I leave my friend Andy a garbled voice message about needing to be here for this momentous day. He is remarkably understanding, says he gets it, he knows how much this means to me. Emma comes home from the gym and I explain that I need to be here, and does she mind, had she planned a special day alone with Tos? ‘Of course not,’ she says, although I suspect she probably had.
The robins largely stay out of the garden. Emma takes me plant shopping and buys me foxgloves, Mexican fleabane and plume thistle (Cirsium rivulare) to fill gaps and plant around the pond. Back home, I start arranging and then planting while she plays ball with Tosca. Then I send her out for provisions so we can have beers in the garden followed by burger and chips when we get hungry, just like we might if out with friends. We don’t listen to music, our ears are cocked for the distant pips from the most excellent robins. We have a happy day, the happiest day. Our precious world is home to five more robins.
When they first dispersed I thought that might be it, that I wouldn’t see the chicks again, but they’re not too far away. There’s one behind the shed and another in the log pile in the twitten just outside the garden. I listen to their calls throughout the day, watch the parents return to check on them and feed them, reassure them that they’re still being cared for in the big wide world. ‘Are you alright? Do you need anything?’ The garden is still the parents’ territory too. They still perch on the bee hotel, still take mealworms from the water-butt bath. I am terrified about the chicks’ first night unprotected from cats, squirrels, foxes and crows, but I’ve done my bit. I can’t wrap them in any more cotton wool, I have to let them be wild. But to have helped them reach this stage is huge, after at least three years of failures. In a spring of few insects and dry soils, in a neighbourhood plagued with high densities of cats, squirrels and corvids, I have helped five little robin chicks fledge their nest. It’s quite something, even if I say so myself.
I’ve been in the garden for most of the day, for most of the weekend. As the sun retreats behind the trees I dismantle the cage around the nest and finally take a closer look at where the chicks have been growing for the last two weeks. How did they fit in it? It’s small but so perfect, the most beautiful grassy bowl. Of course, it’s not quite empty – the sixth, perfect egg sits there, unhatched. I reach in and pick it up, the tiniest ball of speckled treasure.
Epilogue
I never found out where the pond was that the toads came from. I asked more neighbours but got nowhere. Eventually, after searching Google Earth and finding no leads, I found a local history page on Facebook, the type of group where old people reminisce about sweet shops and post photos of roads and buildings in days gone by.
‘Does anyone remember Woolworths?’
‘Ooh yes, we used to go for penny sweets after school on a Friday.’
‘Does anyone remember the rag ’n’ bone man with his horse and cart?’
‘Oh yes, I broke my foot once and he gave me a lift to hospital!’
It’s a nice group, soothing, amid the noise of everything else. And full of people who might have remembered toads.
I ask if anyone who lived in my road or neighbouring roads remembers a pond. I tell them I know there was a pond in the park until a child drowned and it was filled in, but that I don’t know where toads might have been breeding since then.
People write back, mostly to say they don’t remember anyone having a pond in the neighbourhood but confirming that there was a pond in what’s now the park.
‘My dad was best friends with the kid who drowned.’
‘My uncle tried to save him.’
I start to think I may have opened a can of worms.
But then I get more. I’m told a nearby road is named after a brook that used to run all along here from the Downs, that there were farms with ponds where car dealerships now stand. I don’t get dates but I’m beginning to build a picture of the landscape of the area before today, when life was a lot wilder. If there was a brook, a large pond, a farm with ponds, this area would have been wetter than it is now, with plenty of opportunities for toads and their frog and newt cousins. As the patchwork of habitats was gradually taken, they would have been squeezed into ever-tighter habitats but somehow, remarkably, the toads have survived.
I’m always upset when I hear of rivers and streams that have been buried underground; living things that no longer see the light of day. Where are the fish that used to spawn in its pebbles, the dragonflies that used to lay eggs in the weed? Were there kingfishers along this stretch of water, were there otters and beavers and swallows? My toads have a space to breed now but they deserve a better landscape, they deserve a proper home. Come the revolution I will be there, with my pickaxe, fighting to reclaim the old East Brook.
Gulls Allowed continues. We meet for drinks and make plans for how to deal with Drone Bastard next year. Lin has written to our MP and we are looking at trying to get the law changed, so that those who fly drones are not allowed to use them to deliberately disturb wildlife. I suspect we’ll need a change of government to see this through but we will wait, we’re not going anywhere. (Neither, sadly, is Drone Bastard.)
Happily, despite his efforts, the gulls on the factory roof successfully raised their chicks. And Lin has recruited me as a gull rescuer. She texts me when she hears of gulls that have fallen off roofs and we head out together, me with oven gloves and her with an umbrella to protect us from their dive-bombing parents, and help them out of the road and back on to a roof. Sometimes I have to go on my own and I have further recruited neighbours with loft conversions so I can lean out of their Velux windows and deposit chicks directly on to roof tiles. Sometimes, if the weather is bad, they have to stay with me for a few hours, much to the irritation of our ever-patient Tosca.
Pete from my local rescue centre has asked me to show him how to raise butterflies and I’ve asked him to teach me how to rehabilitate birds, like robins, when they fall or are taken from their nest. Our nature-loving community, like my ivy, continues to knit together and grow.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my wonderful agent, Jane Turnbull and my editor Julie Bailey. Once again, they took a chance on a half-formed idea and gave me the time and space I needed to work with it. Thanks especially to Julie for working so tirelessly to make everything shipshape and on time – I was so pleased to work with you again. Thanks to my patient copy editor, Elizabeth Peters, who asked all the right questions, and to Charlotte Atyeo for proofreading. To my illustrators, Abby Cook and Jasmine Parker, who have brought the book to life, and to Rachel Nicholson, Lizzy Ewer, Katherine Macpherson and Sarah Head at Bloomsbury, who have given my book wings and sent it out into the wide world. This book would be nothing without the amazing work of this team of brilliant women.
Thanks to my fact checkers: Emily Robinson (amphibians), Richard Comont (bumblebees), Richard Fox (1976), Ann Winney (hedgehogs) for your time and advice, and to Alex Lees, Hannah Bourne-Taylor and Susie Howells for making sure what I said about your respective projects was exactly right. Thanks to Choel for letting me write about the hedgehogs. Thanks to the many neighbours for letting me mention them and for Pete and Gayle Foggon at Sompting Wildlife Rescue and Ann Winney at Hurst Hedgehog Haven for trusting me with precious hedgehogs to release into the garden, and for letting me write about them, of course.
Thanks to my gull friends for the laughs. If one good thing has come from the activities of Drone Bastard, it’s been getting to know you.
I am so grateful for Emma and Tosca, who make me laugh, and for the emotional support of friends Andy, Jo, Eli, Becky, Helen and Humey, who were happy to talk, or not talk, about my bloody book. Extra special thanks is due to the wonderful human that is Melissa Harrison, who took time to read the whole manuscript while busy on her own projects – the book is so much better for her input. And to my family: thank you for letting me continue this strand of our story.
This book has been challenging to write, and I wrote myself into many ridiculous dead ends. One day, by chance, Kath Moore phoned me as I was staring out of the window wondering if I should just tell Bloomsbury this had all been a mistake, and said, ‘I want to know what you’re doing.’ I want her to know that those words changed the course of the book and its journey to where we are today. I’m not sure I would have continued writing it had I not picked up the phone.
30 Million Gardens for the Planet
We live in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world thanks to years of agricultural intensification and a demand for cheap food. Since the turn of the last century two of our bumblebee species have gone extinct, along with 97 per cent of our wildflower meadows (go figure). Since the 1970s we’ve lost 67 per cent of our common moths and 40 million birds. Some 80 per cent of butterflies are in decline, while a conservative assessment of insect numbers generally suggests 60 per cent have disappeared in the last 20 years alone – this, I feel, is very conservative: when did you last clear insects from the windscreen of your car? There are efforts to re-establish hedgerows and field margins to give space back to nature, rewilding projects that aim to return landscapes to the living habitats they once were. Good things are happening. But, on the whole, we continue to slash and burn. We continue to bulldoze through ancient woodland and greenbelt, to fill rivers and seas with human excrement, pesticides and pollution. Still we transform little pockets of living space into joyless car parks. Still we ignore the needs of hedgehogs and countless other wild species, to the detriment of all of us.
Climate change and habitat loss pose the biggest ever threat to life on Earth. Most species can’t adapt quickly enough to the changes that are happening and we will see many extinctions in our lifetime. These extinctions represent a heartbreaking and completely avoidable loss, but also they will make life harder for those of us who are left. All species on Earth are part of a series of ecosystems that keep life ticking over: the pollinators that provide food while ensuring the next generation grows the following year; the earthworms and other soil fauna that keep the soil healthy so we can grow food in it; the beavers that keep rivers clean so we may drink the water. These are some very basic examples of the amazingly complex webs of life that have evolved on Earth over the last 12,000 years, which we are destroying with our collective reluctance to transition away from fossil fuels.
Climate change is a global issue, but we must stay focused on what we can change here, at home. It has not been caused by us but by big business, by oil giants, by capitalism itself. But it’s us who are sleeping through the destruction, us who are letting it happen. We need to educate ourselves more on what is really happening, which goes far beyond seeing what’s reported in the news – and fighting against it. And we need to fight hard.
While we fight with all of our might to force politicians to make the changes we need for a liveable future, there’s a lot we can do at home. The UK’s 30 million gardens represent 30 million opportunities to create green spaces that hold on to water and carbon, create shade, grow food and provide habitats for wildlife that might otherwise not survive. It might not look like much but that little patch of land outside your back door could help species survive the assaults of climate change and habitat loss; it could be part of a corridor that allows wildlife to travel north in search of cooler temperatures; it could provide food and water when there’s little in the wild; it could offer a windbreak that simply enables bees to land on the flowers they need to feed from. We can do this, one garden at a time, one allotment, one balcony, one patio, one windowsill at a time. Don’t have any outdoor space? Join your local park group – we have 27,000 public parks – and a few extra habitats here and there will further add to the survival rates of certain species and make life easier for us, too. Don’t forget that all of these extra plants we’ll grow and the habitats we’ll create will mean there will be less CO2 in the atmosphere, less water flooding the streets, less heat, less wind. It’s not one garden against the world, it’s 30 million gardens, 27,000 parks and countless balconies and roof gardens for the planet.
Where to start
Ultimately, whatever space you have, look at growing more plants in it. Cover your walls and fences with climbers and plant up bare spaces so the whole site is greener and more alive. All of these plants will absorb CO2 while providing habitats for a huge range of species.
Grow flowers for pollinators, specifically single flowers, where you can see the central part of the bloom, and flowers of different shapes so they attract the widest range of insects. Keep them well watered so they produce nectar, even in a heatwave. Also grow more drought-tolerant plants such as Mediterranean herbs, catmint and chives, which don’t need so much watering but still produce nectar. (Grow honeywort if you dare!)
Grow leaves for leaf munchers, including caterpillar food plants. These are nearly always native plants – native shrubs and trees like hawthorn and hazel but also ‘weeds’ like dandelions, grasses and bedstraws. Look at growing near-natives for those arriving from the Mediterranean. Easy starting plants include fennel and carrots, which are used by the continental swallowtail butterfly, and cleavers and bedstraws for the hummingbird hawk-moth.
Plant a hedge, which will filter and slow down wind, rather than a fence, which wind will smack into, giving it energy to do further damage along your street. Birds will roost and nest in it, hedgehogs will shelter beneath it, butterflies and moths will lay eggs in it. In autumn, when its leaves fall to the ground, leave them there. Worms will take them into the soil and, along with fungi and bacteria, will break them down into food that’s returned to the roots of the hedge they came from. A mixed, native hedge planted with hazel, hawthorn, wild roses and guelder rose is best for wildlife but all hedges will slow down wind, absorb water and lock away carbon..
Dig a pond, which will absorb and hold on to carbon while providing drinking and bathing water for birds and mammals and breeding opportunities for aquatic invertebrates and amphibians. Get to know the wildlife that uses it, including the backswimmers and whirligig beetles, the pond skaters and the huge great diving beetles. Sit by it and feel peaceful by it. Hang around at night and wait for bats.
Make hedgehog holes on either side of your garden and chat to your neighbours about creating a ‘hedgehog highway’. Look at your garden not as a small, private space outside your back door but as part of a wider landscape, a network of habitats that could save lives and save species. If you have plastic grass, decking or paving then there has never been a better time to take it up.
Be wilder by letting areas of grass grow long, leave fallen leaves where they land and stop sweeping away the pile of debris that accumulates behind your pots. Let seedheads and berries feed the birds they are intended to feed. Be nice to weeds, for they are nice to wildlife. Please stop using pesticides. Please avoid using peat.
Save water when it’s wet so you can use it when it’s dry. Currently we seem to have wetter winters and drier summers, so we can plan ahead to ensure we have water to feed plants, top up bird baths and keep ponds full all year round. Buy the biggest water storage container you can afford and connect it to the downpipe of your house so it fills quickly when it rains. Look on your local council website, where there might be a discount on water butts, or visit your local tip, where water butts are often given away for free or for a few quid. Get as many as you have space for. If heavy rain is forecast, empty your water butt into the garden so it refills and prevents some water from reaching the sewers. If it’s dry, use that water to keep your garden alive, your flowers producing nectar. If you live in a flood-prone area then consider making a rain garden, which will take all the water from your gutters and hard landscaping and hold it in the garden, where it will slowly seep into the ground.
Grow food to connect you more with the land. The greater connection you have, the more you will understand about the natural systems that aid food security. Start with easy crops like courgettes and climbing beans. Compost your kitchen and garden waste to feed your soil and the invertebrates, bacteria and fungi that keep it alive. Rejoice in the many living things – frogs, slow worms, beetles, hedgehogs – that will live in your compost heap while it breaks down. These species will return the favour of you providing them shelter in your garden by eating the slugs, aphids and caterpillars that would otherwise eat your crop.
Put up bird boxes to help birds. Swifts and house sparrows are particularly in need of nesting sites but starlings and songbirds need them, too. If you have scaffolding up, erect swift or house sparrow boxes beneath the eaves of your house. The two species don’t get on with each other, so keep nest boxes separate to avoid conflict. In the garden tit boxes are readily used. A dense mass of foliage is perfect for robins.
Keep an eye out for caterpillars on nettles or other foodplants in communal spaces, such as your local park. If you find caterpillars, ask yourself: will they be safe? If not, move them to a spot that will be safer (perhaps away from the path or in a wilder area of the park, or your garden or allotment). Always move them on to the same foodplant you found them on; they simply won’t survive if you put them on a different plant. If none of the above options is available, you could take them home and raise them yourself. You’ll need a mesh cage (known as a butterfly cage) and a daily supply of fresh foodplant leaves. Please only do this if you can commit to feeding them every day and be around to release the adults safely when they are ready. If you’re a beginner, start with just a few and work your way up to caring for larger numbers.
Leave water for hedgehogs and birds to drink. If you see birds struggling to find food for their chicks in spring then leave out mealworms – you can rehydrate dried ones in a bird bath or similar. Mealworms will be taken very quickly by all birds so you may want to put a cage around them so only smaller birds can access them, which will prevent hedgehogs from eating them, too. But, whatever you do, open your eyes and take action. If birds and other wildlife are going hungry then feed them. You can save their lives.
Feed grounded bumblebees that have emerged from hibernation but haven’t found nectar in time to give them the energy to fly. Gently pick them up and pop them on a suitable flower, such as a crocus or primrose, making sure you watch them drink before you move on. If they don’t drink, find them a better flower (remember you need to see its centre) or mix a teaspoon of sugar with a teaspoon of tepid water and see if they will drink that instead. Wait for them to buzz and fly off.
Rescue hedgehogs you notice are out in the day during winter. In summer, it’s normal to see hungry mums with young in the nest come out during the day to find food and water, but at other times of year a hog out in the day is poorly and, usually, close to death even if it looks OK. Find details of your local rescue centre and call them, tell them what you see. Is it tiny? If so it won’t be big enough to survive hibernation. Is it walking in a circles? Not moving? Remember that hedgehogs never ‘sunbathe’. If you can quickly get it to a rescue centre, you may save its life.
Get to know and record wildlife to help track the movement of species. Growing plants and creating habitats is only half of the story. It will help so much if you get to know who visits your garden. Buy a bee book or a bird book or a butterfly book or a frog book. Read it, marvel at the wonderful things you learn and use that knowledge to better understand the needs of those living in your garden. Long-tongued bees need flowers with long flower tubes; frogs and toads need different types of pond (or different habitats within the same pond); birds have a range of food and habitat requirements that change from winter to autumn. Get to know who visits you now so you will know who arrives in the future and who stops visiting you, too. It’s important to know. Take photos of species and log your sightings on irecord.org.uk, which will help ecologists track population movements, including declines, increases and arrivals.
Reading List
Beebee, T. 1997. Frogs and Toads (British Natural History Series). Whittet Books, Totnes.
