One Summer Lucy Houliston, aged just 6, set herself the mission of raising awareness of weeds as plants that deserve love and attention, just like everything else. And so The Weed Trust was born.

She also had a passion for insects, she remembers having pockets full of woodlice!

Adult Lucy is now working in urban ecology and she shares the story of The Weed Trust and where it has led her.

We went together to the Eden Nature Garden to meet Benny Hawkesbee, who describes himself as a wildlife gardener, he greeted us wearing his favourite dandelion teeshirt!

There will be bees, beetles and frogs along the way!

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Sally: 00:00:43

Welcome to our plant stories. Our connections with plants often go back to childhood, as they do in this story.

The how to grow part of this episode is going to be a bit of a surprise, but then there are lots of lovely surprises in this episode.

Benny: 00:00:59

If you lift each of them up, you'll see beetles and frogs underneath most of them.

Lucy: 00:01:02

Can we have a go here?

Benny: 00:01:04

We can.

Lucy: 00:01:07

Grabbing it. I'm just grabbing it. I'm picking it up.

Benny: 00:01:09

Yeah. My guess is either a Rose Chafer or a lesser stag. I'd have to inspect it.

Sally: 00:01:15

Back in the Autumn, I met up with Lucy Houliston. She describes herself as a wildlife storyteller. She is currently doing a biological science master's by research focusing on urban ecology.

And we met up in an urban orchard in a park in London. I love your plant story, I think because these aren't, these aren't plants that everybody rushes towards, are they?

They have a bit of a bad name, but you tell me, you tell me your story.

Lucy: 00:01:43

Well, you know what? I think it's, I mean, I would not describe myself as a gardener and maybe that's why I like weeds so much.

I can afford to like weeds because I don't have to worry about trying to remove them and stop them from ruining my garden. But I've just always had an affinity with the weirder stuff.

And I, I say weird wildlife, you know, I mean, the, the ugly things, the unloved things, the under-appreciated things, you think of insects, you know, they play a really important role in the ecosystem and yet so many people just hate them because they're scuttily or they're slimy or they're ugly or they're scary often because of what the media has told us about them. And weeds were just one of those things. I don't know if it's, I think when I was a kid it was like, oh, I feel sorry for you. You're just a flower. You're just a plant like everything else. And, you know, I saw those for what they were. They were just plants, which is what weeds are.

Plants in the wrong places, plants where we don't want them. And actually a really successful group of plants.

It's funny that people try so hard to grow certain plants and then weeds will just pop up anywhere with no, you know, no care or attention at all. But yeah, I just saw them as nice plants, just like anyone does a plant in the garden.

And I understood that they were just as important to the other things I was obsessed with back then, the insects and other invertebrates. And I just thought, they have every right to be here. They have just as much right to be here as all the other plants do.

Sally: 00:03:22

So tell me about the club you set up.

Lucy: 00:03:25

So I must have been about six and I was always, always making things, drawing things, writing things, writing scripts, doing shows. So anything creative. I did all kinds of things.

And one summer I decided I'd set myself a mission to raise awareness of weeds as plants that deserve love and attention just like everything else. And so I spent, I don't know how long, but I remember spending at least days, maybe weeks, designing a logo for this weed trust.

That was the name of my club, the Weed Trust. And I wrote newsletters, welcome newsletters.

I put them together in a little welcome pack for the two people who obviously really wanted to join the club. They were desperate to. It was my mum and her best friend. So let's just say I ruined their girls nights in that summer.

I made these welcome packs and forced them on my mum and her friend. And, yeah, there was probably a little bit about some of the common weeds in the garden in the newsletter, I expect, and why we should love them.

I'm not sure what my argument was age 6 and, yeah, that was my first little mission, I think the first time that I really combined my love of kind of weird and unloved wildlife and overlooked wildlife with my love of creating things and making things. And that was my first little crusade into trying to protect curious creatures. I think now I've, since then I've done a bunch of things with all different animals as well as plants, but that really was the start of it all. It didn't quite take off, but I...

Sally: 00:05:05

Think its time may have come, actually.

Lucy: 00:05:06

I think it has. I know there are some people doing some really cool stuff to kind of promote weeds, but, yeah, maybe we should revive The Weed Trust.

Sally: 00:05:16

You were ahead of your time.

Lucy: 00:05:18

I like to think so.

Sally: 00:05:19

I love the fact that your mum and her best friend became members of it. I think that's fantastic. I love it. It is so creative.

Lucy: 00:05:26

Yeah. I don't know how convinced they were, how voluntary that that decision was to go.

Sally: 00:05:33

Is that logo somewhere.

Lucy: 00:05:35

I wish it was. And you know what else? I remember my, one of my mum's friends, kids who, you know, was a friend, friend growing up, she made me a poster once.

It had a picture of me on it holding a dandelion, I think. It was when we first kind of got computers in our houses, you know. And she designed this poster, it said we love weeds.

And she gave it to me as a present. We've still got that somewhere. So, yeah, I made a bit of a name for myself, I think, even back then.

Sally: 00:06:06

Why do you think weeds have got such a bad name?

Lucy: 00:06:09

Well, they're just, they grow so quickly. They're so successful. It's interesting, this idea that, it's kind of the fact that they are so successful as a group of species that's been detrimental to them because they out compete with the plants that we're trying to, to grow. And we're so obsessed with trying to control nature. I think we're moving away from that now.

But this idea of tidy gardens is still so widespread and people want their gardens to be meticulously, you know, organised and arranged and grass mown and things. And it, you know, we used to use weeds, we used to forage. Even now think of blackberry picking.

We do still use the them and they enrich our lives like if, if you go out foraging. Everyone loves to do that.

Sally: 00:07:03

But what was your own garden like?

Lucy: 00:07:07

So I grew up on the outskirts of London in East London. It was just your typical square lawn with some flower beds around the edge and a bit of patio near the back door.

So it wasn't particularly wild.

I spent a lot of time in my nan's garden as well, growing up that was a little bit more wild in that it had some trees in there, it had more hedges, it was a bit more, it was a bit taller in terms of the plants in there, there was a bit more going on. But it was a typical suburban garden.

And I think maybe that's why instead of looking at things like birds and maybe the other animals and plants that people take more notice of, usually I focused on the snails and the woodlice and things because those were the things that I came across and really got to know out in my garden.

Sally: 00:08:00

I love that. What's your earliest memory do you have an early memory of observing those insects? Because you're right, you know, they're not the things but as a child, I love when a child will spot something and really follow it, see it. They're in a different space somehow.

Lucy: 00:08:16

I loved woodlice. It's that classic thing, isn't it, of kids sort of turning over logs to see what's underneath. And I always loved woodlice.

They were just, you know, these little bumbling, round things. And especially the, you know, there are different types, the really glossy, round, pill bug type ones I loved.

And I remember going to school once with pockets full of wood lice. Well, either going to school or coming home from school. And my mum just kind of, she's like, yeah, there she goes again, pockets full of wood lice, of course. And then also actually me and my nan had a conversation the other day. She said, I remember going out to the garden you used to make me lift up that flower pot. There was a big concrete flower pot on the wall in the garden and I used to ask her to lift it up so I could see all the ants underneath.

Because there was a nest in the garden and they'd gone up the wall and there was a bit of stuff going on under the pot. But you could see all the little trails and the tunnels that they'd made used to fascinate me. So, yeah, so snails. Snails I love too.

There's a picture that actually I use in a lot of talks I give of 6 year old me holding up this tiny, tiny snail. And the best part about the picture is that it was taken in Disneyland.

So we went all the way to Disneyland to go on the rides and see the characters and the thing that I was most excited about on the first morning that we woke up was a snail that found by the fountain outside our hotel.

And that just sums me up as a kid.

Sally: 00:09:38

I think that's perfect. Mickey Mouse.

Lucy: 00:09:42

No, here's a great snail. I also loved Minnie Mouse. But the snails were on par, definitely.

Sally: 00:09:48

So how has this kind of woven through your life to where we are now?

Lucy: 00:09:54

This love of weird stuff and unloved stuff has stayed with me. You know, I was obsessed with wildlife.

I just kind of want people to realise that these things that are overlooked and unloved have a really important role. And I've kind of just carried on with that. And I think with The Weed trust as well.

There was a big storytelling element to that as well, the logo design and the writing and stuff. And I've kind of carried on with that.

I do a lot of writing and things because I just like to combine this sort of love of nature with my more creative side.

Sally: 00:10:24

So tell me about the MA that you're doing at the moment.

Lucy: 00:10:27

So it's a Masters by research. I'm based at Royal Holloway and UCL and I am looking at urban ecology. So I've been all over the place studying wildlife.

I studied moths in Ecuador and I've looked at marine life up in Scotland and things. But it's funny how I'm kind of returning now to the stuff on my doorstep, I'm looking at urban orchards around London.

I'm working with a charity called the Orchard Project to really try and better understand the value of these urban orchards. So we know a lot about traditional ones, the conventional ones that if you picture an orchard, that's what you think of.

But all around London we've got these community growing spaces popping up thanks to charities like the Orchard Project, who are sort of funding, planting and training community to actually manage them and restore them and plant them.

And we know that urban green spaces are valuable for wildlife and we know that traditional orchards, particularly the older ones, are valuable for wildlife. But we don't know a lot about these younger, smaller ones, less conventionally managed ones.

Sally: 00:11:38

So what's a typical day like when you are working on this project?

Lucy: 00:11:43

From May through to September, I'm out sampling insects. So bees, beetles. I'll go out and I'll spend officially an hour's sort of observation time.

But often it, it runs into two because every time I spot something I have to pause my timer. So I'm looking for bees. So I walk a really slow, really, really slow pace around the orchard in random directions, trying to cover all the ground, looking for bees, not honey bees, but wild bees. So bumblebees and solitary bees and catching them in an insect net.

So it's very sort of Victorian looking, not very high tech at all, as is often the case with ecology.

But I'm wandering around catching the bees, the bumblebees, a lot of them I can identify by eye and as time goes on, you know, I'm getting better at that and they just get released.

But the solitary bees, a lot of them I do have to collect just because some of them are tiny, they look more like ants than they do bees and they're really, really hard to actually identify in the field. You need to get them under a microscope because for a lot of them it's a case of looking at the tiniest details.

So it's counting the number of hairs on one segment of the leg, you know, so you really have to have to get up close and personal with those. And I'm also trapping beetles as well. So I do that using, again, very high tech, a very high tech device called a pitfall trap.

It's basically a plastic cup that I dig into the ground and fill with, I'm using vinegar, you can use water, you can use ethanol, but the vinegar is a kind of mild attractant.

So it means that I ultimately catch more beetles, which is good for the sort of project that I'm doing.

Sally: 00:13:25

I think The Weed Trust has come a long way. You know, I love that kind of early six year old you and where it has led you. I think that is just fantastic.

Lucy: 00:13:36

It's been, yeah, it's, it was definitely the springboard to a lot of the stuff I've done.

And I love the fact that, you know, that started in my garden in suburban London and here I am back in London looking at the plants and counting the weeds on the ground. Six year old me would have been in her element.

Sally: 00:13:58

I wanted to take Lucy to meet someone who I thought would share her passion for weeds. So in October, we went to the Eden Nature Garden to meet the gardener, Benny Hauksbee, who greeted us wearing his favorite dandelion T shirt.

He describes himself as a wildlife gardener. I wanted to start with the word weeds. What did that word mean to Benny?

Benny: 00:14:21

I think it's quite exciting, really. Plants for free, which is kind of being a little bit of a cheapskate. I think that's kind of a good, good starting point.

But I'm actually not too far from this exact garden where I first rented a room on the Wandsworth Road. I didn't have any money to buy plants.

I was just getting into gardening and I grew weeds in the back garden and just, well, I grew them by just watching them and trying to work out what the heck they were, you know, leaving them to flower. That's where I first came across green alkanet, Canadian fleabane, all that kind of stuff.

Michaelmas daisies, the Motorway Asters, you know, those kinds of plants. And so to me, I don't know, it's kind of slightly rebellious because, you know, it's kind of not what the RHS have historically taught us to grow.

But I don't know they're plants for free. They're exciting. And then the more I've learned about ecology and wildlife, the more I realised that they're absolutely crucial to everything.

So I don't know, I'm just the biggest fan. But it took me 25 years to learn it.

I wasn't quite as on it as Lucy in terms of being six years old and, you know, really being aware of how important they are already or having this inclination or this instinct that they were important. It took me 25 years to realise.

Sally: 00:15:31

Sometimes they're just described as plants in the wrong place.

Benny: 00:15:35

I put weeds in places that most people wouldn't. So for me, I could flip that anyway. But yeah, I don't know, plants in the wrong place.

Maybe a lot of our garden plants are in the wrong place and they're taking up space that weeds should have.

Lucy: 00:15:49

It's this thing about tidiness again. Everyone's obsessed with sort of, oh, no, I think a lot of the problem with weeds is, oh, it's in the way.

I can see, I'm looking in front of me now and I can see what someone might describe as a weed spilling out into the path. If someone was trying to keep a tidy garden, that would be cut.

But I don't know, there's real beauty in that wildness and I think just seeing them as an enemy all the time, that's not necessarily the way, they are so important.

Sally: 00:16:20

So we've come to Eden Nature Garden in Clapham. Tell me about this garden.

Benny: 00:16:29

Well, yeah, it's my other baby really. I've got a three year old son, but this is my other baby. This is the place I dream about before I go to sleep at night. It's been here 24 years.

It was a patch of grass and my predecessors, the gardeners that came before me, started to turn it from a patch of grass into something. I guess at the beginning they didn't really know what it was going to be, just a garden of some sorts. And every year it evolves.

Every year we ensure that people, people are at the heart of it as well as wildlife. So, yeah, I don't know, it's a really interesting space and I get paid a day a week by the church to garden it with the local community.

And yeah, we, we kind of punch above our weight really, in terms of wildlife for Zone two London, we've got a really good intake list and yeah, it's quite an exciting little space really. Yeah.

Sally: 00:17:14

So I propose we do a tour.

Lucy: 00:17:16

Let's do it.

Sally: 00:17:17

I, I'm excited that, Lucy, you're going to find bees here

Lucy: 00:17:22

We've been stood here for 10 minutes and I've already seen bees and wasps buzzing around in the trees which, yeah, there's stuff.

Benny: 00:17:28

Around still, isn't there? There's a good block of ivy just through here. If we kind of duck underneath the Cotoneaster.

Sally: 00:17:33

Let's go for it.

Benny: 00:17:36

Yeah, that's right. We just go down this path. We're kind of looking across towards the pond and there's a huge block of mature ivy which we're very protective of.

Lucy: 00:17:49

I was really upset the other day because I walked past a big old pub near me and it used to be covered in ivy and they've decided to chop it all back.

And I don't know whether it's structural reasons, but I think it's always a shame because they are so when you look at them, they're always buzzing with things. Always.

Sally: 00:18:08

I have one of these at the back of my garden and I actually think it is what holds the fence up. I think if anyone ever takes it down, there will be no fence. It is the fence. But just looking at this, it is just alive.

Benny: 00:18:21

Yeah.

Lucy: 00:18:23

We can get some bees buzzing down the microphone. Ask them what they think. Ask them what they think about the ivy.

Benny: 00:18:30

I know. I think they're pretty unanimous. So this used to be honeybees in the other. All this sand came from skips, basically.

So we didn't spend any money on substrates or people digging, this is high clay sand. This is more ballasty stuff, good for plants.

And we've had mining bees using it and red mason bees nesting in the sands already. Pretty cool.

Sally: 00:18:52

So tell me what this was before, you said this was honeybees.

Benny: 00:18:55

Yeah, this was a honeybee apiary. And sadly the beekeepers became too busy and the apiary fell into disrepair really.

So then we made a decision because there's a lot of honeybees locally anyway and there's a big kind of movement now for people to not take on honeybees when we can promote wild bees instead. So we decided to create a garden which would encourage more habitat and plants for wild species instead. So it's been yeah, the results have been pretty astounding in just one year. Really. Red mason bees nesting in the sand and at least one species of mining bee in the other sands. And that's just within the first season.

So, yeah, pretty. Pretty exciting. Maybe we'll talk more about the wild bees. But there's nearly 280 species in the UK, 24 bumblebee species within.

That one's a honeybee species and then the rest are solitary.

Sally: 00:19:54

Morning.

Benny: 00:19:55

Hi, John.

Sally: 00:19:57

So we're standing in front of a piece of timber.

Benny: 00:20:01

That's right.

Sally: 00:20:01

Which has beautifully got the word Eden bees carved into it. And then lots and lots of tiny little holes, which you can explain.

Lucy: 00:20:08

I'm trying not to go, which is what I always do when I see something weird or cute. Wildlife wise. I can see some of these holes are stuffed with things what might be in there.

Benny: 00:20:16

Yeah. So this was donated by John Little and his son who make these commercially and they donated it to the garden.

And then John and I drilled the various diameters of holes in the letters.

So we've got 8 mil down to 4 mil holes as deep as we can in the timber and we've got, at the largest holes we've got the kind of, the largest species of leaf cutter bee, the wood carving leaf cutter bee. Then it goes down to kind of the mason bee species and then it goes down to the resin bees mostly.

And those are the ones where you can see little sandy stony bits that are sealing off their holes. So they've been a very, very successful species of bee in the UK since they've arrived in the last couple of decades.

And they tend to seal off their nest chamber, egg chamber with tree resin and then they pebble dash it with silica and sandstone to stop to reduce the instances of parasitism. So they're very cute.

So there's, you know, there's probably five, six species of bee utilizing this and there's another wave of parasites that come in and parasitise. And they're also very important, parasitic wasps, dual wasps, all that kind of type of thing that have been hanging around the post.

So with us this has been here a year and a half, this post and we've had all kinds of stuff turning up.

Sally: 00:21:32

Said they arrived in the last couple of decades.

Benny: 00:21:35

. I think they came in around: 2000

nly been here in the UK since: 2001

Sally: 00:21:48

Wow.

Benny: 00:21:49

They've proliferated, proliferated at absolute breaking speed. And then the, the resin bees, not even in the uk.

Sally: 00:21:55

So are they coming in on plants, are they?

Benny: 00:21:59

Well, resin bee is very likely to have come in in timber. Timber, yeah, Fair enough. Ivy bees, I'm not actually sure.

It may have come in in substrates, so sands, because they nest in sandy substrates, loose, free draining stuff, or even in soil, like a free draining soil. They might have been brought in from Europe. They, they may well have come in that way.

I'm not 100% sure you could even possibly get, you know, a female that could have come in on a, on a boat or something like, like you do sometimes with adults that make their way. But I think it's most likely there's larvae in the substrates for the Ivy bee.

Lucy: 00:22:34

Yeah, I was gonna say in a lot of parks, London parks, I'm seeing these bee sand planters pop up all over the place and I, you know, they seem to be quite a new thing. I don't know how effective they are in urban areas, but I'm seeing these sandpiles as well and, yeah, I think.

Benny: 00:22:52

They're definitely making a difference. It's good observation. There's a whole raft of species that will really prefer to nest in sand. There's a whole rafter species that will nest in clay.

It's quite diverse, like, you know, the insect life of bees. And even in the UK there's, like I said, 280 species and people just....

Lucy: 00:23:08

Don't realize the diversity, I think, because somehow the honeybee has become this poster child for save the bees. You know, when that's not the bee that's in trouble, you know, it's all the others.

And we think of bees in hives and we don't think of them as nesting in the ground, nesting in the soil, that sort of thing.

Benny: 00:23:24

Exactly.

Something like between 70 and 80% of the bees across the world nest in the ground, which shows the absolute importance of how you manage your ground, really. You know, how you cover it over. Is it with grass, is it with slabs, is it with tarmac, is it with Astroturf?

What you do will have an impact on those ground nesting invertebrates. If they can't get through an area of tarmac and they're going to lose that habitat, that nesting space. And same applies with Astroturf.

Same applies with impermeable stone or bonded resin.

When you learn about ground nested invertebrates, it teaches you a whole world of things and it's a gift and a curse because you start to realise there's so many mistakes that we're making, whether they're intentional or not. Councils strapped for budget now with tarmac in pavements instead of relaying slabs and sand.

Whereas I've seen ground nesting species of bee that nest between the slabs in sand. If you tarmac it all, they can't nest there anymore, so you've lost that habitat. So you start to see this world. Then that's quite anxiety inducing.

But obviously then we need to counter that with all our positive stuff that we work on. Well, that's a lot.

Lucy: 00:24:32

So you don't even think of that, you know, urban environment. So many people think, oh, there's nothing there, there's no habitat. If there's concrete there, nothing can live there.

But like you say, even gaps in paving slabs can be home to stuff.

Benny: 00:24:43

I've got photographic evidence of this stuff. So it's kind of like that opens up a whole new world. Same with old brickwork.

All the old houses of London, so many of them were made out of brick and mortar. And as that degrades you've got nesting possibilities for birds and insects.

And if you start to make them all with cladding and block and render, like all the modern skyscrapers, there's not a single inch for wildlife to live alongside us.

Sally: 00:25:10

Does this become quite stressful for both of you? Because once you know something, you kind of can't unknow it and then you see it in places that other people don't see.

Benny: 00:25:21

Yeah, it is. Like I said, it's a gift and a curse really. But it just has to fuel your drive to make positive change, really. Otherwise you just, you'll crumble.

And I'm sure there's moments where I crumble a little bit. But what do you think, Lucy?

Lucy: 00:25:35

Yeah, no, I agree. It's similar to that sort of slightly broader question. You know, you see these statistics about species decline and exactly, I go out into the park and I see people who are being paid to cut all the flowers away from the lawn to get it short. And this isn't even an area that people walk on, you know, road verges and things like that. And it's horrible. But you have to have that hope.

Like, if I didn't, then I wouldn't be doing conservation work.

I wouldn't, I don't think any of us would be doing this sort of thing, you know, and it is important to kind of help people understand rather than, I think, finger pointing and saying, you shouldn't be doing that. And because we are, it's so easy for us to see ourselves as separate from nature. And I might have said this before, but we're not like this.

Places like this show that we can work with it in good ways. And the more we learn about that and what works, hopefully we can make this positive change. And we are, we can see it now.

Benny: 00:26:41

This is what I call a mini meadow. So kind of it's not really a full on meadow. You know, meadow purists will probably lambast me, but this was a short lawn when I started.

All this area beneath the small apple trees there and the one, the slightly larger one behind us, this is all short lawn. And slowly but surely we turned it into a mini meadow experiment.

Lucy: 00:27:01

One thing I can't stop staring at are all those mushrooms, all the fungi on those tree stumps. Is there a story behind the tree stumps? Were they here when you got here?

Benny: 00:27:11

There's a story in every square meter of this garden, to be honest, and I've only been here nine years, you know, this, the history goes deeper. But just next to the pond, there's a large veteran Turkey Oak tree.

And three years ago, just after we redid our pond in one of the storms, a huge, huge section came down. It was touching the neighbour's roof into our brand new pond, which is lined because we haven't got clay, on top of the shed.

And we pleaded, because we know the benefit of standing dead wood or declining trees, we pleaded them to keep the trunk as high as possible. So it's about 15 foot tall, the big mature trunk.

And we also requested that as much of the wood that was being pruned away be kept in as big a piece as possible. So these chunks you see in the meadow, this is

Turkey Oak and they came from that tree falling and yeah, they've got all kinds of fungus on them and there's all kinds of holes for beetles and if you lift each of them up, you'll see beetles and frogs underneath most of them.

Lucy: 00:28:08

Can we have a go?

Benny: 00:28:10

Yeah, we can.

Sally: 00:28:12

You said the word beetle! Yeah.

Benny: 00:28:16

I mean, as long as my son hasn't disturbed them in the last few days. But that...

Sally: 00:28:20

Oh, well, I can feel it. Your son is going to be like Lucy, isn't he?

Benny: 00:28:23

He's the only person that's been in the Eden pond without waders on. Look at that, look at that beautiful architecture created by beetles. And then what happens beyond the beetles,then you get your solitary bees and wasps using it.

So the first, the first waves of deterioration in old wood or dying wood, deadwood is the fungal phase, then the beetles, then the bees and wasps and you get woodpeckers and all kinds of stuff following suit. But yeah, I just think these pieces of wood would so incredible. Why would you wood chip all of it?

So there was a portion of the tree that was turned to wood chip, but we retained as many big pieces and branches as we could and kept them within the garden. So this one is actually falling apart, which is what is part of the plan. If you have a little look under there, you might see something.

Oh, look, there's tiny frogs.

Lucy: 00:29:17

There's a grub of some sort under there.

Benny: 00:29:19

Oh, yeah, that's a. Yeah, that's quite a large beetle. It could be a Lesser Stag beetle. It's could. I don't think it's.

Yeah, I don't think it's big enough for a Great Stag beetle. But we have got them in the garden.

Lucy: 00:29:32

I'm grabbing it, I'm just grabbing it. I'm picking it up.

Benny: 00:29:34

Yeah. My guess is either a Rose Chafer or a lesser Stag. I'd have to inspect it a bit more.

Sally: 00:29:40

Oh, Lucy, you are so happy, aren't you?

Benny: 00:29:41

Look at that tiny frog.

Lucy: 00:29:43

Tiny frog. That's the same size as a woodlouse.

Sally: 00:29:46

You're in your happy place. Look how much life is underneath here. It's extraordinary.

Benny: 00:29:50

Allowing it to decay slowly. If you turn everything to wood chip, which is the primary root of many people dealing with wood. Wood chip is good in plenty of ways. And you can.

Sally: 00:30:04

All those wood lice that you used to put in your pockets. Oh yeah, I love that sentence. I was listening back. Yeah, I often used to have wood lice in my pockets. Really? I don't think I ever did that actually.

Lucy: 00:30:17

A must-have accessory. Everyone should have them. They improve your life, I think.

Benny: 00:30:22

Great connection. I'm gonna put it down very slowly. They should all be fine. It's very soft underneath.

So you can see to use those kind of cliched words a bit these days, the complexity of this. This space used to be just a very, a weekly mown lawn like the one I did at the top, the upper lawn. But now we've got all kinds of stuff.

We've got bumblebees nesting, we've got frogs using it as a nursery area, we've got anthills, we've got beetles developing, we've got a very special species of thread wasted wasp that collects grass in mid summer when it dries out to seal its nest cavity.

That was the second record in Britain of that species we had in this garden. You know, just the life in this not particularly huge space.

Sally: 00:31:13

So what would your advice be, Benny, having watched this garden over the past few years and Lucy as well? Because I can see, I love seeing your enthusiasm when you are seeing those insects and the bugs and the beetles, to people listening.

If there's one kind of key piece of advice you would give, give them, what would that be? To create something like this in your own garden. What do we need to be aware of? What do we need to think about?

Lucy: 00:31:43

I'd say let go of the idea of tidiness. Clearly we do need some input so that we don't just end up with a load of scrub, like Benny said, this is a really sort of dynamic habitat.

You've got all this, all of these things here. But if there was a lawnmower going through this every day then or every week, it wouldn't be the place that it is.

Benny: 00:32:14

Yeah, I think that's a really good point.

I think we need more wild, we need more feral, you know, parts of our gardens or our spaces, we also need that to maintain some kind of control, otherwise it becomes completely overwhelming. And also, there are plenty of upsides to have in, you know, formal. Formal bits as well.

So with nature, nature is so complicated that we can never begin to understand it. So your best approach is to have mixed strategies. So don't do everything the same.

Have some short grass, have some long grass, have some clipped hedges, have some woolly hedges and try and rotate it if you can. It's not always possible. And like, smaller spaces, I don't know. I think it's kind of like we need to accept some more wild bits and some of them will need to be a bit messier than people might like. If you package it well, like, we kind of delineate the areas here with little badly woven short hedges.

Like, you know, that kind of shows people that we're are working with intention. So I think we do need to let go a little bit. We need to allow more weeds in, more wildness.

And I think the benefits are apparent even in this little space.

Sally: 00:33:26

We always end each episode by learning how to grow the plant in the story. But which weed would Lucy choose?

Lucy: 00:33:32

It might be a bit abstract, but fungus, you know, as an ode to that grub that I saw and I squealed and I grabbed because I loved it so much under that tree stump, you know, there's so much life there. So stick a tree stump or a lump of wood in a green space and let the fungi grow and let the wood decay.

Maybe it's the opposite of growing, you know, let it die and decay and see what happens. Does that work?

Sally: 00:34:04

I think that's fantastic.

I actually happen to have, in a bizarre sort of way, a very old piece of walnut tree that I could do that with, since my dad grew a walnut tree and it was in our garden for many, many years and actually died when my dad died. And then it fell a couple of years ago and it's been sat in my mum's garden.

But I think I shall retrieve a piece of it and I shall let it just decay in my garden. Thank you both. It's been a delight. I love sharing other people's passions. I'm not going to promise to fill my pockets with woodlice, Lucy. But I will see them in a different light. I promise.

Benny: 00:34:43

Should we check Lucy's pockets before we walk out?

Sally: 00:34:51

I learn so much with each plant story, and I hope you have also enjoyed Lucy and Benny's passion and knowledge. Our Plant Stories is an independent podcast production presented and produced by me, Sally Flatman.