The Garden Jungle: or Gardening to Save the Planet

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In hotter climates, the Paulownia is grown as a street tree, and massive displays of purple flowers can line the streets, making a magnificent tree in cities from South America to Australia. Let’s have a little taste of that in our Jungle Garden. Best to plant as a single specimen plant; choose a nice sunny corner where you can truly appreciate this tree. Underplant with shade lovers to make the crown stand out. Tuinieren kan écht de wereld verbeteren/redden, dat laat Goulson duidelijk zien. Er is al onherroepelijk veel schade toegebracht maar het is nog niet te laat: koop wat kippen, knutsel een wormerij in elkaar en sla je slag op de plaatselijke plantenruilbeurs (mijdt de grote tuicentra) terwijl je op de wachtlijst voor een volkstuintje staat. Europeans clearly suffer from a similar ailment. Borrell volunteers that: “The world needs Europe. My experience of travelling around the world is that people look at us as a beacon. Why [do] so many people come to Europe? Are there flows of illegal or irregular migrants going to Russia? Not many. No, they are coming to Europe but for good reasons." Plus ça change Winding paths through dense planting adds a dynamic element to the garden. By restricting the view from one end of the garden to the other, you actually will make the garden feel larger. Garden designers have used this technique for many years. Like a top-notch wildlife documentary, The Garden Jungle draws us in with fascinating details of the natural world and, at the same time, delivers a wake-up call... I doubt that many will finish reading this important book without making a few changes to their gardening or way of life. * Church Times *

Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that the humankind has been able to build – the three things together," Borrell said during the event. There are nods to using peat free compost, the benefits of being outdoors, the importance of allotments and growing your own, along with many other subjects such as the variety of animals that use our gardens daily, that shows that we can all do 'our bit' in a little way to help this planet of ours. I now want to have a mini pond, put up bug hotels all over, and plant a few dwarf apple trees to try some of the 700+ varieties available, and plan to grow as much as I can from seeds, and as many different varieties as possible. In real life, European engagement with Africa and the world has gone far beyond pharmaceutical testing to a whole plethora of pillages from colonialism, slavery and genocide to shadow wars and the theft of natural resources. The Garden Jungle is at times an immensely serious book, exploring the environmental harm inadvertently done by gardeners who buy intensively reared plants in disposable plastic pots, sprayed with pesticides and grown in peat cut from the ground. Goulson argues that gardens could become places where we can reconnect with nature and rediscover where food comes from. With just a few small changes, our gardens could become a vast network of tiny nature reserves, where humans and wildlife can thrive together in harmony rather than conflict.I bought this book for its title: Gardening to save the planet, and the blurb promised a discussion of the kind of re-wilding I had learned about from Isabella Tree‘s Wilding as applied to a smaller-size garden. I‘d already stopped mowing and weeding, and this seemed to furnish the scientific justification for it. The author is a professor of biology.

In the 19th and much of the 20th century, the favourite metaphor that European colonial racists used against the rest of the world was that Europe represented "civilisation", while the rest of the world represented "savagery" and "barbarism".Palm trees, cordylines and ferns are planted close to Stephen’s house, creating a jungly feel. The palm is is Livistona australis, the most southern-growing palm (in the Southern hemisphere, this means the most tolerant of cool winters). People report it growing -quite slowly – if well sheltered in the UK. The Trachycarpus fortunei palm tree is considered more reliable in cool climates. The most valuable chapter is on pesticides – it’s truly alarming how widespread they are, and how difficult to avoid. He describes organic food / growing your own in the language of Pascal’s wager: along the lines of ‘you might as well avoid pesticides; even if we one day find out that they weren’t so bad after all, you would have lived a pretty healthy and environmentally low-impact life’ (pp. 89–90). My reference to 'jungle' has no racist, cultural or geographical connotation," the diplomat said. "Unfortunately, the 'jungle' is everywhere, including today in Ukraine." Where Goulson’s book is so good is in suggesting specific, practical and easily implemented remedies that every gardener can adopt, no matter how small their patch. It’s easy to feel that we are powerless to stand in the way of climate change and the collapse of pollinator numbers, but, Goulson says, even the smallest act of resistance is meaningful both in the cumulative effect widespread green gardening would have on the environment, but also in the message it sends about where our priorities lie.