On the cameras today is a hog carrying dandelion leaves into one of the boxes. I can’t see if it’s male or female but I watch it collect leaves from the dandelion patch I left on the patio, and my heart soars. I hope it’s a pregnant female, taking a chance on the bachelor pads for the first time, but if it’s a male just making his home more homely that is also wonderful. I am horribly, achingly worried about the dry weather, which no one is yet calling a drought but clearly is, and the impacts this will have on wildlife, on those that need water for drinking and bathing, for raising young. I’m anxious about the rivers and the trees, about all life that is being pushed to the limits of its own existence. But the hedgehogs will be OK. These few who use my garden will have water and food for as long as they need it, and nest boxes to bring dandelion leaves into. And I can watch them – it’s something I can do while we all wait, desperately, for rain.
It’s sunny but cold, the sky a child’s drawing of yellow ball suspended in deepest blue, the occasional fluffy cloud in the distance. Traces of frost remain on plants still in shade and ghosts of ice haunt the surface of the pond. Bees take cold nectar from spring flowers: brrrrrrr. The dog and I potter in the sun while the shade sleeps.
I plant out sweet peas and clear some of last year’s stems from the border, which I had left intact over winter so insects had somewhere to shelter. I top-dress potted plants with fresh, home-made compost and water them with grey water (recycled water containing biodegradable soaps and detergents), remove weeds from some areas and allow them to remain in others. I sweep the patio, deadhead daffodils, I tie rose and clematis stems into the trellis.
I put the bee hotels out – two in the back and four in the front, of different types, made using different materials and with different-shaped holes (square or circular). The bees have their preferences but these change every year and I like seeing which ones they go for. I fill one of the release chambers with last year’s red mason bee cocoons, as it won’t be long before they hatch. The leaf-cutters I leave in the shed, as these can be predated while in their cocoons and it’s safer to keep them locked away for as long as possible – they won’t fly until June. Sometimes, if I’m working at home a lot, I let them hatch out on my desk with the window open, so I can not only watch them emerge but see them safely into the sunshine, too.
In the pond little commas of tadpoles wriggle gently on fallen willow leaves. These sit just beneath the surface and provide a microhabitat, not only generating warmth as the sun heats small amounts of water above them but also food, as they’re covered in algae, which the tadpoles eat. I crouch down to watch them in their vast watery world. There is still some frogspawn left and the newest tadpoles stick closely by, some of them nibbling the jelly around their unhatched kin. Some have only just hatched and appear to lie on their leafy beds barely moving, with just the occasional wriggle of the tail. Others are older, bigger, and are using their tails more vigorously, swimming strongly in the shallows. Those older still are on the other side of the pond, feeding from algae growing on stones. All are vulnerable; it’s thought that just 1 in 50 tadpoles becomes a frog, the rest are eaten by other tadpoles and aquatic larvae, by birds, by newts. There’s enough here to feed everyone, enough yet to become plenty of frogs. Just as long as the pond remains a pond. I fetch the hose and connect it to the water butt and release my precious store of rainwater into their home. Just a bit. Just enough to keep a reasonable level so the tadpoles can swim freely.
Tosca growls, gently, for attention. The scruffiest of mongrels, she’s a mix of 13 different breeds largely made up of border collie, Labrador, springer spaniel and Pomeranian. She looks like a skinny little collie with an enormous Pomeranian tail, black with a ridiculous white bib. She’s bald on her back due to colour dilution alopecia, a genetic condition that comes from humans tinkering with the colours – the hair grows and then breaks off. She’s clever and funny and makes an excellent gardening companion. Mostly she lies on the bench while I potter, occasionally coming over for a cuddle. Other times she will fetch things from the habitat pile and scatter sticks and wine corks and pieces of root all over the garden. Or she will demand that I play chase with her or drop things at my feet for me to pick up and throw for her. When she gets what she wants she gambols around the garden, like a show pony jumping high over the long grass, pretending she will ever let me catch her. She has this wonderful way of purring while growling, which she reserves specially for play. Sometimes, I’ll be on my hands and knees planting or weeding something out, or lost in tadpoles or other pond magic, and she will creep up behind me and purr-growl for me to play with her. I turn around and she’s holding a toy in her mouth, hopefully.
Today she has a ball, which she drops as I turn around. Her big hazel eyes look at me, willing me to play. I stop gawping at tadpoles and throw the ball for her, and she brings it straight back and drops it at my feet again. I throw it again and she keeps it. At this time of year she can run around the pond, there’s not enough foliage to stop her, and so we play a futile game of chase; her leaping around the pond, daring me to catch her with the ball, and me unable to follow because I’m worried I’ll fall in.
The tadpoles continue to warm up and feed from willow leaves, the bees continue to visit lungwort and primroses. The birds stay away but only until we’ve finished running around. I get less done when I’m in the garden with Tos but my heart is fuller. And she makes me a better wildlife gardener, she always stops me doing too much. The blackened rosehips will be pruned another day, some of last year’s stems continue to provide shelter. I clear up the sticks she has scattered on the lawn and clear spent plant material into a heap, which I transfer to the habitat pile so any insects still using it can move on safely. There will be time again for gardening.
The walls of my garden are only waist high, and so trellis makes up the height to what I suppose is an acceptable level of privacy in this age of not talking to your neighbours while living on top of them. On the south-facing side the trellis runs the whole length of the garden but on the north-facing side, closest to the house, there are three fence panels that conceal the wall entirely, with trellis covering the rest of it at the far end.
The trellis supports a range of plants: rambling rose and clematis on the south-facing side; honeysuckle, hops and golden clematis, or Clematis tangutica, facing north (although they poke through the gaps to next door and get a fair amount of sun). Along the fence, which gets barely any light at all, I planted six little ivy cuttings that my neighbour Kate, two doors down, gave me when I first moved in.
Ivy is amazing. Self-clinging, you don’t need to tie it in to anything; it will grow happily up walls and fences and it’s so shade tolerant it will practically grow in the dark. It has a reputation for destroying fences and walls and it will, but only if they’re damaged in the first place. Ivy will take advantage of the smallest crack or hole but if the structure it’s climbing up is sound ivy can actually protect it. Studies have shown that, when growing up houses, ivy acts as natural insulation, helping to cool them in summer and warm them in winter. Another study showed that ivy absorbs polluting particles and that, when grown along main roads, it can help reduce pollution (and therefore save lives). Ivy provides habitats for anything from nesting birds to hibernating butterflies, its flowers are visited by pollinators and its leaves are used as a food plant by several species of moth, along with the summer generation of holly blue butterflies (in spring they lay eggs on holly). Its berries contain more calories, gram-for-gram, than the equivalent weight of chocolate and, because they don’t mature until late winter, they help birds get into peak condition for breeding.
I strongly believe that ivy can be a significant tool in mitigating the effects of the climate crisis and indeed absorbing CO2, that it should be grown up every house, every office block, every patch of city that doesn’t have space for a tree but does have room for a small trellis. Every time I see a fancy green wall on the side of a building, with its many pockets of plants that need regular maintenance and watering, I think how much better and easier it would be if ivy grew there instead. There’s no need to water ivy because it’s drought tolerant, no need for feeding or tying in. Yes, it needs pruning – about once a year to stop it covering windows and growing into the roof – but otherwise it would need little attention at all. It’s versatile, too: in larger gardens and wilder areas you can leave ivy to develop flowers and berries but in areas with less space you can cut it right back as a flush, lush, living wall, a wall that supports life, absorbs CO2, reduces pollution and looks so much nicer than the bare bricks and faded fences we city dwellers are faced with at every turn.
I haven’t planted ivy up the walls of my house because they need repointing, but I did plant it along the fence, which was in good shape when I moved in and remains so now. I had visions of my little cuttings growing and knitting together, of watching birds nesting in them and holly blue butterflies laying eggs on the leaves. Of letting some of it mature and bear flowers and fruit that would serve pollinators and birds, but mostly of having a well-clipped, lush green wall, something living where previously there had been nothing.
Of course, the cuttings just sat in their little soily beds and sulked for two years. I would watch them impatiently, wondering when, if ever, they would start to climb. I counted the number of fence slats above the tip of the tallest stem to measure achingly slow growth, and obsessed over the gaps between cuttings so I could track the very moment they became one. I suppose it seems like an odd pursuit, tracking the growth of ivy up a fence. But when you’re obsessed with greening the grey, when you know how vital and life-giving this stuff is, there’s nothing more important.
The cuttings finally started moving properly last year, and I took photos of them to track their progress. In April, a flush of new growth finally took one plant to the top of the fence, just one rogue stem reaching above a slim triangle of leaves. Astonishingly, no sooner had it reached the top of the fence than it started to become a ‘habitat’. In the first week of May, as the first brood of sparrow and starling chicks hatched from their eggs, I watched their parents descend on the garden en masse, frantically turning every leaf, every blade of grass for a morsel to feed their young. I watch them do this every year but last spring was the first time they climbed the ivy, the first time they were able to rustle among its leaves and eke out tiny things – tiny snails, tiny larvae – to take back to their nests.
Starlings love snails. Last spring a whole gang of them brought their chicks into the garden and showed them where the snails were. I watched clumsy fledglings flying from the rowan tree to the neighbours’ flat roof and smashing the living daylights out of their newly found treasure. The song thrush is well known for its snail-eating skills but less so, the starling. They come for other critters, too: fat leatherjacket larvae, caterpillars. I love watching starlings murmurate above Brighton Pier in winter, wondering which of them are fuelled by my garden.
Another ivy cutting has made it to the top of the fence since, while a third might manage it this year (it has just five fence slats to go). The knitting together might happen soon, too. Three stubborn cuttings remain resolutely grounded but they are growing, slowly, creeping along behind plants that will soon have leaves. I try to imagine what it will be like when the whole fence is covered in a lush panel of ivy, when more than one sparrow or starling at a time can forage among their leaves. Will a wren ever nest here? Or a robin? Will holly blue butterflies lay their eggs? Time will tell; I just wish my little cuttings would hurry up and cover the fence.
The frogs started spawning earlier than last year but continued well into March, filling up the first shallow beach and then almost obscuring the second. At night I would sit on the cold bench and listen to them croak into the night sky, listen to their splashes of frustration and possession, the scraps between males over females, the ambush of a frog that dared jump into the melee. If I moved like a whisper I could get close enough to shine my torch and see them at it, but I found I preferred not to. I found I preferred the darkness of the bench, of being alone with my senses, of honing in on every splash and croak.
One night, as I shivered quietly, I heard squeaking above the continuous rumble of croaking frogs. My ears pricked; hello! I turned on the torch and there it was, a young male toad lounging on the frogspawn like a teenager on the sofa. Common toads don’t croak to attract females but squeak or peep, which is exactly what he was doing, although why was he on his own? ‘Where are your friends?’ I asked him. ‘Where are the girls?’ Over the next few days more toads arrived via the twitten from who-knows-where, and splayed out in the pond like the first one. ‘Squeak squeak squeak,’ they said. I put the camera on the back gate to see if I could spot females arriving but none did. Would these males squeak for nothing? Another night I swear I could hear squeaking from elsewhere, too. A greater number than the eight in my pond, but far enough away for my toads to be louder. Where was this other pond? I had no idea.
It crossed my mind to take the torch and head into the night to find out. They sounded like they were in a garden north of mine, maybe five doors down, near the neighbour who found the toad that she was sure was on its way here. Could one of her neighbours on the other side of her have a pond? Should I find out? In the end I chickened out of going to look for it; Portslade-by-Sea is not the place to be caught in a twitten looking into back gardens by torchlight; I would need to find another way.
Who do I know on that part of the road? People to nod shy hellos to: the man with a toddler called Arthur, the woman with a dog called Twiggy. Literally no one to march up to and ask if they had a pond, let alone one with breeding toads in it.
I was reminded of my friend Wayne, who, when he moved into his house, leaflet-dropped the whole road asking who had a pond (and what lived in it), who had hedgehogs, who did things for wildlife generally. Most people didn’t get back to him but some did, and instantly he knew who his allies were in his efforts to save species. He also knew how likely he was to get toads in his garden. With his knowledge, charisma and enthusiasm he has built the most amazing network of wildlife gardens in his neighbourhood, with a hedgehog population to match. He’s made a hedgehog box for virtually every one of his neighbours, and clubs together with some of them to buy hedgehog food. He’s a hero and a credit to us all, and we should all be more like him.
I’m not quite ready to leaflet these streets, asking who has a pond, but I am ready, perhaps, to strike up a conversation with Twiggy’s mum in the park. The toads have been and gone for this year, so I have a good 12 months to bring myself around to it.
In Brighton every other roof is home to a pair of nesting seagulls; herring gulls and lesser black-backed gulls, to be exact, and their enormous gangly chicks that tumble down chimneys and off roofs into gardens, and who wander around the streets among clubbers and pub-goers, squawking into the night. There are ‘gull people’ who keep an eye on them, who go around town with a ladder and a net, replacing fallen chicks to their roof (or as close as they can get them), who collect casualties and take them to rescue centres. Once, I spotted a herring gull caught in a kite up high in a tree, its mate waiting desperately by. I alerted the gull people and they had a team of tree surgeons setting it free within the hour. There are those who feed them and care for them in their homes, those whose house you can turn up to with an injured gull, who know exactly what to do with it. There’s a whole community of people that exists only to help Brighton and Hove’s seagulls, who step up during their nesting season and ensure more of the chicks survive than they otherwise would. Their lives and ours, entangled as they are, in this built-up city by the sea.
You can tell the time by the gulls. At dawn they call to each other as if greeting good morning. At dusk they fly south, zoning towards the water, the sunset reflected on their bellies. I’ve never managed to find out if they roost on the sea or just visit at dusk to feed, but it seems some do – certainly some fly out at dusk and back again at dawn. I’ve always thought how magical it must be to sleep like that out in the open, feeling safe beneath the sheltering sky, with so much going on beneath what you can actually see and feel. I have slept on dive boats a few times and felt the power of the sky above me, the mystery of what lurks beneath. But I was in a boat, with showers and duvets and a kitchen and chefs. Imagine just sleeping out on the ocean, bobbing about in the water, snuggled only beneath a blanket of stars.
They don’t nest on my roof, which makes me sad, because they would be so safe here. But they do come into the garden. Herring gulls gather sticks to make their nests, take ridiculous swims around my pond. They stand guard as I set the table outside for summer meals and Ack-Ack-Ack to their mates if it looks like the food might be decent. Sometimes, if I leave the back door open, they come into the house, their feet slapping on the kitchen tiles as they raid Tosca’s bowl for meaty morsels. I don’t feed them, per se, but if the hedgehogs haven’t eaten all of their food I leave the lid off the feeding station in the morning so the gulls can have their breakfast – kitten biscuits flying everywhere as they peck, dramatically, into the dish. Ack-Ack-Ack-Ack, Ack-Ack-Ack.
I used to say, ‘You can always tell when the buzzards are around, because the gulls go bonkers.’ And they would. They do. Suddenly the rooftops erupt with distressed gulls calling to each other to protect their chicks or eggs or even half-formed nests. I look to the sky and might see one or two buzzards circling above them. Or I might see a peregrine falcon, one of those that nests in the city centre and usually takes starlings and pigeons. These days I’m more likely to see the drone the bad man flies to stop the gulls nesting on his roof.
Several times a day now, the gulls launch themselves into the air, flying in circles and crying out their horribly distressing alarm calls. It’s not a predator disturbing them but a drone, a drone flying too close to their nests. I thought it was a mistake at first. I thought whoever was doing this was interested in seeing the gulls’ nesting. I see this at Brighton beach when the starlings are murmurating – the drones always fly too close, weaving among the birds and causing them to shape-shift into different forms to escape them. But it’s born of an idiot wanting to get better footage, who ultimately likes the starlings. Sadly, this isn’t an overeager gull enthusiast who can be gently persuaded to keep his distance. If only it were.
I don’t like Facebook but it’s best for community groups and I’m a member of a few that keep me updated with various things I like to know about (e.g. when the park is due its annual haircut so I can rescue butterfly caterpillars). There’s a group for the road next to mine, which is handy for knowing if the bins won’t be collected or if there are any road works or does-anyone-have-a-spare-parking-permit or did-you-hear-the-motorbike-last-night-it-was-very-loud-do-you-think-it-was-the-same-one-involved-in-the-crash-that’s-been-reported-in-the-Argus?
One day someone wrote about the drone. ‘I think it’s being used to deliberately scare the seagulls,’ she said, ‘can everyone keep an eye out?’ She reported the incident to the police but, without knowing who was responsible, couldn’t get much done about it. A few days later she had worked out who it was – a man with a warehouse on the road behind hers, who was flying the drone at lesser black-backed gull nests to stop them nesting on his roof. She spoke to him but he was horrible. She updated the police but they still didn’t come. I reported the incident to the police, too, using the same crime reference number she originally used. They wrote back and said it was being dealt with. But it’s not being dealt with. The drone’s still flying and the gulls are still crying and up to five times a day I feel my whole body tighten as a man sends his drone to the rooftops to deliberately distress nesting birds. Where are the police? Where is the justice? How do I get these sounds out of my ears?
My partner Emma and I head to Birmingham, to see Mum, my sister Ellie and my half-sister Anna, while Tosca has a holiday with the dog sitter. Due to Covid, it’s only the second time Emma has met them, and she’s never met little nephew Stanley, Ellie’s partner Gareth, Anna’s partner Alex or mum’s husband Pete. ‘Time to throw you to the wolves,’ I say.
‘I’m s-s-s-s-sorry for my la-la-la-la-language,’ Mum stutters to Emma, and then explains she’s had a brain haemorrhage, as if she’d forgotten to mention it the last time they met, or as if I’d not done so in the two and a half years we’ve been together. Her stutter comes and goes and she loses it as soon as she relaxes. ‘I work very hard on my brain,’ she says, and proceeds to list the ways, while Emma nods enthusiastically. ‘Every day I do Sudoku, Wordle, Words with Friends, and then Pete joins me for the crosswords (the standard and the cryptic), and then we do “the quiz”,’ she says proudly.
‘What’s the quiz?’ I ask.
‘The quiz,’ Mum replies. ‘Pete asks the questions and I answer them.’ I am, as ever, none the wiser.
‘I was very surprised’, says Pete, ‘to learn today that your mum knows who Harry Styles’ girlfriend is.’
