Old woods, old photos, this wood was coppiced many years ago, when I saw it a few years back it was neglected, trees fallen, boggy underfoot but of course it was making its own ecosystem. Well on Gardener's World, the same point was made by 'rewilding' a garden, allowing the natural world to invade the 'kept' garden.
George Monbiot is all for rewilding our country, allowing the uplands to become wild and less sheep ridden, the beavers to dam rivers and maybe even wolves to roam Scotland, that would definitely bring down the expansive deer population.....
Sometimes I am in two minds about this, the habit of growing flowers in gardens have brought the insects in to live and prosper, what of course we need are more ponds, the old village ponds have long gone. Frogs and newts disappear and the water insect life is scarce. We have farmed the land to within an inch of its life, the old meadows of wild flowers are long gone, councils plant wild life verges along the road, and we can only hope insects do not get killed by passing traffic.
We had that sad spectacle of builders and councils netting the trees and hedges so that the birds would not build nests, I am still trying to work out why?
Yes Thelma - I too am a follower of Monty Don and found the idea of rewilding interesting. I can only do the very minimum in the garden because it is very steep and stepped, so I employ and gardener as an when he can come. He always comes and keeps my front lawn kept,,
ReplyDeleteYesterday I walked between a field of barley and a field of oats. There were no weeds or gaps anywhere - just a sea of barley and a sea of oats. No doubt they had been sprayed with insecticide and herbicide and there was very little sign of life. No harvest mice or adders or butterflies or finches or frogs or dragonflies - just a solitary walker plodding by on his way to the end.
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