74: How can our gardens protect the environment?

How can we utilise our garden spaces, balconies, window boxes and/or pots to benefit the environment?

Matt, Fraser and Becky catch up on all things summer, and discuss their own gardening skills before being joined by Kate Bradbury, an award-winning author and journalist, who specialises in wildlife gardening.

Episode Transcript:

[Music flourish] 

Matt:  Hello and welcome to Local Zero. I’m pleased to report that the full contingent is back once again and I am, of course, joined by Doctors Rebecca Ford and Fraser Stewart and today, we’ll be exploring greener and wilder gardens. 

Fraser:  If you’re fortunate enough to have access to a garden, balcony or window box or even if you simply have a love of green spaces, which I think most of our listeners probably do, today’s episode will be of particular interest.  

Rebecca:  Joining us later is Kate Bradbury, an award-winning garden writer, broadcaster and TV presenter specialising in wildlife gardening. 

Matt:  Yes, and in case you missed it, consider this a polite reminder to go and check out our last episode that we recorded pre-Glastonbury on decarbonising the music industry. 

Rebecca:  And a further reminder to subscribe to Local Zero wherever you listen to your podcasts. Check out our website at LocalZeroPod.com and follow us on Twitter @LocalZeroPod where you are more than welcome to get in touch with us.  

[Music flourish] 

Matt:  Before we kick off, I just wanted to thank a couple of listeners who have dialled in and said some really lovely things about the pod. First, we heard from Jack Irwin from Low Carbon Hub Oxford which I think is an organisation we’ve covered before and we’ve had representatives on the pod speaking about them, so it was really good to hear. Jack emailed us to say, ‘I’m a huge fan. I’ve listened to most of your episodes and I am starting to capitalise on them in my work. Episode 69 – I didn’t quite realise we’d got that far but there we go – on retrofit was particularly useful as I’m working on an innovative project about retrofitting in Oxfordshire.’ Jack has clearly got the academic thing about a feedback sandwich [laughter] – positive, negative, positive – and he pointed out there is a societal bias towards domestic retrofit in our pods and could we possibly invite experts for a non-domestic retrofit episode? I think that’s a fair criticism from Jack and something we’re maybe going to correct and get it on the roster.  

Rebecca:  Absolutely. 

Matt:  So thanks, Jack. Also, we heard from other folk, didn’t we? We’ve got a long list. 

Fraser:  We did. It’s been quite the week on the Local Zero hotline. We have another thank you to Alan Thorley on Twitter who got in touch to say, ‘Maintaining some positivity – I don’t know if that’s what we specialise in but we try to – is so important even if only to keep you going as you protest against the pretty generalised failure we’re currently seeing which is why I always recommend people listen to Local Zero pod.’ Thank you very much Alan for the kind words. 

Rebecca:  Positivity in the face of failure. I love it. That should be your tagline, Fraser. 

Fraser:  [Laughter] Or is it failure in the face of positivity? I don’t know. One of them [laughter]. 

Rebecca:  Either way [laughter]. 

Fraser:  I could get a reversible t-shirt [laughter]. 

Rebecca:  So how is everyone? Did anybody watch any of Glastonbury? 

Matt:  Yes, I did. I do this every year. I kind of force myself to watch some of it and then I spend the first ten minutes wishing I was there and then the remaining time thinking the sound quality on this iPlayer episode is terrible. That’s probably Patrick or Dave, our producers, and I’ve got that kind of spectre hanging over me [laughter]. Yeah, I enjoyed it. What about yourselves? 

Fraser:  Yeah, I enjoyed it a lot. You know what? I used to think that I liked going to festivals and I went to Tea in the Park in the early 2010s and it just rained and rained. It’s nice on the first day when you’re with your friends and it feels like good fun and you’re having a drink but when you’re hungover in the mud in the rain and your tent has flooded, it’s not quite so nice. I enjoy watching it from the armchair. 

Matt:  From the dry armchair I’m assuming [laughter]. 

Fraser:  Very odd phrase. In particular, I thought Elton John... what a guy, man. That was a Glastonbury set. I know this isn’t the purpose of the pod and listeners are switching off as we speak but... 

Matt:  They won’t be, Fraser, as last week, this was exactly the topic we covered. If you haven’t listened to it, you really ought to. 

Rebecca:  We didn’t cover Elton John [laughter] 

Matt:  We didn’t have Elton John on the pod, no [laughter]. He certainly couldn’t make it. He was otherwise engaged [laughter]. 

Fraser:  Unlikely climate hero, Elton John [laughter]. 

Matt:  We did cover this and I watched the coverage thinking, ‘How green is this? How low carbon is this?’ This is the kind of thing that once you have that debate, you start to pick up little things. What are they drinking in their hand? What are the stalls behind them? Are those all the cars in the car park? It starts to set you on a trajectory. I’m not trying to be a killjoy but it begs the question. I really enjoyed last week’s episode. 

Rebecca:  Yeah, I think we need a chart for the music festivals... not in terms of how popular they are or who’s headlining but how green is your festival. 

Matt:  Top of the Pops. Somebody needs to develop a really good pun there. Fraser, I’m largely looking at you here [laughter].  

Fraser:  Yeah, I’ll duck out for the next ten minutes [laughter]. 

Matt:  He’s going to dial off and come back in [laughter]. Yeah, Glastonbury was good. For those who haven’t listened to the music episode, please check it out. I really enjoyed that one. Other news? Becky, on the last episode, you were dialling in and out. The double-glazing is in apparently. 

Rebecca:  It is. 

Matt:  You look snug as a bug. I’ve got my Octopus Mini. Some of the folk listening to this will be thinking, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve got one.’ It tells your electricity consumption every five or ten seconds. I’m not sure I need that level of granularity in my life but I have it. 

Fraser:  How do you get anything done? We’re very, very lucky that we’ve got solar panels and we’ve got a little app that shows the power flows and it’s mesmerising. I can’t stop looking at it and saying, ‘Okay, the battery is fully charged. Get the dishwasher on.’ How do you do anything with five seconds worth? 

Matt:  I think it’s about trying to ferret out demand which you didn’t necessarily know was on there but after a while, it’s a bit like the initial home displays. Do you just stop looking at it after a while?  

Rebecca:  How do you see it? Is it an app on your phone? 

Matt:  Yeah, it’s on your phone. Fraser is quite right. You end up stopping doing valuable things in your life and just look at the... 

Rebecca:  Does it alert you? Does it give you alerts? 

Matt:  ...fridge cycle going on and off [laughter]. 

Rebecca:  Oh god! [Laughter] Does it give you that breakdown? Does it just give you a graph or will it also explain to you what’s coming on? 

Matt:  It gives you a graph. I was there boiling a kettle and looking at it and I nearly scolded myself [laughter] because I was looking at the data of the kettle. Is data dangerous? Yes, it is [laughter]. I don’t know. I’ll report in as I’ve literally just hooked it up this lunchtime. Bigger news other than my Octopus Mini is that the Climate Change Committee has come out today, folks, and said we are way off target. Of their 50 key indicators, I think 11 are off track and 14 slightly off. There’s a lot of work to be done and Lord Deben, who is the outgoing chair, has been replaced (albeit temporarily) by Professor Piers Forster who came out with an excoriating letter absolutely demolishing the government’s progress over the last year. Have you been following this? Is this something you’ve had a chance to look at? It’s just come out today or whilst we record. 

Rebecca:  Well, it’s out today but I feel like it’s been building for a while. I can’t say that seeing these figures finally has shocked me based on everything that we’ve seen in the run-up to this over the past year. It is shocking. 

Matt:  I’m not shocked but I am appalled. 

Rebecca:  Yes, absolutely. 

Matt:  There you go. That’s pretty damning, isn’t it? Fraser. 

Fraser:  Yeah, I think that’s right. I’d agree with Becky completely. It’s not surprising, especially if you work in any way in the energy policy space or the climate policy space. It’s frustrating more than anything. I appreciate the timelines for these reports as well but on the back of things like the Skidmore review at the end of last year which highlighted that from within the government itself, we’re not doing enough but there is a huge opportunity here if we accelerate this and really put our foot down. To see that we’re still lagging on so many things and things that we know need to change and, in some ways, know what needs to change to get us there is incredibly frustrating. What I would say that I found interesting from this and something that we’ve been big proponents on the pod is, and again from the Climate Change Committee, an emphasis on the need for public engagement and communication. I don’t know if either of you picked up on this as well. 

Rebecca:  Yeah, and I appreciate that it will only go so far in itself. I think what we need to see is engagement and communication alongside better business models, better support from industry and better governance structures. Heating is such a big element in this, right? There’s a huge uncertainty around the future of heating. It feels like everyone that you talk to in the industry knows exactly what we need to be doing but we don’t seem to have that direction from government. Every person I speak to and every householder I speak to is so confused and just relies on what their tradespeople tell them. So I think we need that engagement with people and we need that communication but we need a lot more surrounding that as well. 

Fraser:  Definitely. 

Matt:  Yeah, and just on heating, according to one of the figures in that progress report... 

Rebecca:  Oh, it’s shocking! 

Matt:  ...versus other European nations, we have the lowest numbers of heat pumps installed per head or per capita. 

Rebecca:  Absolutely shocking. 

Matt:  It’s just some basic numbers here and this is one of the things I think the CCC (Climate Change Committee) is so great at. You can’t fix what you can’t measure and it’s kind of pointing out where work needs to be done. The overwhelming message was we’ve treaded water for a year overall and in some respects, we’ve gone backwards in other areas and when you’ve got this locomotive heading down the tracks of climate breakdown, you really are going backwards if you’re not moving forwards. The other point that was kind of snuck away there in the headlines was that some of the solutions that are out there to deliver on these ambitious targets are too technocratic. We’re relying too much on technological innovation and really, we now need to step up and empower and inform households and communities to make low-carbon choices and stronger demand-side policies. We say time and time again that this is now where action needs to be taken and it’s not action that can be done behind the scenes in society around the boardroom tables and by traders investing in this, that or the other. This is stuff which matters around the kitchen table and we’re now there and until we have a government, this one or the next, that is willing to step up and to make that vision and, as you said before, a vision that isn’t just about low carbon but a more prosperous, happy and fairer nation, we’re not going to get there because no politician will want to make those difficult decisions. 

Fraser:  I think that’s right and something that comes through the report, which we know quite well already, is that actually, as much as we see conflict or controversy around climate action or climate measures in the headlines, there is broad support right across society in every corner of the country for, in some cases, quite radical climate action or certainly action that benefits people but that’s not a given. You can’t take that for granted. If you have people who have come to the halfway line to meet you and you’re not there yet as a government with the action that you need to take to make these processes easier, whether that’s a heat pump, an EV, better public transport or whatever it might be, then you might find, especially in the context of the energy crisis, that that appetite isn’t as solid as you think. I think meeting that demand and that appetite is so important at this moment in time. We can’t wait around for that. 

Rebecca:  I did some research back – oh goodness! – before my kids were born. I want to say it was probably about 2016/17... 

Matt:  That’s BT, isn’t it? Before twins. 

Rebecca:  Yeah, exactly [laughter]. I think the findings are exactly the same today and the needle hasn’t moved. It was that delivering a lot of the solutions needs to happen at the local level because you can’t just dangle a financial incentive carrot and expect people to take it up. We really need coordination of a lot of the stuff being delivered and local authorities are so well-placed to do that if only we could resource and support them and devolve powers to them but we need a national vision, strategy and clear policies. I think we’re not going to get there unless we remove it from the politics of all of this. We need evidence-based policies and then we need to see clear strategies for delivering them at local levels and we just don’t have that. 

Matt:  A very important point, Becky, and one I think we ought to have maybe an episode on is about how we might need to change the whole way that we do net zero and the extent to which it’s aligned with politics. Segue alert – you mentioned strategy. One of the things that is tucked away again in the headlines is the need for a strategy around land use change. That’s mostly at the system scale with peatland afforestation but the land that most of us are familiar with is in our backyards if we’re lucky enough to have one. It’s not something you’re probably going to see in the average CCC report but gardens are an important part of that makeup not just for climate, biodiversity and all the rest. Question and quiz alert! Do not read the notes [laughter]. How much of the UK is taken up by gardens? Fingers on buzzers. 

Rebecca:  Didn’t we cover this in one of our previous episodes on land use? It’s a smaller amount than I thought. 

Matt:  Time is ticking. 

Rebecca:  Hang on. Okay, so by ‘gardens’ are we including houses as well?  

Matt:  No, no. 

Rebecca:  Are we including the total land footprint? 

Matt:  Not the built environment. 

Rebecca:  Got it. 

Matt:  The green space out back. Go on, Fraser. Plump for one. Pick a figure... any number. 

Fraser:  I’m with Becky on this. I think it’s probably lower than we think. I’m going to go for 5%. 

Matt:  Okay, Becky? 

Rebecca:  I’m looking out of my window trying to gauge... 

Matt:  [Laughter] Scaling it up. 

Rebecca: ...how much space is taken up by gardens [laughter]. I live somewhere that’s quite rural and so then if I think that actually, most people live in cities and a lot of people don’t have gardens at all... 

Matt:  Gardens are getting smaller too. 

Rebecca:  ...and gardens are getting smaller, I want to halve what Fraser said and say 2.5%. 

Matt:  Right, between you, that’s good. Between you, it’s there or thereabouts. In England, it’s about 5% and that’s from the government’s own land use statistics. Suggestions there, if you’re looking UK-wide, it’s probably lower than that at around 2% which is from the Wildlife Gardening Forum that has put up their own calculations which broadly made sense to me. If anybody has any contestation around that, I’d be glad to hear it. 

Fraser:  I don’t know, Matt, if you have it to hand but why would it be lower outside of England and around the rest of the UK? 

Matt:  We’re getting into the weeds on this, Fraser (pun intended). I’ll come to that. Maybe we need to do a backroom, post-chat debrief but I think it’s about the size of gardens but also the fact that there is more land given over to other stuff. We’ll come to that. If you were to take these estimates as the whole UK, it’s roughly about a fifth of the size of Wales. The garden area for England is more than 4.5 times larger than that of our national nature reserves. 

Rebecca:  Wow! 

Matt:  So this is a big space and, no surprise here, it’s in population-dense areas in the towns and cities that aren’t very biodiverse. I want to put it to you two... for you, what does your garden space mean? Is it a refuge for wildlife? Is it a place to store carbon? Is it a refuge for everything natural or does it play another role? What are the first words that you conjure? 

Rebecca:  Shame [laughter]. 

Matt:  Space for shame? 

Rebecca:  No [laughter].  

Fraser:  It’s where I go to just feel disgusted. 

Matt:  Just shame [laughter]. 

Rebecca:  No, my garden has no grass. Where I live, it’s very hard to grow grass in gardens and it just dies because I’m very coastal. We have a gas-powered barbecue out there, decking and stones and there’s nothing green at all. Actually, my husband is growing courgettes which is very exciting. That’s the most exciting thing that happens in my garden. 

Matt:  Okay, so maybe Kate can offer you a few pointers possibly coming up [laughter]. Fraser, you’ve just moved out into the sticks. I can imagine that you are the laird of a 10,000-hectare estate, deer are running wild and there’s a bubbling brook in the corner. Is this correct? Is this a wildlife refuge? 

Fraser:  Yeah, almost. It’s mostly Americans with rifles. They pay really, really well and so we let them come in and do what they want. No, I have a nice garden space. I have a big bit of grass out the back and then a little garden space out the side where I built myself a couple of raised beds and I’ve planted some things. My planting has gone well in that my vegetables grew really well but I’ve been away for work, so I’ve been really bad at keeping on top of it and actually eating the stuff which would be nice. Half of it is wild. We wanted to keep it nice for local flora and beasties. We’ve noticed locally to us, within our community groups and spaces, that there seems to be a real struggle for biodiversity just now. People are noticing less and less. So we try and do our little bit in the garden as far as possible and we have a little bit that’s well kept for if we have people round and we’re chilling in the sun. Yeah, we try and make it useful. 

Matt:  I think there’s that link there between kids and nature. This year, I’ve left part of the garden at the back there. We’ve got a weird garden. It’s on a hill, so it’s not actually that useable but at the top of it, I’ve just let it go. Elsewhere, I’ve put in a little barrel pond. I took half a whisky barrel, tanked it, sunk it and made that space. 

Rebecca:  Nice! 

Matt:  We’ve got frogs in there and the kids love it. For me, they’re learning but they’re having fun at the same time. We’ve got an expert on this. Don’t listen to me. I’m a pure amateur who just grazes on the odd bit of information. 

Fraser:  You just look like a gardener. 

Matt:  Like I’ve just come in [laughter] a bit frayed around the edges. A poor man’s Monty Don is what they call me, Fraser [laughter]. I think we ought to ask because there’s this notion of how we wild our gardens. Should we wild our gardens? What’s the benefit? I think it goes beyond carbon and all the rest, so I’m hoping that Becky, Fraser and myself are going to get a few top tips. Shall we bring her in? 

Rebecca:  Definitely. 

[Music flourish] 

Kate:  Hello, my name is Kate Bradbury. I’m a garden writer and author specialising in wildlife gardening. One of my books is called Wildlife Gardening for Everyone and Everything which encourages us to do more for the species that live amongst us in our gardens. 

[Music flourish] 

Matt:  Welcome, Kate, and thank you for coming onto the pod. I’ve got six-year-old twins and I told them I had a wildlife gardener coming on and you are immediately the most important person in their lives [laughter]. They’re really excited to have you along to turn our garden into an absolute jungle. Maybe before we get into some top tips about what each of us can do, with or without a garden I might add, perhaps you could offer a bit of background to your life, your work and how you ended up becoming a guru around wilding our gardens and making them more friendly spaces for nature. 

Kate:  Okay, I’ve been gardening since I was about three years old. I pretty much came out of the womb and I was gardening, so it’s been in me for my whole life. In my early 20s, I was the weird one who had the allotment. It was those post-student days when you’re all a bit useless and my partner’s flatmate, Johnny, had thrown out an old duvet into the backyard because it was mouldy rather than throwing it away, washing it or any of the things that you might do with a duvet that was a bit smelly. He just threw it into the backyard. I bumble made a nest in it and we didn’t notice. The neighbours complained and the first we heard of it was the landlord phoning up my partner and saying, ‘If you don’t get rid of this bumble bee nest, we will.’ I thought, ‘Hang on a minute, we can’t do that.’ Suddenly, I became this bumble bee champion. I googled how to move a bumble bee nest. We moved it in the middle of the night because you’re supposed to move them when it’s dark when all the bees have returned to the nest and they don’t sting you at night, although they do if you shine a torch in the nest. They sting you in the face. 

Matt:  These are already good tips [laughter]. 

Kate:  I moved the nest to my allotment and then didn’t do any work for the rest of the year. I just used to go down and stare at the bees. I was just completely in love with them and that started this big love of the natural world. I’ve always been in tune with the natural world. I grew up in Birmingham in a very suburban area and I didn’t have one of these amazing wild childhoods. That bumble bee nest my way in really and suddenly, everything all came together and I started writing about it. 

Matt:  And have enjoyed writing about it because you’ve got various books that you’ve produced but also, beyond that. I think I first became aware of you on my permitted one hour of watching TV over the weekend between three and four on a Sunday. I’d get Gardeners’ World on. None of the family are particularly interested and I think I saw you on there talking about what we should and should not be doing. You’ve had a really exciting career since moving bumble bee nests from duvets [laughter]. 

Kate:  I applied for a job with Gardener’s World magazine and ended up becoming their wildlife editor literally because I wouldn’t stop talking about bumble bees, so they gave me this job [laughter]. I tried to get bumble bees on every page and it worked. I got them in quite a lot and it’s just grown from there really. 

Matt:  Gardeners’ World is an interesting one for those who have watched it. I’ve definitely seen a change in the last few years and people talking a lot more about nature. You’ve been an important part of that. It’s been inspirational for me and others I think to think of their garden beyond just being fruit, veg and flowers really. 

Kate:  I think so and I think more of us are waking up to the importance of our gardens as well as providing habitats for species that are declining with stepping stones habitats and all of those things. Yeah, it’s welcome. I’d like to see more wildlife gardening. 

Rebecca:  I hear a lot about this. I hear a lot of people talking about wild gardens or rewilding and I think, as a concept, I get it but what does that actually mean in practice? If we think about a wild garden, how is that different from one that isn’t? It’s not just an overrun garden, right? There’s something very special about it, so can you maybe give us a hint?  

Matt:  A very low-maintenance garden, yeah [laughter]. 

Kate:  It can be an overrun garden. I think the beauty of gardens is that they’re mosaic habitats. We all have this small space outside our back door which combines to become this enormous habitat. There are 22 million gardens in the UK and they’re all very different. A wild garden ultimately is quite wild. People talk about rewilding. People talk about wildlife gardening. I think it can be what you want it to be really. It can be your vision of what that is. Some people literally don’t do anything to their gardens at all. It’s completely wild and it’s overtaken by brambles which is where the foxes live. It’s very wild. Every so often, we need those habitats dotted in amongst all of the other gardens because that is where you’ll get the foxes breeding. It is where you’ll get the hedgehogs living. You’ll get birds nesting in there as well. Most people don’t want that. Most people want something that is visually appealing and that they can use as well, so then you have areas of long grass perhaps or if you want to keep your lawn short, you grow pollinator plants or you grow native plants for egg-laying moths and butterflies and grow climbers up walls so birds can nest. You’re managing a habitat and you’re bringing in things from wild natural habitats to enhance your garden as a habitat. Is that wild or is it a managed habitat? It’s a very broad term but ultimately, it can be what you want it to be. I think the main thing, from a climate perspective, a biodiversity perspective and a mitigation perspective as well, is that we just grow as many plants as possible because they literally can help with all things. 

Matt:  There’s this really interesting dichotomy between doing absolutely nothing and then over-managing it. I’m just reading Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell’s new book about rewilding and I think they quote George Monbiot who says ‘Somewhere between over-managing and under-managing lies this sweet spot.’ It’s a contested point but in your mind, what would the opposite of a wild garden feel and look like to be sitting in on a summer’s day? 

Kate:  It would have a plastic lawn. It would have no border and no plants. It would just be a very derelict space and a very dry space with no plants in it. I live in a very urban area and lots of people pave their gardens or they cover their gardens in plastic grass for ease. They see their gardens as an outdoor room. I suppose the next level down is that you’ve got a nice lawn but you mow it too often and too short. You grow plants that are double-flowered which may as well be plastic because the bees can’t access flowers when there are too many petals. If you can’t see the central part of the flower, then a bee can’t access the pollen and nectar. You may use pesticides and slug pellets or you don’t let plants complete their life cycle. In a wild garden or a wilder garden, leaving some plants to seed is really beneficial for the plants themselves but also for the birds that eat the seeds. Not many people know that if you don’t cut back your lavender after flowering, then you get sparrows eating the seeds. You get sparrows eating the seeds of lots of other plants as well. Yeah, you might chop everything back. In autumn, it’s always been the tradition for gardeners to just cut everything back and put it on the compost heap but that denies so many species opportunities to hibernate over winter. The extreme, I suppose, is just completely nothing there with plastic, paving or whatever but then there are variations going down which is over-managing. 

Rebecca:  I’m just thinking back to what you were saying about how there is no one specific wild garden and there are lots of different ways of doing it. The different ways might give rise to different species being able to be supported. I’m hearing a lot more about this recently. Is this something that’s sprung up in reaction to something? How important are our gardens in addressing biodiversity and addressing the climate crisis? Is there a reason that seems to be more important now than it was before or is it just that we’re more aware of it now? 

Kate:  I think it’s that we’re more aware of it now. I’ve been banging on about this for years which is that gardens are this untapped resource. We’ve got 22 million gardens in the UK, as I said, and combined, they could be the biggest nature reserve in the country with lots of little linked habitats that provide corridors that connect wider habitats that enable species to move. Lots of species are going to be moving North over the coming years and they need the habitats and the corridors in place to do that. They’re a huge untapped resource and I think as well just the wider acknowledgement of how decimated areas of the countryside are with these pesticides, habitat loss, the grooming out of hedgerows and all of those things. We live in one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world and then we’ve got these gardens and actually, there’s so much we can do. I think the other thing with gardens is the fact that with so many things with the climate crisis and biodiversity loss in the UK, we’re making such painfully slow progress. Whereas, actually, in our gardens, it is all about the power of the individual. You can go out today and plant a tree, dig a pond, not mow your lawn and stop using pesticides. You will make a difference. You can talk to your neighbours and they can do similar things. People stop me. My front garden is a little meadow at the moment and people stop me and talk to me about it and it’s infectious. That is how you create corridors and that’s how you create little biodiversity hotspots within towns and cities. We can literally do that now. We’ve got to wait two years for a General Election but we can do things for biodiversity and for climate in our gardens right now. 

Fraser:  I think that’s a really, really cool thing and I really like that idea. It’s not unique to gardening but I’ve seen it myself with that kind of thing that it can be really infectious. The social and community side I think could be a really powerful gateway for connection and for other climate-type things which we all come back to. I guess something that we see so much of, especially with big, white new-build developments, whether that’s a plastic lawn or more generally, this kind of mindset... this cultural thing where you have to mow your lawn and keep it pristine, it has to look nice and it has to... 

Matt:  The ‘tidy brigade’ is my term for them [laughter]... 

Fraser:  The tidy brigade. 

Matt:  ...but my rudimentary understanding is that this is something that’s a hangover of Victorian gardening and it wasn’t necessarily how we did things. Yeah, sorry, I’m jumping in but that’s what we call them in our house, the tidy brigade [laughter]. I have to fight against it myself. 

Fraser:  Yeah, it’s difficult, right? It’s like growing your hair out when you hit that awkward stage and you think, ‘I have to leave it if it’s going to go anywhere.’ Kate, you’ve already touched on it a little bit with that kind of individual action and talking to people but how do you overcome that wider mindset that a lawn should be pristine, nice and groomed to encourage this? 

Kate:  What I tend to do is talk about all of the amazing species that use the lawn. I get very excited about meadow brown and gatekeeper butterflies coming into my garden, about large skippers and about speckled woods. I find loads of little beetles in the thatch. What did I have breeding last year which was really amazing? I had six-spot Burnet moths breeding in my little garden. There are really amazing things that can happen when you just let your grass grow. It’s more interesting and it’s more fun. I’ve actually moved my meadow into my front garden and I was planting buttercups into my front garden recently and I got some funny looks from people because I was literally planting weeds into what most people consider to be a sea of weeds. I think I have an advantage because of who I am and most neighbours know that, so they don’t tend to challenge me. You can mow around the edge of a little meadow which lets your neighbours know that it’s a deliberate habitat and it’s a managed habitat. You wouldn’t believe it but that works so well. A lot of people have a fear that you’re letting go and bringing the house prices down. There’s this innate fear and actually, if you do something like mow a little rim around it or put a little sign up saying ‘This is for the butterflies’ then people instantly relax and think, ‘Oh, I could do that.’ I’ve had neighbours coming up to me. I’ve got a neighbour who has got a strip of grass outside her house and she said, ‘Oh, I want to do something with it. What should I do?’ I’m now helping her create this meadow. There will always be some people who want to be really tidy and they want everything to be shipshape but actually, the majority of people I think will approach you and will want to do something themselves. They’ve just been waiting for that person to do it first. 

Rebecca:  I love that. So you’re helping your friend who has got a small space of lawn. What do you do? Give us some top tips that anybody could do that’s got a small space to make their garden better. 

Kate:  If you want to have a meadow, I think you need to accept that is that hair growing-out phase that you were talking about, Fraser. It’s going to look a bit rubbish initially. The easiest thing to do is to let it grow and see what turns up. It might not be very beautiful initially. You can plant plug plants in. Plug plants are small plants that arrive in little cells of trays. They’re multi-celled trays and you can plant those into the lawn and they will grow. You can sow seed but that tends not to be very effective and especially when the grass gets growing, it can be quite vigorous. Some people talk about taking off the top few layers of soil and then completely resowing a meadow which I think is a very long-winded way to get ultimately what you want to be achieving which is just some long grass with some wild flowers growing in it. I’d just let the grass grow and plant some plug plants into it. There’s a seed called yellow rattle which is a semi-parasite of grass and that reduces the grass growth. You sow that in August. We’re not very far away from that. There will be lots of seeds available in August to buy. Put that on the lawn and hopefully, that will help decrease the amount of grass growing. Cut it in autumn or spring and remove the grass clippings and that slowly reduces the fertility of the soil which increases the abundance of wildflowers. If you don’t want to do that to your lawn, dig a pond. Ponds are amazing and provide drinking water and breeding habitats for so many species and also the sludge in the bottom of your pond holds more carbon dioxide than the equivalent area of trees. It’s amazing! All of these things also help mitigate against the effects of climate change like flooding. 

Matt:  I dug a pond last winter. It’s only a little barrel pond. It’s an old whisky barrel that I halved, tanked it and sunk it. We put in some tadpoles and a couple of water snails but no fish because they’ll eat everything else. I was amazed by how much stuff just appeared in there. I was expecting all the flies to come in but obviously, I hadn’t really banked on the fact that the flies, hoverflies and dragonflies were going to lay stuff in there. You look and it’s a crucible of life. It’s a primordial soup of stuff [laughter] that I’ve never seen before. My kids are learning but I’m there and I’m fundamentally learning some of the building blocks of life in my own back garden. This is a long-winded way of me getting into what some of the co-benefits are of this and that actually, if you start to do something different with your garden, the learning that you have... how does it maybe start to influence how you look at the world more broadly? It’s almost like you learn something in your garden that you can take outside of your garden and it starts to change the way that you think. I don’t know whether that’s something you’ve found personally or you’ve seen in other people that you’ve been helping. 

Kate:  Absolutely. I mean our gardens are little windows to the natural world, aren’t they? We see a bee on a flower. We start to notice things. We start to notice when the bees come out of hibernation. We start to notice which flowers the bees feed from. We notice when the birds start courting and when they start nesting and gathering nest material. If we’re lucky enough to get birds nesting in our gardens, we can watch that whole process. It connects us to our gardens. It connects us to the wider landscape. We understand more. I think gardeners more than anyone, apart from those who are very clued up with the climate crisis, are so aware of when it doesn’t rain. When it doesn’t rain, everything falls apart. I’m going to my allotment every day at the moment to water it because we haven’t had rain for so long. I’m acutely aware that my plants aren’t getting water but the soil is baked, the blackbirds haven’t been able to get enough worms to feed their young and the robins have also been struggling. Three or four weeks ago, when it was key bird-nesting season, there were loads of reports of bird chicks dying in the nest because they couldn’t get enough moisture. Baby birds don’t drink water but they get their moisture from caterpillars and worms and if they can’t get caterpillars and worms because it’s too dry, they’re going to starve in the nest. As a gardener and as someone who is connected to that landscape, whether you’re a gardener or not and if you have a garden and you observe what’s going on in your garden, you connect to that and you understand that the changes in the weather and the climate are directly affecting things now. Also, that gives you the power to be able to do something about it. I had some robins nesting in my garden. It was really dry and I saw a robin take a sunflower heart out of the bird feeder, dip it in the bird bath and take it back to its nest. I started getting worms out of the compost bin and leaving them in little piles all over the garden and also got some mealworms, soaked them and left them in the bird bath for it to take to their young. All five chicks fledged and they were fine. They were fine because I recognised what was happening and I stepped in to help them. We can all do that. We can all be little stewards. We can all help. We can all do stuff to help. 

Rebecca:  I love this. I want to ask you about my garden [laughter]. This is brilliant. This is actually an ongoing debate and I... 

Matt:  We haven’t brought you on for a free consultation [laughter]. 

Rebecca:  We’re in a situation where it’s hard to grow and we don’t have much space. There are probably a lot of people who don’t even have gardens as well that might have maybe just balcony spaces, concrete bases, window boxes and so on. What can people do to engage that don’t have the capacity to grow grass or don’t have the space to do something like we’ve been talking about so far? 

Kate:  If you haven’t got a garden or if you’ve got something that’s decked or paved, you’re limited but think about corridors that certain species need to move to other habitats. For example, I live in Brighton on the coast and lots of species come in. When they migrate, they arrive in Brighton, they spend a few days in the garden and then they move on further inland. 

Matt:  Could you give us an example maybe? 

Kate:  I get lots of birds coming in like chiffchaffs in spring and willow warblers but also hummingbird hawk-moths which used to be a migrant bird but it’s now overwintering here and it had a very good year last year in the drought because it’s a Mediterranean species and can cope with a dry climate. That’s going to be a resident species very soon in the UK. If you’ve got a window box, a doorstep, a small paved garden, a balcony or a patio, you can grow plants in pots. Plants in pots tend to need more water because they have a smaller area of soil for their roots to penetrate. I would always recommend growing Mediterranean herbs. You can grow things like rosemary, lavender, oregano, chives, thyme and all of those things in pots. You can use those leaves in your cooking but you can also let them flower and they produce amazing flowers. Grow mint separately. They have some of the most amazing flowers for pollinators. Oregano has some of the best butterfly flowers you can grow. You can do stuff like that. You can create little nectar bars so that they can refuel on their way to somewhere else. You can also have a little bird bath so that the birds can come in and have a little bath and then move on. You can even grow some native plants so that egg-laying moths can complete their life cycle. 

Fraser:  I was laughing, Kate, at your point about mint there. This is my first year planting anything. I happened to marry a solicitor and we got a nice garden. 

Rebecca:  Lucky you! [Laughter] 

Fraser:  I put mint in with some other herbs thinking I’d have a box of herbs. I have a box of mint. That is now what I have and everything else is somewhere buried beneath. What I think was interesting and I guess calling back to what you talked about was this point around leadership and sharing information and lessons. My gateway into this... I was never interested in gardening all my life really but my grandfather was and he worked in voluntary organisations, and still does in his retirement, growing food at the local allotment to then provide to the local foodbank. There’s this kind of social tie to it by serving the needs of the community and bringing the community together around it which was more my entry point and my interest. I guess from that perspective, how powerful is the gardening conversation as something that can build ties locally and can be at the heart of communities? We see more and more community gardening as well for people who maybe don’t have their own space. How important do you see that? Like Matt talked about earlier, what do those co-benefits look like? 

Kate:  It’s huge. It’s absolutely huge. The power of community, as we all know, is absolutely amazing. I think food growing as a way into that is phenomenal. Going forward, we all need to be growing more of our own food, don’t we? Teaching the community to grow food is hugely important as is getting everybody involved and getting everybody involved in little bioblitzes like counting hoverflies and bees and finding out what’s going on. It’s about putting up bird feeders and seeing what arrives. It gets people interested and it gives people the confidence to go and do that at home as well. Like you say, it’s just lovely things like growing food to donate to foodbanks and all of that stuff. Where my allotment is, we’ve got a little foodbank and we all give our surplus veg to the foodbank and people come and get it on a Sunday. It’s a really lovely community space and there are lots of little community plots going on around there as well. There are lots of very good things happening. Again, if you don’t have a garden, you can get involved with one of those things. I’m sure there’s loads of stuff locally that you could find. 

Matt:  I suspect there’s a whole element here about trying to understand the baseline of how wild our gardens are and whether they’re getting better or worse. Becky pointed out that there seems to be a raising-level watermark of awareness but are we actually seeing changes on the ground or not? 

Kate:  Are we seeing changes in terms of increases in populations of species? No, I’m afraid. I think what’s happening is that there is a polarisation at the moment. There’s still an increasing trend for plastic grass and paving but there is also an increasing trend for doing wilder things to our gardens. At the moment, it seems to be polarising. I hope that with a bit of love and encouragement, we can get the plastic and paving gang to come and join the wilding gang and we can all do really amazing things locally and bring wildlife back to our cities and our towns. It’s hard to quantify what is happening with the insect populations in our gardens because nature reserves and other open areas are visited by recorders and ecologists who do regular transects and they count what’s going on. In our gardens, no one is going to knock on your door and ask to come and count all of the wildlife in there. That’s up to you. The only way people are going to know what’s going on in your garden is if you tell them. I record species with iRecord which is similar to iNaturalist and I have species lists. I don’t measure the abundance of species but I just record the species lists and I think the more people who do that, the more people who learn how to identify things and record them, it lets scientists know what’s going on. Obviously, we’re going to have loads of species coming over from the Continent. We’re going to have loads of species from the South moving North. There’s going to be a lot of change with lots of species dying out and some species increasing. 

Matt:  Yeah, I was sounding off on Twitter the other day saying, ‘Oh, it’s the first time I’ve ever heard oyster catchers.’ I’ve heard them constantly this year and for all the years I’ve lived here, I’ve never heard them. I was saying, ‘Is that a good sign or a bad sign?’ People were straightaway saying, ‘Actually, it’s probably a bad sign. It sounds like something has been disturbed somewhere.’ I guess there are two points. Those observations, if they’re in your garden, are not necessarily a good thing if there’s a displacement and second is that the gardens are interconnected with the rest of our landscape. I’m flanked by two golf courses and so it’s the extent to which I’m feeding them or they’re feeding me with anything worthwhile and wild. I don’t know. Maybe I can put that to you before we finish. 

Kate:  Yeah, absolutely. Lots of people see their garden as being this small space outside their backdoor but to all of the wildlife, it’s not. It’s part of the wider landscape. My wider landscape includes a little park and neighbouring gardens but also the high street and the bins. It’s a very urban environment. That’s where I live and it’s very urban. That connects though because I’m not too far from the South Downs. Actually, the more of us that can create corridors and do wild things in our gardens, the more we can actually create little corridors going up to the South Downs which is really beneficial. The wider landscape might be a flood plain or some chalky downland or woodland and your garden will benefit from the species that live in those but that habitat could potentially benefit from what you’re doing in your garden as well. I think it’s really important to take a wider look and see where you are. Certainly, looking at what species are local to you and seeing if you can do something for them in your garden is really exciting. 

Rebecca:  My kids went to an outdoor nursery and we used to have the app where they could, through the leaves, identify which trees they were looking at. They were so engaged in all of that. I then take them to school and it’s just concrete everywhere. There is nothing. I just think there is such a missed opportunity there around really engaging swathes of our community in these shared learnings and shared opportunities. We could keep talking to you for ages. As Matt said, it’s not a self-help podcast but I feel like I could ask you so many questions [laughter] but I know we’re coming up on time. Thinking about all of these different areas, some people have gardens and some people don’t. Some people have some shared spaces. If you could make a single recommendation to people who have listened to the conversation and are keen to get involved in some way, in 30 seconds, what would be your number one recommendation to them? 

Kate:  The number one recommendation is to grow more plants. If you’ve got a wall, cover it with plants and grow climbers. If you’ve got a balcony, have pots of plants. We need more plants to support wildlife, plants to absorb water and plants to cool ambient temperatures. We all need to grow more plants and that would be my takeaway. 

Matt:  Thank you so much. We’ve all taken copious notes [laughter]. Please do check out Kate’s books and find her on her Twitter account @KateBradbury but in particular, Wildlife Gardening for Everyone and Everything. Kate, thank you so much for coming along. It’s been a real pleasure. 

Kate:  Thanks so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure too. 

[Music flourish] 

Fraser:  You’ve been listening to Local Zero. Please take a minute if you can to subscribe to the pod. Hit the follow or subscribe button wherever you listen to us and if you know anybody who might enjoy it, word of mouth is a really powerful tool as we’ve heard in today’s episode. 

Matt:  So if you haven’t already, please take a minute to find and follow us on Twitter @LocalZeroPod to get involved with discussions over there. Also, and increasingly a few of you have been doing this, please email us at LocalZeroPod@gmail.com if you want to share some longer thoughts. We’re always open to suggestions for potential episodes but for now, thank you and goodbye. 

Rebecca:  Bye. 

Fraser:  Bye, bye. 

[Music flourish] 

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