Recent content in Blog on Nature Works
Remind me again why I chose a career out standing in my field? Tonight was the inaugural event at the 14th European Conference on Ecological Restoration, an ice-breaker event with free wine and beer and delicious snacks.
Day 1 of the 3 day journey from West Wales to the Ecological Restoration conference in Estonia. Somebody nationalise these trains. The first day involved driving to Carmarthen to catch a train to London Paddington, then a Tube to Tottenham to stay with absent friends.
Kicking the tyres on my blog before setting off for Estonia I am headed to Estonia on Saturday for SERE24, the 14th European Conference on Ecological Restoration, to learn about wood meadows and restoring nature.
Imagine a densely wood meadow combined with a cup of delicious beverage and your favourite cake, that is the idea behind the Wood Meadow Café! What is a wood meadow? Well, at its simplest, it’s roughly 40% mown meadow and 60% stands of trees and shrubs.
A quick trip to a lovely local nursery for just a couple of hedging plants soon expanded Went to see Aisha at Ty Rhos Trees on Saturday. We supposed to be picking up a few privet hedging plants.
I’ve started a new part-time job as Biodiversity Assistant, and found some rather cool software in the process I started a new part-time job a couple of weeks ago as a Biodiversitiy Assistant for Ceredigion Council, and it’s been pretty full on.
Tim Johnson of the Native Plant Trust on Margaret Roach’s A Way To Garden podcast Bio-productive gardens with Tim Johnson from the Native Plant Trust, on Margaret Roach’s A Way To Garden podcast.
Very inspirational blog post about improving UK school meals. It is a lot of work but worth it Hodmedod’s grow UK grain and pulses, and they are doing a lot of what I consider essential work in food security & sovereignty, soil preservation, education and health.
New film about soil. Dig it. Just seen this film advertised, Six Inches of Soil (I originally misttyped that as Oil, oh, the irony).
A garden is where a multitude of ideas, thoughts, lives, intentions, accidents and worlds all conjoin in living surprise Gardens are so many different things to so many different people and so many different life-forms.
I bought a cheap drone for making garden plans, now I need to figure out how to create an orthomosaic map! I bought a DJI Mini 2 SE drone to take photos of gardens, so that I can more easily create garden designs and planting plans.
Ivy is a fantastic wildlife plant but do watch out where it’s growing Ivy (Hedera helix) is a fantastic wildlife plant (supporting over 106 species of insect, as evergreen habitat, for its flowers and its berries.
Me and a client came up with a brilliant idea for ceramic hoverfly lagoons Buzzclub, a citizen science wildlife gardening club based at Sussex University, do some lovely work with wildlife gardening.
What does politics and ideology have to do with gardens? politics with a lowercase ‘p’—as opposed to Party Politics—is everywhere. The shifting sands of power and network of relationships in every society.
Climate Assemblies are a thing, isn’t it time for a companion Biodversity Assembly? ? I went to a KNOCA (Knowledge Network on Climate Assemblies) called Unheard Voices, very interesting.
I went to a brilliant Ceredigion Nature Partnership meeting the other day, this is a great summary by Dr Katy Peat I went to a great Ceredigion Nature Partnership online meeting last week.
Reference links for Community Assemblies for young people, via Katie Reid I went to KNOCA (knowledge network on climate assemblies) workshop Unheard Voices the other day, made contact with Katie Reid, who is doing a workshop on Young People’s Assemblies for KNOCA soon.
A friend’s idea about training a Blackberry I was chatting with a forest garden friend of mine about why his neighbour is tying his Hazel poles together.
Busy building a website for the Hope Garden and thinking that although it looks like the same work as for any other ‘business’, the end goal is different I am building a website for the Hope Garden project, “A Climate Assembly at the heart of a wildlife forest garden 💚”.
The first test flight of the new drone! It didn’t crash. I bought a drone for photos of garden plans. Originally I thought a drone would only be useful for large gardens but I really think it’ll be an invaluable way of documenting planting plans.
I went to a workshop yesterday and a collage the day before, about deliberative democracy with a big dose of biodiversity I went to a 3 hour workshop yesterday, Workshop on Hearing Unheard Voices: Listening to future generations and nonhuman nature in Climate Assemblies.
How feasible is Chestnut miso? Fermented European food. For some reason, I’m being drawn towards fermented foods: sauerkraut, kimchi, sourdough, miso.
How about small chunks of iterative learning material for creating a wildlife forest garden? I had been learning Welsh using SaySomethingIn.com, the language learning system was a small amount of spoken Welsh every day, so that you eventually start speaking without thinking, and you learn the writing later.
I had a brilliant email reply from Linda at Buzz Club answering some of my habitat questions John Little is one of my favourite gardeners and hole diggers, as he is constantly experiments with wildlife habitat and aesthetic designs (see his Tiktok channel).
Years ago, I was a web designer, and where people wanted to go was a key idea in web design. The same applies to garden design. I took a trip to the health centre today, for a 10 tonnes of hardcore shoulder injury I sustained a couple of years ago.
Bark added to muddy seating area, chicken wire tree guards On Friday 15th December, I added a trailer load of bark mulch to the upper seating area at the Syra woodland garden.
How much does a pavement (sidewalk) cost? About £360 per metre. I’m working on a Hope Garden project at my local allotment.
Workshop 2 in the Community Assembly training was engaging communities I have started the Trust The People free Community Assembly course.
What we ask for makes a differnce I’m working on an RHS show garden with a Community Assembly in the heart of a wildlife forest garden.
These are my most favourite tools, really here for my own reference! Most used & favourite Felco 2 secateurs with Housolution polyurethane sheath Silky F180 folding saw, with replaceable blade Niwaki hori-hori knife & canvas sheath Showa 350R 10/XL gloves Spear & Jackson solid socket tree spade Wishlist Silky Zubat 330 with belt clip scabbard Niwaki GR Pro secateurs — I like Felco secateurs as…
A heavy birdbath that can be easily cleaned is great for birds & can be made from natural materials I was reading about birdbaths in the New York Times (warning: paywall).
Overburden is the gravelly, claggy stuff dug up around the main aggregate in a quarry. It can be used as a binding foundation for paths. Syra is a woodland forest garden project on the west facing side of a Carmarthenshire hill.
A full allotment is 250m² Just a quick note to myself, according to The National Allotment Society, a UK allotment is 10 poles, which is 250m².
Grass is a high maintenance & high energy to maintain, and requires a bump of energy to convert it into any type of garden I sketched this graph a few years ago, to illustrate to a client that maintaining grass is high energy, either with a machine or a scythe.
And it’s not just me, pretty much every self-employed person, gardener & designer in the land is too! For bleeding edge words and acronyms I now depend upon my teenage son.
I am putting portoflio photos on Mastodon using threads & notification feature I post a lot of photos on my Mastodon account @natureworks@mas.
I want to write a book, and Radical Horticulture might be that book I am not sure why but I want to write a book.
What is the alternative to the flawed existing economic model? Martin Crawford asked the question about food forests and economics:
Nut trees are an integral part of any community garden but there are not many nutteries in the UK My vision for a resilient community garden is a wildlife allotment, a covered social space, and a community orchard, which includes nut trees and edible shrubs.
Some thoughts and musings on a (not really so) Every garden can be a #WildlifeGarden Use #NativePlants where possible Create habitat where you can Grow #WildFlowers & perennial crops for humans Extend garden principles of mutual aid into the commons Common land Accessible, affordable Create edible ecosystems Prerequisites #Organic #PeatFree #PlantBased Local & recycled materials Minimal energy…
My orchardist friend Martin Hayes is using Robinia tree stakes, apparently lasting 25 years Very interesting to hear that Black Locust (Robinia pseudoacacia) can is long lasting (25 years) and very suitable for tree stakes.
Sally Bower’s 2021 RHS Bursary report on growing in rubble substrate Landscape designer Sally Bower has a very lovely study tour report about growing in low nutrient substrates.
Many recycled aggregates are low fertility and sterile, meaning they’re an ideal growing substrate for many native plants and wild flowers I’m a big fan of John Little’s work on creating wildlife habitat diversity using recycled building “waste”.
A quick visit to the best nursery in the whole of Wales!! I picked up some Hemp Agrimony and Betony today for clients from Celtic Wild Flowers.
Martin Crawford’s intro to the second Forest Garden Symposium asks a central question The 2nd International Forest Garden / Food Forest Symposium is available online, totally free.
Zero-carbon architect and building exhibition The architect Yasmeen Lari has an exhibition at Architekturzentrum Wien.
More reactionary horticulture in the media And there’s more in the Reactionary Horticulture saga. Luckily, ecological landscaper Rebecca McMackin has been following it in her latest newsletter Sturgeon Moon.
A hole in the ground where you borrow soil I went out to the Syra project the other day (2 acre south west facing forest garden on steepish slope), and I spoke with Matt from West Wales Trails who is landscaping the paths.
Gardens are irrevocably connected to society, and we need a radical shake-up of both I read Benjamin Vogt’s A New Garden Ethic a few years ago (it’s brililant, have a read), and he continues joining up the dots between society, politics, economics and gardening with native plants.
Online workshop today about Community Assemblies, which are at the heart of a garden design I’m working on Trust The People ran an online workshop about Community Assemblies. Their manual is available here.