Tip Top

Old Berger Paints factory Portland Road

The great thing abut Nature is that it never goes away. Roman cities or abandoned coke works are all the same, a problem to overcome. In time Nature does not succeed merely. It is.

Last century I read a book by the then new kid on the block Richard Mabey. It was a Book Club Associates publication entitled The Unofficial Countryside. Mabey went on to much fame and admiration, but for me, this little book is one of the best he ever wrote that I have read.

The idea behind The Unofficial Countryside was simple. It was about the 'countryside' we carry about with us in our everyday lives, the one we meet on our errand and window gazing, on public transport or walking down a street. That nature which we have shuffled off into a sub category. Mabey brought this into focus and showed how it is the living part of something that fuels our imaginations and is root and branch to that other Nature most of us watch on television or the internet.

The Guardian gives an artful plug to a newer addition to the literature of the unregarded by long time friend of the paper, Stephen Moss here.

Some juicy quotes:

"[Moss] quotes the environmentalist Chris Baines who said that one way to improve the biodiversity of an arable field is to build a housing estate on it. “This may sound glib, but he was being entirely serious,” writes Moss in his new book, The Accidental Countryside. “Most arable fields are monocultural deserts, with virtually no wildlife, whereas Britain’s gardens are often home to a suite of former woodland birds and other wild creatures.”

Suburbia, liberally festooned with bird feeders, paid up ecologically responsible gardeners (or fewer irresponsible ones) is home to a diversity of invertebrates and small or not so small birds that makes the Green Belt seem like a particularly blighted slice of emetic emerald desert.

"Moss argues that in terms of boosting biodiversity, it could be better to build on fields than rewilded brownfield sites.

“This is quite controversial,” he concedes. “Not everyone will agree with me. But fundamentally what I’m saying is, if your brownfield site is in the middle of Finsbury Park [in London] and it’s an old garage that’s not needed any more, of course you should build housing on it. The problem is, the word brownfield is used for anything where there has been some kind of industrial build.”

He might easily be talking about Battlefield the Beautiful or a dozen other such similar places within a few miles of it.