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A gardeners role in ecology.
bédé
Posts: 3,095
Ecology can be taken too far. And sometimes we miss the whole picture. Is this the place for a debate?
location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
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This kind of thread normally goes in the potting shed category but it doesn't really matter as most of us just look at recent discussions
How can you take ecology too far, that is meaningless, or it is at least to me.
When you don't even know who's in the team
S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
Wildlife threads and gardening with a wildlife focus are a significant part of the forum.
Questions are always more interesting than answers.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.
For example does it really help to plant nettles? They are valuable for wildlife but are also already pretty plentiful everywhere so you might not really be adding much by including them.
Or, are ornamentals worse than natives? There are specialised insects that rely on native plants, but in a garden context it seems to be the overall diversity of flowering plants, and the availability of nectar when native flowers are scarce, that makes gardens valuable. There's also plenty of research suggesting that native insects can adapt to make use of ornamental species, especially ones from the same genus as native plants.
And the habitat that gardens provide is made up of a diversity of different gardens, each gardened differently, sitting next to each other. Some full of flowers, some mainly lawn, some with lots of gravel, some with ponds, some derelict and full of nettles and thistles and so on. Trying to do it all within one garden isn't really necessary. But fine if that's what you want to do.
I can recommend this book: No Nettles Required.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
You might be lost.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
Tnings could easily go haywire though...
There's facts and there are opinions. I want and needs must. Ignorance and wilful ignorance. Known unknowns and unknown unknowns.
It can be very difficult to make a reasoned decision, even with the best will in the world.
I live in the Peak District National Park. I have a couple of fields, that have been grazing land for a very long time, quite possibly hundreds of years. There was a property here, and others around that still exist, named in a tenancy agreement in 1664.
The fields have a wildflower population, but parts of them are boggy and given over to rushes. My sheep graze the fields, so they prevent natural regeneration. If that did occur, the increasing tree and scrub cover would wipe out the harebells, eyebright and creeping cinquefoil that grow there now. Some creatures would gain, but some like the hares, curlews, lapwings and skylarks that live there now would lose out.
Our drains, and those of all the other farms feed into little streams that join a bigger stream that links into a river that leads to the sea. Water that springs from our land will be used further downstream for many things including drinking water, but the people there don't want too much of it at once. We have dug ditches and laid drains to make some parts less waterlogged.
For re-wllders this is a wrong thing to do. The boggy bits should be left as they are, the rushes given free rein, but as they hold back water, this would decrease floodfng risk downstream but also reduce the water supply. It would also affect diversity as the rushes spread inexorably.
I try to tread lightly on the land and conserve what I can, but am sometimes at a loss to know what is best. How do you balance all these different things?
Would more native woodland really be of more value ecologically than what is there now? Which 'wild' is 'better'? Is it right or wrong to dig a ditch to improve a soggy area, or to dig up rushes to give the grass and flowers a chance?
Will any of it make the slightest difference when the sea levels rise and the dispossessed billions come looking for a home?