First to colonize the barren land are the lowly lichens, surviving on bare rock.

贫瘠的土地上首先长满了地衣这种低等植物，它们在裸露的岩石上生存。

youdao

The formerly [once] barren land has been changed into stretches of fertile fields.

昔日的荒地今天成了良田。

《新英汉大辞典》

The place used to be a stretch of barren land.

早先这里是一片不毛之地。

《新英汉大辞典》

It is not undeserved: he has succeeded in transforming a barren land into one that has 18, 000 kilometres (11, 400 miles) of tarmac roads and a network of schools and clinics.

ECONOMIST: Botswana

As I peer through the heavy calibre bullet belt of the door gunner, suddenly lush, green fields appear and then out of this wilderness, sparkling in the sun rises the Helmand river bringing life to this barren land.

BBC: Afghanistan: Landing in the camp

In the opening pages of Cry, the Beloved Country, the poignant novel about a disintegrating Zulu family, Alan Paton depicted the barren land left to the tribe by the late 1940s and, with bitter brevity, described what had befallen the people struggling to survive on it.

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