If wildness can exist even when there is a degree of human intervention, then gardens too can, to some degree, be wild. ie gardens can be cultivated in such as way as to create or support areas of wildness. These could be corners that are left to run wild, or lawns managed as meadows (although they are likely to be cut by hand rather than by grazing animals). But even when gardens are more formally cultivated they can still support wildlife with flowering plants that benefit pollinators, log piles that benefit insects and beetles, ponds that benefit frogs and dragonflies, and in the absence of pesticides, aphids and caterpillars that benefit birds.
Category: Go Wild!
31 Days Wild: 20th May 2025
Wild is a word that can mean natural, untamed, or uncultivated. It can also mean free. Most of fauna in Richmond Park is wild with the exception of the deer. They were artificially introduced and their health and numbers are artificially maintained but with quite a low key touch (ie providing some winter feed and culling weaker animals to maintain herds appropriate to the size of the Park). The flora too is largely wild with the exception of the areas of p planted flower gardens and the Isabella Planation where the plants are purposefully cultivated. Equally there is a degree to which the trees are cultivated in so far as dangerous branches are removed and new trees are planted to create new areas of woodland. Nevertheless these interventions do enable wildlife to thrive. Richmond Park is London’s largest designated Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI). According to Natural England “Richmond Park has been managed as a royal deer park since the seventeenth century, producing a range of habitats of value to wildlife. In particular, Richmond Park is of importance for its diverse deadwood beetle fauna associated with the ancient trees found throughout the parkland. In addition the park supports the most extensive area of dry acid grassland in Greater London.”
31 Days Wild: 19th May 2025
I like to think of Richmond Park as a place for wildlife, be that ancient oak trees, sky larks, or deer. But is it really a ‘wild place’? It was originally created from farmland as an exclusive park where Charles I could hunt deer – a managed environment. Even today its biodiversity is shaped by a high degree of human impact – both the work of the Park’s management team who weed out invasive species, manage deer numbers, and plant new trees, and the large numbers of people (and their dogs)who use the space for recreation, commuting and for mental wellbeing.
What makes somewhere a wild space?
31 Days Wild: 18th May 2025
Today’s Richmond Park sighting was of a kestrel. It’s screechy call first caught my attention and looking round it was perched high on an old oak tree. Another kestrel flew in and I suspect entered a hole in the tree where likely they had made a nest.
I see kestrels fairly often in the Park – often because of the distinctive way that they can hover in the air.
31 Days Wild: 16th May 2025
One of our bird boxes is home to a young family of Blue Tits – the chicks loud peeping can be heard whenever the parents are delivering food. We typically have two or more Blue Tits in the garden flying between trees and shrubs and the bird feeder – but I am guessing at the moment that the parents are catching bugs and insects for their young.
The following is a fascinating description of a Blue Tit’s year.
31 Days Wild: 15th May 2025
Having spent the whole day in the City of London, there was little nature to engage with!
Back at home I identified a white tailed bumblebee in the garden.
31 Days Wild:14th May 2025
I had a go at trying to identify the bees in the garden. Unfortunately they don’t keep still long enough to really compare them with the images on identification sheets. I think the ones I was looking at were tree bumblebees with a single yellow and a white tail.
31 Days Wild: 13th May 2025
I’m again back up in rural Warwickshire, it’s late afternoon and the air is filled with small flying insects – midges and the like, I guess – but certainly far more airborne wildlife than I see in south west London. This might explain why in Warwickshire I see swallows but not in London.
31 Days Wild: 12th May 2025
Running through the Park, I have noticed a thick drift of soft ‘fluff’ which on closer inspection is the remains of the flowers from the beech trees. We tend to forget that trees – other than obvious ones like fruit trees and horse chestnuts – have flowers. How else would they produce seeds for the next generation. Most trees rely on the wind for pollination so don’t need decorative flowers to attract insects – hence the small fluffy nondescript brown flowers on the beech tree.
31 Days Wild: 11th May 2025
During the late morning I was walking through Sheen Common. Sheen Common is more woodland than open grassland, and is bisected by wide foot trodden paths. Here where the sun slanted down between the trees, I watched a pair of butterflies dancing round and round each other in spiralling waltz. A bit of research on the internet, and I am guessing they were speckled wood butterflies.
The Green Tau 