Page 29 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #11
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as a ‘nation of gardeners’, our gardens are Chloe Smith. That’s an average of two Hyde ‘brownfield’ for several new houses or even
fast disappearing. In a report published in Parks per year (and a further 14 since 2011). a block of flats.
2016, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) The tragic loss of gardens is more prevalent Taken together, Britain’s gardens take up
said the percentage of front gardens lost to in urban areas, where space is at more of more land than its nature reserves. We’re
paving, concrete or gravel had risen to 24 a premium. Front gardens are paved to treating them as anything but.
per cent, up from just 8 per cent in 2005. park cars, a trend partly driven by on-street This loss of gardens is catastrophic for
The results, based on a poll of 1,500 people, parking charges, while back gardens are wildlife. The paving over of one garden may
suggested that more than 4.5 million of lost to anything from garden offices to low- be of no significance in the greater scheme
Britain’s front gardens were entirely paved, maintenance paving, decking and fake lawns. of things, but the cumulative loss of a street’s
while 7.2 million were mostly paved. One plastic-grass company told me they’re worth of gardens puts wildlife at risk. While
Another grim report, published by London seeing 10 to 15 per cent growth year-on-year. no research has been specifically conducted in
Wildlife Trust in 2011, compared aerial That’s 10–15 per cent fewer lawns per year, and this area, we know that gardens – comprising
surveys of London taken in 1998 and 2006. 10–15 per cent less food for birds and wildlife. a lawn, shrubs and flowering plants – provide
It found that domestic gardens (both front crucial food and shelter for wildlife. We also
and back) made up nearly 24 per cent of the y opting for the kind of easy know that paving stones, decking and fake
London’s total area, but that in those eight ‘outdoor rooms’ depicted in glossy turf offer very little by comparison.
years nearly two thirds of its front gardens photo shoots rather than lush We know, too, that hedgehogs have
had been covered with hard surfaces, while green spaces, we’re turning our declined by 50 per cent since the turn of the
the amount of green space in back gardens Burban gardens from green to century, that butterflies are vanishing from
had shrunk, due to garden offices. grey. Some are being lost completely – for towns and cities faster than the countryside,
“An area of vegetated garden equivalent example, when a decent-sized house and and that house sparrows suffer greater
to 21 times the size of Hyde Park was lost garden is grabbed by developers, who then losses in urban areas. Covering roughly the
between 1998 and 2006,” said report author knock the home down to use the site as same period in which Chloe Smith noted
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