Political action is crucial to saving our ecosystems. But we can also do our little bit to protect them, plant by plant, insect by insect, tiny soil-dwelling fungus by tiny soil-dwelling fungus.
About
Margaret Morgan
Many years ago, in the early days of blogging, I had a website devoted to gardening. I’d just returned to studying. First time round, my studies were in law and literature. This time it was vocational education (TAFE in Sydney, Australia) and a qualification in horticulture. That sparked a hunger for more, and I went back to university to study, research and teach plant science and ecology. So my blog evolved. One post, on the evolution of chloroplasts, won an international online popular science-writing prize, judged by Richard Dawkins. (That blog, My Growing Passion, still exists online, though it now untended and weedy. You can take a look around if you like, but please forgive any broken links you might encounter.) For more about me and my career as a screenwriter and author, see my professional website.
This time round, my planty blog is based on the other side of the planet. My family and I recently emigrated from Australia to the Netherlands and last year bought a house in Rotterdam. It’s a c.1905 terrace house in the neighbourhood of Nieuwe Westen, an historic and beautiful part of the city with streets dating back to the 1400s. Nearby is the gorgeous Heemraadssingel (see images below), one of Rotterdam’s main canals stretching north from the harbour, and it’s a ten-minute tram ride to the centre of this remarkable city.
When I last I “owned” a garden (can anyone really “own” the land beneath our feet? Seems a silly concept. Surely we are only ever short-term tenants, and then the land will in turn own us) it was entirely filled with indigenous Australian plants, most native to the area. Our property backed onto Sydney’s Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, a 150-square kilometre wilderness, and I wanted our garden to be an extension of that ecosystem. Anything exotic was only allowed in pots, never in the ground.
Here I want a garden that is also native, but native to the Netherlands. Dutch plants that will attract, feed and house Dutch animal species.
When I was a child growing up in the sixties on the then largely undeveloped bushy northern outskirts of Sydney, I was an explorer of creeks, a wanderer among the sandstone clefts, the bracken and gums, and a finder of birds, insects, lizards, frogs and the occasional snake. The awe I felt for the natural world settled deep in my bones. Over the years, my studies, both formal and informal, and my work, both professional and as a volunteer, led me to an understanding of the ecology of my home and a firm knowledge of the flora and fauna of Sydney.
Now, living on the other side of the world six decades later, I’m feeling a lot like that little girl on the cusp of learning. Once again, I’m confronted with species I don’t recognise, whose habits are mysteries to me. Once again, I’m living the thrill of finding out.
I hope you’ll join me on the journey.
