The Natural History of a Garden by Colin Spedding, Timber Press, 拢17.99/$24.95, ISBN 0881925780 Reviewed by Julia Durbin
IN the decade or so that my husband and I have been married, we have argued about many things, but never before about a dustbin lid. Following advice given by Colin Spedding in The Natural History of a Garden, I placed said lid on a piece of rough ground at the end of our urban back garden to see what wildlife would make a home beneath it. My other half was convinced it should remain on the dustbin, but he hadn鈥檛 read this intriguing and informative book.
Most people visiting a garden just look at the plants. Spedding claims that a naturalist鈥檚 way of looking at a garden adds other dimensions to stepping outside your own back door. A gardener, he says, 鈥渃annot suddenly unaided, see things as a naturalist would. You have to know what might be there. And where exactly? And when? And how it can be seen, recognised or watched?鈥�
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The Natural History of a Garden answers all these questions, and many more. I now know what bat excreta looks like 鈥� 鈥渟mall near-black elongated pellets (about 3 millimetres long)鈥�, that moles have between three and four babies a year, that a hedgehog can climb well, its 6000 spines cushioning it if it falls, that moths have feathery antennae while butterflies鈥� are knobbly, and that the total number of spiders in England and Wales has been estimated at 2.2 million million.
Work with a local school led Spedding to write the chapter on gardens for children. This contains a whole range of suggestions that could stimulate a young person鈥檚 interest in natural history, including a crib sheet of questions for parents or teachers less well versed in the area than they might want to appear. And his tips for building interesting ponds should be handed out in every garden centre stocking pond liners.
The one drawback to the book is its layout. At first glance, all the tables and boxes make it look like a textbook. But they are stuffed full of facts, and integrated with the main body of the text in an accessible and coherent way. So you can either read the book as you would a novel, or dip into it when you have a particular interest. In short, when it comes to the natural history of the garden, Spedding raises questions you have never even thought of, and makes you very glad he has given you the answers.
Oh, in case you鈥檙e interested, in the short time it remained on the ground, our dustbin lid provided a home for snails. Every snail has 15,000 plant-crunching teeth, says Spedding, so I rather wish we鈥檇 been less hospitable.