A week's answer
Apr. 19th, 2007 03:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunnBefore I had to zoom away to Boston, I posted casually in ladyofastolat's journal in praise of dandelions. She responded...
Sadly, wildlife doesn't come to the garden
I started writing a reply to this, but it's one of those things that 'required a weeks answer, or none' and I only just finished thinking it over. By which time it was far too long for a comment so I either had to throw it away or post it here. So I hope she will forgive me for that because it kind of moved on...
Any garden is a potential (and probably real) wildlife habitat. Even a tiny one. Wildlife is not composed only of what Gerald Durrell labelled 'charismatic megafauna' such as lions and tigers (or in the UK, badgers, otters, wildcats, eagles, deer). It's a whole structure: even if you *have* charismatic megafauna the chances are that few people know about it, because there are never many of them about and in environments with people in, they are very good at keeping out of the way.
What you see in most gardens is the smaller building blocks of the ecosystem, which are just as delicate and important and in many cases just as beautiful, and which are so, so easy to sweep away because people think it's important to be tidy. Tidy! Who destroys a world out of tidiness...?
In the garden whose owner has unwarily precipitated this rant ( :-p ), a couple of weeks back, I saw bumblebees, butterflies and birds. I saw a Small Blue butterfly and 2 Orange Tips on the way to the Co-op. I bet there are lots of moths, beetles, worms and other invertebrates too. In the lawn were amazing mosses and creeping flowering weeds, and in the border there were lots of flowering plants, native and imported, providing early nectar for the bees.
The seeds of the dandelion are excellent for goldfinches and siskins. An untreated, mown-from-time to time lawn rich with weeds and worms means it's likely to be a really useful food habitat for the blackbird (yes, there is a blackbird. I saw him). The grass was a bit scratched up in places: yes, that's partly the cats, but I'd be amazed if it wasn't the blackbird and robins as well.
One small garden habitat may not support much on its own, but grouped together in cheerful suburbs, small gardens are not just for people. In fact, a lot of the time they are better habitats than farmland, particularly in the areas where the landscape makes massive pesticide powered agriculture economic.
Things like use of garden pesticides on small gardens where each gardener is thinking that their contribution to the whole is minimal, really do make a difference. We as a society are building more and more houses closer and closer,covering the areas between in decking and gravel, and then treating those areas with weedkillers and pesticides. Along our roads we string car parks and great tin boxes, connected by a handful of bushes selected not for their wildlife value, but their ease of management. We are making a desert inch by inch.
When I first lived in Mickle Trafford in Cheshire, there was a really disturbing lack of birds. The land around had been drained and treated, most houses had a lawn that was a monoculture of one or two species of grass, and treated for weeds, for worms, for anything that might interrupt the sameness. No bluetits, but plenty of blue from the endless bloody slug pellets strewn everywhere. One day I was out walking and the only bird I saw was a dead woodpigeon on someone's porch. It had a slug pellet in its beak. OK, it might have been a coincidence. Might.
The birds started to come back by the time we left there, but still, so few, so few species. I had a nightmare with pests in that garden, because the whole area's system was so totally out of kilter. The soil structure was wrong (not enough worms, because of lack of organic matter in the soil - all sent off to the tip), in the gardens where there were no pesticides used (mine) there were plagues of blackfly, sawfly, slugs, lily beetle - because all the natural predators of those pests had had their populations suppressed.
The garden was big enough on its own to support unstable breed-crash cycles of insects blown in from outside the immediate area or emerging from the tiny local populations that couldn't be completely eradicated, but not big enough to support the predators (such as bluetits and ladybirds) that would have kept the populations to a manageable size. And of course there were no larger predators (charismatic megafauna) because there was no supporting structure. There were a few urban foxes, living out of bins. Foxes are not supposed to live out of bins. A rural fox is a lovely thing, but you don't get a fox in fabulous condition on a diet of old potato chips...
A good number of lovely laid-back neighbours with a lax attitude to tidy-garden-syndrome was what that area needed to get back to having a proper ecosystem, a proper beauty. A garden isn't a fixed thing: it should move, and that means letting go a bit and accepting that not everything will always be quite how you planned...
Heavens. I went on and on. See me rant...
Sadly, wildlife doesn't come to the garden
I started writing a reply to this, but it's one of those things that 'required a weeks answer, or none' and I only just finished thinking it over. By which time it was far too long for a comment so I either had to throw it away or post it here. So I hope she will forgive me for that because it kind of moved on...
Any garden is a potential (and probably real) wildlife habitat. Even a tiny one. Wildlife is not composed only of what Gerald Durrell labelled 'charismatic megafauna' such as lions and tigers (or in the UK, badgers, otters, wildcats, eagles, deer). It's a whole structure: even if you *have* charismatic megafauna the chances are that few people know about it, because there are never many of them about and in environments with people in, they are very good at keeping out of the way.
What you see in most gardens is the smaller building blocks of the ecosystem, which are just as delicate and important and in many cases just as beautiful, and which are so, so easy to sweep away because people think it's important to be tidy. Tidy! Who destroys a world out of tidiness...?
In the garden whose owner has unwarily precipitated this rant ( :-p ), a couple of weeks back, I saw bumblebees, butterflies and birds. I saw a Small Blue butterfly and 2 Orange Tips on the way to the Co-op. I bet there are lots of moths, beetles, worms and other invertebrates too. In the lawn were amazing mosses and creeping flowering weeds, and in the border there were lots of flowering plants, native and imported, providing early nectar for the bees.
The seeds of the dandelion are excellent for goldfinches and siskins. An untreated, mown-from-time to time lawn rich with weeds and worms means it's likely to be a really useful food habitat for the blackbird (yes, there is a blackbird. I saw him). The grass was a bit scratched up in places: yes, that's partly the cats, but I'd be amazed if it wasn't the blackbird and robins as well.
One small garden habitat may not support much on its own, but grouped together in cheerful suburbs, small gardens are not just for people. In fact, a lot of the time they are better habitats than farmland, particularly in the areas where the landscape makes massive pesticide powered agriculture economic.
Things like use of garden pesticides on small gardens where each gardener is thinking that their contribution to the whole is minimal, really do make a difference. We as a society are building more and more houses closer and closer,covering the areas between in decking and gravel, and then treating those areas with weedkillers and pesticides. Along our roads we string car parks and great tin boxes, connected by a handful of bushes selected not for their wildlife value, but their ease of management. We are making a desert inch by inch.
When I first lived in Mickle Trafford in Cheshire, there was a really disturbing lack of birds. The land around had been drained and treated, most houses had a lawn that was a monoculture of one or two species of grass, and treated for weeds, for worms, for anything that might interrupt the sameness. No bluetits, but plenty of blue from the endless bloody slug pellets strewn everywhere. One day I was out walking and the only bird I saw was a dead woodpigeon on someone's porch. It had a slug pellet in its beak. OK, it might have been a coincidence. Might.
The birds started to come back by the time we left there, but still, so few, so few species. I had a nightmare with pests in that garden, because the whole area's system was so totally out of kilter. The soil structure was wrong (not enough worms, because of lack of organic matter in the soil - all sent off to the tip), in the gardens where there were no pesticides used (mine) there were plagues of blackfly, sawfly, slugs, lily beetle - because all the natural predators of those pests had had their populations suppressed.
The garden was big enough on its own to support unstable breed-crash cycles of insects blown in from outside the immediate area or emerging from the tiny local populations that couldn't be completely eradicated, but not big enough to support the predators (such as bluetits and ladybirds) that would have kept the populations to a manageable size. And of course there were no larger predators (charismatic megafauna) because there was no supporting structure. There were a few urban foxes, living out of bins. Foxes are not supposed to live out of bins. A rural fox is a lovely thing, but you don't get a fox in fabulous condition on a diet of old potato chips...
A good number of lovely laid-back neighbours with a lax attitude to tidy-garden-syndrome was what that area needed to get back to having a proper ecosystem, a proper beauty. A garden isn't a fixed thing: it should move, and that means letting go a bit and accepting that not everything will always be quite how you planned...
Heavens. I went on and on. See me rant...
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no subject
Date: 2007-04-19 04:13 pm (UTC)When I made my comment, I was really thinking about just after we moved in - before we had cats. We were the first house to be inhabited on our road, and for months - years, really - lived on an active and very noisy building site. We had a bird bath, and bird feeders, but nobody came. I compared it with my Mum's house, where she has about 8 bird feeders, two bird tables and 4 bird baths, and usually around 40 birds in the garden at any one time. Our garden felt pathetic. I gave it up as a lost cause - but, really, I should have persisted. I hesitate to do so now, though, post cat. We've found a couple of dead birds inside, which is horrid. I watch that very brave blackbird hop over the lawn, and dread the day I'll find his body in the hall.
Plus we seem to have a tail-less lizard...
no subject
Date: 2007-04-19 05:13 pm (UTC)Neuromancer
no subject
Date: 2007-04-19 05:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-19 05:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-19 05:14 pm (UTC)I know what you mean about bird feeders though: we've stopped actively feeding birds in our garden as well just because it's so grim finding little corpses and having tempted them down in to range.
I honestly believe (backed by the RSPB) that most of the species that are predated are not being seriously damaged in terms of population numbers: small birds and mammals are supposed to be prey species, and most cats are not hugely successful predators compared with, say a stoat or something. Still, it's still nasty for the individuals involved.
no subject
Date: 2007-04-19 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-19 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-19 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-19 10:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-19 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-04-20 10:20 am (UTC)I am certainly not against the removal of brambles: nice though the berries are, they straggle and strangle and scratch in a very annoying manner, and you do need space to accommodate them. Likewise nettles are all very well in their place (which to my mind is far away from anywhere you might need to go regularly: we have some that live in a big hedge, and I don't let them come into the main garden).
But there are so many 'weeds' that are very beautiful and easy to live with, yet seem to be considered undesirable for no obvious reason. Germander speedwell is one that I feel particularly passionate about.
Just look at it! How is a plain green lawn better than that?!!
Or Hawkweed: we have quite a bit of that, later in the year, and I think it's just stunning (and a brilliant nectar source):
no subject
Date: 2007-04-20 12:57 pm (UTC)