From eyesore to architectural feat, people’s opinions of the inner city tower block range from horror to awe, but most would likely suggest such buildings have little or no wildlife value. But the people who live in them disagree…
Daphne and Lillian, two ladies who have called an imposing Hackney tower block home for over thirty years, rave about the natural spectacles they witness from their cloud capped building. The pair sit in the kitchen of a seventh floor flat, smoking cigarettes and reminiscing, all the time framed by a window that has sweeping views out over East Reservoir, Stoke Newington and beyond to central London.
Your eyes can trace the shapes of the Gherkin, BT Tower and London Eye, before settling closer to home on the steeple of Saint Mary’s New Church and then on the many birds resting on the glittering water at the tower block’s feet.
“The first time I came here I really couldn’t believe it, it’s such a wonderful view. From the street you’d never think it” says Daphne. “I’d spend hours staring out of the window at first. My mother used to say you could never be depressed in this flat because of the view, because you got to see all four seasons in detail. In the winter, when it snows, you look out and it’s like a village, with the snow on the trees and on the church. It’s so pretty.”
Lincoln Court doesn’t look especially pretty from the outside. It’s a tall, grey wedge of concrete and the main reception area is almost grim. But ascend a few floors and enter Daphne’s spacious, light-filled flat and you’re transported to another world. “You look out and you don’t see other people’s windows and walls, you see vast open space” says Daphne. The ladies feel blessed. “You’d miss out on all this if you were on the ground in a house” adds Lillian.
“You know when it’s most wonderful?” Daphne asks. “In the summer when there’s a storm. I love storms. We watched one at 3am in the morning once. We were glued to the windows watching it break over the reservoir. The water looked electric lit up by flashes of lightning. It was fantastic. We also get some really beautiful sunsets. When you’ve lived up high for a few years you really start to appreciate what you’ve got, it’s amazing.”
For Lillian, it’s the creatures and natural dramas she witnesses from her high rise perch that make her love life in Lincoln Court. She adores foxes and watches a local family of them every day, recognising individuals and learning to understand their behaviour. She recalls an incident three years ago when she saw a partridge from her flat. Watching the bird through her binoculars, she found her local foxes had also seen it and were in hot pursuit. With delight she exclaims that the partridge shot up a pear tree and escaped.
Lillian is a birdwatcher and has seen everything from jays to kestrels high up on the tower block’s ledges. “In the summer I left some food on my windowsill and a jay came and took it. There are four of them now.” Seagulls have recently moved in and the ladies comment that Canada geese used to be reservoir regulars but don’t visit any more. They’ve watched the reservoir change over the years, saying it seems smaller now as the reed beds gain strength. After initial concerns, both are huge fans of London Wildlife Trust’s community garden on the water edge.
Mark Pearson works for the Trust at the East Reservoir Community Garden and believes the local tower blocks are an essential part of the landscape. A fanatic birder, he relishes the views afforded by such buildings.
“Being fascinated by London’s ever-changing avifauna, I spend more time looking up than is probably healthy in a city of white van drivers and bendy buses, but it’s more than worth it – there’s an incredible variety of birdlife above us in the city skies.
Visible migration involves the ebb and flow of migrating birds overhead, and is a phenomenon that is especially dramatic in late autumn. Raptor-watching, meanwhile, is concentrated mainly in the main migration windows of spring and autumn.
To appreciate these spectacles, there is no better (or more comfortable) venue than high up in a tower block. I’ve been lucky enough to see osprey, black kite, honey buzzard and marsh harrier circling over the reservoir – special enough from the ground, but much more dramatic from Lincoln Court, the tower blocks that overshadow the water.
The extra height from tall buildings gives unrivalled views of many birds in flight, from large raptors to battalions of smaller birds. If you live or work in a London tower block, think of your window or balcony as a private, all-mod-cons bird observatory – because that’s exactly what it is.”
This article appears in the winter 2009 issue of Wild London magazine
Talking green design and the wonders of Wandsworth with sustainable development and regeneration expert Lorna Walker.
I first came across Lorna Walker at a ‘Sustainable Cities’ event at the British Library, organised by the Natural Capital Initiative. She delivered an inspiring speech that made me proud to call London, the greenest city in the world, home. She focussed on empowerment and the benefits of urban greening, rather than statements of doom and gloom. Lorna seemed sure that people could do much to equip urban areas to cope with climate change.
The second time I met Lorna was in the leafy surroundings of her south London home. I walked there across an autumnal Wandsworth Common, admiring trees gently haloed with gold and bushes studded with bright red berries. We sat in her airy conservatory and watched birds swarm over her feeders and squirrels hop noisily across her roof.
Lorna was born and brought up in southern Africa, but has lived in London for over 30 years. She’s worked as a director at Arup and was a member of Richard Roger’s Urban Task Force. She now runs her own business and is a commissioner for CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment).
“Urban is my joy” she says. “Cities are fantastic. They are where you will find the solutions to many of our problems.”
London is definitely her favourite. “I just adore London, I think it’s the best place to live in the world, it has such choices and such diversity. When I got married we moved to Wandsworth. It has the most green space of all the London boroughs, plus you’re close to the river and it’s not that far from town.
“London has parks all over it, squares and hidden little jewels – it’s 37% designated green space, not counting gardens. Green spaces mean better air and trees clean up pollution. In the future, they are going to be more important than ever if we’re to cope with extreme weather events.”
Sustainable design is becoming an often heard term, but what does it mean? “It means common sense and good design, for people. Sustainability is about doing one thing that has about five positive effects. And one of the imperatives is continuous improvement – you don’t have to change the world by Tuesday, but you can do a bit, if you believe every little bit counts.
“A lot of effort is going into improving the energy efficiency of buildings, but there’s also now much more work focusing on the edges of buildings and nurturing green space around them. For example, urban ventilation systems, where you allow areas for air to move, quite often over water, can help mitigate against the urban heat island effect.”
For Lorna, green space is central to happiness. She says she wouldn’t survive in London without access to nature. She also suggests that happiness is starting to become accepted as a kind of science, explaining that it’s connected to health and community, which are in turn intrinsically linked to spending time outside. Statistics show that vast swathes of the population, young and old, are depressed. “Parks and furry things, talking to other people and being active, the spaces where people can do those things are really important.”
Access to green spaces for Lorna, who is a wheelchair user, can be difficult in London but she is full of praises for improvements that are slowly being made. The Thames footpath is a particular favourite. “It was originally designed for cyclists but it’s great for wheelchairs. My pet hate though is gravel, it’s absolutely impossible for wheelchairs, you just can’t get over it.”
And what are Lorna’s favourite green spaces and London views? She loves Wandsworth Common and the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park, which is “totally magical all year round”. The best views are to be had from buildings like the OXO tower and Centre Point, or along the river from the Albert and Hammersmith bridges.
But most of all she loves her “green but unkempt garden”, where she and her sister counted over 23 species of birds last year. She works mainly from home and says the more she looks the more she sees. She keeps it wild and spends as much time as she can simply watching, delighting in everything from bees and beetles to bright green parakeets.
Lorna Walker is managing director of Lorna Walker Consulting, which focuses on sustainable development and urban regeneration. She is commissioner for CABE (Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment) and has just finished working on a Foresight report about sustainable energy and management in the built environment. Find out more on www.lornawalker.co.uk
This article appears in the winter 2009 issue of Wild London magazine
This review was originally written for the Londonist
Part of the Suspense London Puppetry Festival, Perseus and the Gorgon’s Head played at The Little Angel Theatre this weekend. Mixing people with puppets, the performance was an interpretation of an ancient Greek tale written by the late Adrian Mitchell.
The people took the form of five storytelling gods, given to meddling with the lives of unfortunate human beings as a way of relieving themselves of the boredom of eternal life. The puppets were both a mixture of beautifully carved creations, operated generally by hand but also by string, and playful use of everyday objects and cloth.
The story was a classic, that of a son of Zeus, Perseus, who is challenged to kill Medusa, the infamous Gorgon who has snakes for hair and whose gaze turns men to stone. The set was inventive, transforming from a feast laden table into a stage where bronze towers rose and sea monsters were defeated.
The main character puppets were elegant and simple forms, but with detailed costumes and distinct personalities. The three grey ladies were a particular delight. Voluminous dresses housed three withered hags with only one eyeball to share between them, which they plucked out and passed between themselves in order to see. It was skilful puppetry and brilliant to watch.
The human performers were clearly working hard, but there were a few clumsy moments and missed notes. It’s a small space for five performers and 20 puppets, and the actors/puppeteers did a sterling job of adapting to it, but things didn’t run as smoothly as they could. Although this was couched as ‘adult puppetry’ it didn’t feel like it. It was certainly suitable for children and lacked knowing winks. Charming, but perhaps a bit disappointing if you were expecting something a bit racier from the ancient Greeks.
Puppetry performances of all kinds continue throughout the week as part of the Suspense festival. Whether you’re a puppetry connoisseur or a puppet virgin it’s definitely worth checking this festival out. Find out more at www.suspensefestival.com
A review originally written for the Londonist.
Organised by the self styled ‘think and do tank’, the New Economics Foundation, the Festival of Interdependence was a popular choice for a free day out this weekend. By midday, a long queue to get into the Bargehouse was developing and organisers were forced to start operating a ‘one in, one out’ policy of no return. The crowds and not being able to leave and come back were our only complaints about this event.
We got there early to sign up for a bread making class and to take part in an urban agriculture workshop, which was fascinating when the architects leading the discussion could make themselves heard over the loud background noise. This green fingered Londonista especially enjoyed the section when we broke out into small groups to discuss the value of the urban growing spaces we knew.
Wandering around the Bargehouse before the bread making began, there was much to see and do. The festival spread out over several floors and 
each room had its own character. In one room we stumbled upon a climate change poet and indulged in free coffee, in another we witnessed mad looking gadgets from the ‘Human Powered Home’ and on the top floor we walked into an indoor recreation of the Climate Camp.
The bread making workshop was great. Run by Paul Barker from the Cinnamon Square Bakery in Hertfordshire, and organised by the Real Bread Campaign, it was a flour fuelled hour of fun. We learned an awful lot about the humble loaf as well as getting to make one of our own. Ingredients and kneading techniques were covered, and Paul revealed that baking bread is an obsession and an art. The Londonist’s energetic hand work saw our dough fly through the air and onto the floor, but happily at a moment when our teacher’s back was turned and he never knew.
By the time the bread making was done, the Bargehouse was feeling really busy and we decided to go off in search of a quiet, late lunch. As we left a speaker was just getting started outside, taking advantage of the queue / captive audience. It looked like the Festival of Interdependence was going to buzz for the rest of the afternoon.
An interview/preview I did for the Londonist this week
It’s been over 25 years since the last festival and the suspense has been killing puppetry fans. But at last ten days of puppet magic is to unfurl across London as Suspense, a festival of adult puppetry, opens at the end of the month. Including an eclectic range of performances, masterclasses and symposia, organisers promise to “explode the myths that currently surround puppetry in this country” and prove that “puppets aren’t just for kids”.
Suspense stars puppet artistes from the UK and beyond, and adventures will range from the bizarre to the mysterious, with performances from a host of marionettes, shadow puppets and found objects, as well as animation, film, dance and song. The festival runs across 7 select venues including tiny treasures like the Little Angel Theatre and the floating Puppet Barge.
We chatted to Peter Glanville, Artistic Director of the Little Angel Theatre and one of the brains behind Suspense, to find out more.
Peter, it’s been over 25 years since the last London Puppetry Festival… why so long and why now?
Puppetry has historically been very poorly funded in the UK, and so puppetry companies and organisations like Little Angel have not had the resources to create a major event of this scale. Over the last five years high profile productions like War Horse, Madame Butterfly, Avenue Q, The Lion King and Venus and Adonis have helped to generate new audiences and a growing appreciation for the art-form.
At the same time, Little Angel has developed evening audiences for adult work such as our “Puppet Grinder Cabarets”. This, in turn, has influenced more theatre artists / companies to engage with the art-form, and is reflected in the wide range of work programmed for Suspense.
You say puppetry is going through a renaissance at the moment, but why do you think that is? What is it that’s appealing about it right now?
Theatre makers are looking at new ways of creating work and have re-discovered and re-examined the potential of puppetry in telling stories through image, symbol and metaphor. A growth in influences from other cultures has also had an impact. Julie Taymors work was influenced by her time in Indonesia, Greg Doran was inspired by Bun-raku Puppetry in Japan, and numerous artists have been inspired by Tadeusz Kantor’s work in Poland with objects and puppets.
What distinguishes adult puppetry from kids’ puppetry?
As with all forms of live performance, it’s the content which defines the work as being suitable for kids or adults. For example, there are graphic images from war in “The Brain” which are not suitable for children.
What kinds of people watch adult puppetry?
All kinds!! I’m sure the festival will have a core audience who are interested in puppetry and visual forms of theatre, but I think more people will be attracted by the subject matters – from Shakespeare to Einstein to Schoenberg – rather than just the art form.
How would you describe the London puppetry scene? In fact, is there a London puppetry scene??
The Little Angel calls itself the home of British Puppetry – since 1961. We’ve been a major centre for people who want to learn more about the art-form as makers or puppeteers. We have weekly classes for children, teenagers and adults, as well as ongoing professional development courses and educational projects up and down the country. We’re also a producing and receiving house and tour work nationally and internationally.
Most puppeteers/puppet-makers have had a connection with Little Angel at some point in their careers. Having said that, there are many other incredible places where people can also learn or perform puppetry, especially Norwich Puppet Theatre and the Scottish Mask and Puppet Centre in Glasgow.
In terms of ’scenes’, puppetry is definitely not London-centric. There are an abundance of companies scattered all over the country. This is reflected by Puppet Festivals in places such as Bristol, Edinburgh, Skipton, Bath and Buxton. Most of the companies programmed in Suspense are not London-based.
What about you – how long have you being doing puppetry?
I became interested in non-text based / visual forms of theatre making when I first saw work by companies like Phillipe Genty and Complicite. I ran a company called Kazzum for many years and through this time began to study mask, Lecoq-based clowning and puppetry.
My interest in puppetry continued to grow and a four month sabbatical in 2000 allowed me to travel across South-East Asia studying the art-form in more detail. I returned to direct a production of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” in a tank of water inspired by Vietnamese Water Puppetry. My first job with the Little Angel was as a Stage Manager when I was a student. I never thought then that 25 years later I would have the privilege of being Artistic Director.
Finally, what should we watch at Suspense?
I’d advise everyone to catch “Rust” by Green Ginger at The Pleasance – their work is a lot of fun and this is a London premiere of a piece that has been all over the world. I’m also looking forward to hosting international companies at Little Angel – Compagnie Papiertheatre (France), TAMTAM Objektentheater (Holland) and Inkfish (US)
The Suspense London Puppetry Festival runs from Friday 30th October until Sunday 8th November. www.suspensefestival.com
An interview I did for the Londonist website this week
Frustrated by “sodding confusing, political and opinionated” advice on how and why to be green, Mark Shearer and Nick Gardner decided London needed Project Dirt.
It’s a south London facing website that’s providing a platform for projects with an eco-friendly bent to link up, and a website that’s showing off examples of real Londoners doing real things to make our city a greener place. Three years later, and 18 months since going live, the website has attracted over 1,500 members without any kind of marketing and is planning to go London-wide, then national, then the world..!
The Londonist met Mark for lunch in King’s Cross, close to the Hub where he’s masterminding his dirty empire. We realised trying to conduct an interview while eating a midday meal was something of a nightmare, and this Londonista is sure she had food between her teeth throughout. Mark had much to say though, and we managed to fit in questions and answers between mouthfuls.
So Mark how did it all begin?
It was four years ago, I was 25, working in property, but with a lifelong interest in the environment (I’m mesmerised by Attenborough). But I found the green movement a disjointed one, I found it frustrating, confusing.
An internet search revealed that there were three Transition Towns in one London borough and two compost clubs in the same street that Nick lived in. We could see there was a need for a platform for these projects to sit on, where they could see what each was doing and collaborate.
There was also a need for a space where the general public could see from afar examples of people taking positive action and also get genuine advice, the kind of advice you’d get from a mate in the pub. And practical advice too, not just abstract things like ‘top ten tips to save energy’ or ‘put a brick in your cistern’ wisdom, but advice from real people doing real things in their communities.
And so Project Dirt was born..?
When we started we were just five people and a project, well two people if I’m honest because that includes Nick, myself and our tech guy. The website went live and we decided not to do any marketing, to just see what happened relying on word of mouth.
Project Dirt’s website is hosting all kinds of local London projects now, from Friends of the Earth groups to grow your own projects on housing estates. We’re attracting attention from international companies like Timberland, from political figures like Rosie Boycott and from borough councils like Wandsworth. People know who we are suddenly. We dared to do it and it’s lovely hearing people giving us positive feedback, telling us how Project Dirt has helped them.
What happens if two Transition Towns from the same borough register??
We introduce them and get them to work together.
And are there any rules?
Anyone can sign up and become a member, we have almost 1,500 so far. In terms of projects, we’ve got a broad remit for the kinds that can join and be listed on the site, but ultimately they have to have a green core. We had a humanitarian project contact us recently about being on the site but we had to say no. What they are doing is great, but Project Dirt wasn’t the right space for them.
There are lots of green websites and forums, what makes yours unique?
It’s that we’re saying enough to talking, that we are featuring projects that exist, people that are taking actual action. I think our neutrality makes us unique too, and our transparency. The site is all based around groups, a bit like the Facebook group system. Individuals can use the forum to network but we’re defined by the projects.
We’re offering people a chance to put their projects on the map, to list their events, share their knowledge and seek advice. We’re providing them with web space, with project management tools, even with a press office in some cases.
It’s important to emphasise that our current site is a test site too and that, although we’ve started with a south London bias, we are keen to be London-wide. We hope to launch a new website in the next six months, something more sophisticated but even simpler to use. We’d like Project Dirt to go national, even global. It’s south London and also urban in character at the moment, it’s quite an intimate space defined by neighbourhoods, but I think it will expand its borders well.
Sounds expensive.
We’re looking for funding, and we will charge certain groups to join, like companies and local authorities. For individuals and other projects it’ll stay free. We’ll sell advertising too.
Is it completely virtual? Do you ever meet the people behind the projects, get your own hands dirty?
Nick and I are very hands on, we act like mediators between the projects and visit them all the time. This is my full time job now. I’m doing IT workshops at the moment for our users who are over fifty because they want to understand how to use the site more effectively.
Scary, but exciting, I’ve been asked by Earthwatch to take part in a debate at the Royal Geographical Society in November, it’s going to be some kind of ecological Dragon’s Den! I think they asked me because I’m a bit ordinary, business minded rather than a scientist or a boffin.
Tell us a bit more about Timberland, Wandsworth and Rosie.
Timberland approached us out of the blue. At first we weren’t convinced, but their sense of corporate social responsibility seemed really strong and so we set up project fund with them. Four pots of £500, which projects could apply for and was very popular. We’re now administering a Timberland Earthkeeper grant. I really believe it’s important to work with the big guys because the small changes they make have a wide impact.
Following on from that Wandsworth Borough Council are now using Project Dirt as a way of managing their new eco fund. Projects will be able to apply for money from its £5,000 pot through our website. Rosie Boycott has been in touch too and is a big fan!
What are your favourites on the Project Dirt website?
The Brixton Pound and Let’s Go, Let’s Grow. I also really like The Wandle Trust, who organise monthly river clean up sessions attracting about fifty volunteers each time. And Devonshire Road Nature Reserve in Forest Hill, run by a star called Iris who rescued the site and is now busy installing beehives and setting up a kids’ club.
The people who’ve signed their groups up to Project Dirt are trailblazers and mini heroes. If you look at our webpages you get a window into a bit of London where people are achieving great things. Find out more at www.projectdirt.com
Written for the Londonist website: http://londonist.com/2009/10/interview_mark_shearer_of_project_d.php
A portrait of planted Paris, early autumn 2009
A preview-review piece I wrote today for the Londonist website
The Pale Blue Door will swing open again later this month for five more days of camp supper club food and frolics in Dalston. Artist Tony Hornecker has been hosting a pop up restaurant-cum- installation at his house this summer and it’s been such a success that he’s declared he’ll be back by popular demand from the 30th September to 4th October.
The Londonist stepped through the Pale Blue Door on bank holiday Sunday and loved every minute of it. We loved the glowing candlelight, the heavy velvet drapes, the chintzy crockery and squeezing onto our tiny table. We loved being served a welcome G&T by a gorgeous drag queen in an incredibly short dress. The food isn’t gourmet but it’s tasty and filling. Expect a three course meal with wine, including a roast and yummy homemade crumble, for your £30 fee.
But this isn’t really about the food, it’s about everything else. It’s about clambering up steep stairs and disappearing through trapdoors, it’s about high ceilings and ceilings so low you have to crawl. It’s about chickens living on the roof. It’s about a bathroom dressed in red velvet that’s still home to the inhabitant’s toothbrushes. It’s about the voyeurism of exploring someone else’s home, in this case an artist’s small live/work space, which has been turned into a wonderland that makes you feel like you’re in an oversized doll’s house.
You share your evening with whoever else has emailed Tony and asked to visit that night, in our case an eclectic bunch of Londoners who’d resisted the August bank holiday exodus and were looking to be fed and entertained on a lazy Sunday night. There were retired folk and pregnant women, as well as couples, friends and people who’d braved it alone.
It’s really up to the individual how much you immerse yourself in the experience. We ate, we drank and we were rewarded with glorious Tina Turner renditions from our hostess. By the time coffee was finished, we were up and dancing with our dining neighbours. The next morning there was glitter everywhere, in places you’d never imagine, and the gin and red wine combined to produce seriously fuzzy heads. But it was worth it, we had a mad and wonderful night.
The Pale Blue Door returns from 30th September until 4th October
To book email thepalebluedoor@hotmail.co.uk or check out http://tonyhornecker.wordpress.com
written for The Londonist website:
http://londonist.com/2009/09/pop_up_underground_restaurant_revie.php
A little preview piece I wrote last week for the marvellous Londonist website
http://londonist.com/2009/09/preview_puppet_grinder_cabaret.php
The shapes thrown by the dancing milkshake straw were truly impressive. It glided, it soared, it did back flips and it did high kicks. In fact, its moves were nothing short of majestic. We knew that straws were flexible and fun – a drink with a straw is a drink with character – but had no idea an audience could be gripped by one as it danced across a blacked out stage, masterfully worked by a circus master and a couple of chop sticks.
The Puppet Grinder Cabaret returns to the charming Little Angel Theatre tonight and tomorrow after a trip up to Edinburgh. The London adult puppet scene is thriving, audiences love it and Oli – Oliver Smart, the brains and the brawn behind the dancing milkshake straw – says the art form has a high profile in theatre, opera and film at the moment.
This Londonista has been taking puppetry classes at the Little Angel this year. It’s the tiniest theatre ever, but is wrapped in a storybook kind of magic. When you’re waiting outside for the doors to open, you can peer through a dusty window into the puppet makers’ workshop that is full of many magical creatures, suspended in the half gloom. Lessons take place in a nearby church hall and cover everything from shadow puppetry to working with found objects.
Oli specialises in making puppet magic with discarded things he’s found. The Suitcase Circus, a collaboration between Oli and his friend Matt, is a joy to behold, where objects you always thought you knew and understood like gloves and teapots find new life as moody and eccentric cabaret stars.
We’ve been to a couple of past Puppet Grinder Cabarets and they’ve been brilliant. If you don’t have plans already we’d definitely recommend trying this out. The line up this weekend includes Magdalena the Mysterious and Shitty Deal Puppet Theatre as well as Suitcase Circus, plus films from Sarah Wright, Bjorn Verloh and Henning Thomas. Go and witness the milkshake straw in glorious action for yourself!
What are you doing this weekend Helen? Oh…ummm…I’m actually writing an article about bogs, I say, feeling rather sheepish. Doesn’t exactly sound glamorous does it? But funnily when I’ve told people about the bog article, they’ve lit up. Perhaps I’ve been confessing to somewhat special characters but I’m not sure that’s it, bogs are pretty amazing places.
One friend, someone I regard as a true urbanite, went all misty eyed over the ‘b’ word, reminiscing about a few months he’d spent in the Hebrides doing wildlife surveying. He described the rich, peaty landscape as a true wilderness and as isolated as you could get in the British Isles. Another person I told got very excited about the idea of bog people, the ancient bodies pulled out of peatlands, preserved by the acidic, oxygen-less earth.
The UK and Ireland are home to about 15% of the world’s peatlands, which globally cover approximately 3% of the earth’s surface. Living in London I thought I was probably as far away from any kind of mossland as you could get, but it turns out there’s a sliver of bog on Hampstead Heath, not far from where I live. The Heath is a great place, somewhere in the city where you can go and get genuinely lost and a little bit muddy. The capital’s small sphagnum bog can be found in an acidic patch in the Kenwood west meadow. It’s been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and provides a perfect home for numerous invertebrates and locally rare plant and moss species. It’s a tiny, urban example of how important bogs are for wildlife.
On a far grander scale, the peatland areas of northern England, Scotland and Ireland support wildlife species that can only exist in bogs’ unique conditions. The creatures that call peat home are fascinating and the plant, moss and lichen life is nothing short of exotic. There’s the carnivorous and brightly coloured sundew and butterwort plants that have something almost tropical about them; there’s the delicate beauty of minty smelling bog myrtle, rare bog rosemary and bog asphodel; not to mention the multicoloured and multi-textured patchwork of sphagnum mosses. Bogs can be home to various birdlife as well as dragonflies, damselflies, frogs and lizards. And the sight of the magnificently hairy caterpillar of the dark tussock moth is something to behold.
Peat forms in the waterlogged, sterile and acidic conditions of bogs and fens. These inhospitable sounding conditions are loved by certain plants. As they die, the organic matter doesn’t decompose but slowly accumulates as peat due to the lack of oxygen, growing at the painfully slow rate of just one or two millimetres per year. Some peat bogs have taken thousands of years to form. They lock up carbon that would otherwise contribute massively to global warming.
Unfortunately the UK and Ireland’s peatlands have been being consistently destroyed and degraded for decades. People have been using peat for centuries and hand cutting for fuel can be sustainable, as the peat is often able to gradually re-form. It’s the industrial scale stripping of peat for horticultural products that’s the real problem.
It started in the 1950s with the rise of the garden centre, an explosion in amateur gardening and an increasing trend to grow things in containers. It would be silly to suggest that peat isn’t an effective growing medium. It’s good at holding air and water, it’s sterile, easy to store and relatively cheap. Since the 1970s, it’s been the compost of choice for nearly all growers and this has had devastating environmental consequences.
Things are slowly changing. Politically peat is recognised as being in need of protection. The UK government has committed to 90% of the soil market being peat free by 2010, and DEFRA closely monitors the situation. Figures released in 2007 highlighted that amateur gardeners were the biggest consumers of peat products, but that peat use was slowly dropping.
As we face up to the realities of a changing climate, peatlands have taken on an even greater significance as vital stores of carbon. Despite only covering a small part of the world’s land area, peatlands contain twice as much carbon as global forest biomass. A 2008 United Nations report concluded that 10 per cent of global emissions come from degraded peatlands – more than is emitted by the global aviation industry. The destruction of bogs is not only disastrous for wildlife, it’s got dire consequences for us humans too.
A letter from conservationists appeared in the Times about this earlier this year. The authors suggested that peatland restoration was a key way to tackle climate change. They argued that the “restoration of peatlands converts them from net emitters to net absorbers of CO2…Restoration also brings collateral benefits in terms of flood control, water quality, biodiversity conservation and amenity value. The UK contains substantial areas of peatland containing over 1,800 million tonnes of carbon. Restoring these to prime condition would not only help to balance our own carbon budgets, it would encourage other nations to do the same.”
Peat bogs are wonderful places for wildlife and they have the potential to act as vital carbon sinks at a time when we urgently need to cut emissions. You can do your bit to protect them by refusing to buy peat products or plants that have been grown in peat based compost. There are lots of alternatives that will effectively nourish your plants, not least homemade (and free!) garden compost.
Find out more about peat
www.ipcc.ie – The Irish Peatland Conservation Council
