Inside the Guerrilla Weed Killers of Great Britain
An undercover group dedicated to restoring parks and woodland
*Names and locations have been changed to protect identities*
5:30am in the woods of Essex, leaf mould crunches under wellies.
Freezing air hangs off our breath as we keep guard against errant dog walkers.
Destination: Prunus laurocerasus — cherry laurel — an invasive sucking plant that belongs in South-Western Asia.
Tarquin pulls out a pair of extendable loppers, casually hidden in his green wax jacket. The team gets to work.
A snap in the bushes… everyone freezes.
This is a story that began a long time ago…
The year is 1576, Queen Elizabeth I is sending adventurers into the New World hunting for gold while Shakespeare is testing out his first quills. The nation is filled with the swashbuckling stories of Sir Francis Drake. These are the first steps towards Britain becoming the wealthiest nation ever.
With the expansion came curious arrivals to British shores, none more so than the famous botanist Carolus Clusius. It was Carolus, by the care of the Ambassador to the Emperor of Constantinople, who brought Prunus laurocerasus, the cherry laurel, to Britain.
These were the opening salvos in an explosion in exotic gardening — one British nature has been battling ever since.
Before the Elizabethan period, foreign planting was a passion fruit or an orange tree. Most fauna is ill-adapted to the ‘four seasons, one day’ of British weather.
Yet with new frontiers came one-up-manship between a burgeoning aristocracy. They had the money and poured it into exquisitely manicured estates.
In came grey squirrels from America, muntjac from Asia and horse chestnut trees from the Pindus Mountains of Greece. None of these well-recognised staples of modern Britain should be here.
When talking about nature, nothing can be grown in a vacuum. The victims of our new arrivals are red squirrels, black poplar, and the mighty ash and elm.
They are no match for the popularity of foreign invaders or the diseases that come with them — they now cling to life on the last vestiges of rugged Britain.
Skip to the modern day…
This process is supercharged. You are never a few miles from a garden centre selling ruthlessly expansionist plants that thrive in any soil condition. These are plants that can steal all light and can tear through the unique mycelium that binds woodland life — a binding we are only beginning to understand…
They have tools of evolution applied from other harsher environments that makes light work of the heavily degraded patchwork of Northern European wilderness.
The same superpowers provide short-term allure to amateur gardeners. On first inspection, bright green waxy leaves that remain all year look nice.
Others plants bring the promise of gigantic plumes of flowers — take the colossal Spanish Bluebell against its diminutive, and increasingly rare, English Bluebell cousin.
Most importantly, the traits have made them the go-to for behemoth housing corporations. New-build sites in Essex are often coated in cherry laurel hedging. It looks great to sell a house, the real nightmare lies in waiting…
The cherry on top
Once it is bedded in, cherry laurel will smother all comers. It has lightning root growth that makes it pop up 10m, 20m or even 30 metres from the original plant. It grows fast vertically — up to 60cm a year.
Every inch of this plant is poisonous, containing high levels of cyanogenic glycosides, turning to cyanide when cut. There are reports of people passing out when driving fresh cuttings to the recycling centre. In the 1970s The St Alban’s Poisoner, Graham Young, murdered a fellow inmate using cherry laurel leaves sourced in the ground of his psychiatric hospital.
If ingested it can kill dogs. When water falls from the leaves it takes that same poison into the soil, eliminating competition and destroying habitat potential.
Back to the woods…
So here we are, 5:30am — a small group of hardy naturalists — teachers, lawyers, kids — unified by a bizarre common cause to cultivate and preserve the final strips of British woodland.
A snap in the bushes — everyone freezes… Before a squirrel scuttles through the undergrowth and everyone returns to digging roots.
As the first rays of sunlight dapple through the forest, shovels clank against shallow flint stone and there is the unmistakable soft smell of rotting wood mixed with fine autumn rain.
By 7am all that remains is a hidden pile of cuttings, carefully positioned to avoid ground contact. One more beast slain, one more inch gained.
As we make our escape for porridge and coffee, Sarah can’t help but name trees and point out mushrooms — fly agarics, chicken of the woods.
We pass by the tell-tale signs of a local badger set, a true hardy survivor against hunters, haters and tuberculosis.
Why covert?
Not everything in life has to be organised. They tell me public land is ours, collectively. Like the genesis of ParkRun, a 5km fun run that breathes life into local green spaces, sometimes you just have to get going.
Tarquin tells me emails have been sent and contact attempted, but in an age of infinite budget cuts it’s worth remembering the guardians of public land are ultimately the people.
There is the further question of what should and should not be here. Britain holds a unique position because of its detachment from Europe following the last ice age. It suggests that many of the newly invasive species could be here naturally but for the critical timing of receding ice and Britain’s geological uncoupling.
The species which would most benefit from our unique fauna are also largely extinct, from the Great Auk — giant penguins that roamed the Scottish isles to Irish Elk. More recently Scottish Wildcats, a species now considered functionally extinct.
The truth is we don’t know what impact a rapidly changing landscape has until it’s too late…
The Essex Emerald moth
First discovered in 1787 was last seen in the 1990s. It is now presumed extinct — a beautiful fleeting reminder of the fragile ecosystem in which we live. I will never see one.
The Resistance
Going back hundreds, if not thousands of years, there has always been a symbiotic relationship between natives and the land, no matter what nation you live in, no matter whatever country you call home.
The Guerrilla Weed Killers are the 21st-century expression of that same pagan love that feted the Green Man, that saw trees as symbols and that viewed nature as the true fabric of life.
Long may they thrive.
Thank you to the people who let me write about their collective, your passion gives me hope.
If you are a lover of the planet, you can inspire others to experience the wonders of the natural world by becoming a writer for The Environment.
