sawft ih-steyt | /sɒft ɪˈsteɪt/
The soft estate is the term used by UK’s National Highways to describe the green space and natural habitats that border the nation’s roads. First cousin to our urban edgelands, the soft estate shares many of the same characteristics. Running alongside or in between busy highways and trunk roads, in the UK alone, the soft estate is estimated to cover around 40,000 hectares. This bastard countryside doesn’t conform to our usual concept of a nature reserve yet it represents a significant sanctuary from the monocultures fostered by agri-chemical farming. In the main neither picturesque nor peaceful, this fragmented network of grasslands, woods, and wetlands has nevertheless become a haven for wildlife, including a number of rare and protected species. In recent years, not only ecologists but also painters, photographers, and writers have been taking an increased interest in these liminal spaces that for most of us exist at the margins of our awareness.
In many cities across the world, miniature Miyawaki forests have been planted by roadsides in gores,* traffic islands, and other patches of the soft estate. Named after Akira Miyawaki, the Japanese forester and botanist who pioneered a method of growing small-scale native ecosystems, Miyawaki forests can generate remarkably fast-growing, densely packed islands of biodiversity.
In the 1990s, American horticulturist Lauren Spring Ogden coined the term hell strip to describe the often patchy and neglected verges of greenspace running between the road and the pavement. Also known as tree lawns or devil strips, planting and maintaining these maligned ribbons of the soft estate is now a well established, if particularly challenging, genre of gardening.
* In the context of the soft estate, a gore is the triangular piece of land in between where a road forks – from the Old English gāra, meaning a triangular piece of land.
Introduction Aeolian Alpenglow
Benthos Crepuscular Crispate Crown shyness
Desire lines Dreich Endragoned Edgelands
Frondescence Fumarole Gluggaveður Gossamer
Karst Komorebi Lawrence Long acre
Machair Monkey’s wedding Moonglade
Psithurism Quartz Rakuyou Roaring forties
Snag Soft estate Specular, diffuse and pellucid
Spoondrift Steam fog Swash zone Sylvan