Inside

Qué pasa, naturalists?

It’s been a few weeks. We’re turning over carrot crops with Van Gogh in Montmartre, dodging shots in Singapore and wow I like Frankfurt. Venga!

City

F is for Frankfurt.

Frankfurt, or ‘Home of the Franks’ makes me hungry just writing about it. Yes, it’s almost lunchtime as I write this and yes, frankfurters are awful but yes, I live in a city where there’s frankfurter bars everywhere and - please feed me.

They did right in this corner of Germany by starting with the Stadtwald or ‘City Forest’. This 3,866 hectare wood is the centrepiece of a city where 50% of the urban area is green space and 80% of residents live within 300m of some tangible nature.

Central Park?

Frankfurt: Hold my (large) beer.

The city is on it’s way to 1250km of paths through the network of 400 nature destinations including zoos, wetlands, towpaths and other places to loiter or linger (depending on your age).

You might lob at the Jumeirah Frankfurt, a hotel doing it’s best to combat insect poverty in the city with its 60,000 rooftop bees. You can enjoy the honey on your toast downstairs if you like. It’s just one of many sites you don’t normally see tending to pollinators in Frankfurt.

Citizens are as active as the city in protecting and creating urban nature, I love this particular NFP group and their evergreen spirit. Hand them a sausage, please.

There’s even a techno-optimist ‘green’ enclave near the airport called Gateway Gardens that’s easy to smile at.

I’m putting Frankfurst on my list for a visit in the next year.

Concept

Allotments.

Snagging a piece of land close to home and raising some cabbages or carrots is almost a universal pleasure. It might be something smaller, or a balcony patch. Non-commercial food crops by people on land away from home has been a useful way to care for land, feed ourselves and balance the pressures of dense urban enviornments for millenia.

In post-industrial times allotments were connected with “campaigns for public welfare when municipalities provided the poor sections of the population not with financial support but with plots of land.”

Vincent Van Gogh travelled to Paris and painted the hill of Montmarte in the Summer of 1887. The kitchen gardens and allotments held a fascination for him, even as the metroplis began to nip away at the rural edges of the landmark.

The narrow fields, small buildings and flimsy fences are a light dance on the land reflecting the temporary nature of the crops. There are few orchards or vines. Perhaps this very fleeting element makes the success of a harvest that much sweeter.

I love the rounded brush strokes that suggest human work in the land and movement in the plants and trees.

Allotments are in and out of vogue in cities but I suspect our near future will see more of them as eat local, fresh and as a community.

Plan

The Rifle Range Nature Park, Singapore.

It seems all roads lead to Singapore today for how to bring nature into cities. They truly are leading the way. You can even ignore the solar punk vision of Gardens by the Bay (below), take a less travelled path, and find yourself somewhere that takes your breath away.

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The rifle range was recently an abandoned quarry, mostly flooded and wildly overgrown. Sounds pretty perfect to me but, let’s make it a bit more accessible - sure! A key aim of the plan was to increase biodiversity. The team behind the project spent nine months up front studying the most suitable plants and animals to improve soil quality and biodiversity potential. As well as this addressing the roadkill problem on neighbouring roads was done with culvert and rope bridge crossing and providing shelter nearby.

The pangolins seem to have voted with their feet and the park is now a stunning example of doing a little to help a lot, and letting nature find a way. Oh and some nice paths and such.  Here are some more wonderful photos.

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Idea

The world before people.

It’s wonderful to be able to find every inch of the planet before we go, perhaps even to drop a plant by drone where it’s most needed.

But this map of the known world from the year 990 A.D. suggests to me there’s a gap between the potential for harmonious co-existence for species at that time, and where we have landed lately.

Maybe we give the sea creatures a shot at running things for a bit?

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Photo

A door between worlds

In the 1700s and 1800s the romantics of Europe flocked to Sintra in Portugal to catch the mist on their face and create fantastical homes and gardens away from city life. Today it’s a UNESCO world heritage site and perhaps my favorite place on earth.

Lord Byron wrote that it “…contains beauties of every description, natural and artificial. Palaces and gardens rising in the midst of rocks, cataracts and precipices; convents on stupendous heights, a distant view of the sea and the Tagus.”

I took this photo not long ago on a wet day at the bottom of the Initiation Well at the Quinta da Regaleira estate.  The remarkable and claustrophic structure was created by Carvalho Monteiro, notable romantic, bug nerd and Freemason who was fascinated by Dante and the nine circles of hell.

If you’re ever in Lisbon, it’s well worth the short hop.

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