The Garden Jungle by Dave Goulson review – gardening to save the planetby Dave Goulson

From ponds to planting … how to transform your garden into a refuge for threatened flora and fauna

One of the most evocative and powerful slogans of the 1968 Paris revolts was sous les pavés, la plage – beneath the pavement lies the beach. Today in the UK, where more than three quarters of us live in cities, many people have lost touch with the natural world. They have forgotten the earth beneath their feet. Dave Goulson wants to reverse that dangerous trend and reconnect us with the wildlife that lives under our noses, in our gardens and parks: “the jungle that lurks just outside your back door”.

In the last 30 years, Goulson – a professor of biology who specialises in bumblebee ecology and founded the Bumblebee Conservation Trust – has had six different gardens, from “a pocket-handkerchief rectangle” to his current one, a “slightly unkempt but delightful” two acres. But every garden, large or small, is teeming with life, from the worms to the birds and butterflies. Beginning in the 1970s, Jennifer Owen – “one of the great heroines of wildlife gardening” – recorded the plants and creatures living in her little Leicester garden. In 35 years she found 2,673 species.

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from Home And Garden | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2K5Kob9
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