Tag: Urban Nature

Tales from the urban jungle

It certainly feels like Spring has sprung in my little corner of Newcastle: garish daffodils of all shapes and sizes adorn the roadsides, House Sparrows emerge from beneath the slates of terraced homes and cool yet brighter mornings are marked by the fluted notes of Song Thrush and the caterwauling of returning Lesser Black-backed Gulls.

In the small park at the end of my street, the regulars are busy. Blue Tits make tentative inspections of nestboxes lovingly placed by local volunteers, plump Woodpigeons haul twigs back and forward and each tree, whether Ash, Oak or Sycamore, seems to sport at least one bird in full song. On today’s walk, it was the Robins that sang the loudest; although the song of Greenfinch, Dunnock and Goldfinch was audible during the lulls.

There have been a few new arrivals on the local patch this week – new species to adorn the growing list of critters with whom I share my street. Among these, the oystercatcher was the loudest – shrieking at dawn as it circled the wasteland a stone’s throw from home. Doubtless, a suitable breeding site for a pioneering wader. Slightly more demur was the reed bunting – a handsome male – that turned up on the parkland pond, singing amid a stand of reeds no bigger than your average office. Not a bird I had to expect to see in the city when I set out to record the wildlife here.

Also new this week were the frogs – not that I have seen one yet. City amphibians appear far too savvy for that. No, instead I must make do with the leftovers of their nocturnal antics – several globs of spawn deposited around the margins of the pool. A promising sign that, despite everything, frogs still persist here.

Earlier, I mentioned daffodils – the flower of the moment and everyone’s favourite springtime bloom. Not mine, I’m afraid, my efforts this week focused on unearthing (figuratively speaking) other treasures along the path sides and fractured walls of the street. A successful mission, with a few new species for the patch: Green Alkanet, adorned with gorgeous, deep-blue flowers; fuzzy Common Mouse-ear and, perhaps most exciting of all, what I think could be Danish Scurvygrass. A salt-tolerant species now flourishing along the perpetually gritted motorways of the UK, growing here (ironically) outside the local salt storage depot.

Green Alkanet, Danish Scurvygrass and Common Mouse-ear

Plants need not be new to be exciting, however, and this week, the dainty white blooms of cherry plum have reigned supreme. A naturalised species in the UK, this eye-catching member of the prunus family is one of the first trees to spring to life, blooming even earlier than our native blackthorn with which it shares many similarities. Blooms which, at present, are painting my local park a beautiful white, all while providing a welcome source of nectar to the few intrepid pollinators willing to brave the chill and venture out.

The blooms of Cherry Plum in the local park

Well, that’s just about a wrap for this weeks update. Honourary mentions this week go to the Ring-necked Parakeets who, having well and truly colonised the North, appear resident on the street – flying too and fro and never failing to rattle the nerves with their piercing shouts. Somewhat less obtrusive (yet no less colourful), Goldfinches also continue to raid the feeders daily – a welcome splash of colour against a backdrop of aged brick and flaking window frames.

Bringing the wilds home: a backyard experiment

The problem with living in any city, whether that be London, Manchester or, like me, Newcastle, is that space is often at a premium. Large expansive gardens and idyllic personal grottos are few and far between and, more often than not, residents are forced to make do with small, confined and often uninspiring spaces.

Living in Heaton, a large urban district of Newcastle, our terraced flat comes with very little land. A small back garden, walled on all sides and entirely covered in concrete the sum of the area we have to work with. Our mundane little plot lacked even a small patch of soil in which to grow something, anything green. Far from ideal for someone who yearns to engross himself in nature whenever possible.

Tired of staring uninspired at bricks, steel and concrete, back in the Spring, and my partner set ourselves a small challenge: to attempt to ‘green up’ our little corner of urban Tyneside. In doing so, aiming to make our space as appealing as possible to as many different species as possible. The sum of our garden wildlife sightings, until this point, consisted of little other than a handful of moths and the odd wandering Magpie.

Starting out…

The cornerstone of any garden the first thing we needed to add in order to make our space wildlife-friendly was, of course, soil. And so we set about buying planters of all shapes and sizes – long and shallow, round and deep, hanging, you name it – collected with the aim of growing as many plant species as possible. Including, we had hoped, at least a few edibles, alongside pollinator-friendly blooms and a few ornamentals. Within a few weeks, these initial pots and troughs had been filled: Honeysuckle, Lavander, Thyme, petunias and Bay Laurel representing the first living organisms to grace our plot.

A few weeks later, and lacking space for any substantial body of water, we opted to add a container pond, planting the admittedly rather unattractive plastic tub with a handful of native water plants – Marsh Marigold, Hemlock Waterdropwort and Flag iris. A mini-project closely followed by another with the addition of two mini-meadows – pots planted with Seedball wildflower mixes – and next, a raised bed suitable for our edible produce. The latter soon filled to bursting with chillis, lettuce, Bok Choi and later, a few more varieties of cabbage. Following this, more plants were added. Taller wildlife-friendly options – Raspberry and Blackcurrant – and a range of low-lying species.

Getting there (I promise Matt did not do ALL of the work)

Fast-forward to the end of Summer and, at the time of writing this, the garden – I finally feel comfortable using this word – looks altogether more pleasant. Looking out of the window this morning, I see pleasant green, not grey. And all in all, our space feels altogether different: uplifting as opposed to depressing. The results of our exploits can be seen below for those interested.

The current state of play…

But what of the all-important wildlife? Did it descent on our humble space en masse, as we had intended? Well, yes. To date, we have recorded no less than 66 new species for the garden. The pollinators arrived first, Tree, White-tailed, Red-tailed and Garden Bumblebees, Honeybee, Common Wasp, Common Carder, Marmalade Hoverfly and Large White butterflies representing a few of the more obvious visitors. Among the more common denizens, a few surprises were to be had too – the unlikely discovery of a small, metallic bee deceased in our new bug hotel heralding the arrival of a species which, before its occurrence here, I had never even heard of: the Bronze Furrow Bee. A species with a patchy national distribution; poorly recorded and not overly abundant.

Next came the Red Mason Bees – now in residence within a crack in our neighbour’s wall – while moth numbers to have increased also. Silver Y, Angle Shades, Setaceous Hebrew Character, Heart and Dart, Light Brown Apple Moth and Large Yellow Underwing respecting just a few of our nocturnal records. A more surprising record coming from a Six-spot Burnet found during the day on our Runner Beans in July – not a species I would often associate with the less than wild streets of Newcastle.

Heart and Dart, Angle Shades, Slug-fest, and a bumble rescue.

Of course, with a range of tasty edible crops planted, it was inevitable that ‘pest’ species would follow at some point. And sure enough, they did: our cabbages were besieged by the larvae of Small White and Diamond-backed Moth; our Honeysuckle fell victim to aphids; we lost an entire crop of Swiss Chard to Cabbage Fly and Yellow Cellar Slugs and Garden Snails were quick to find any seedlings. Interesting species in their own right which, in turn, have sparked an increase in other, much more welcome creatures: 7 and 14 Spot Ladybirds, colourful members of the Ichneumonoidea family, Harvestman, centipedes, beautiful Garden Spiders and fearsome-looking House Spiders. Now, equilibrium has been reached and plants remain relatively damage-free.

For the last few weeks, new additions to our growing ‘garden list’ have followed thick and fast. A fortnight back, we were delighted to discover no less than 9 Painted Lady at roost beneath one of our hanging baskets. This morning, they’re still there; although numbers have dwindled somewhat. Elsewhere, Matt discovered a Buff Ermine caterpillar ravenously consuming our small Buddleia plant and today, a glance in our container pond revealed a few new colonists: water fleas and hoverfly larvae.

Now, I will not go so far as to claim that our little urban garden looks all that nice. Nor does it compare to the micro-rewilding efforts often shared on social media – those wonderful tales of gardens transformed into makeshift nature reserves, gorgeous and incredibly biodiverse. We are definitely proud, however, to have created something beneficial to local wildlife and enjoyable (and useful, taking into account all our veggies) to ourselves. We stand content to watch and enjoy for the remainder of this year and already find ourselves looking forward to amending our space further in the future, so to make more of a difference. Perhaps we will invest in a creeper to cover some of the remaining walls, or just maybe, we’ll expand on our mini-meadows with another of our bargain grow beds. We will see!

On a final note, I must apologise for the quality of the photos used in this article – it seems there has been a problem uploading photos from my phone to the computer. Not that this presents too much of an issue, they still get the point across.