Mun: Hi! So, this is long overdue! I've had this character for at least 9 years, went through about 3 renditions of her, and had this particular blog of her for at least 7 years. I had her bio as a "page" but never as a "post," so rectifying that now so I can pin it! (The link has been in my blog description as well, but that link only works on the desktop, not mobile).
So anyway, enjoy this backstory on my OC for Nick's mom, Sylvia Wilde!
The RP'ing Rules
Link to Rikareena's (Mun's) Zootopia Fanfiction
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About Sylvia
-Age: 56
-Zodiac Sign: Gemini
-Favorite Color(s): Pastel blue and pastel pink
-Likes: Gardening, spring, music, taking care of her son
-Dislikes: Prejudice, discrimination, her son getting into trouble
Sylvia Wilde is a single parent who raised her kit, Nicholas Piberius Wilde, on her own.
I’ve used Sylvia before. Previously, I developed her background such that her husband was still alive, but had left the family because he’d gotten involved in dirty-dealings with mob mammals. Neither she nor Nick knew where he was. I had also crafted my own OC idea of who her husband was and what he was like.
In bringing her back, I’ve decided to revamp her story. For this Sylvia, her husband is very much John Wilde, the character that ended up on the cutting room floor from previous Zootopia storyboards.
Sylvia grew up in a rural town, but moves to Zootopia to pursue her dream of being a musician when she’s in her late teens. During that time, she meets John (a new bright-eyed and bushy-tailed resident of the city), who immediately becomes smitten with her and tells her of his own dream to be a business owner of a clothing line. After dating for a couple of years, they soon marry and settle down in a townhouse in the heart of the city. It’s not too much later that Sylvia gives birth to Nicholas, their only son.
John tries to instill good faith and hard work in Nicholas for the few years that he’s around, and he often worked two or three jobs himself just to make ends meet for his family.
I do still hold the headcanon that John he got mixed up with some of the wrong crowds to provide for his family, but it did not work in his favor. He ends up dying after what the ZPD called, “an accident,” but Sylvia knows better. Still, she tries to protect her son from the details of what really happened to his father–that mammals who were prejudiced against predators–foxes in particular–and most likely with a vendetta against John, were behind the job. This happens when Nick is about five years old–a couple of months from his sixth birthday.
Sylvia is able to shield Nick from the cruelties of the world as much as she can until he’s about nine when he attempts to join the Jr. Ranger Scouts and wxperiences the incident where he is bullied for being a fox.
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Sylvia is kind and caring. She’s very much a maternal figure to practically anyone who crosses her path and is willing to help those in need. She has a calming spirit, but she’s also stern and can be scary and intimidating when she needs to be. She would do anything for her baby, and is not afraid to rip into anyone who threatens him. She’s always encouraged her Nick to put his mind to anything, and to take pride in who he is.
She has several siblings, as vulpine are often able to birth in litters. But she herself, unfortunately, was only able to birth one kit. She had a very rough pregnancy with Nicholas. She and John had trouble getting pregnant prior to Nick’s conception, so he is very much their miracle kit.
After John dies, Sylvia often takes up two to three jobs herself, relying on friends of the family to watch Nicholas when she’s busy. She has a garden and loves flowers. She’s also able to play the piano and had dreams of being a famous pianist when she was younger. She still does so as a hobby and loves singing lullabies to her little Nicholas.
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Between John’s death and the Ranger Scouts incident, things become harder on Nick. He starts staying out later, not always telling his mother where he’s going. It gets worse as he gets older and is exposed to more prejudices of the world, and she becomes more worried about him and what he’s getting involved with. Eventually, a huge fight leads to Nick leaving home when he’s a teenager. He takes up hustling, against his mother’s wishes, but he does leave envelopes of money from his jobs in her mailbox to help her make ends meet.
However, she doesn’t hear from him in person until years later, after he joins the ZPD as their first fox.
Forest gardens are collections of diverse and useful plant species that are modeled on the structure of a young forest. As a horticultural pattern, forest gardening is found throughout the world, particularly around the tropical rainforest belt. [1] Temperate climate forest gardening is still practiced in parts of China, and there is much to suggest that the forest garden pattern may once have been found throughout the world’s temperate forests, prior to the arrival of agriculture. [2] Practiced in diverse environments, by widely different cultures, the forest garden pattern can vary greatly in detail. The common characteristics by which the general pattern can be recognized are:
Vertical stacking of different species (forest architecture mimicry)
High plant diversity (200 — 400 species per garden is common)
Typically established on small parcels of land (1/4 — 3 acres) [3]
The use of mostly perennial plant species
Producing a diversity of yields to meet a wide range of human needs (geared more toward subsistence than an exchange economy)
Low energy inputs, especially as concerns on-going maintenance
Forest gardens are largely self-fertile and self maintaining (ecosystem mimicry)
Unlike most horticulture and almost all agriculture, which is, by contrast, very two-dimensional, forest gardens are collections of plants arranged both vertically and horizontally. The vertical partitions of space are referred to as “layers,” and the utilization of these layers by the gardener is modeled on the vertical structure of young forests, or forest edges. While tropical gardens sometimes feature up to nine distinct layers, most forest gardens comprise seven layers:
the canopy, consisting of the largest trees in the garden
a sub-canopy of smaller trees and large shrubs
smaller shrubs
herbaceous plants
horizontally spreading plants covering the soil surface
vining plants climbing through all of this
and the “rhizosphere,” the soil layer, from which roots and mushrooms may be harvested and upon which all the other layers depend.
Here in the northeast, a forest garden canopy might comprise walnut, chestnut, hickory, or sugar maple; with a sub-canopy of persimmon, plum, pawpaw, saskatoon, or hazelnut; making their way into the sub-canopy are the vines: grapes, hops, hardy kiwi, groundnut; underneath these in the shrub layer, raspberries, currants, and blueberries; then nutritious and medicinal herbaceous plants and perennial vegetables such as jerusalem artichoke, nettle, milkweed, lovage, or echinacea; and finally, protecting the soil surface, a carpet of strawberries, lingonberries, oregano or mint.
The utilization of vertical space within the forest garden allows for a large number of plant species to be grown in relatively small areas. The number of species found in traditional tropical forest gardens can be truly astonishing: 200 or more plant species, of direct and indirect use to humans — not to mention, birds, insects, and small mammals — is typical on a ¼ acre of forest garden. But even in temperate climates, the species diversity can be very impressive, and 200 — 300 species over an acre or two is not uncommon. The diversity of species in forest gardens makes them very resilient to pest and disease infestations, as these usually only effect a small number of related species at any given time — if a few things fail, there are many more to make up the loss.
In contrast to annual-centric horticulture and agriculture where, every year, seeds are planted and after some months, food can be harvested, the forest garden, with its large diversity of perennial species, makes harvest throughout the year – or, here in the north, throughout the spring, summer, and fall – possible (though even here we begin harvesting tree sap in late winter). The gardener intentionally selects species to provide harvests for as many months of the year as is ecologically possible, and thus, avoids the need to grow any one species in large enough quantities that it may be stored as a primary staple food for the entire year.[4] Harvesting from many species at different times of the year makes the forest gardener’s way a particularly robust and resilient way of growing, food.
Forest gardens provide much more than just food, though. As already mentioned, a characteristic of forest gardens around the world is that they are geared more toward subsistence than an exchange economy. That is not to say that cash crops are never grown in forest gardens, but the gardens are typically planted with such a range of species as to allow the gardener to meet most, if not all, of her needs from her forest garden. There are plants for food, yes, but also plants for medicine, for fuel, for fiber, for dye, for building, woodworking and basketry materials, and also plants whose place may be primarily in providing ecosystem functions, such as nitrogen fixation, or attracting certain types of insects, necessary to the overall health of the garden.
Tropical forest gardens tend to be planted on small plots of land, often only ¼ to ½ acre in size. In the tropics, as there is a year-round growing season with more intense sunlight, and many more shade adapted plants, forest gardeners are able to plant very large numbers of species in small areas. While in the tropics, a ¼ acre of forest garden may be sufficient for a household,[5] in temperate regions with less sun and fewer plants that remain productive in shade, more space is required to allow for wider tree spacing, which, in turn, allows more light to reach the understory, keeping the plants there productive. Temperate climate forest gardens, geared towards the needs of a single household tend more towards 1 to 2 acres in size.
In forest bioregions, the land, if left alone following disturbance, will quickly move through successive stages of development until it is again clothed in forest: the forces of nature are always tending toward a forest ecosystem. If working in opposition to this natural tendency, hefty energy inputs required to maintain the land in a non-forested state, and the further from forest one goes, the higher the. requirements become. Thus, agriculture – keeping a field where there would otherwise be forest, dependent almost exclusively on annual plant species where there would otherwise be perennial species – is the most energy-intensive way of meeting our needs: it requires the most labor (or the most fossil fuels).
The forest garden works with the natural tendency of the land. In some forms of forest gardening, the garden literally hitches a ride, as the site is cleared, planted, and then let revert to forest at its natural rate, a new garden site being opened elsewhere as the forest canopy closes.[6] In many forms of forest gardening, reversion to mature forest is arrested prior to full canopy closure, largely through the selective harvesting of trees to re-open the canopy.
In the forest garden, the major energy input comes in the establishment of the garden – the clearing and preparation of the garden site and the planting of the garden. As the planting is of mostly perennial plants, the planting only needs to be done once, not every year (though plantings are typically added to or changed, and replacements of varieties are made – after all, it is gardening, and gardeners are potterers). Clearing and preparing of the site, in sedentary models of forest gardening, can also be done but once. In shifting models, typically found in large tropical forests, the clearing and site preparation may be done as often as every five years. Following establishment, the main activity of the forest gardener (or forage gardener) is harvesting.
As the forest garden closely approximates a stage of natural forest succession, it can, like the young forest it mimics, be self-fertile and thus largely self-maintaining. The normal processes that fertilize the forest, such as the decomposition of woody organic matter and leaf litter by fungi, insects, and soil organisms, are also present in the forest garden. And significant quantities of bird, insect, and animal manure are to be found, as they are in young forests. The use of many leguminous nitrogen-fixing species by forest gardeners — to improve soil conditions for the surrounding plants — is a mimicry of the ecosystem function of pioneer species. Pioneer plants, present in the early and mid stages of forest succession, enrich the soil and nurse the young trees that will later become the canopy of the mature forest, protecting them from wind and animal browse.
Like a forest, yet unlike agriculture, the underground space of the forest garden is partitioned as well. In monocultures, the plant roots are all down at roughly the same depth in the soil and looking for exactly the same minerals and nutrients as their neighbors. In the highly diverse perennial polycultures of forest gardens, different soil depths are occupied and the precise needs of the plants (being different species) differ, thus plants may be grown in close proximity to each other without resulting in soil depletion and excessive competition between plants.
It took the monocultural minds of Westerners a good while to recognize that the chaotic mess of vegetation surrounding homes and village sites in such diverse places as Sri Lanka, Tanzania, or southern Mexico was, in fact, an ecologically-sophisticated way of meeting most of the essential needs of the gardeners. Yet agroforestry, the agricultural approach to three-dimensional perennial polycultures that came into being in the early to mid-twentieth century – large scale, machine-harvestable, market-oriented – when it recognizes forest gardening at all, sees it only as a distant and difficult relative.
The revival of forest gardening in the west is due largely to the experiments of Robert Hart, a Tolstoyan anarchist, author, and small-hold farmer. In the 1970’s, Hart developed an interest in agroforestry — in particular, the system of “three dimensional farming” developed in the l950’s by Toyohiko Kagawa — and began his own experiments with (what was to later be called) forest gardening, on 1/8th of an acre of old orchard. On this tiny piece of land, Hart developed a productive garden (yielding food and basketry materials mainly), far more ecologically complex than any form of agroforestry then being practiced, and far closer to the chaotic tropical forest gardens that agroforestry sought to simplify. This is hardly surprising, as agroforestry is focused on production for a market-economy, whereas Hart sought a decentralized and de-industrialized society where households and villages would be largely sell sufficient. The great irony here is that Hart was conducting his experiments in the Welsh border lands of Shropshire, England, the precise place where the industrial revolution began. Hart’s vision of the forest garden was one of raising the self-sufficiency of households to facilitate economic down-sizing and a return to highly localized economic activity, of creating sites of practical education for children in the life skills of feeding and sheltering themselves through co-operation with diverse species in living systems, and of a means of re-greening the forest environments that agriculture and urbanism had denuded.
Robert Hart’s work has inspired a subsequent generation of neo-forest gardeners, particularly in the United Kingdom, continental Europe, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand. While Hart’s forest gardening idea is often thought to be synonymous with permaculture, it was pioneered independently of permaculture,[7] and if the practice has been widely adopted by permaculturalists, it is because, in many ways, it could be considered the quintessential permaculture technique of production: an ecologically regenerative/benign, low-labor, solar-powered, self-maintaining, resilient production system that is directed toward household and community self-sufficiency. While there may be some problems with the way forest gardening has been incorporated into permaculture practice, such as a focus almost solely on the production of food, rather than the full range of things needed for a subsistence life, it should nevertheless be acknowledged that many of the techniques used in temperate climate forest gardening by neo-forest gardeners, particularly those of design and site preparation prior to the establishment of a garden, are the fruit of decades of research, experimentation, teaching, and networking by permaculture practitioners.
Hart’s pioneering work has inspired not only some spectacular gardens but also some very good texts on forest garden theory and practice. The most notable of these are Marlin Crawford’s Creating a Forest Garden, and the two-volume set, Edible Forest Gardens, by Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier. The former is, in my opinion, the better introductory text as it clearly lays out the basics of temperate climate forest garden theory, design, and implementation, and it is authored by the person who has created what is, by popular consensus amongst forest gardeners, the finest example of a temperate climate forest garden in the western hemisphere. But once hooked and eager to take up the art of forest gardening, the Jacke and Toensmeier texts become indispensable, particularly if you live in the northeastern United States. the region where these two forest gardeners reside and upon which the volumes are focused. These are encyclopedic tomes: the first volume is a thorough exploration of forest ecosystem theory, while the second contains detailed explanations of site assessment and design processes, forest garden implementation and maintenance, and includes a near-exhaustive list of useful perennial plants for temperate climates. There is so much information in these two volumes that I fear, for the uninitiated, they may make forest gardening appear ridiculously complicated, which it is not. Forest gardens, as close mimics of natural forests, are complicated beyond our understanding, and therefore, the gardener need not attempt to understand everything as the scientist seeks to, but rather, through observation and participation in the evolution of this ecosystem in miniature, can develop and depend upon the craft and intuition usually associated with the artist, or master gardener. There are a few fundamental ideas and techniques that need to be thoroughly grasped before planting a forest garden, but only a few. On the other hand, to become a master forest gardener will likely take a lifetime.
Finally, there is also Robert Hart’s Forest Gardening, not a how-to manual so much as a poetic exploration of Hart’s vision of the forest garden and how he came to it. As the focus of neo-forest gardeners has largely been on technique, it is good to remind ourselves that, at least as Hart saw it, the real fruits of the· forest garden were self-sufficiency and autonomy.
Works Cited
Anderson, M. Kat:
2005 Tending the Wild: Native American knowledge and management of California’s natural resources. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Crawford, Martin:
2010 Creating a Forest Garden: Working with nature to grow edible crops. Totnes: Green Books.
Hart, Robert:
1996 Forest Gardening. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green.
Jacke, Dave and Eric Toensmeier:
2005a Edible Forest Gardens, Vol. One: Ecological vision and theory for temperate climate permaculture. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green.
2005b Edible Forest Gardens, Vol. Two: Ecological design and practice for temperate climate permaculture. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green.
Lawton, Geoff:
2008 Personal communication.
Workman, Dion:
2011 — ‘Natural Farming in the Philippines: Traditional farming systems and local efforts to save them.’ Unpublished manuscript, originally appearing on the now defunct natural farming website, Terraquaculture.
2013 — ‘Jomon Horticulture: “Incipient agriculture” or forest gardening?’ Lecture given May 5, 2013 at Shikigami forest garden, Japan.
[1] Forest Gardening is still practiced in Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, China, Vietnam, Tanzania, Nigeria, central America, and the Amazon. (Hart; Crawford; Lawton; Workman)
[2] This claim, based upon a slightly broader definition of forest gardening than I have given in this article, includes practices that might better be called, as Dave Jacke has, “gardening the forest,” or, as M. Kat Anderson has called them, “tending the wild.” Examples of this more extensive approach to “forest gardening,” include the Jomon, indigenous to the Japanese archipelago (Workman 2013), indigenous peoples of the eastern forest bioregion of North America (Jacke 2005a: 14), and the indigenous peoples of California (Anderson). In Europe, traditional coppice practices and the cultivation of hedgerows comprising many useful forest-edge species are certainly forms of “agroforestry,” but may also suggest older practices of tending the wild.
[3] Forest gardens are “over-yielding” systems, meaning that multiple harvests of different crops are possible from the same piece of land. The implication of this is that, while forest gardens cannot produce yields of a single crop comparable to agriculture, they can produce overall yields, from a given piece of land, far higher than that achieved with agricultural techniques. Thus, when geared toward subsistence, forest gardens need only take up relatively small areas of land.
[4] While in the tropics it may not he necessary to store food for any length of time, in temperate climates, particularly the further north or south you go, it is. Thus, temperate climate · forest gardeners do generally grow crops suitable for long term storage — nuts, in particular, but also fruits, seeds and tubers — however, they can do this by spreading the quantities needed, or desired, across as large a number of species as possible. This approach creates resiliency against crop failure in the forest garden.
[5] It should be noted that tropical forest gardeners often also have access to much larger forest areas and so it should not be thought that everything is corning from the forest garden. Many wild foods, medicines, materials, and particularly firewood will often be gathered from outside the forest garden.
[6] This practice, often derogatorily referred to as slash-and-burn agriculture, when viewed in the light of what ecologists have called the patch dynamic theory of forest succession (Jacke 2005 : 268) — in part, the idea that a forest, rather than taking a single, linear path towards a static, climax state, is rather continuously cycling through all stages of succession across different parts of the forest — may in fact be a very sensitive mimicry of natural forest disturbance patterns. Naturally, such disturbances might occur when a large tree falls in the forest, taking a good number of surrounding trees with it, some uprooting and disturbing the soil, leaving a clearing where primary and secondary stages of forest growth will now manifest. Other natural occurrences such us windstorms and wild fires can also create such patches. The size of the patch that can be created by a large tree falling in a forest is not dissimilar to the size of many shifting forest gardens.
[7] As practitioners view permaculture as a “toolbox” of techniques, as well as a design system, they have the tendency to label anything that resembles it, or is useful to it, as “permaculture.” While this infuriates some horticultural innovators who do not want to be thought of as permaculturalists, Robert Hart seems to have been only too happy to be included in the permaculture fold.
Okay so if you missed it 10 years ago 😁 I have a Zootopia RP blog for my Zootopia OC Sylvia Wilde, my take on Nick Wilde's mom.
Vulpinemama-wilde
So I maaaaay be open to RPing again soon!
Sylvia is also the version of Nick's mom in ny fanfics.
Annnnd, I have a potentially fun idea to update her bio soon? But I don't want to reveal it before I release the new fic idea I have so...but it would certainly be an interesting take!
I'ma write a "The Bad Guys"/"Zootopia" onsehot based on the premise that Nick and Mr. Wolf were childhood friends, and Nick's mom (my Zootipia OC Sylvia, Nick's mom- @vulpinemama-wilde ) watched out for them.
🌹 🍁 💐 🌺 - always up for hearing more about Syl! ^_^
She feels the most at home in the townhouse that she and her husband first purchased when they moved to Zootopia. She's been there ever since because it hold memories of the times most precious to her, and she honestly cannot see herself leaving anytime soon--she'd be heartbroken when she did. But she can look in the kitchen and see old memories of him hugging her from behind while she did the dishes. She'll look in the den and see memories of him slow dancing with her while Nick was asleep in his crib. She'll look in the living room and see memories of him helping Nick open Christmas presents--or older memories of when she sat on the couch and he'd rub her feet or rub her belly with his gentle paws when she was very pregnant with Nick. She'll look in the bedroom and see memories of their fights and their makeups. And of course all the memories after he passed as well--memories of Nick growing up, good and bad. But all of that is home to her...she could never leave it.
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Her "comfort corner" is the garden in her small back yard. She started it not long after she had Nick and she's kept to it ever since. She grows different kinds of flowers in it every few seasons. Tending to it gives her something to do and makes her feel more in tune with nature, which is very calming for her.
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She...doesn't handle it well. By that I mean, she often doesn't like letting other people know she's sick because she doesn't want to be a burden to them. When her husband was alive, he'd often have to force her to bed and keep constant checks on her to make sure she wasn't trying to up and move around on her own. (It was especially hard when she was pupped with Nick because he was a difficult pregnancy). But even after her husband died, she tried to not let Nick know when she was sick (which of course worried him more). And even after he left home and she had her friends nearby, she'd try not to bother them too. She actually can get through illness pretty okay--fast turnaround time. And she'll never admit it, but she actually does hate going through it alone--especially when it's really bad. But she'd rather tough it out than worry her loved ones...which is one of her flaws and only makes them worry more (and it's even harder/more fragile now that she's older).
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When Sylvia has a nightmare, she sings a special lullaby to herself that her mother and older siblings used to sing to her (her dad would to, when she was in a deep sleep, but she doesn't know this). It's the same lullaby she would sing to Nick when he had nightmares. Over the years, she has sometimes coupled this with any item from old things her husband gave her/that remind her of him, to whatever Nick's last comfort item was from his last developmental stage. These have ranged from old plush animals or dresses or sweaters John bought her over the years, to Nick's old toys or blankets, to family photos. Anything that helps her anchor that sense of "love and home." 🥰
@vulpespxp Sorry for the delay, but these were fun to answer!! Thanks for the asks! 💕
