J's Garden Notes - Spring 2022

Small Steps

Our future relies on us finding ways to live alongside and with a thriving natural landscape. We can all take part in this regeneration. If we all link our natural spaces together we will build a working natural web to allow nature to move freely alongside us.

70% of land in England is farmed and over my lifetime our farming practices have increasingly been driven by Government funding and policy and our natural landscape has become disjointed. Hedgerows have been taken out, margins at the edges of fields have become smaller and smaller as more and more land was given over to the production of food. These nature/wildlife pathways were therefore eroded and have caused huge areas of our natural countryside to have become disconnected and therefore isolated. The push to put this right has begun but obviously will take time.

We, as gardeners, can do something too to make a difference – to speed this regenerative process up.

Gardening - pesticide and herbicide free.
Creating links between gardens – hedgehog pathways in fences. Letting hedgerows grow as links to the land outside the garden or to the garden next door.
Leaving areas of lawn to nature – small patches of meadow, ponds, wildlife areas.
Planting plants to encourage pollinators – bees and other insects.
Creating bug hotels and beetle banks.
Feeding the birds that visit our gardens.

Also...
Talking to others about linking areas of biodiversity in our villages, towns and local farms.
Talking to councils about not mowing verges

I was lucky enough to listen to a lecture Isabella Trees gave for The Oxford Botanical Gardens a couple of weeks ago. Isabella is the author of Wilding and joint owner of the Knepp Castle wilding project in West Sussex which has been running now for over 20 years.

"Whatever little piece of soil we have jurisdiction or stewardship over, we can do something positive with." Isabella said.

I have been watching their project with interest for a while now and visiting it is amazing to see just how nature can regenerate itself and how huge amounts of wildlife have returned to their parcel of farmland. This is a demonstration of what can happen but unless it is connected to other areas the balance will be lost in time.

Isabella said in her talk that ”the smaller the land, the more human intervention is needed to replicate the natural processes that are missing, because of the contraints of space.” I can easily see how isolated pockets of nature will in time begin to struggle with genetic inbreeding. They all need to linked to be healthy.

We do not all need to create a Knepp Wilding Project, but we can connect our own small spaces together to form, what she describes as, "a webbing of nature restoration throughout the landscape."

When you look, there is a huge wave of activity in our country towards these goals.
Regenerative farming is happening in many places
Things are changing and we will all benefit. We can help speed up this change.

"Rewilding 5% of England could create 20,000 jobs in rural communities and increase employment by 50% compared to intensive farming, figures show.” Guardian Aug 2021

Nature has the answer - regenerated soils are obviously good for healthy, organic growing of food but also:

• acting as a sponge for coping with floods
• locking the moisture in the ground to cope with drought
• carbon capture – storing carbon from the atmosphere

The more of us that get on board in some small way with this, the faster we can put back what we have lost.

The Lost Wax Process of Working With Lead

Very occasionally we are lucky enough to come across something really rare and special. We currently have a collection of lead pieces which are one of those rare finds. The age and high quality of these pieces it such a privilege to see in close quarters. These have all been cast using the lost wax process which was something of the period used for single, unique pieces.

This process involves the artist sculpting the piece in wax. The finer detail is then added to the outside of the wax sculpture to a finished level.

Once complete it is encased in a shell. This was probably a ceramic material in the 18th century and later on and through to current day is a type of plaster.

This was then heated so that the wax ran out from inside leaving a void as a negative imprint of the piece. Molten lead was then poured into the casing. This way either solid or hollow pieces were made. They were one off pieces as the original was melted and then when the lead was cool the ceramic casing was broken away from the new lead piece within.

The lead sculpture would then have the finer detail added with the sculptors tools to finish off the piece.