After the summer's heat

There is mist across the valley this morning, morphing the view into something less familiar and shortening my horizons. It is the first such mist for many months and hints at the approaching summer’s end and a period of transition. The recent rain has replenished the parched ground and the air hangs heavy with moisture, as if the Earth itself has exhaled to release her sweet breath.

Walking the short turf of the lawn wets my feet and leaves behind footsteps that outline my passing, each a darker patch of moisture etched within the carpet of silvery white dew. Should I walk the meadow I would return with my trousers soaked, the fabric covered with grass seeds and the bodies of small invertebrates, each held tightly to the cloth by a meniscus of dew.

The air feels deliciously cool but carries with it the first sweet scents of autumn, the merest hint of woodland fungi that will undertake the process of breaking down much of the season’s harvest. Two swifts pass overhead on silent wings, feeding as they journey south; they provide an echo of the noisy juveniles that were such a feature of July. It is a morning that feels like summer’s end, a shifting of the seasons and a sign that, to use a phrase from Ted Hughes, ‘the world’s still turning’. This transition can be a gradual one, a mix of days hinting at a return to summer but then switching to suggest that autumn is already here.

It is one of my favourite times of the year, with a strong sense that much of the natural world is on the move. Migrant birds from more northerly breeding grounds are already passing through on passage south. Many will attract the interest of birdwatchers, perhaps myself included, but for now I am content with my local ‘patch’ and the changes I can see within it as the hedgerow fruits ripen, crickets chirp and house martins and swallows gather on the wires. These cool mornings suggest renewal but of a different kind to that encountered in the spring and my spirits soar as I experience the pull of season’s end and look towards the approach of autumn.

Wildlife closer to home

Gardening provides an opportunity to get closer to the natural world even though you might consider the two unlikely bedfellows. Gardening, like agriculture, involves both working with nature and battling against it. You need to work with the soil and the seasons, and to select plants that work best in the conditions that your garden presents you with.

For me it is a pleasurable experience to sit and work a border, picking out unwanted seedlings, like nettles, bramble or wavy bitter-cress, that have arrived from outside sources. Weeding by hand allows me to be selective and also provides an opportunity to interact with many of the smaller creatures with which I share the garden. Various beetles march across the soil’s surface, disturbed by my activities, while centipedes, small snails and woodlice are revealed as I move bits of wood or leaf mulch. Such creatures are easily overlooked but a bit of time and a small amount of effort can provide you with a long list of fellow garden users.

Gardens contain a wealth of life, making them one of the main contributors to biodiversity within our increasingly urbanised landscapes. The recent Garden Bioblitz event helped to raise the profile of the many small things that can be found in our gardens. Admittedly not all of this life is native, our passion for new and unusual plants often leading to the introduction of species from elsewhere across the globe. Most remain within the confines of our gardens but some ‘escape’ and become a problem in the wider countryside.

The presence of these other creatures, some of which are now increasingly rare in other habitats, underlines that our gardens do not truly belong to us; in effect, we only have a tenancy over them. While we may exert a very strong influence on ‘our’ gardens and their wildlife through our activities, other creatures will have their own hold on the garden, perhaps even shaping how we use it. Some gardeners simply will not tolerate this interference, blasting unwanted plants and invertebrates with chemicals, but many more are learning to garden with nature rather than against. Such an approach still involves ‘gardening’ but it provides a more pleasurable and rewarding experience. Perhaps this is why, as a naturalist, I enjoy my garden its wildlife. 

The countryside in your back garden

There are many people who, for whatever reason, are unable to enjoy the countryside proper. Instead, their interactions with the natural world are restricted to the wildlife that visits them in their homes and gardens. While some may view garden wildlife as uninteresting or commonplace, and gardens themselves as a highly managed and artificial habitat, more and more researchers are discovering the tremendous wildlife value of our lawns, borders and shrubberies. Put simply, gardens support wildlife – lots of wildlife. Now, most of this wildlife is not big or showy, nor necessarily that attractive, but it is there and it has great value. While your garden may not be heaving with dozens of different bird and mammal species it will have a myriad of invertebrates, from ground beetles, solitary wasps, flies and other bugs down to even smaller creatures like nematode worms, soil micro-organisms and bacteria. The thing is, you don’t tend to notice, or appreciate, all of this wildlife.

One of the problems with this wildlife being overlooked and undervalued is that gardens themselves are undervalued. This has led to the government classifying urban gardens as ‘brownfield sites’, alongside old industrial land earmarked for development. Over recent years, this reclassification has led to a process known as garden grabbing – whereby property developers buy up houses with large gardens to demolish and replace them with high density housing. Needless to say, high density housing means low density green space and wildlife is pushed out. You might think that this is a sensible solution to the problem of urban sprawl and the pressure placed on Greenfield sites within the wider countryside but it is not as simple as that. You see, much of our wider countryside – at least much of that portion under intensive arable monocultures – is actually pretty poor for wildlife. For example, the foraging opportunities in gardens for bumblebees are far richer than those on offer within most arable farmland. If you lose the larger gardens with their nectar and pollen sources then you lose the bees. We, as human beings, also lose out – starved of our contact with the natural world. Having green space into which you can retreat, to take a breath of fresh air or to enjoy watching wildlife going about its business, is incredibly important to our well-being. To divorce ourselves from the world around us goes against the core of human nature. We are part of the natural world and we have an innate fascination and longing for the comforting presence of other creatures. Such encounters reinforce our sense of belonging, strengthening our place as part of a wider community of life. We should cherish our gardens and the wildlife they contain.