A garden is a powerful thing. My guest this week, Kate Bradbury, the author of “One Garden Against the World: In Search of Hope in a Changing Climate,” is here to share how small actions can make a difference to conserve wildlife.
Kate is an award-winning writer specializing in wildlife gardening and the author of “The Bumblebee Flies Anyway,” “Wildlife Gardening for Everyone and Everything” and “How to Create a Wildlife Pond.” She’s the wildlife editor of BBC Gardeners’ World magazine and has a regular Country Diary column in The Guardian. She writes regularly for the RHS’s The Garden magazine, The Wildlife Trusts members’ magazine and BBC Wildlife. Her garden was featured as part of the BBC Springwatch Garden Watch campaign, and she and her garden have also appeared on Autumnwatch and Gardeners’ World.
Kate Bradbury is a garden writer and conservationist. Her latest book is “One Garden Against the World: In Search of Hope in a Changing Climate.” Photo Courtesy of Kate Bradbury
Kate is a champion for wildlife protection and goes to great lengths to aid animals. She belongs to several wildlife rescue groups and supports amphibian and reptile charity Froglife and bumblebee charity Bumblebee Conservation Trust. She is also an ambassador for the Royal Horticultural Society and conservation charity Butterfly Conservation.
“I’m always just keeping an eye out for things that need saving,” she says. “We live in such close proximity to these species, and not enough people are aware of how to be good neighbors.”
Get to Know Kate Bradbury
Kate started gardening when she was 3 years old. “Pretty much as soon as I could walk, I was sort of hanging around in the mud and sowing seeds,” she recalls. “ … Both my parents were keen gardeners. My dad did the vegetables, and my mom did the flowers in a very sort of traditional family way.”
Kate gravitated toward growing vegetables. Her father grew runner beans up bamboo poles and sent Kate in between to pick the beans that he could not reach.
“I was hooked,” she says. “I started growing my own vegetables when I was 11.”
When she was in college, everyone brought their dying houseplants to her for aid. Then she got her first allotment — a plot of land rented for gardening — when she was 23.
“Everyone laughed at me,” she says. “People have stopped laughing now because I’m in my 40s, and we’re all gardening now. But when I was in my 20s, it wasn’t very cool.”
In addition to always gardening, she’s always been a writer. “I was always writing, scribbling away,” she says. “If it was sunny, I was outside. If it was raining, I was writing.”
She now lives in Portslade, just outside Brighton in England. She lives in an old red brick railway workers’ terrace that she moved into six years ago. She has a tiny front garden and a 40-foot back garden.
“The thing that makes it good for wildlife, really, before I came along, was that all of the gardens are connected at the back by a twitten, which is an old coal route.” Miners used the route to deliver coal to the terraced houses.
Not only are all the gardens connected, the route also connects to the park. Collectively, the gardens and park make for good habitat for hedgehogs and other creatures.
“I dug a pond and I planted lots of native shrubs and I planted lots of bee-friendly plants, and I created lots of habitat piles and I made bee hotels and other habitats for nesting bees.”
She also planted a meadow, where five species of butterflies breed.
Her neighbors have begun following her example and planting habitat — though not everyone is on board. Some neighbors have plastic grass.
“I look after wildlife,” she says. “I sort of see myself — this sounds a bit pretentious — but as a custodian of the land outside my back door. So I really care about the individuals who live with me.”
The World’s Smallest Meadow
Kate says a big problem in the U.K. is people paving over their front gardens to park a car. However, her front garden is so small, there is no room to park a car. What she does have is the world’s smallest meadow.
“It’s kind of the bane of my life really because the thing about meadows is they look amazing until July and then they look terrible,” she says. “I’m going through this period now of just looking at it and just thinking, I really want to cut you down. But the alternative to that is then looking at a cut meadow for six months. It’s causing me some anguish, but also at the same time, I’ve got five species of butterfly breeding in it. I’ve got several species of bee.”
The U.K. has lost 97% of its meadows since World War II. Converting more yards into meadows, as Kate has done, would be a tremendous boon for wildlife.
“If we all did it, then they would just be part of one large, huge meadow spanning the whole country. We’d certainly have a lot more butterflies and bees. And yes, they do turn brown in July, but maybe if everyone’s meadow turned brown in July, I wouldn’t be so grumpy about mine.”
In the United States, homeowners association rules may prevent many gardeners from converting their lawns into meadows, but Kate doesn’t encounter that problem in the U.K.
Kate mows her meadow in September and lets it grow again in March. She says this mimics the role of meadow farmers of old England, who would cut short their meadows in July and August. Then grazing animals would keep the meadows short until March.
“I try to leave it a little bit longer just because usually there are still caterpillars using these species,” she says.
“Meadows are not a natural habitat,” she added. “They’re a manmade habitat, but they’re a really good manmade habitat.”
Meadow plantings support pollinators and many any creatures. Photo Courtesy of Kate Bradbury
Swift Bricks and Sparrow Boxes
“I’m involved in various campaigns to get swift bricks made compulsory in the U.K., which is something that’s really desperately needed,” Kate says. “Hundreds of thousands of people have campaigned for it and signed petitions for it, and yeah, government doesn’t want to do it.”
Swift bricks are nesting boxes that replace bricks in construction.
“Swifts are very loyal to their nesting sites, and they’ll die trying to get into their nests,” Kate points out.
When she sees a school or pub with scaffolding up, she writes to them to encourage them to include swift bricks in their renovations.
One old pub had loads of house sparrows nesting in it, and it was undergoing a renovation. After she wrote to them, they included 30 sparrow boxes in the project.
Planting to Provide Pollen for an Extended Period
“With pollen and nectar, most pollinators don’t care if the plant’s native or not,” Kate says. “Pollen is protein, nectar is essentially sugar and water with a few amino acids chucked in.”
Generalist pollinator species are indifferent to the origins of a plant because they can reach all the pollen and nectar they need. Specialist pollinator species can’t reach the pollen and nectar on just any type of flower. They need the native plants that they co-evolved with. For example, Kate says the scabious mining bee will only visit scabious, and the loosestrife bee will only visit yellow loosestrife.
So Kate uses native plants and supplements with non-native plants to extend the flowering season in her garden.
“With climate change, with some insects coming out sooner or staying out later in the year, you can top up what you would normally find in the wild with non-natives,” she says.
Native plants are also needed for native moths and butterflies to lay their eggs on. Those eggs hatch into caterpillars that can only eat the leaves of their host plants, which are, overwhelmingly, native plants.
“I grow all of the caterpillar food plants that I can in my garden, because the more caterpillars there are, then yes, the more moths and the more butterflies, but also the more birds, the more hedgehogs, the more frogs and toads,” Kate says. “So I’m creating an ecosystem. I’m creating a food web in the garden, in a very small space.”
A pollinator garden. Photo Courtesy of Kate Bradbury
One Garden Against the World
“It’s about creating a garden in the context of not just habitat loss, but climate change as well, and I wanted to write about climate,” Kate says. “I felt like I needed to get a few things off my chest, and I wanted to see what I could do and if I could sort of galvanize people to help in the cause really.”
She says she’s always been of the opinion that if you are really negative about something, nothing’s going to change. “Whereas if you have a positive slant, no matter how negative you are feeling about it, if you find something positive to say, then you give people hope and love. … You’re gonna get people out there doing stuff, noticing things, growing plants for bees, being excited by frogs.”
In writing about something as enormous as climate, she says her greatest fear was immobilizing people, making them feel like there was no point in doing anything, that it’s all too late. “It’s not too late,” she says. “Every single thing we do is going to make a difference.”
She wanted to write about the smallness of her garden and the insignificance of it on a grand scale, but all the difference her garden was making in the world and the good it was doing her.
She wrote the book in 2022 amid a drought in the U.K. and temperatures then reached 40°C (104°F) for the first time while 35°C (95°F) was historically the temperature of what would be considered a really hot summer.
“It’s just so frustrating that everyone just carries on as normal. No one’s paying attention to it. I was really feeling it,” she says.
It wasn’t just what she saw on the news. She also observed wildlife struggling in the garden.
“When things are really hot and dry, flowers don’t produce nectar. So I was just seeing dead bees everywhere.”
Caterpillars were shriveling up and dying because they weren’t getting enough water. Hedgehogs and other mammals weren’t getting enough to drink. Hedgehogs in particular were found collapsed in parks and gardens.
“I’d never been so busy taking hedgehogs to rescue centers,” she says.
Photo Courtesy of Kate Bradbury
Bumblebees
“Bumblebees were the catalyst for everything,” Kate says.
Bumblebees made a nest in an old duvet that her old flatmate’s ex-partner threw into the backyard 20 years ago.
“We were all just 22 years old, 21 years old, and just a bit useless. And for some reason, we don’t really know — I think it was moldy, I think it smelt bad — he threw this duvet out into the backyard. And in the U.K. a backyard is just a little square of paving. It’s not a garden. It’s tiny.”
The neighbors complained about the nest. “And then the landlord got in touch and said, if you don’t get rid of this bumblebee nest, I will.”
Kate got in touch with the then-new Bumblebee Conservation Trust and learned how to move a bumblebee nest. She and her flatmate dressed in makeshift beekeeper suits made of net curtains and moved the nest at midnight, when all the bees were supposed to be back in the nest. She got stung in the neck twice anyway.
“We cut the nest out of the duvet and then, put it in a little box of moss and grass, and then took it to my allotment . And I just fell in love. I didn’t do anything on my allotment for the rest of the year. I would just go to the allotment in the morning before work and I’d sit and I’d just watch them coming in and out of their nest, pollinating my beans, and I was hooked. I thought they were amazing.”
When the nest died, she was bereft, she says. “She read all the books she could on bumblebees to learn how she could have done better for them.
“On my third book, I realized that actually when I watched the bee digging itself into a hole — and I thought she was going mad, actually — she was a queen for the next year going into hibernation.”
The nest hadn’t failed. It was successful, she learned, and that queen’s progeny could still be living today.
Around that time she got a job at a gardening magazine, and all she wanted to do was write about bumblebees. A second gardening magazine hired her, and she continued to focus on bumblebees. That magazine made her its wildlife editor.
“That was the beginning of it all, really, just me just doggedly not shutting up about bumblebees,” Kate says.
Last year was the worst year on record for bumblebees in the U.K. because it was so cold and wet in spring, she notes. They need a steady nest temperature of 34°C (93°F), so many nests failed.
“This year, touch wood, they’re having a good year,” she says.
Bumblebees inspired Kate’s interest in wildlife conservation. (Photo credit: Amy Prentice)
Hedgehogs
“Who doesn’t love a hedgehog?” Kate asks.
She says she moved because of hedgehogs.
“I had to compromise with my partner at the time,” she recalls. “I wanted to move to the country, and she wanted to stay in the town. And I said, ‘Well, can we just go a little bit further out then, because they’ve got hedgehogs.’”
Kate moved in during January and put cameras out, and by March, the hedgehogs arrived, when they came out of hibernation.
Kate got feeding stations and set up hedgehog shelters and habitats. One hedgehog she observed in her garden was missing a leg, and she captured it so it could be treated. After three weeks, it was released and moved into one of the feeding stations, not letting any other male hedgehogs on.
A 2007 Biodiversity Action Plan classified hedgehogs as a priority species in Britain. Kate is one of many people in the U.K. who work to monitor hedgehogs and step in to provide aid when warranted.
“Hedgehogs aren’t really aware that they’re being managed in this way or they’re being monitored in this way,” she says. “But we’re all just keeping an eye on making sure they’re all right, and then we can step in if they’re not, all right.”
Last year Kate rescued a hedgehog nest from a woman’s pair of pygmy goats, who were kicking the hedgehogs and preventing them from getting out for food. The hedgehogs were moved 10 doors down to a fellow hedgehog rescue member’s home.
Hedgehogs are one of the reasons Kate became a conservationist. Photo Courtesy of Kate Bradbury
The Three Most Important Things to Do to Create a More Wildlife Friendly Garden
Add Water: Adding a water source will make an incredible difference in the presence of wildlife in your yard. It can be as large as a pond or as small as a shallow dish. Having water sources of various depths will serve a variety of wildlife.
Kate’s pond is three meters by two meters. She made it with a liner and put loads of plants around it so it looks like a natural pond. Frogs, toads and newts breed in it. She aimed to have a pond that would be big enough for toads, which are particular about their ponds and have experienced population decline in the U.K.
A pond supports various species.
Photo Courtesy of Kate Bradbury
Make Habitat Piles: Let plant debris build up. Twigs, logs, stems, leaves — all of those things that you might normally compost or send away, find space to pile it up. “You’ll get loads of stuff living there,” Kate says.
She has a wood pile on her property that she made of logs she collected from other properties where trees were being pruned. She has spotted frogs, hedgehogs and wrens in the pile, as well as various species of fungi. “It’s really vibrant and biodiverse.”
Plant Long Grass: Long grass provides shelter for insects, mammals, amphibians, etc., to rest during the day and also leaf material for insects to eat and seed for birds to eat. And other animals eat those insects. Wildflowers will grow among long grass, providing food for pollinators.
Long grass and wildflowers provide habitat and nourishments for wildlife.
Photo Courtesy of Kate Bradbury
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Kate Bradbury. If you haven’t listened yet, you can do so now by scrolling to the top of the page and clicking the Play icon in the green bar under the page title.
How do you use your yard to serve wildlife? Let us know in the comments below.
Links & Resources
Some product links in this guide are affiliate links. See full disclosure below.
Episode 134: Bird Population Decline and What Gardeners Can Do to Help
Episode 142: Why Our Plant Choices Matter: Nature’s Best Hope, with Doug Tallamy
Episode 152: The Native Plant Trust: Why Plant Choices Matter
Episode 237: Ecological Gardening: Creating Beauty & Biodiversity
Episode 261: All About Native Bees, with Heather Holm
Episode 314: Native Gardeners vs. the HOA: An Important Victory for Wildlife
Episode 317: Native Gardeners vs. the HOA, Part II
Episode 331: The Ecological Garden Blueprint: 10 Essential Steps That Matter Most
Episode 400: Defending a Native Garden From Misguided Laws
Episode 401: Fighting for the Right to Have a Natural Yard, with Wolf Ruck
Episode 402: Bylaws for Biodiversity
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“One Garden Against the World: In Search of Hope in a Changing Climate” by Kate Bradbury
“Wildlife Gardening: For Everyone and Everything” by Kate Bradbury
“How to Create a Wildlife Pond: Plan, Dig, and Enjoy a Natural Pond in Your Own Back Garden” by Kate Bradbury
“The Bumblebee Flies Anyway: A year of gardening and (wild)life” by Kate Bradbury
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Disclosure: Some product links in this guide are affiliate links, which means we get a commission if you make a purchase. However, none of the prices of these resources have been increased to compensate us, and compensation is not an influencing factor on their inclusion here. The selection of all items featured in this post and podcast was based solely on merit and in no way influenced by any affiliate or financial incentive, or contractual relationship. At the time of this writing, Joe Lamp’l has professional relationships with the following companies who may have products included in this post and podcast: Milorganite, Soil3, Territorial Seed Company, Proven Winners ColorChoice, and Dramm. These companies are either Brand Partners of joegardener.com and/or advertise on our website. However, we receive no additional compensation from the sales or promotion of their product through this guide. The inclusion of any products mentioned within this post is entirely independent and exclusive of any relationship.
