The Welsh Utopia

Amser maith yn ôl / A long time ago.

The shallow sea in Cardigan Bay, from Pen Llŷn in the north to Ceredigion in the west, was once a mix of forests, lakes, rivers, swamps and saltmarsh. The nomadic people who lived there cared for their land, yet never thought they owned it. They foraged and hunted, treated animals as equals and left offerings in exchange for anything they took. This was the land of Plant Rhys Ddwfn, the Children of Rhys the Deep. Not deep below the sea – Rhys was a thinker, a dreamer, a philosopher.

He reasoned that if the mean giants who lived in the mountains ever saw his land, they would destroy it. So, he devised a cunning plan. He planted a hedge of herbs along what is now the west Welsh coast, to hide his land from their prying eyes.

Only if the giants stood on the one small clump of this herb that grew away from the coast would they see Rhys’ world, but as they had no idea where this piece of turf was, all they saw was rain.

Rhys’ children cared for each other, their numbers grew, food became scarce, and the giants heard the distant rumble of empty bellies, although they mistook it for the anger of the gods.

They turned to crafts, became toolmakers, wood carvers and basket makers, and travelled by sea to the markets in Ceredigion to trade their goods – but as soon as they were seen, prices went up. They traded with Gruffydd ap Einion, a radical free-thinker who dreamed of a fairer world. After many years, they took him to the clump of herbs, where he saw Rhys’ land with all the knowledge and wisdom in the world archived safely in forests and books. Preachers and politicians were few. Choughs and kestrels hung in the air. The land was rich beyond dreams, the utopia he had long dreamed of.

Gruffydd asked how they kept themselves safe from crime, and they explained that Rhys’ herbs hid them from an angry creature with horns, snakes and a sword that spewed toxic venom at anything it disagreed with.

When Gruffydd stepped away from the herbs, he lost sight of Rhys’ land, though he never forgot there was a better world out there in Cardigan Bay. Rhys’ children traded with their friend all his life, until one day they came to the market to find Gruffydd’s hair had turned to snow and he had passed over to the Otherworld.

As the floodwaters lapped at their feet, Rhys’ children turned to a nomadic life, following the seasons and tracks of animals along the water’s edge, fishing and foraging, carrying the bones of their ancestors to remember their stories. For pity the people who have forgotten their myths.

Marsh Girl

Seven thousand years ago, Môrwen was born into this world of rising floodwaters as one of Rhys’ children. She fishes for salmon, forages for hazelnuts, scavenges for honey, digs for celandine tubers, carves wooden spoons from holly, weaves baskets from rushes, draws animals on stone with charcoal and makes pigments from crushed rock. She knows the movements of the deer herd and follows their tracks and scents through the forest. She collects antlers shed by the old stags and sharpens the points into axe-heads with flint tools. She has no need to keep deer in enclosures – they come when she calls. She is sharp as flint, moulded from the dust of time. She has spent so much of her life up to her waist in water, friends call her Marsh Girl.

In the evenings Môrwen huddles at Nan’s feet to hear stories of the mean giants of the mountains, the mischievous old women who make potions from the herbs of the forest, the green man of no one’s land, and the girls who transform into fish, birds and wolves. She draws mammoths chased by little stick men who glory in the spilling of blood and praise themselves in poetry and song. She has never seen a mammoth, but Nan’s words paint them in her imagination. They become real when she sketches on rocks, until the rain and floods wash them away.

One day Môrwen is foraging along the riverbank when a storm gathers out to sea, waves crash over the beach, and the forest fills with floodwater. She runs for high ground but slips into the swamp and sinks up to her shoulders. She grabs hold of a clump of tough reeds and bends her knees to stop herself being sucked further into the wet peat. She hangs there for what seems like hours until the wind abates and she hauls herself on to the dry forest floor, where she lies breathless, staring at the stars.

Thoughts swish round her mind like waves. Is the sea having a laugh? Why are Rhys’ children losing their way of life to the floods? Will the sun set fire to the trees? Do her descendants have answers in the future? She knows there is a future, for she has stepped through the veil on Calan Gaeaf before.

The Cardigan Bay Mermaids

Amser maith yn ôl / A long time ago.

In the Old Welsh Dreamtime, when people were people and fish were fish, three brothers lived in a yellow stone farmhouse overlooking the forests and swamps of Cardigan Bay. Eldest Brother ploughed the land and had honey on his bread, Middle Brother farmed the sea and had salt in his porridge, whilst Little Brother wandered the old Welsh Tramping Road with a tune on his lips, head in the clouds and feet in the mud, and when his belly rumbled he asked his brothers for food. The two hard working brothers grumbled.

‘Little Brother?’ said Eldest Brother, holding a small pig on a rope, ‘Take this enchanted pig, sell it for money – and don’t swap it for anything that makes wishes come true! You know what happens to wishes in fairy tales?’

Little Brother nodded and set off along the Old Welsh Tramping Road with a tune on his lips, an enchanted pig on a rope and no thoughts about wishes in fairy tales. He walked until he came to a deep dark wood, and in the middle of the wood found a crooked lime-washed house with a red door. In the doorway stood an old woman with a thousand wrinkles round her eyes and a single yellow tooth wobbling unnervingly in thebreeze from her breath.

‘Would you like to buy an enchanted pig?’ asked Little Brother. The woman pulled on the one grey hair in the middle of her chin, and drooled. ‘Mmm, roast pork! I’ll swap your pig for my enchanted handmill. It will make your wildest wishes come true.’ The pig hid behind Little Brother’s legs.

Little Brother completely forgot about wishes in fairy tales, and the deal was done. He set off back along the Old Welsh Tramping Road to the shores of Cardigan Bay with a tune on his lips and an enchanted handmill under his arm, and as the red door closed, he heard the squealing of a pig.

Little Brother returned to the yellow stone farmhouse overlooking Cardigan Bay, and thought, ‘I’d like a cottage of my own.’

‘Little mill, little mill, grind me a handsome house.
Little mill, little mill, grind it without a mouse.’

And the handmill ground out a pink-washed longhouse with a table, a chair, a bottle of wine and a roaring fire. Now he would never need to ask his brothers for food again.

Eldest Brother looked out of the window of the yellow stone farmhouse and saw a pink-washed longhouse that wasn’t there yesterday. He knocked on the door and there stood Little Brother.

‘Little Brother, last time I saw you, you were poor as a church mouse, now you’re rich as a lord. Where has all this money come from?’ and Eldest Brother poured out a bottle of home-brewed beer. Before Little Brother passed out, he told Eldest Brother all about the handmill.

Eldest Brother took the handmill home to the yellow stone farmhouse, placed it on the kitchen table and made a wish.

‘Little mill, little mill, grind me maids and ale.
‘Little mill, little mill, grind them dark and pale.
Oh – and a little fish for my tea.’

Eldest Brother was a simple man.

The handmill began to grind out strong beer till it covered the floor, then a dark girl with the tail of a fish, followed by a pale girl, also with a fish tail. Soon the beer covered Eldest Brother’s feet, his knees, waist, belly, chin, and mermaids were frolicking in the sea of ale, so he shouted ‘Stop!’, but the handmill continued grinding ‘til the door burst open and a river of beer and mermaids flowed down into Cardigan Bay, flooding the forests and swamps until Eldest Brother drowned, as he would have wanted to go, with a drunken fish-girl on either arm.

Little Brother awoke with a headache to the sound of rowdy mermaids frolicking in the floodwater. At that moment, Middle Brother, the one who ploughed the sea, sailed into Cardigan Bay in his red-masted ship with a cargo of salt from a faraway land, to find a sea full of mermaids singing rude sea shanties and impolitely inviting him to remove his trousers and join them.

He dropped anchor, waded ashore and went to the yellow stone farmhouse, where he found Little Brother holding a handmill that was still grinding out beer and mermaids.

‘Little Brother, when I left, this was all land and now it’s water. And where have all these drunken mermaids come from?’

Middle Brother produced a bottle of smuggled Jamaican Rum and before he passed out, Little Brother told Middle Brother about the handmill.

Middle Brother took the handmill back to his ship, placed it on the deck and made a wish.

‘Little mill, little mill, grind me salty salt.
Little mill, little mill, grind it without a halt!’

for with an endless supply of salt, he would never have to sail to faraway lands, live on mouldy biscuits or be looted by pirates.

The handmill began to grind until the deck was covered in salt, and soon it covered his feet, knees, waist, belly and chin, so he climbed the red mast but the salt climbed higher and under its weight, the ship sank to the bottom of the sea, where Middle Brother, like Eldest Brother, drowned in the arms of rowdy mermaids.

Little Brother woke with another headache and went to the seashore for a drink, but the water tasted of salt, beer and mermaids, and now he remembered. ‘Is this what happens to wishes in fairy tales?’

So he set off along the old Welsh Tramping Road with a tune on his lips, head in the clouds and feet in the mud, in search of fresh water and food from the forests.

And the handmill? Well, it’s still there on the wrecked deck of the ship on the seabed in Cardigan Bay, forever churning out salt, beer and mermaids, who are often mistaken by the environmental services for dolphins. And that’s why a swim in the Salty Welsh Sea leaves you feeling as if you have been swimming with drunken mermaids.

Calan Gaeaf

It’s Calan Gaeaf, the first of November. Mischief night, the first day of winter in the Welsh calendar, when the veil between this world and the Otherworld is at its thinnest and spirits from the past are able to pass through and haunt our dreams with scary stories of forgotten ancestors. A bit like a Welsh Day of the Dead, or Halloween when people wear bedsheets and pretend to be ghosts, or witches in green make-up with fake blood dripping from their mouths. Time isn’t linear on this day. It travels in endless circles, swirling through space. You can travel around the coast of Wales in one day at any time in history.

Môrwen hauls herself out of the swamp and stands up, dripping mud on to the mossy forest floor. She remembers Nan’s stories about the ice mountains melting and filling the valleys with floodwaters where her people live. She wonders if it will ever stop? And what happened to the mammoths? Did they drown? Môrwen can hunt like a wolf, swim like a mermaid and speak the language of birds, so she will escape the inundations – but what will happen to her people? She places a sprig of rowan in her pocket, faces the sea, sweeps back her hair, curses three times, and steps through the veil into her future.

Time passes in a moment.

Years, hundreds of them. Thousands. Millennia.

Môrwen hasn’t enough fingers, toes, tails or limpet shells to count them all.

The post The Mesolithic Mermaid and the Welsh Utopia appeared first on The History Press.

What inspired you to write this book?

I knew from researching and writing about members of Scott’s Terra Nova expedition that several also participated in expeditions led by Ernest Shackleton and Douglas Mawson. The fact that Scott consulted Arctic explorer Fridtjof Nansen about Arctic clothing and equipment (including that adopted from Inuit precedents) also emphasised links between exploration techniques in the two polar regions. And as James Cook, Roald Amundsen and others had explored both polar regions – something Nansen, Shackleton and Robert Peary also planned to do – it struck me that a history of exploration covering both polar regions would tell a more integrated story.

Why ‘50 Objects’ rather than biography this time?

In 2010, as I embarked on my first polar book, Birdie Bowers; Captain Scott’s Marvel, Neil MacGregor’s A History of the World in 100 Objects was broadcast on BBC radio and published as a book. MacGregor’s ground-breaking work showed how objects, whether generic or personal, can reveal history in a fresh, engaging way. Since then I’ve enjoyed other ‘50/100 Objects’ books either as gateways to new subject areas or a means of shedding fresh light on more familiar ones. So, happily for me, as The History Press had already published several object-s based books, they agreed that polar exploration history was an appropriate subject for new one.

What kind of research have you done for your books, including this one?

Like most authors, I start with desk research for each new book. But this book was also informed by previous site research visits, starting in 2011, when I first went to Antarctica and visited Scott’s Terra Nova hut (ice blocked us from the Discovery hut) and Shackleton’s Nimrod and Borchgrevink’s Southern Cross huts. One of my outstanding memories (alongside encountering penguins in their natural habitat) is of seeing the bunks once occupied by Bowers and his companions. As part of that first trip to Antarctica, I visited archives, museums and relevant local sites in Australia and New Zealand – a pattern I continued during research visits to Spitsbergen, the South Atlantic and Antarctic Peninsula area and, most recently, the Northwest Passage. But while site research is important and allows me to add my own ‘angle’ to subjects, the length of my bibliographies and acknowledgements pages attests to the bedrock of reading and archival research in Britain on which all my books depend.

Was there anything especially surprising that you found in your research?

I’ve always enjoyed discovering unexpected encounters and interconnections during my research and this book was no exception. One object recalls the unplanned meeting on a remote Arctic island of Nansen and British explorer Frederick Jackson – a meeting which resulted in a famous Illustrated London News front page. I also noticed how scientists regularly shared the results of their work and that Joseph Hooker, who saw Antarctica’s Great Ice Barrier in 1841 from the decks of Erebus, lived until 1911 so met to compare notes with Edward Wilson, his Discovery and Terra Nova expedition counterpart. French explorer-scientist Jean-Baptiste Charcot, a prototype of today’s ‘networkers’, regularly collaborated with Scott and other expedition leaders, fellow-scientists and Deception Island whalers and others he encountered during his travels. Ports were also nodes of interconnection – while I knew circumnavigator James Cook lived in Whitby and used Whitby-built vessels, I had not previously encountered two Whitby master-whalers, William Scoresby senior and junior, whose achievements are recognised with objects in my book.

Unusually for a polar history covering this period, several chapters focus on women. Can you explain how that came about?

From the outset I realised the timespan of this book – from the late 1700s to early 1930s – precluded featuring women who stood on the Antarctic continent or led official expeditions. But while researching James Cook’s family life, I found details of Elizabeth Cook’s little ‘ditty box’, now in the Library of New South Wales, Sydney. This became the second object in my book and allowed me to describe Cook’s third circumnavigation from a different standpoint. I then found suitable objects associated with Jane Franklin (Franklin’s second wife), Eleanor Gell (Franklin’s daughter by his first marriage), Kathleen Scott (who worked as sculptor while Scott was in Antarctica) and with Dorothy Russell Gregg (later Irving-Bell), whose album of Shackleton and other memorabilia suggests that ‘super-fandom’ is not a new phenomenon!

What is your favourite object or chapter in the book? Why?

That’s probably the hardest question so far – so I’ll shortlist three candidates!

• The beautifully cased daguerreotype of a young Scottish doctor Harry Goodsir, which was taken in May 1845, just before Franklin’s ships left for the Northwest passage. Although Harry looks relaxed in the image, his letters reveal him as full of energy and enthusiasm for the challenges ahead.
• Discovery, Scott’s custom-built expedition ship, which came close to being abandoned in Antarctica on her maiden voyage, but can be visited in Dundee, over 120 years after being launched there.
• Elizabeth Cook’s ‘ditty box’, made by her husband’s shipmates and shedding a light on a remarkable woman.

Any final thoughts …

As suggested in the introduction to my book and by the title, this is only one history of polar exploration. I’ve cast my net wide and, in addition to objects associated with famous ‘Polar Stars’, included ones owned or used by women, people of colour and lesser-known participants in expeditions. But there are still polar exploration histories to be told – some of which are already being researched or written.

One of my reasons for highlighting collaborations and interconnections is that I believe that, if we are to protect the polar regions and their history, these are more important than national rivalries or competition. The finding of the wreck of Franklin’s Erebus in 2014 resulted from collaborative working between the Canadian government and Inuit people, whose oral history indicated the wreck-site. I’ve also highlighted the 1903-5 voyages of ARA Uruguay, during which explorers and scientists from Sweden, Norway, Argentina, Scotland and France were rescued and assisted. As it happens, emergency stores were cached for future mariners in distress – stores which, a decade later, gave Shackleton (who knew of them) a glimmer of hope that he could save his men after Endurance sank.

Last, but not least, I hope that readers – whether experienced polar travellers and historians or those who have learned recently about the finding of the Endurance wreck or at-risk penguin colonies – enjoy A History of Polar Exploration in 50 Objects as much as I enjoyed researching and writing it.

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As I watched the television news, an announcement scrolled across the screen: ‘Authorities in Greece say wildfires are under control’. Good news I thought, having followed coverage of the fatal inferno that had consumed 40 square miles of land close to Athens, the historic town of Marathon and packed tourist centres nearby over the preceding few days. The bad news though is that, globally, wildfires are anything but under control. They are just one symptom of a climate system undergoing rapid – largely human-induced – change, which will profoundly affect all of our lives, and those of future generations. So what’s going on?

Fire is a season

In parts of Canada, the United States, Brazil, Russia, Australia, Indonesia, northern and southern Europe, fire is now a season: a predictable and steadily lengthening annual period in which vast wildfires are no longer just a likely risk but a deadly certainty. And the average temperature records we see being broken every year and every month drive the scale and incidence of wildfires still faster and further. This new reality is not something we can avoid or run from – it has to be faced.

The relationship between climate change and wildfires operates as a closed feedback loop. The hotter the planet becomes, the more moisture evaporates from the land, making forests drier and more susceptible to fire. When they burn, huge quantities of particles and pollutants are ejected into the atmosphere to contribute to the greenhouse effect.

Particles blown to the polar regions also settle on snow and ice, darkening the surface and so reducing its ability to reflect heat. This in turn causes ice sheets to melt faster, altering ocean salinity and currents, which lead to even warmer temperatures. The ice caps’ retreat then exposes more permafrost, releasing greater emissions of methane, more global warming and more fires. And so on.

It’s thought that a faulty power cable started the fire in Greece. While it was lightning that sparked the 100-feet-high flames that destroyed almost half of the mountain town of Jasper in Alberta, Canada, a few weeks before. Other fires – like one that raged across the island of Tenerife between August and November 2023 – are started on purpose. It’s estimated that around 60 per cent of all wildfires are the result of deliberate or reckless human action. And the conditions created by industrialisation and burning fossil fuels are of course 100 per cent down to us.

A human problem

Some kinds of forests and grasslands have evolved to burn. It’s an essential part of how trees, plants, soil, fungi and microbial life regenerates that from time-to-time woodlands spontaneously ignite. This is most often due to lightning strikes as in Jasper, or through resin reacting to exceptionally hot weather. But by steadily encroaching into forests and turning them into resources to be exploited and managed, humans have upset these cycles. Habitats that might previously have burned every 300 years are now igniting every 30 years, giving natural resources and defences no time to recover in between.

Small fires, the sort that keep natural revival ticking over, have become much less frequent; easily prevented by modern stewardship or controlled by quick-response firefighting. But as average temperatures and extreme weather events increase, the risk of unstoppable super-fires becomes greater. Across the world, annual wildfire seasons are already forty to eighty days longer than they were in 1990. So although there are now fewer fires per year in total than ever before in recorded history, the areas of land they affect and the loss and destruction they cause have gone off the scale.

During the ‘Black Summer’ of 2020 when the size and impact of forest fires really began to gain worldwide attention, the 45 million acres destroyed in Australia alone was equivalent to a country the size of Uruguay, Cambodia or Syria. It’s estimated that almost three billion animals were killed or displaced in the 2020 Australian fires: mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, invertebrates and insects.

Wildfires can be mitigated – for example, by clearing accumulated ground-level biomass that provides the tinder for them to start and spread. They can also be fought – by ingenious water-bombing aircraft or by using artificial intelligence to predict exactly where fires will happen next. But by focusing on these more immediate measures, we inadvertently predispose forests to burn under the very worst conditions. This paradox means that the more we try to prevent and suppress fires in the near term, the worse they become when they return. And many of these initiatives undermine the biodiversity and ecological value of the world’s great forests.

Heat domes are here

When an enormous tract of woodland burns, it releases millions of tonnes of carbon and gases into the atmosphere. In recent years, this has contributed to more frequent ‘heat domes’ settling over continental regions, where a static high pressure weather system traps hot air beneath it like the lid on a pressure cooker, causing temperatures to soar past 50 degrees Celsius. When a heat dome forms, any humans beneath it are in trouble, because the ‘wet bulb’ temperature can rise beyond the point at which even the healthiest people can survive.

Our species stays cool by sweating. In hot weather, the salty droplets that emerge from our pores evaporate to cool the skin and bring down the body’s temperature. But this can only happen if the air is dry enough to take up more moisture. Once relative humidity reaches 95 per cent or above, sweat simply collects on the skin, making us feel even hotter and stickier. And when these levels of humidity combine with extreme warmth, people can quickly overheat and die from heatstroke – as recently happened in northern India.

Climate forecasters previously thought that this fatal combination might begin to occur by the middle of the twenty-first century. But it has arrived and taken hold much sooner than expected. Inside a sweltering heat dome, air conditioning is one of the few short-term options for survival. Refuge from unbearable heat and humidity, even temporarily, allows the body to recover and rebalance. But millions of air conditioning units consuming energy and pumping out hot air just make the underlying problem worse, driving the feedback loop of emissions, warming and climate distortion ever faster and deeper.

Because of the region’s size and relatively sparse population, the 2021 North American heat dome killed only a few hundred people. But even those in perfect health who stayed in the shade, with an endless supply of water and wearing clothes that made it easy to sweat succumbed. Localised peaks of heat and humidity simply made it thermodynamically impossible to prevent overheating and death. In more populous countries like India or China, this phenomenon has the potential to kill tens of millions in days or weeks; a mass human extermination like none ever seen before. And on our current trajectory it’s a matter of when, not if, this happens.

Living with wildfires

Forest fires are natural, essential and often uncontrollable. So if we are to live with them it’s our own habits and choices that need to change. If we know that parts of the world are virtually guaranteed to burn, then it makes little sense to locate settlements and industries there. Instead we need to let natural forces reassert their control in these regions and find ourselves other places and models to live and work.

The nature and scale of the change needed to achieve this take the challenge far beyond the individual. It demands new paradigms of human communication and cooperation, innovative technologies and concerted global action that can be sustained over centuries or millennia. We know for certain that we face a hot, fiery future, so societies will have to learn and act quickly to protect our fragile home.

Following the fires near Athens, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis visited a military airbase to thank the crew of firefighting aircraft for their efforts and bravery. At the same time he bore an apology – that it would be another three years before seven new water-carrying planes purchased from Canada are due to arrive.

Time, it seems, is not on our side.

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Come with me to a hillside where the trees face east and if you stand with them, you can watch the sunrise. Here the twilight lingers and the dew on the grass glistens in the gloaming. If we, for a moment, step into the elastic liminal space that exists between night and day, the crepuscular hours of the dawn and the dusk, and sit for a while, we may find that we have the ability to step through a gap in time and walk the path of those before us.

We may experience true awe as we watch Neolithic communities roll stones from the Preseli Hills in Wales to Salisbury Plain in England. Watch them carefully observe the sun and line up those 25-ton stones with it as it rises above them. Haul on ropes to stand them tall in the surrounding landscape, inspiring wonder in all those who see them.

We may see the Egyptian civilisations as they hide their Pharoh, a direct link to the sun, during an eclipse, so that no harm falls to him. We may sit awhile in the temples of Greece to hear stories of Helios, Apollo, Phaeton, Eos and Hemera. We may wonder at these gods and their complex lives, their fierce protection of the earth and their indifference to humans.

As we sit, we see Romans celebrating the solstice and the birth of their Sun God, Sol Invictus and as the Saxons arrive, we see them bring a second Sol and Mani both with wolves to chase them across the sky.

Hurry on and we see yrplings (earthlings) working the land. They encounter many more stones rooted in the earth and they dance amongst them. From their footsteps and laughing voice, spring new stories of witches, zealous brides and magical cows.

How farest thee on this journey for Henry is now on the throne and they are still dancing. This time around the Maypole as the farming folk and their communities celebrate the gifts the sun has given them this year

We journey on and smoke fills the skies as the Industrial Revolution arrives. We artificially lengthen our days, wring out ever last productive hour with candles, lamps and soon electricity. The machines churn on and progress marches forward as we spend hours in the dark behind walls that block us from the sun, softening our bones.

Laws are passed so that we may find balance in this new world of productivity, yet we continue on this path. We build more and more boxes to live and work in and spend more and more time in the glow of knowledge boxes, moving further away from the hill where the sun rises.

But the hill is still there. Waiting. Patiently. Sit once more on that hill and watch the light as it returns to us and you may find peace and a calm that we once honoured with megaliths. Come and join me and I will tell you the stories of the sun.

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The exposed landscape of the Fens are constantly windswept. Sometimes the light, peaty topsoil on agricultural fields gets whipped up, creating a spectacle rather like a dust storm, known as a fen blow. When not in the air, the soil is a perfect growing medium for crops; many of the country’s root vegetables and salads are grown in Cambridgeshire. But, prior to a significant drainage operation in the 17th century, much of the Fens were underwater in winter, creating a rich habitat for waterbirds and a variety of aquatic creatures.

Few fragments of fen remain in their true state. Just four, in fact; all in Cambridgeshire. Arguably the most famous of this quartet is Wicken. Protected by the villagers who relied on the resources it provided and the Victorian naturalists who collected moths and butterflies there, Wicken Fen came into the ownership of the National Trust.

Since the appointment of the nature reserve’s first Keeper, in the early twentieth century, a small succession of Watchers-come-Wardens-come-Rangers have worked hard to safeguard this precious relic of a landscape almost lost completely. Keeping it wet and open is key, as is creating a mosaic of habitats for the diversity of wildlife that lives here. Since the 1820s, over 9,000 different species have been recorded on the reserve, most of them invertebrates.

But a number of these creatures have gone extinct. Like the swallowtail butterfly – despite three separate reintroduction attempts – the Norfolk Broads now its sole UK breeding ground. To reduce the chance of further losses and increase the opportunity for future recolonisations, Wicken needed to become bigger, better and more joined up.

In the first decade of the 21st century, the reserve doubled in size. Drained land around Wicken has been turned back to nature. Creating a space as unique as Wicken Fen is no mean feat, although simple steps have seen it well on its way.

As a ranger, one of my favourite tasks is ‘turning on the water’ in winter. By diverting a small quantity of river-water onto the Fen, scrapes form and attract water birds literally overnight. Wigeon flock in their hundreds, along with mallard, teal and shoveler. Over time, reedbeds have formed, enabling rare nesting birds such as the marsh harrier and bittern to return. Britain’s tallest bird, the crane, has returned, after a centuries-long absence, benefiting from the new wetland. Otters and water voles inhabit the waterways, occasionally delighting visitors who chance upon them.

There is another key ingredient for the restoration of fenland; large herbivores. Wicken Fen now attracts visitors not just because of its summer cuckoos or winter hen harriers, but because of its breeding herds of horses and cattle, which free-roam across the landscape, evoking an atmosphere from centuries ago. The Koniks (small horses) and Highland cattle play a key role in keeping the fen open, creating a diversity of both habitat types and vegetation lengths. They also spread seed in their dung, which incidentally is a habitat in itself – 20 species of dung beetle have been recorded in Konik dung on the wider reserve.

Out on the fen year-round, come rain or shine, these hardy-but-placid animals are part of the landscape. A key part of reserve management, they are arguably rangers themselves, fulfilling an important function.

Restoring fen, creating reedbed and protecting peat for over thirty years, Wicken Fen has been at the forefront of wetland conservation, pioneers of what has become known as ‘rewilding’. And the future looks just as fascinating as the past.

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We humans have a universal, innate love of flowers, and go to great lengths to satisfy this desire. The worldwide flower growing industry is worth billions of pounds, and impressively fine-tuned to deliver these delicate products to us within days. Most of the cut flower varieties we currently buy were grown in England until just thirty years ago, when domestic production declined due to competition from the huge expansion of the flower industry in Holland, much of it in highly controlled artificial greenhouse conditions.

In recent times, much flower production has moved to warmer climates in the global south, but environmental concerns mean that British grown flowers are increasingly undergoing a renaissance. Our cooler climate is suitable for many commercially grown flowers such as gladioli, stocks, sunflowers, Sweet Williams, peonies, asters and alstroemeria, as well as the ever-popular spring bulbs.

The Joys of Spring

Twenty years ago, I moved from London to the traditional flower growing area of Cornwall. As I write it is early February and spring is about to arrive. Plants do well in the mild, wet climate of south west England, and many are already showing their colours. Dark indigo Iris reticulata peek out of pots by my front door, and hyacinths push their flower shoots above the soil. Narcissi are flowering, as is a glossy-leaved, pink-flowered camellia. In a month or two, the beautiful Japanese cherry tree which I planted in my garden will burst into flower, filling the air with its sweet, clean scent. The flowering of the cherry blossom is a highlight of my year, reminding me of the much-loved Prunus yedoensis which grew in the garden of my childhood home in southern New Zealand. In common with many others, the plants in my garden are full of memories which connect me to my family history and the people and places I love.

Blossom photograph

When I look out of my window, I see a field of daffodils which has been steadily harvested over the last few weeks, a sight familiar in this area for over a century. Daffodils and narcissi have been grown commercially in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly for almost 150 years, and Cornwall is now the world’s largest producer of daffodils, with a harvest of around 900 million daffodil stems annually along with 15,000 tonnes of bulbs. Decades of research have resulted in the development of many new breeds and scientific advances. Daffodils contain galantamine – a compound known to slow the progression of the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease. Daffodil crops grown 1,000 feet above sea level are used in the pharmaceutical industry as they produce more galantamine than daffodils grown anywhere else due to the altitude.

The native daffodil, Narcissus pseudonarcissius, was celebrated by Shakespeare as ‘the flower which comes before the swallows dare.’ Once abundant, this wildflower is now much rarer, having declined during the 19th century as a result of habitat loss.

In later spring, when the beech trees open in the woods which line the banks of the River Fal and its creeks, the ground is covered with native bluebells and wood anemones, a sign of ancient and undisturbed woodland. Thick patches of enchanter’s nightshade and dog’s mercury thrive in the damp edges of the woodland in the beautiful, dappled light, and fallow and roe deer, sometimes glimpsed like smoke in the shadows, leave narrow paths of trodden flowers where they have passed by.

A Family Legacy

Flowers have underpinned the fortunes of my family for three generations. My Australian grandmother, Minnie, began her flower growing and floristry business in Brisbane, Australia, in the 1930s in order to provide for her growing family after my grandfather, Matie, lost his railway job during the Great Depression. My mother and many of her family members worked in the business alongside Minnie, the space under their raised wooden villa transformed into a bustling, sweltering workshop.

In the far south of 1950s New Zealand, my father was due to begin a teacher training course when a summer holiday job as a driver for a floristry business changed his plans, and much to his family’s surprise he decided to dedicate himself to a life of flowers. Within a few short years, he became the owner of one of New Zealand’s oldest floristry businesses, Miss Reid the Florist in Dunedin, New Zealand. After time spent working in Highgate, London for Geoffrey and Anne Lewis, founder members of Interflora, he became president of Interflora New Zealand and, in later years, of the organisation’s Pacific Unit. As Minnie’s business was also a member of Interflora, it was only a matter of time before my parents met at an Interflora conference in the 1960s.

Growing up, I spent much of my time working in the family business and in our large garden, where my parents grew flowers and foliage to supplement the commercially grown flowers bought daily at a wholesale market. Inevitably, I worked as a florist myself when I first moved to London in 1992.

Despite the loveliness of the bouquets and arrangements produced by florists, it is a rather grubby, gruelling occupation requiring long hours worked in the cool and sometimes cold conditions which keep flowers in prime condition. But it has its upsides: floristry took me to places I would never otherwise have gone – inside the residences of famous movie stars filming on location in London, in private elevators to the penthouses of media magnates and captains of industry, into the sumptuous interiors of London Guildhalls and the banqueting hall of the Lord Mayor of London’s residence, the Mansion House, to deliver arrangements for dinners attended by the great and the good. Intrigue abounded in the hush-hush bouquets which rock stars sent to their mistresses and, a few days later, to their furious wives.

My experiences as a florist have taught me that flowers speak for us above and beyond our words. They express our feelings and accompany us at times of happiness and great sadness. They lift our spirits and console us, their colours, shapes, and scents conveying emotions and embodying memories. They move through the seasons and the years beside us, reflecting our own life cycles and journey through time and the seasons of our lives.  

Being in the company of plants and flowers in our homes and gardens improves our wellbeing, lowering our heart rate and cortisol levels, calming us. Far from being frivolous decorations or showy lifestyle choices, plants are essential providers of the air we breathe and the food we eat. This world would be a far less delightful place – indeed one in which we could not live – without them.

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When you look at the night sky – what do you see?

Stars

Stand there long enough and your brain will try to organise them into a pattern. It’s what we humans do. Then you notice that some of the stars seem to stand still while others move around in circles. You can tell this because you can see where they were in relation to the landscape around you. Then you notice ( we humans are good at noticing) that when a particular group of stars disappear or reappear on the horizon there are heavy winds, so you don’t go out on the sea, or the bison will soon be moving across the plain, or that now is a good time to plant crops, or that winter will soon be coming and its time now to prepare stocks. The stars, sun and moon give a way to measure time and anticipate what might come next in daily life. With anticipation comes learning and the ability to change for the better. The sun gave a daily measure of time, the moon with its changing phases gave a bigger chunk of time – the month. And the six-monthly rise and fall on the horizon of the asterism known as Pleiades gave an indicator of the changing of the seasons. How to convey these insights so that others learn the signs, remember, and prepare?

Stories

The cave peoples told these tales and passed them on within their communities to keep the information alive. Some people believe that the early cave paintings reflect the star asterisms in the sky. They told the stories from the experiences of their every day lives, and of the myths they wanted to emulate.

In 1925 the International Astronomical Union defined 88 constellations in the night sky with 48 of them based on the Greek Myths. Above your head are five major Greek myths played out for you in the different constellations! Some have two or three constellations each, but some have fifteen or more! Do you know which constellations are in what Greek myths? Their influence on the star images spread across Europe and into the resulting worldwide colonies which define the Western world today.

However, not every community sees the stars in the same way – they have their own stories for the same asterisms – the little groups of stars – and the constellations – the bigger cluster of stars. These stories were told in communities where the storyteller tells the bones of the story – but their voice, stance, gestures, pace and rhythm all add quality and meaning to the story. All of which is lost in translation when the story goes from the mouth of the storyteller (immersed in the local community traditions and values, which do not have to be spelt out to the audience because they share it in common) to the ear of a translator (with their own different cultural beliefs and values which may counter the teller’s beliefs) then to the pen of the transcriber (who may come from a totally different landscape, country, or culture and is trying to make senses of the words they hear). Even the transition from the pen of the transcriber to the published page is fraught – as divorced from the landscape, the local traditions, and tribal mores the written word is crafted in the world of the author and publisher.

A striking example of this language transition is a rock formation in Wyoming called ‘Devil’s Tower’. Originally it was known in the local language as ‘Bear Lodge’ and it is believed by some that an initial literal translation into English was misheard as ‘Bad God Tower’ rather than as ‘Bear Lodge Tower’. Layered with a Christian influence it became ‘Devil’s Tower’. There is currently a move to restore its original name.

But in changing the story to reflect the new teller’s world view, how do you know you are not desecrating the story from its meaning to the original teller of the tale. Consider the Christian celebration of Easter and the Passion of Christ – where he dies for the sins of the people, saves them and then is resurrected. If a new teller decides that ‘resurrection’ doesn’t fit with the way they want to tell the story and tells that Christ was only injured then miraculously healed, then this is changing the story and affecting the beliefs and values of the original teller and culture. It is called cultural appropriation and is one of many ways that indigenous culture bearers are concerned that their cultural life and beliefs are being eroded.

Some traditions bearers say “don’t try to tell the stories.” But in the absences of an indigenous teller what happens to the stories? It is important to know the stories to know where we have come from, where we have commonalities and our differences.

The different stories of the same stars in the night sky are important to understand and share, but to do this properly we must respect the culture we are exploring, try to understand that culture, know our own culture so that it doesn’t spill into the retelling, and most important of all we must research it.

Equity has a guide for Storytellers who are working with material from other cultures.

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Today we might reasonably define a spice as the (usually) dried part of a plant used to season or flavour food, typically seeds, fruits, berries, roots, rhizomes, bark, flowers or buds, as opposed to the green leaves and stems. They are often, but not always, strongly aromatic. This is quite a good working definition, but it fails to include substances that have been referred to as spices in earlier times.

The earliest use of spices was for medicines, which then in many cases gradually evolved to culinary use. Black pepper is the best-known example, which became immensely popular for seasoning food from the start of Imperial Rome. Sugar had been used in the kitchen by Europeans since medieval times but only became commonplace in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; prior to that it was an exotic luxury spice.

The aromatic resins of certain trees from the Middle East have been used as perfumes and as incense since the Bronze Age, and were also regarded as spices. In medieval times, not only did food have to be seasoned, but it also had to look the part, and in many cases this meant adding colour. Yellow was provided by saffron, egg yolk and later turmeric. Alkanet, the roots of a herb in the borage family, was used to add red, as was Red Sanders – an Indian tree that provided a red dye. Pink could come from rose petals and green from a variety of herbs. Turnesole, a plant of the spurge family, was used for purple or blue. (Even black and white were catered for: black by boiling or frying blood, and white from egg whites, crushed almonds and milk.) There was even a peculiar category of spices from animals; musk (from the caudal gland of the musk deer) and ambergris (from the digestive system of the sperm whale) were used both as perfumes and food flavourings.

Notwithstanding medicinal use, the common thing about all of these substances is that they were unassumed luxuries – and they had great value. The search for them was to change the world.

Extracted from The History and Natural History of Spices by Ian Anderson

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Feles: a cat, a mouser, but also a thief.

The eyes of nocturnal animals like cats gleam and shine in the dark.

Excavated cat bones and cat images on vases and coins are proof that cats were padding about southern Italy at the end of the fifth century BC. By the time we get to the Roman Empire, there must have been cats galore.

So let’s start with these small cats and some evidence of their place in the Roman world.

Facts about felines

• Roman provinces might have lost a few cats to Egypt. The Egyptians worshipped their cats and exporting the animal was illegal. There are records of soldiers being dispatched to ‘repatriate’ captive cats smuggled out of Egypt.

• Modern archaeological research into the DNA of cat remains has proven that cats travelled on ships on ancient trade routes, spreading the animal across the Roman world. They would have acted as pest control on board Egyptian ships, and Asian wildcats would have kept rodent numbers down on ships travelling the trade route from India.

• Cats didn’t feature much in Roman literature, but they did leave the tiniest of paw prints in Roman books on farming. They could be a problem (smooth your duck enclosure walls with plaster inside and out to make sure cats can’t get in) and a help: cats won’t eat your grain, they bury their waste and they get rid of vermin.

• Talking of vermin, the Romans used ferrets to get rid of pests, but ferrets are burrowers and everyone knows that climbers are more useful than burrowers. Cats were especially good at getting rid of mice and rats as they could climb a thatched roof in the countryside or stalk across the tiles of city roofs, cleaning up the area while they stuffed themselves with rodents and helped contribute to the state of the city’s public health.

• When we think about a cat’s reaction to fireworks and then imagine the noise from the earth tremors at Pompeii before Vesuvius actually erupted, as well as falling pumice and debris, it is clear that any cats would have scarpered at the first noisy rumbles. It is no wonder, then, that only a few cat bones from the time of the eruption have been found at Pompeii: cat bones in two vineyards and a partial cat skeleton in the Temple of Venus.

• If you want to find a bigger cache of cat remains, you should look to Roman military sites, where archaeologists have found plenty of evidence of feline camp visitors – no doubt keeping the soldiers’ food stores free of mice and rats. As if Roman cats wanted to leave us proof of their hunting abilities, excavations at the site of the Roman sea port of Myos Hormos at Quseir al-Qadim on the Red Sea coast discovered a first- to second-century ad cat buried inside a Roman administrative building. The cat’s body was wrapped in woollen and linen cloths and was well preserved. The animal was a big one and experts believe it was a domesticated cat rather than a feral one. Apart from the skeleton, there were remains of quite a bit of fur, the stomach and a preserved lower intestinal tract, which showed that the cat had just eaten six rats before its death. (No wonder it was big.)

• Felicula was a Roman cognomen – an additional name similar to a modern-day nickname – for girls and women, meaning ‘Kitty’ or ‘Little Cat’. This name turns up in Roman inscriptions on funerary reliefs, so while the cat didn’t take up anywhere near as much room in Roman literature as the dog did, it appeared here, in the world of inscriptions for real people, across the cities and towns of the Roman Empire. Donald Engels, in his book Classical Cats, tells us there are over 250 cat nicknames surviving on inscriptions in Rome alone.

• Talking of funerals, images of cats appeared on funerary steles and tombstones, often with engravings of children holding cats or a cat sitting at the child’s feet.

• Just as pesky as the dog, cat paw prints have been found imprinted on Roman tiles.

• The Latin for cat, feles, was used for ferrets and polecats too. In certain Roman plays, the word feles was slang for someone who predates on young women: feles virginaria and feles virginalis – translating to ‘virgin cats’. The ‘cat’ part of the phrase had the unpleasant meaning of ‘virgin predators’ or ‘virgin mousers’.

A cautionary tale for ancient cat killers

In 59 BC, when Julius Caesar was a consul, King Ptolemy XII of Egypt was trying to work out an alliance with Rome. Roman envoys arrived in Egypt and amongst the soldiers who accompanied them was one unlucky legionary. Watching events unfold was historian and author Diodorus Siculus. The Egyptians revered cats and the last thing you wanted to do was harm one. But sometimes accidents happen. Diodorus gives us all the details: if a cat dies in Egypt, there is wailing and crying and the cat is wrapped in linen and taken off to be embalmed; if a cat is killed, the perpetrator is put to death. Even if it’s an accident, Diodorus writes that the locals will gather together and kill the cat killer before there’s even been time for a trial. If anyone sees a dead cat, they back off and shout that they had nothing to do with it, but just found the cat in this condition.

So what happened to the unlucky Roman soldier? Diodorus says he witnessed the whole event with his own eyes. The legionary had killed a cat completely by accident. Crowds rushed to his house determined to punish him. Never mind trying to keep on Rome’s good side, never mind trying to keep the envoys sweet. Despite King Ptolemy sending officials to beg for the Roman’s life, neither they, nor any fear of Rome, could save the soldier, who was killed for harming this sacred animal. (Diodorus, Siculus I.83)

Extracted from Battle Elephants and Flaming Foxes by Caroline Freeman-Cuerden

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Early every Saturday morning, there is organised run with hundreds of people from around the local area taking part, trying to complete a 5 kilometre course across Burgess Park in whatever way they can. Quite a few should end up close to where I am standing here in Addington Square under the shade of a horse chestnut tree. The joggers will crowd together in their running gear and lycra around the little snack bar nearby, gathering there to share tea, coffee and conversation with friends and with strangers.

This small residential square from where I am observing proceedings is just inside the park perimeter, just inside this vast London parkland of 56 acres, a green space that flows between the urban bustle of Peckham and the busy streets of Camberwell. The morning breeze gives soft breath to the air and a few pale pink blooms from the horse chestnut flutter down around me. There are other activities going on nearby, there are tennis courts next to the snack bar. Out of my sight I can hear the thwacking of the ball, the pocking sound of the racket strings as they are struck. The players shout out the line calls and update their scores with diligence.

A squirrel perched high on a plane tree branch gazes at me in disbelief as I lean back on the trunk of the chestnut. I would like to sit down and rest for a minute, but the grass is wet after all the rain that fell through the night, and there are no benches here in the square. Close to the entrance gate some ageing paving slabs suggest that once a bench was present, and a Southwark council rubbish bin standing adrift beside the small, paved rectangle gives further evidence that once a place to sit was there. But no longer.

It is early May and some spring flowering is still to be found in the square. On the point of collapse, there are many tulips in a weird mix of colours and varieties, a mix that would never be found in a natural setting, but still seems to be considered a completely normal combination in a garden. From the 120 or so tulip species known to horticulture, many native to central Asia, thousands of different variations have occurred or been produced, and through the centuries they have made their way across the world. Over a millennium ago, poets from Persia were writing of these flowers in phrases filled with awe and wonder.

The majority of the tulip bulbs bought these days will have been grown in the Netherlands, from where 77% of all flower bulbs commercially sold originate. It sounds quite nice, huge fields of tulips and other things in vivid hues at this time of year, carefully regimented into broad rows. But then, as an industry, this kind of horticulture is reliant on chemicals, fungicides, pesticides and so on. Therefore, those fields of spring colour must have been drenched with poisons for decades.

Over the years, I have bought and planted countless tulip bulbs. Something I regret now is that I did not try harder to source ones I could be certain had been grown without any chemical assistance. In my life as a gardener, I have never used chemicals, even though for much of my time I have been in charge of sites considered high profile – 10 years in Devon for the National Trust, followed by 6 at Chequers in the Chilterns, finally going to Lambeth Palace for a further 7. In all these places while I was there, pesticides and synthetic fertilisers were never present, no fungicides, no weedkillers. Those who support such concoctions for horticulture are nervous of these words, nervous of terms like ‘killer’ or ‘poison’, preferring sweeter labels such as ‘plant enhancement products’ to be used.

With a guilty shudder I consider my failure to be more circumspect when tempted by the tulip’s astonishing array of different colours and forms, the endless variations they can bring to a garden. But I can change my ways, I can make other choices next time.

Alongside the now ragged troops of tulips are sweeps of golden daffodils, also falling to the grass as they struggle with the weight of oversized flowers on green stems that seem too slender to support them. They lie there forlorn, petals glittering with heavy rain drops. Looking closer, I see they are probably Narcissus ‘King Alfred’ with their prominent yellow trumpets protruding from the centre of each flower, sounding their presence to all around, even if those sounds are rather muted now in the first week of May.

A few years ago, when Sir David Attenborough visited the garden at Lambeth Palace in spring, he asked me why there was such a bizarre mix of daffodils all around, why there were not more natives in such a long established garden, the kinds of daffodils that William and Dorothea Wordsworth might have strolled through in the Lake District, marvelling at the golden flowers dancing in the breeze. It was a difficult question to answer, but I replied that for many years the fashion in gardens had been to plant many different variations of daffodil in fairly random patterns, unnatural and strange as that might appear. However, we tended to favour the indigenous daffodil, choosing the Lentern Lily or Narcissus pseudonarcissus for our plantings, England’s only native daffodil. These are delicate things with deep yellow trumpets surrounded by a crown of paler leaves. Sir David looked me in the eyes and nodded.

Then he shook my hand and went on his way, saying ‘you are doing well’ as he smiled warmly at the surrounding garden despite the cold chill of the morning. For a moment or two, his words caused me to levitate slightly, my feet an inch or two above the weathered flagstones. Fortunately, nobody seemed to have noticed anything unusual, not Sir David nor Archbishop Justin who was accompanying him. Alice and Cheyenne, my fellow gardeners, were close by, continuing with their garden work as carefully as always and not looking in my direction.

With feet back on the ground I watched the two venerable men leave the raised terrace where we had met, saw them walk across the grass and step below the dark branches of the lovely tulip tree. They then strolled past the yew topiary pyramids to disappear through the doors into the mysterious inner world of the palace.

Those are memories from a while ago. Today, on this bright morning in Camberwell I gaze down at the ‘King Alfred’ daffodils while picturing their English relatives, the Lentern Lily narcissus, wondering how clusters of those natives would look meandering across this garden square. But I see the joggers have begun to collect around the snack bar, and it is time for me to move on.

Less than a hundred years ago, the immense park of rolling green they have just run through was not here. Instead, the space was a network of narrow streets where little houses jostled each other, terraced rows regularly interrupted by various factories throwing out smoke from their impressive chimneys. The busy Surrey Canal came through here, the Peckham branch being opened in 1826 as a route for commercial barges and other boats. For the next 120 years, those craft pushed along the waterway to ply their trades day in day out, carrying materials to and fro, until everything was changed by the catastrophe of World War II.

These parts were badly hit. Between October 1940 and June 1941 at least 49 high explosive bombs fell from the air and shattered almost everything that had occupied the area that is now the park where I am standing. Many more bombs rained down hard on the surrounding streets over nights of unimaginable terror.

Rather than rebuild from the burnt out wreckage of the war-time hell, a slow process of change began as tons of broken masonry and glass were removed. The old streets and buildings were not to be replaced but instead pieces of cleared land were acquired bit by bit on behalf of the local council. The plan was to join everything together to create a new open space for the benefit of all, and by 1973, something resembling the present day Burgess Park had appeared. The slow assembly took nearly 40 years, the weaving of a living green quilt carefully stitched together, piece by piece. And now that green quilt covers this land between Peckham and Camberwell, 56 acres filled with trees and grass, wild meadows and water.

Gardening with wildlife in mind has been given an emphasis here, especially since 2012 when the park was awarded an £8 million grant to facilitate further developments, including much more planting and many more trees. Large areas are left undisturbed for wildlife habitat, so good to see. This approach is helpful not only to the millions of wild creatures that have taken up residence in the park, but also beneficial for the thousands of humans who visit each day, even if only passing through with no time to pause quietly beneath one of the trees.

I look back across Addington Square. To my left, a broad patch is unmown, left to its own devices, a kind of gesture to the wild enclosed by the curve of the black iron railings. One plant above all is running free there, cow parsley, and as I approach, it reaches up to me with a keen froth of fresh white flowers, its green foliage like eager young ferns. Closer to the ground I can see the vivid flashes of blue alkanet.

The cow parsley swims around me and for a few moments I can float in the pale white waves. The botanical name Anthriscus sylvestris suggests a preference for the edges of a woodland, but it is doing well enough here. At this time of year it can be seen in many places, on roadside verges and waste ground, in gardens and graveyards, taking a chance wherever there is a small opening.

Some call this an invasive weed but I do not accept that definition. Cow parsley has been present in all the gardens I have looked after, suddenly appearing in paths and paving, their unmistakeable forms occasionally boldly threading through planted areas where I had no wish to see them. But I could simply pull those intruders out if they became too much. And I must not forget the fantastic early nectar source they offer to various pollinators such as bees and hover flies, while later also providing good forage for orange tip butterflies. Humans could also forage the young leaves. They are said to taste like sharp chervil with traces of licorice, but their close resemblance to deadly hemlock indicates extreme caution should be taken.

I haven’t had breakfast yet and must hurry home now. As I make my way into the main park, I look back at the cow parsley and see again its cheerful attempts to be as wayward as possible, scrambling and sprawling, branching and creeping, while hemmed in by the solemn railings surrounding the square’s planted area.

There is a kind of dream that recurs through English gardening, the dream of the wild brought inside the walls, a constructed arcadia where we gardeners may wander around in our luminous haze. I’m not sure what to make of that, but I do believe that although gardens can never be the wild countryside, they can share elements with it, so that the space which is enclosed and tended to can be another kind of haven, a place where all kinds of essential wild creatures can find what they need to thrive.

I will think it over some more as I walk slowly back to the Peckham apartment block where I live, returning home to make some breakfast before the morning is over.

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