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December reflections

7/12/2023

Coming to the end of the year prompted me to reflect on the nature projects I had undertaken and how one project had fed into and stimulated another. In January I dug and landscaped a pond and this prompted me to build a new pathway through the middle of the woods which I have used many times since. I planted native blue bells and wild garlic in the green along the side of the path and had some success but I am hoping for more this year.

Through February and March I dug out over 300 sq m of turf in the field and sowed wildflower seed.It took until late June to flower but the flowers provided much pleasure throughout the summer

I judged my wildflower for insect pollinators to have been successful so in August I began planning to extend my mini B-Line. I imagined a curve on the outside of my existing cultivation about 2 to 3m wide and I worked on it for much of September and October spending a couple of hours a day on most days digging up the turf and barrowing it to the woods.

I used the turf to create my grassy knoll - another labour of love, into which I planted a couple of hundred native bluebells.. The knoll looked a bit bare so I began landscaping it with wild woodland sedges dug up from other parts of the woods where they are abundant. I counted 60 plants that I had transplanted.

I got distracted and in November I spent quite a bit of time lining the main pathway through the woods with logs and segments of tree trunks.. It was quite physical and I had to scour the woods for logs of an appropriate size and that often led onto doing other things - like diverting an existing path or stacking branches and moss covered logs. Fortunately, I didnt damage myself lifting, carrying, rolling and wheel barrowing the logs.

So I reached December and decided I would end the year where I started it building another pond - this one at the top of the woods. There is a patch of neglected woodland near the gate. Its overgrown with brambles and nettles in the summer but bare and wet in the winter..I started digging into thr wet clay and it immediately filled with water. The more I dug the more it filled and in the space of a week I had quite a sizeable structure. Over the next few weeks I will be landscaping the edges with ferns. Everything takes time and a lot of physical effort but I can see and appreciate the results and I feel I am creating new environments that are conducive to life.

Creating a woodland grassy knoll

17/10/2023

I began extending my own mini-B-Line in mid August (see my post). I wanted to move my wildflower cultivation into the field and so I started digging with a vague idea of wrapping around the existing wildflower area. I envisaged a curving or sinuous cut about 2 metres wide. I decided not to pile the upturned turf along the edge of the cut as these mounds generated lots of weeds. So I had to decide what I was going to do with turf.

I wandered down to the woods and imagined I could do some landscaping with the turf – parts of the woods are often boggy or have standing water in the winter as the water table rises. In January of this year I created a new path through the woods and raised the level of the ground along the path to ensure it was above the water table. It has opened up the middle of the woods and my intention is to keep developing this area.

Drawing on this experience I thought I might try to increase the level of the woodland floor at the start of my new path by creating a small grassy mound or “knoll” into which I could plant native bluebells and other wildflowers. The area was overgrown wiith brambles and nettles and in early September I made a start by clearing them and then dumping the upturned sods of earth on top of the existing woodland floor to a height of about 60-70cm. As the mound grew I began to shape it and add turf to the top. I am not sure whether the grass will grow in the shade so it is all a hopeful experiment. In this way I was able to knit two different regenerative nature projects together – a new wildflower strip and woodland grassy bluebell knoll. It has taken me the best part of 2 months working a few hours on most dry days to complete the project, but today I dug the last piece of turf and laid it on the now complete knoll.

When working on projects like this I am acutely aware of how the environment and the materials I am working with shapes my actions. For example, the shape and dimensions of the knoll only revealed themselves as I constructed it. The shape was influenced by the existing contours but not constrained by them. It is also clear to me that new dimensions to the project emerge as it unfolds. For example half way through building the knoll I started working on the edges to the woodland path and for a few days this became my main priority. Similarly, I conducted an early experiment in transplanting sedges at the edge of the knoll and going forwards I will increase the topography by deepening the drainage depressions and building up the banks and then transplanting the sedges in the depressions. In this way I will help the sedges displace the brambles and nettle infestation. Wood Sedge is an important plant for wildlife, as it provides cover and food for many species. The foliage is eaten by deer, rabbits, and other small mammals, while the seeds are a food source for birds and small mammals. In addition, Wood Sedge is a host plant for the larvae of some butterfly species

It’s required a lot of effort but I have made good use of the turf (reused and conserved the resource within the area) and elevated the land so that it sits above the wet season water table. I’m also hopeful that it will help control the infestation of brambles in this area. I have enjoyed the feeing of doing something significant to reshape my environment in a way that I know should improve both its aesthetic appeal and plant biodiversity of this area, which should help insect pollinators to flourish. I also know that in years to come, when I am no longer here, other people and living things, will appreciate and enjoy the results of my labour.

Making sense of my journeys

11/9/2023

POST #21 PATHWAYS TO A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

We live emergently but make sense of our lived experiences reflectively. By that I mean that we perceive the world, make decisions about what we wil do and act, and then react to what happens, Only at the end can we fully comprehend and appreciate the results of our efforts and what we have learnt through the process. The last 20 posts record what I have done and contain some reflections and in this post I share two synthesis movies of my experience of trying to help nature, the environment and sustainability. The first shows the evolution of my wildflower meadow project. The second attempts to relate and intgegrate this pathway project with the lifewide inquiry and a community project I am involved in.

Connecting three pathways

Playing in and with Nature

8/9/2023

POST #20 PATHWAYS TO A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

The Science Is Clear: Play Is Critical for Children’s [development] and Improves Well-Being for Adults

Play is state of mind that one has when absorbed in an activity that provides enjoyment and a suspension of sense of time. And play is self-motivated so you want to do it again and again.

The characteristics of play all have to do with motivation and mental attitude, not with … the behavior itself.

National Institute for Play, California https://www.nifplay.org/

Context: We have just had our September Zoom meeting and one of the participants mentioned that she felt her inquiry had provided opportunities for play. There seemed to be agreement amongst other particiipants that our inquiries provided opportunities for play.

I began to think about my own inquiry formed around the cultivation wildflowers and encouragement for natural wildflower regeneration for insect pollinators and how much the idea of playing featured whenever I’m outside doing stuff in and with nature. Clearly there has been a signficant element of work – for example the sustained physical effort of digging up the matted roots of grasses to create patches of bare soil for sowing. But there are also elements of play within the activities – for example just wandering and looking and listening and experiencing the wildflowers in my garden without worrying about time, is for me, a form of play. Perhaps the play is the reward for work and perhaps the opportunities for play are what sustains commitment in the end?

Concepts: Play is defined as a intrinsically motivated activities done for recreational pleasure and enjoyment [1] Brown [2] defines play as experiences that meet the following criteria: purposeless, voluntary, fun, outside of time (i.e., a flow state), less self-conscious, improvisational, and with a continuation desire (i.e., a desire to continue doing it once we have started). All aspects of my project would be contained within these characteristics except for the idea of purposeless which intuitively seems to me to be wrong. Much of my play as a child was grounded in the idea of exploring and discovery, or winning or getting better at something. My project to cultivate wildflowers is being undertaken for a purpose beyond myself ie to help nature, and that is is a deeper purpose than merely recreational.

The California-based National Institute for Play describes seven contexts and patterns for play[3]I can recognise three of these within my own activities
1 Attunement Play – through which I have been able to develop a deeper connection and relationship with the natural world of which I am a part
2 Creative Play – through which I have been able to create representations and artefacts with aesthetic appeal for example through my photographs and movies. One might argue that the very production of a wildflower garden from a field dominated by grasses is a playful but purposeful act of creative play within which elements of work are integrated.
3 Storytelling – the production of stories (my blog posts and presentationsand my movies) describing, interpreting and reflecting on my experiences to share with myself and others.

Brown [2] identifies eight play personalities (Table 1). In truth, we mix these types depending on the context and, for what it’s worth, I can see in the context of my inquiry aspects of Explorer, Director, Collector (I would use Curator), Storyteller and Creator. Last night I helped set up a Moth Trap in my garden with an ecologist friend and early this morning we spent several hours examining and identifying the moths that had been trapped. It felt like play with a purpose, more than recreational and not like work.

Table 1 Play Personalities according to Stuart [2]
The Joker – plays with and through humour
The Kinesthetic - plays through body movement that celebrates the body’s presence and movement in the world.
The Explorer/Investigator - plays through learning. They want to know and understand. This type of play is a way of exploring and orienting to the world.
The Competitor – play in order to win or prove themselves against others
The Director - plays through building systems, processes and organizing. People who enjoy playing in this way find the experience of organizing, arranging, and directing as intrinsically satisfying.
The Collector - collectors are appreciators. They spend energy hunting, acquiring, and building a collection of useful, attractive, or interesting things or objects including gardeners who create botanically wonderous landscapes.
The Storyteller feels the release of play through telling and listening to stories. They are the authors and the novel readers, but more so – they are people who craft narratives from ordinary life.
The Creator - the creative person is inherently at play when they create. Whether it’s a traditional artist who paints, sculpts, or draws or nontraditional creators like landscape contractors, model railroad builders, crafters, and even aquarium owners, people who delight in imagining new ideas and bringing them to life are all enjoying the play style of creator.

I agree that play is a ‘state of mind’ and if we have the attitude we will find affordances for play in almost any aspect of our life. I think this is a characteristic of human creativity and I have been very fortunate in my life to find endless opportunity to play in the different roles I have inhabited. My job often became my hobby as well and that was all I needed to keep me engaged.

Whether I like it of not (and others I’m sure will feel the same) I tend to see situations (including work) as opportunities for play. What I've concluded from my own project is that what might be described as work, like the laborious digging and weeding I’ve done was interspersed and offset by other things I've done that are most definitely playful and enjoyable.

My realisation is that its the integration of these two modes enable me to stick at it and ultimately create the value for nature and myself that I'm trying to achieve... I am very happy to posit this as a theory for enabling some people to sustain commitment to significant tasks, that require investment of a lot of time, energy and resource. Such a theory could be framed using a phrase like:

While recognising that some people may see play as inappropriate for the serious challenge of living and learning for a more sustainable future, some people might appreciate the value of integrating play amongst the strategies they use to sustain their commitment to achieving this goal. In this way they utilise opportunity for creativity and in the process they enhance their own wellbeing.

One of the most signficant lessons for me has been the growing awareness that through my actions to help nature I am not separate from nature, I am part of nature with an important role to play in helping nature achieve its potential to recreate itself and in the process I contribute to my own formation.

Sources
1 Garvey, C. (1990). Play. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
2 Brown S (2009) Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul New York: Penguin Group.
3 National Institute for Play. "The Science – Patterns of Play" https://www.nifplay.org/what-is-play/types-of-play/

Completing the Cycle and New Beginnings

17/8/2023

POST #19 PATHWAYS TO A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

We have reached mid August and that part of the natural cycle where it is necessary to cut the grass and wildflowers that have gone to seed in the natural garden meadow. Nature teaches us that this cycle of plant life that has nurtured the insect pollinators over the summer months is now passing on its genes to begin the next cycle of life.

Our Re-Betchworth team offered a scything workshop last weekend so I joined it and over the course of the day was introduced to the scythe and the mowing technique and gained a few hours experience of cutting wildflowers and grasses using the scythe. The workshop was excellent but by the end of it I realised that it was much too slow and labour intensive to use on my wildflower meadow.

A walk through the meadow demonstrated that there were still plenty of buterflies and pollinating insects foraging so I took my time cutting it with the tractor, one area at a time, rather than tackling the whole thing in one go which I had done in previous years. I began with a high cut, to encourage any animals to escape, allowing the grass and wildflower cuttings to lie for a few days for seed to drop. Then using the mower I made a low cut and hoovered up the cuttings for composting. It was quite time consuming but the task was completed by spending a few hours a day for a couple of weeks

My wildflower cultivation is a mass of flowers and a delight to behold. It began to flower in late June as the oxeye daisy meadow finished flowering, and it has continued throughout July and August attracting a lot of insect pollinators. I consider it to have been a great success with all but one of the areas sown flowering. It has motivated me to extend my experiment and made me think about how might extend my own wildflower cultivation. I wanted to add another strip deeper into the field but I also wanted to incorporate the natural wildflowers in the field especialy a patch of thistles and a patch of ragwort which I had been realised were very important for pollinators. I did some grasscutting and began digging up the turf in a new strip about 1.5m wide by 30m long. I will purchase more wildflower seed and sow this area in September. I will also add some of the oxeye daisy seed I collected from my garden meadow.

Below: Expanding the wildflowerf meadow into the field from left to right - existng cultivation, grass path, new strip being prepared by taking up the turf, grass strip (the grass will be kept short), existing field containing ragwort, thistles and other wild flowers.

I edited our magazine and it was published last week. I contributed an article summarising the progress we have made on our village biodiversity line. I met with my B-Line team mates to plan the next stage of our community project and we agreed a strategy and a division of labour – to knock on doors and invite residents in the southern part of the village to sow wildflower seed in September. Our intention is to extend our biodiversity corridor down to the southern boundary of our parish – a distace of around 5km – 2 km further than we originally intended.

Reflections on how the inquiry has affected me

5/8/2023

POST #18 PATHWAYS TO A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

Our health, sense of wellbeing and sense of who we are (identity) and who we are becoming (learning and development) are influenced by the way we live – our habits, our relationships, circumstances, problems, illnesses, achievements and how we deal with setbacks, and day to day experiences. These feelings emerge through our everyday living but they develop over the accumulation of lots of days of living. There are therefore two scales of involvement – the lifewide and lifelong.

In our inquiry we focused on the question of what motivates us and how commitment to a belief or cause develops. We explored the diverse range of needs that compel us to do what we do. Being able to satisfy these needs, at least in part, helps us achieve a sense of wellbeing - feeling comfortable, healthy, satisfied, happy and or fulfilled that we are living a life with purpose and meaning. While tackling and making progress with challenges, or seeing and acting on new opportunities satisfies our need to learn and develop.

Our inquiry is underlain by the proposition that by helping nature, the environment and sustainability we are helping ourselves and our stories of participation reflect the choices we are making to help ourselves in our own circumstances. As we move into the final stage of our inquiry it is important to reflect on whether or how this proposition was realised and manifested in our own projects.

My responses to the reflective prompts

reflections_on_how_the_inquiry_has_affected_me.pdf
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External recognition

3/8/2023

POST #17 PATHWAYS TO A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

It’s always nice to receive recognition and this year our work for nature with the Betchworth Community, was recognised by Surrey Wildlife Trust. The Trust’s Community Engagement Officer, Claire Harris, saw how we are trying to work with our community to help nature. As a result, we were invited to contribute to a SWT workshop for nature activists working in their communities. They also made a video to showcase our work and to cap it all, we were shortlisted for one of the Trust’s new Community Champion Awards.

The Oscar styled Award’s Ceremony, held on August 3rd and was attended by over 80 SWT staff and community activists across Surrey. It’s purpose was to showcase community projects, and enable people to connect with other like-minded local groups who are trying to help nature and wildlife in Surrey. Here I am with two of my team mates.

Reaping the rewards of helping nature

30/7/2023

POST #16 PATHWAYS TO A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

During July the Oxeye Daisies whither, they loose their petals and eventually all that is left is a brown stalk with a small dark brown seed head containing perhaps 100 to 200 seeds. I spent some time collecting the seed heads in order to sow on patches of ground that had few oxeye daisies and also for the field where I am cultivating a wildflower meadow. Many smaller flowers persisted in this natural meadow together with occasional thistle, knap weed and ragwort and these provided abundant food for foraging insect pollinators.

All my efforts to create a wildflower strip were rewarded as, the wildflowers emerged over a few weeks. Small daisies are the dominant perennial species even though they only formed 6% of the seed mix, but there are also borage, deep purply blue viper bugloss, thistle, agrimony, knapweed, St John’s wort, hawkbit, birds foot terfoil and interspersed with colourful annuals like red poppy, blue cornflower, corn marigold and purple corn cockle.

While most of the seed seems to have germinated, not all of it has flowered. The areas that were sown late (in early April) have far fewer flowers and one area has no flowers. The wildflowers – especially daisies, together with thistles have grown more vigirously on the the mounds I created with overturned grass sods. I will pull up some of thistles at the end of the growing season as these will eventaully dominate the mounds.

The natural meadow, cultivated wildflower strip and field supported a healthy population of butterflies. Over a few weeks I identified 15 different species some of them – like the gate keeper, meadow brown, small white and common blue, in considerable numbers. On a warm sunny day, at any one time I could see perhaps a dozen butterflies close by.

The feedback I gained from seeing and walking amongst the wildflowers, seeing and filming the foraging insects, identifying and photographing the plants and insects and making movies from my photos and videos,have all contributed to my sense of satisfaction and wellbeing.

Only recently have I realised that as my wildflowers die they leave behind a genetic legacy in their seeds. I started collecting seed heads today and as I did it I imagined how I would use the seed to expand the wildflower meadow I have started. In this way I am actively participating in the ecosystem as an agent for propogation and it made me feel good about it. I also had the idea of collecting seeds for other members of our community. I have a lot of orchid seed that I'm sure some of my neighbours would like. In this way new ways of interactimng with my environment and my community have emerged.

Feedback, Motivation & Evaluation

12/7/2023

POST #15 PATHWAYS TO A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

Feedback is the flow of information resulting from our interactions with our environment that helps us understand whether what we are doing is having the desired effect or impact. This information then feeds into our sense of satisfaction which in turn influences our motivation and decisions to continue doing what are doing, change what we are doing, reduce our involvement or stop, what we have been doing.

According to John Dewey, everything we try to do, especially if it is something that we do for the first time, is an experiment. The only way of seeing if our experiment has worked is to experience and observe it and perhaps measure and record what happens. In other words gain feedback from the environment and participants about the effects of what we are doing.

In the last month I have experienced several different types of feedback from the activities I have been undertaking to help nature, the environment and sustainability.

The first type of feedback was an invitation by Surrey Wildlife Trust, an important player in managing and supporting wildlife where I live, to give a short presentation at their community workshop in early June. They wanted me to talk about the work we have been undertaking for our Betchworth biodiversity-line and it was well received by participants and SWT staff. This was followed by SWT making a short video film using our work as a case study and then our RE-B charity being shortlisted for an award.All these things helped me form a judgement that the work we are doing is seen as being valuable by an important organisation in the local natural environment and by my peers working in community action for nature groups.

The second type of feedback was from an event we organised on National Meadows Day (Juky 1st), which we called Wildflower Wander. A total of 20 residents participated in two walks I organised to visit three types of wildflower meadow in our biodiversity line. The thanks we received at the end of the walk and in emails showed me that participants valued the experience and what we were doing more generally.

The third type of feedback I received was from the wildflowers growing in my garden. Throughout June my family and I have been treated to the most spectacular sight of tens of thousands of Oxeye Daisies and towards the end of the month hundreds of wild Orchids. By not cutting the grass this is the visual reward and its aesthetic value cannot be quantified. To say it is uplifting is an understatement and to see the insects foraging reinforces the value to nature of this resource. This feedback means that I will continue to manage the garden the same way each year and continue to expand the area by scattering the seed I collect around the edges of the meadow.

As for my new wildflower cultivation, I spent most of March digging up the turf in about 300m2 of field and then sowing wildflower seed. I knew that sowing in spring was not the best time to sow and my optimism was further dented with the wet cold spring weather. Through April and May I could see quite a lot of germination but little growth. It was only towards the end of June after some warm weather that I can now appreciate that, although patchy, my wildflower cultivation will succeed and I can measurably see an increase in the diversity of the flora in this field. Furthermore, I can see that there are plenty of bees, butterflies and other insects are foraging amongst the flowers, which is one of the reasons for trying to help nature and a sign that my efforts have been worthwhile.

It is fair to say that all these forms of feedback have had a positive effect on me. They tell me that the task I set myself – to encourage and cultivate more wild flowers to grow in order to support insect pollinators - is being accomplished. Furthermore, the efforts of my RE-B team to help nature within our community are being recognised both inside and outside the community. This feedback is motivating me to not only continue doing what I am doing but to go further.

Pathway to a More Sustainable Future UPDATE

4/7/2023

POST #14 PATHWAYS TO A MORE SUSTAINABLE FUTURE

This is my second essay describing my activities aimed at increasing biodiversity by creating or encouraging wildflower-rich habitats for insect pollinators

june_report.pdf
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PATHWAYS DIARY
In March 2023 I began an experiential inquiry called Pathways to a Sustainable Future and many of my posts between March-September were written for this project.
Diary Starts Here

Garden Notes
My garden is much more than a garden. Its playground, a studio for my artistic efforts, a natural laboratory for experiments and learning and a place for contemplation. It keeps me busy and gives me the exercise I need to keep fit, although it does damage me from time to time. But more than anything else it gives me pleasure, happiness and a sense of belonging and of doing something useful and worthwhile when I am immersed in it. It enables me to express myself creatively and draws my attention to the beauty and ecology of life. In this blog I am telling the story of my garden and my involvement and experiences in it through my writing and the photos, movies, music, paintings and other artefacts - it inspires me to create. I have become more conscious of the UNs Sustainable Development Goals and our important role in enabling their achievement my experiments and projects in the natural world show how I respect and try to understand nature and try to enable life to flourish. I know that one day I will not be the custodian of this beautiful landscape we call our home. I must make the most of it now and preserve its presence in my memory knowing that it will carry on long after I am gone and that someone else will care for it and call it their home.
In March 2022 I joined a group of environmental activists in my village and so I have decided to expand my blog to take in the natural world around me.

Useful Links
RE Betchworth
Wildlife Garden Forum
Surrey Wildlife Trust
Habitat Network
Plant Identification UK
GAIA
GOOGLE EARTH

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