As well as my design work for private clients and setting up a Wildlife Allotment in the town, I’m also helping create a wildlife and food forest garden for my local primary school. [Declaration of Interest: it’s where my 7 year old goes!]

In the summer, I met up with the school’s Eco Council a couple of times, and I talked about common native plants and the insects that feed on them.

I also discussed the philosophical concept of Ecocentrism (as opposed to Biocentrism and Anthropocentrism)! This was surprisingly well received, summed up in the deceptively simple question “Is a river alive?”.

Last week we started on the actual design process. This boils down to writing a list of features that you’d like, roughly measuring up the space to see what can go where, sketching the ideas out with pencil and paper, then drawing up a plan (I use CAD because it’s what I do for a living but you can use pencil and 5mm grid paper just as effectively).

The key features for the garden are:

The initial idea is to use hand-crafted gabions for the wall around the seating area, and recycled building “waste” for filling the gabions, the labyrinth and paths. Big respect to John Little for his inspirational work.

Once I have created a design, we will mark up the areas in-situ with trusty old bamboo and baking twine. Then we calculate the costs of the materials and put out a clarion call for volunteers.

It’s also a very good idea to draw up a schedule. Gardens can take years to fully develop, particularly when budgets are tight. By staging the work, you keep up the momentum and celebrate the achievements as you go along.

As with all my clients, the notes, plant lists and designs are online: grwd.uk/primary

I believe it’s so important for all children to have access to wildlife and to see how their food is grown, and so school gardens are central to this If only they were properly funded.

Mastodon Sanctuary

At the hands of a billionaire egomaniac, Twitter has descended into some sort of nasty, vindictive hellscape. I quit. My locked account is still there but I left today. Here’s some handy instructions on How To Leave Twitter.

Now I am on Mastodon. It is calmer, it is nicer, without advertising. I like it. You can find me here mas.to/@natureworks and there are some rather handy tips here fedi.tips They even have #Mosstodon, utterly delightful.

Quick links