Birds of a Feather

To London on Wednesday, for a meeting of the rather wonderful Wildlife Gardening Forum. This was my second meeting, the first being at Wisley last year, and I have to say they really are useful.

The presentations this time were especially good, focusing on a particularly important aspect of the whole wildlife gardening ethos - the need for hard evidence.

There has always been an acceptance, at least within the 'business', that gardening for wildlife is a 'good thing'. But bearing in mind the resistance of some sectors of the population to the idea of a bit of untidiness or - perish the thought - the presence of weeds in the garden, it would be great to be able to quantify that 'good thing' with some proper science.

Thankfully, that seems to be happening. The culmination of the meeting was the launch of 'Wildlife of a Garden: A Thirty-Year Study', a book by Jennifer Owen, who has catalogued the flora and fauna of her small Leicestershire garden for, as the title suggests, the last 30 years. I won't spoil the ending, but suffice it to say the range of organisms she has recorded is staggering, including some new not only to the UK but to science. And the crucial point is that she has never gone out of her way to garden for the benefit of wildlife.

That was the culmination of the meeting, but earlier talks were just as important. Hard evidence from the BTO demonstrated that a whole range of scarce bird species move into gardens from the wider countryside when times are hard; a detailed survey by Pond Conservation showed that, area for area, good quality garden ponds are as species-rich as those in the countryside, but probably more abundant; and after a presentation by Jan Miller of Saith Ffynnon Wildlife Plants I will be thinking more about the recreation of 'brownfield' habitats in a garden context.

All in all, a thoroughly useful day, and graced by the presence of both Chris Baines and Sarah Raven, which sent my fan-boy heart a-racing...