All too often in the city we only notice its little nature bits when they've gone. We walk past them every day without taking the blindest bit of notice. Then they get vandalised, or swallowed up by developers, or shut down by health and safety regs. And then we miss them.
When we wrote about this little patch of neglected and mysterious greenery in our first ever Nature-ist piece, we kind of figured that it would eventually become a splodge of oddly shaped terraced houses, or an annexe to the abutting DHSS centre.
Well, respect to the London Centre for Wildlife Gardening, its official caretakers. Not only have they preserved it as an urban oasis, they have everso-slightly tamed it. It now boasts a pond of sorts, and a bench, and a totem pole, and a brown-roof-beetle-haven, and beautiful gates which are, for the most part, left wide open.
Most importantly, the wildlfe is flourishing, the discarded beercans and other detritus have vanished...and the fairies most definitely still live there. The gardener is still invisible (or maybe the wee folk actually run the place - who knows?) - but it seems he could do with some help as they are looking for volunteers.
