details of every tree we plant. We upload a photo of each tree, along with its tag code, GPS coordinates and measurements at the time of planting. Both Plant for the Planet and Restor require project sites to be uploaded to their sites in the form of polygons. Restor collaborated with Google to enable polygons to be overlaid on satellite imagery of the Earth. We are now using a GPS device to calculate areas we have cleared, which we plan to upload to our website (itself an indispensable piece of tech that is our primary interface with the world beyond Ferncliffe).
Ferncliffe / Aerial view — Photography by David Southwood
Q > Could you tell us about your current partnerships (local and international), and how these will help amplify your efforts and ambitions?
A > We believe that our partnerships with the organisations mentioned above will give us outsider credibility, which is so important in attracting funds and support. In some cases, donations can be channelled from the partner websites to our project. In Pietermaritzburg itself, we are part of the proposed Ferncliffe Forest Management Association, a small group of stakeholders who are active to greater or lesser degrees in the nature reserve. The association was formed in anticipation of a co-management role with the landowner, the Msunduzi Municipality.
Q > Given the slow growth of trees and plants, can you share what visible results you’ve achieved so far and, once your efforts are scaled up, which impactful benefits you anticipate unfolding.
A > A fair bit of “jungle” has been cleared and we are soon to plant tree number 200, so there are visible results. When the trees mature and begin to flower and fruit (about three years from now, for the fastest-growing species) the benefits to the environment will begin to be felt. We anticipate increased biodiversity as more food and shelter is made available. We’d love to see crowned eagles, a top predator, breed in the forest again, and the return of bushbabies, for example. Job opportunities are a huge component. Our project sites will add beauty, too — something that human visitors will find appealing, so we assume more visitors to Ferncliffe will be another spinoff. Long-term, after we have planted thousands of trees, there will be some carbon offsetting.
Q > What is the hardest part of making your vision come to life?
A > Attracting the sort of funding needed to sustain ourselves and upscale our project. Unfortunately, grants seldom seem to cover salaries, or what’s termed “operational costs”. It’s sad that in these climate crisis days, when everyone acknowledges that the world desperately needs more trees, funding for smaller tree planting projects and salaries for NGO staff is very hard to come by. But we suspect that it’s also about being brand new: as soon as we’ve been around a little longer and shown results, the funding should follow.
Q > How has your sense of community differed from your teenage years to now?
CC > I suppose that as a teen, community meant close friends and not much more beyond that. In middle age, it seems that some friendships shift and coupled with the demands of work and family life, my sense of community is a bit different nowadays. Probably all exacerbated by the move from our community of Cape Town friends to a new life in a “foreign” city. I’ve also become aware of communities of plants in ways I would never have imagined! And I am more attuned to other natural communities and the remarkable interrelations between species. For example, I now see broad-leaved bristle grass as the host plant for an extraordinary moth called the Wahlberg’s emperor moth.
JS > I was an ignorant teen, cloistered in suburbia and even more inward-looking than most! Later, I found there really was a journalist community, with a sense of shared ethics and values, and jokes. Now, it’s wider society — in the context of a restoration project, it refers to all kinds of people who might have an interest in the forest, or depend on it in some way, even if they don’t realise it (as flood mitigation, for example, or a catchment for clean water). But you have to question whether the idea of a community will become more tenuous as climate change ramps up and competition for resources increases. I hope we can continue as a species to build on the ideal of inclusive communities, but I’ve read enough novels to wonder.
Ferncliffe / Janine Stephen — Photography by Melanie van Zyl
Q > What patterns, routines or rituals define or help to shape your life and its rhythms?
CC > After 16 years of lecturing and other years spent teaching English to foreigners, I’m happy to report that a non-routined life suits me. After years of being on repeat it took some getting used to a life in which you make your own agenda and time frames. Meditation is a ritual that I’ve been practising for 33 years, so that is probably the one routine that I stick to.
JS > Walking through a familiar patch of nature, looking at things, weeding a little as interaction. What’s grown, what’s changed. Happily I can now do that daily.
Q > What is your favourite tree in the forest?
CC > It isn’t possible for me to name only one, so here are a few. A tight grouping of two quinine trees and a Cape fig that have been mature trees since I was a kid. They grow on a stream in a place where a colony of rock hyrax used to live. A broad-leaved coral tree, the only one that I’ve seen here, which grows between some huge boulders atop a hillock. A massive old yellowwood that the woodcutters missed. It lives in a very inaccessible place and I’m going to have to make a trip to it to check which species it is.
JS > Maybe the rather unassuming red currant that was among the first we uncovered from rampant bamboo, and that I thought was nearly dead but put out new sprouts upon seeing the sun.
Q > What’s the most unusual thing you’ve encountered in the reserve?
A > A cannibal snail having breakfast.
Q > What is something you’ve learned in the last year?
A > You have to be tough to do what we do.
Q > Your goals for the next year?
A > Secure funds to keep going; plant more trees than this year; reintroduce indigenous tilapia fish to a dam; reintroduce indigenous grasses on forest edges, make another artist’s print, grow another 750 new indigenous trees from seed or rescued seedlings, clear another hectare of running bamboo, complete the species lists, spend more time walking in the old forest and admiring the trees, finally see the wood owl nest, learn some more scientific tree names… will that do?
Q > Any advice to those inspired by what you’ve started?
A > You can’t do it alone. Anyone who wants to set up a restoration project needs to be prepared to seek out knowledge, funding and people power. The need to employ workers to clear invasives and plant trees can’t be avoided so you have to be OK with that. Planning is vital, but it’s the first steps that are the hardest to take. Don’t doubt the planet needs you, and that so many people will delight in every tree you save.
Connor Cullinan was born in Pietermaritzburg, where he studied fine art at the University of Kwazulu-Natal. He completed a Post Graduate Diploma in Art at UCT’s Michaelis School of Art in 2011. Cullinan has worked as a lecturer from 2004 to 2020, teaching visual communication, illustration, surface design, graphic design and drawing at various tertiary institutions in Cape Town.
In addition to his work on Ferncliffe forest wilding, Cullinan is a painter and printmaker. He has been exhibiting in South African galleries since 1991, including at Obert Contemporary, Erdmann Contemporary, Barnard and whatiftheworld. His screen prints have been shown at the FNB Joburg Art Fair, Cape Town Art Fair and Turbine Art Fair by the South African Print Gallery and in Queretaro and Oaxaca (Mexico) by Rust-en-Vrede Gallery. His paintings and prints are in the Nando’s collection (various countries) and in private collections in Europe and the United States.
