DITCH WITCH 2025

The Ditch Witch is the daughter of the Hedge Hag. Transformed after Big Agri cut down her mother's hedgerows, the thresholds between our world and the next world and the last scraps of refuge for migratory birds, insects and wildflowers, she finds comfort in the mud.

With a foot on both sides, ditch creatures dwell in the liminal barriers between wild and domestic and so have freedom to move in and out of the realms of humans.  Like her mother and her mother’s mother’s mother as far back as can be remembered, the Ditch Witch is a being of the in-between, both a deeply resting body, discretely dead in a ditch while simultaniously pupating.

The Ditch Witch speaks for the wildlife who have found sanctuary in the ‘empty lot’ and the ‘wasteland’. She represents the potential to be wild and free in the cracks between human land use and cultural values. She protects the virulence that hides in the barren and derelict. She is the life in the ghost town. She is the Grand Master of the Parade of Weeds. She holds open the door for the feral and forgotten to flow through narrow wetland channels into new ecologies. She is a roadside guide to hitchhiking refugees. She holds the natural histories of the highway, the unloved wildlife that follow the trails of the developed and disturbed. She is the nature of the back road gravel shoulder. She understands the anatomy of the ditch and maps its labyrinth of interconnectivity with all ecosystems that are interrupted by roads.

The Ditch Witch is embodied by wearing a mask made of Phragmites, Purple Loosestrife and Goldenrod, three stars of Ontario’s contemporary eco folklore.  3 marginalized ditch plants with ambiguous reputations wavering between villain and hero; native and invasive- escaped cultivars and returning endemic, poison and medicine.

Purple Loosestrife: Shocking springs of color made this European plant popular in North American horticulture from where it escaped and changed the color of Canadian wetlands. Despite the taboo of introducing non native species to vulnerable habitats, this notorious invasive was addressed by introducing non native beetles who successfully suppress the Loosestrife. Intentionally introduced insects keep this unintentionally introduced plant from dominating the ditch and preserves habitat for native insects who survive in the novel ecology.

Phragmites: The Common Reed, stands 6 feet tall. Sometimes 12 feet. It's fluffy purple flowers brought it to North American gardens where it thrives. It's seeds (the Ditch Witch's beard) fit perfectly between car tire treads which is how it hitchhikes between road side swamps through ditches. It grows in vast colonies and secretes a phytotoxin that protects it from competition, pushing out native plants and the animals they support. As this ornamental grass crept her way across the country she was dubbed our most dangerous invasive plant and is targeted by conservationists who do not remember her ancient history. Phragmites invasion is a return home long after her cousins were extirpated in the late Pleistocene.

Goldenrod: This Native flower is a medicinal plant native to Canada used to treat lung infections and allergies. She's pollinated by Goldenrod Soldier Beetles and other charismatic insects. She flowers in autumn alongside the less conspicuous, wind pollinated Ragweed and is often wrongfully accused of causing the allergic reactions that she can treat.

The Ditch Witch thrives in ambiguous provenance, meaning and contradiction.

The mask form is a 'grass mask' a filter protects the wearer from inhaling the cloud of floating fluffy Phragmites seeds that follow the mask. This mask protects against itself.