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The exhibition Ancestral Grains began on Monday 30th March 2020, just a week after the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the start of a nationwide lockdown. During this time, golf courses accross the United Kingdom had to close for a period of 18 months. Ancestral Threads is an installation rewilding exhibition that took place from March 2020 until September 2021, on the grounds of the Diss Golf Club, which is situated on the outskirts of the market town of Diss, Norfolk, consisting of several works which aim to rewild the artificial landscape. The exhibition includes the research and work of artists such as Alan Sonfist, Agnes Denes, Sarah Laaroussi, and Lois Weinberger.

Diss Golf Course, ecological and geological makeup

The Diss Golf Course is located in East Anglia, on Stuston Common, a stone's throw from several main road which lead to the Norfolk town of Diss. It is near to the village of Stuston.

It boasts an "perfectly manicured" (Diss Golf Club, nd) 18-hole course. The course was constructed in 1903 on heathland. Heathlands are areas of great biodiversity, known for shrubs and vegetation, ″heather and other dwarf shrubs usually make up 25 to 90 per cent of the vegetation″ (NatureScot, nd), but there are also many variety of grasses and other low lying plants. Heathlands are not very common and therefore their ecosystems are under threat.

It is important to understand the environment of the golf course as impactful upon surrounding areas, and vice versa, therefore an understanding of the farmland in the surrounding area is necessary. Norfolk farmland produces a variety of cereals, rapeseed, and vegetables; primarily sugar beetm which is grown for the Silver Spoon sugar manufacturing company located nearby in Bury St Edmunds.

Sugar Beet itself acts to aerate the soil and better the irrigation system, therefore it is often used as a break crop. Rapeseed also is used as a break crop, and increases the strength of the soil, adding nutrients such as nitrogen.

However, the cyclical nature of farming can lead to degradation in soil health, and leads to monocultural ecological landscapes which in turn do not foster the growth of wild species, alongside the use of harmful fertilizers and pesticides, which can leach into the water and soil, harming the already altered ecosystems at play.

Design and maintenance of the golf course

The modern golf course is attributed to the Augusta National Golf Club course in America, which is a specific type of golf course design that dictates the creation of a flat area and then adding features to create the course. This design forces the natural environment to bend around the course, instead of vice-versa.

The building and maintenance of a golf course affects the air, water, land, and ecology of the area and surrounding areas. Air: particles and aerosols, odours. Water: aquifer safe yield, flow variations, suspended solids, acid and alkali, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), nutrients, toxic compounds, aquatic life inside and outside the course, fecal coliforms and other indicators. Land: soil stability, natural hazards, land-use patterns. Ecology: large animals (wild and domestic), predatory birds, small game, fish, shellfish and waterfowl, field crops, grass, threatened species, natural vegetation, aquatic plants.

The grass chosen for golf courses in the UK is usually varieties that have been genetically adapted in the United States, to better perform for the sport. These allochthonous species of plant are likely to disrupt and invade the natural ecosystem of the area.

The grass of Mediterranean golf courses is also recognised to retain it’s green colour for most of the year, the irrigation systems and drainage in the soil allows for the brightest green grass to be achieved.

The manicured land of the course requires frequent attention, some areas of the course needing to be mowed up to 2-3 times per week on the green and tee areas.

This frequent mowing and use of the land does not come without a cost. Primarily, the short monoculture of grass which is not derived from autochthonous species does not provide a habitat neccessary for the native insects of the area, who fail to pollinate or feed, and to create their own habitats, burrows, etc. Secondly, the use of heavy machinery in terms of mowers, and golf buggies, in time compacts the clay rich soil of the area. The soil, which should drain naturally, is constantly watered due to the irrigation systems, and then fails to drain the water. This then needs intervention in the form of solid tine or verti drain aeration, in which holes are pushed in the surface of the turf using large machinery and hollow core, where small cores of soil are removed to allow the soil to expand and take up more space. These processes, along with frequent re-turfing, the laying of new strips of turfed grass, allow the surface of the green to be bouncy, light, and therefore create a better game of golf.

The actions of creating the golf course have therefore greatly disrupted the biodiverse ecosystem of the heath, and need frequent human intervention in order to avoid mass flooding, which still takes place, the runoff pushing the fertilizers and chemicals used further afield.

Diss Golf Club boasts an environmental award, achieved in 2020, and it's environmental statement is as follows:

"We are privileged to be able to play golf in such a richly diverse landscape. We share the course, which affords a varied and valuable set of habitats, with all its wildlife. When so much wildlife is under threa, golf courses can offer a previous haven, while also providing a vibrant and interesting course for golfers.

"The aims include longer term sustainability for the course through protecting and preserving it for future generations. This means ecologically responsible land and water management including habitat preservation. We owe it to the local wildlife to ensure that they are not harmed by our activies, but are protected and encouraged to thrive.

"We will ask members to reduce, re-use and recycle in terms of waste on the course, particularly with reference to plastics.

"We will promote the golf course locally, seeking involvement with and support from our local community."

Rewilding Britain

The levels of biodiversity in the United Kingdom are dwindling. It has been estimated that the UK has a wellbeing level of 53% (if the health of a country's natural environment was based on a level of 100% being ultimate biodiversity), which places it among the worst 10% of countries for environmental health. Much of the land of the UK is agricultural or urbanised, meaning that wild species of flora and fauna have been forced out of their habitats, some to the point of exctinction.

Many call for the need to react to this emergency through a process called Rewilding, which aims in various degrees to return to a previous version of an ecosystem. Rewilding encompasses many different desires of varying degrees, including the reintroduction of mega-fauna (pleistocene rewilding), genetically engineering extinct species, leaving an environment to naturally return to some sort of new equilibrium, or actively encouraging reintroduction of animal and plant species.

The Knepp rewilding project, which began in 2002, acts as a case study for the exhibition Ancestral Grains. The inheritors of the Knepp farmland in West Sussex proposed to rewild the land in 2002, outlining a 25 year plan to reintroduce animal species native to the land including "red deer, fallow deer, wild boar, European beaver, European bison, Heck cattle and ponies" (Burrell, 2002).

The team at Knepp dictated that reintroduction of large herbivores that were native to the area would in turn stabilize the vegetation, in turn, "rewilding is also self-consciously geared not towards achieving the human-defined end state of 'wilderness', but rather aims to set in motion natural dynamics that will ultimately result in autonomous habitats and self-managing landscapes." (Fowkes, Fowkes, 2018)

It is through this theoretical backbone that the artists of the Ancestral Grains exhibition decided to selectively reintroduce several plant species and reintroduce (alongside the collaboration with the Frenze Beck Nature Reserve) animal species, to enable the landscape to begin to return to a previous ecosystem. The choice to create this exhibition on the land of an existing golf course was in an attempt to disrupt the harmful processes at play.

Sarah Laaroussi, Golf Ball Bomb, 2020

The main artwork created for the exhibition was by artist Sarah Laaroussi.

The piece followed much research into the material of golf balls, and human tendencies to lose them in the rough and unused areas of the course. Laaroussi created a golf ball design that involved biodegradable materials and wild seeds to repopulate the environment of the course.

The design of the golf ball has gone through several iterations, the most modern consisting of a dimpled cover, rubber elastic-like winding, and a rigid rubber core. These elements come together to achieve a ball that is dense and bouncy, that should glide and bounce along the green.

There are numerous different types of density and composition of balls which suit different kinds of golf games and conditions.

The material composition is usually synthetic rubber like polybutadiene, surrounded by one or more intermediate layers, and the cover consisting of materials like surlyn or urethane. These materials do not biodegrade. When lost, which is often and perhaps inevitable when golfing, these materials are left in the environment, and when left for prolonged time or exposed to heat, these chemicals leech into the water, soil, and land, in turn affecting the natural environment: the species of plants, the soil health, and also the animals in the area.

In efforts to change this wasteful and harmful process, Laaroussi adapted the modern golf ball. The resin cover exterior was replaced with a newly developed biodegradable material, made of a bamboo fiber and sucrose (CRI, 2021), which is strong enough to withstand the force of the club and not shatter in the process, unlike previous moulded plastic alternatives. It also begins to biodegrade in a much shorter amount of time when exposed to the right environment, in only 2 months it fully decomposes into the soil, compared to other biodegradable plastics which can take up to 25 years to biodegrade. The dense rubber string layer of the golf ball was replaced with roots and shoots which achieve the density of the golf ball so it remains functional in play. The rubber ball interior was also replaced with the seeds of wild plants indigenous to the native to the heathland of Norfolk, specifically seeds suited for pollinating insects.

These seed balls were used both by activists in the area, who attended open days in February 2020 prior to the closure of the course and hit these balls into the longer grassy areas of the rough, fairways, and also into the aquatic system and fully unused areas, (Salgot and Tapias, 2006) which were rarely under monitoring by the grounds staff of the golf course.

The wild seeds contained over 50 varieties of shrub seeds, and other grasses native to the heathland, namely including sheep’s sorrel, black medick, sheep’s fescue and wild carrot, which in turn have attracted the Fen Mason Wasp, an endangered species native to the area, alongside many other pollinators. The sanded and slightly acidic soil of the banked area of the golf course provided the perfect environment for the Fen Mason Wasp to burrow into, it’s ground being soft enough to dig through but dense enough to hold it’s form after hollowed out. The eggs and larvae also attracted more of the bird population native to the area, which had previously not visited the site due to the vast empty spaces with no areas to feed or nest.

Currently, the wild grasses and flowers are still growing, and invite insects and herbivores that are native to the heathland, including wild rabbits and hares, and the land is attempting to return to a previous state.

Return to Heathland

Alan Sonfist's Return to Heathland followed the 1978 Time Landscape New York City in which the artist took a plot of land in New York City and in it grew the plants which would have made up the wild botanical system. This reinvisioning of the work in New York City seeks to use the same ideas of rewilding, or recreation, but on a different scale and environment.

Following the announcement of the 2020 lockdown, the Return to Heathland installation was proposed to the Diss Town Council as a permanent artwork, and has been protected by the council since.

The artist used the supposed "wild" sections of the course, which were unused by the golfers. Upon research into the wild landscape of heathlands tens of thousands of years ago, Sonfist aimed to reintroduce plant species such as the Buellia asterella, a black and white lichen which is only now known to exist in four locations in Norway and Germany, and the Fine-leaved Sandwort Minuartia hybrida, a branched annual plant.

This area provides a visual example of the land before it was changed by humans, and the wild plants which existed there. It points out the contrast between the residential area of Diss, the main road, and the stark green bare landscape of the course.

Collaboration with Frenze Beck Nature Reserve

The opening up of the space and closure of the B1077 road which ran alongside the course permitted the natural habitat of the Diss golf club to interact with the larger ecosystem of the Diss Norfolk area.

The B1077 road allowed travel from the A140 main road into the market town of Diss via the village of Stuston. Following many other redirections of traffic in the Norfolk area, constructions of roundabouts and new roads which do not pass through residential area, the B1077 was closed upon entry from the A140. This meant that the historically very busy and national speed limit road which passes the Diss Golf Club has now become a very quiet road, in which cars are rarely sighted, and only provides direct access to properties in Stuston and environs.

The lack of vehicles provided both reduction in noise pollution and less abstruction of flight routes for several aviary species in the area.

The golf course, previously void of many species of bird, has now become a hot spot for many bird species, some of which are repopulating, after low numbers. The spoonbill has been spotted wandering the marsh areas in the Diss region, and also several Cranes.

This prompted collaborative work with the Frenze Beck Nature Reserve, located just a kilometre north of the golf course.

The reintroduction of various shrub, grass, and groundcover plants at the Diss Golf Course has prompted the reintroduction of roe deer in the Frenze Beck Nature Reserve, originally contained whilst they got used to their surroundings, but have now spread further afield, including to the golf course. With the closure of the road the deer are no longer threatened by vehicles, and are free to roam the area.

During the lockdown, the Diss Golf Club refrained from returfing and aerating the green areas of the course, and therefore the native vegetation could take root, without the interference of allochthonous grass species from America. This also meant the stopping of use of fertilizers and pesticides. These changes allowed the Diss Golf Club to become a place of great biodiverse significance in the area.