0:01 [Applause]
0:04 Hello. Hello. Yep. Good morning,
0:06 everyone. Thank you for coming. Uh, as
0:08 Julia said, I work with her on various
0:10 special projects. I'm a consultant to
0:13 Beth Chatau's Gardens and I was involved
0:16 in the programming of this symposium
0:18 with Julia. So, I hope you're enjoying
0:21 it. Are you enjoying
0:24 it? Good. Good. Good. And I hope you're
0:27 finding it useful and interesting. Are
0:32 you good? Thank you. Okay, so we've been
0:33 presenting you with a lot of
0:35 information, okay? That was the
0:37 intention of this. We wanted to bombard
0:39 you with all of these fantastic ideas
0:41 from all of these really skilled,
0:43 knowledgeable people, okay? Because
0:45 they're in our industry and we need to
0:48 share that knowledge. So, what I'm going
0:50 to do is slow things down a bit. I'm
0:53 going to just step back a bit and look
0:55 at some of the links between some of the
0:56 things that people have been talking
0:58 about. I'm going to sort of think about
1:00 some of the underlying basic principles
1:03 of why we're here and what we're talking
1:05 about. You know, we think we know about
1:06 these things, but perhaps they're not as
1:08 straightforward as we
1:13 think. So really, it's all about education
1:15 education
1:18 and Dan and Julia talked about the uh
1:20 Beth Chatter Education Trust. Now, the
1:23 key term is education there and that's
1:25 why we're here. It is about education.
1:27 It's about information and it's about
1:30 sharing that information. Okay? Because
1:32 that's what's important. We've been
1:34 talking about all the challenges we're
1:36 facing. So, we're not going to be able
1:39 to confront those challenges unless we
1:44 educate ourselves. That is really
1:48 important. Okay. So, education and
1:50 information were really important to
1:51 Beth Chatau.
1:54 She wrote a lot of books, of course,
1:57 sharing information, sharing knowledge.
1:59 You know, that was from her experience
2:01 in the gardens. We all enjoyed the
2:03 gardens last night at the party, right?
2:04 It wasn't just because it was a party
2:06 that it was good. It was because we were
2:09 in a fantastic location, a location that
2:11 had been carefully thought about over
2:14 many years. And all of that thinking was
2:16 put into Beth's books. She was generous
2:18 in sharing that
2:21 knowledge. and right plant, right place.
2:22 We had an interesting conversation about
2:24 that earlier and that was fantastic. I
2:26 really appreciate that and I think you
2:28 know Joe's points are really valid. But
2:30 I think for a lot of people this is a
2:32 very simple message. We can talk to
2:34 people that aren't part of our group. I
2:37 think what it means is appropriate plant
2:39 appropriate place you know and they went
2:41 into that fantastically in that panel
2:43 session. So thanks for that. But
2:45 obviously behind this, and Dan mentioned
2:47 this earlier as well, was Andrew
2:50 Chatau's work. Beth's husband. He spent
2:53 his lifetime researching the natural
2:56 habitats of plants and he wrote
2:59 endlessly about it. There I spent uh a
3:02 weekend there in the house last year
3:04 just going through the archive of his
3:07 material. There was endless amounts.
3:09 There's some typed pages, but then there
3:10 are other journals. With this
3:13 microscopic writing, it's so hard to
3:17 decipher. And now I have the kind of
3:19 unenviable task perhaps of trying to
3:21 edit that into some semblance to make it
3:23 into the book that he originally wanted
3:26 it to be, which is called the wild
3:29 origins of garden plants. Okay, so that
3:30 was the kind of knowledge he was
3:32 researching these plants, where they
3:34 live, their natural habitats. We've been
3:35 talking about those sorts of things
3:37 already in other sessions, but you know,
3:39 this is what he was doing. He was
3:41 looking where they were from. Beth would
3:43 want to use a plant. She would go to
3:44 Andrew and say, "Where is this plant
3:46 from?" And he'd be able to tell her.
3:48 Then she could put it in the appropriate
3:51 place in the garden, which is why it's so
3:53 so
3:56 fantastic. This is just one of the maps
3:58 that he did. He did some fantastic kind
4:01 of handdrawn maps, real works of art in
4:04 themselves. So hopefully that book will
4:06 be published sometime in the next couple
4:08 of years. It's going to take a while to
4:09 get through, but there's publishers
4:11 involved that are very committed to
4:13 making it a fantastic book. So I just
4:14 had a conversation with them the other
4:16 week and they were totally hyped up
4:18 about it, which is
4:21 great. Now, obviously what Andrew was
4:23 looking at was plant communities, and we
4:25 know plants grow in particular
4:28 associations in their natural habitats.
4:30 find groups of species together in
4:32 particular locations. Okay, that's what
4:35 plant communities are and we can so sort
4:36 of look at those. There are
4:38 classifications of those. There's the
4:40 national vegetation classification in
4:43 this country here which is five volumes
4:45 of books which looks at every sort of
4:47 natural habitat and the particular
4:49 plants that grow in them in this
4:51 country. And I sort of use those as
4:54 references when I'm doing planting. I
4:57 sort of uh think about a particular sort
5:00 of planting based on the site I'm using
5:01 and then look at these kind of plants
5:03 that would grow in that in some other
5:05 location which is similar basically use
5:07 that then as that's the basis and then
5:09 build up a picture from there. There's
5:11 similar classifications in the United
5:13 States as
5:16 well. So plants and plant communities
5:18 are obviously important parts of
5:20 ecosystems. You know, we talk about
5:22 ecosystems and we know what they are,
5:26 right? They are generative, nonlinear,
5:29 complex systems that don't have an
5:31 overall form of control. There's nothing
5:33 overall that's guiding them. It's all
5:34 the interactions that are going on
5:39 within them within them, big and small.
5:41 Okay? So, so that's really really
5:43 important. And of course, ecosystems are
5:45 important because they're part of Earth
5:48 cycles, biogeeochemical cycles. Merlin
5:51 mentioned them yesterday and these are
5:54 things like the water cycle, the carbon
5:56 cycle, nitrogen cycle and there are
5:59 others and basically these are cycling
6:02 these elements through ecosystems
6:04 through the soil through the atmosphere
6:08 through the oceans and these processes
6:11 keep the planet in a relative state of
6:13 balance. They keep it in that Goldilock
6:17 spot, that condition which is just right
6:20 for life on Earth, for our life and the
6:23 life of all the other living species. So
6:25 that's why they're really important.
6:27 That's why we talk about them. That's
6:29 why we sort of are concerned about the
6:31 state of them
6:34 currently. So you know, they operate in
6:36 a state of relative equilibrium. They're
6:38 changing because they're dynamic
6:39 systems. So they're not static. They're
6:42 kind of just moving around according to
6:43 all the interactions that are going on
6:45 them. But they need to be in relative
6:47 states of equilibrium to keep that goldilocks
6:49 goldilocks
6:51 condition. And to do that, they need to
6:54 be diverse. They need to be complex.
6:56 They're entangled. They're all sort of
6:59 interconnected relationships. Charles
7:00 Darwin at the end of uh the origin of
7:03 the species talked about the entangled
7:05 bank, which was his description of an
7:07 ecosystem. I mean Merlin's book
7:10 entangled life is a reference to that
7:12 quote in
7:15 Darwin and complexity. Complexity is
7:17 really important. You know we think
7:19 we're intelligent species. We called
7:21 ourselves with a lack of hubris homo
7:25 sapiens intelligent animals. Yet
7:28 ecosystems are more complex than we
7:30 think. They're more complex than our
7:32 intelligence can handle. The American
7:35 ecologist Frank Egler said, "Nature
7:38 isn't more complicated than we think.
7:40 It's more complicated than we can
7:43 think." Okay? It's just bigger than our
7:46 minds can handle. Even AI
7:48 AI
7:52 can't comprehend how op how ecosystems
7:54 work because they may be able to look at
7:56 all the possible permutations of what's
7:58 going on in them. They may be able to
8:00 second guess what's going to happen
8:02 next, but because it's happening in real
8:04 time, which choice of those permutations
8:06 are they going to choose? If they could
8:08 do it, they would be an ecosystem
8:13 themselves. So complexity is
8:16 key. And resilience. If we want to have
8:19 these ecosystems and relative states of
8:21 equilibrium, they need to be resilient.
8:24 they need to be uh able to face the
8:26 numerous environmental challenges that
8:27 are going on around
8:30 them. Now, resilience is about when an
8:33 ecosystem can bounce back from these
8:35 challenges. So, if an ecosystem
8:37 collapses, if it's resilient, it'll be
8:39 able to reconstitute itself. It doesn't
8:41 necessarily mean it's going to be in the
8:43 same state exactly, but it needs to
8:47 perform the same functions.
8:51 And of course habit uh ecosystems are
8:53 resources and habitat for so many
8:55 different species. Okay, we know that we
8:57 talk a lot about biodiversity these days
8:59 in the garden world and that's a good
9:02 thing because it is really really
9:05 important and of course we talk a lot
9:08 about charismatic fauna you know I mean
9:10 Rebecca was talking about it and it's
9:11 brilliant and there's all those things
9:14 and people do focus a lot on the three
9:18 bees birds bees and butterflies they're
9:23 not so keen on slugs snails spiders bugs beetles
9:24 beetles
9:26 Peter is, John is, we know that. We
9:29 heard it in their talks. But, you know,
9:31 it's all of these things together. They
9:34 all play important roles in ecosystems,
9:36 you know. So, if we're thinking about
9:38 biodiversity, we've got to be thinking
9:40 about all of these things. If we love
9:42 biodiversity, we need to be thinking
9:44 about those things. We love other
9:47 creatures. We love cats. We love dogs.
9:49 We love lambs gambling around in fields
9:52 in the spring and then put them on
9:55 plates on dinner tables. Is that loving
9:57 life? Well, there's a cognitive dissonance
9:59 dissonance
10:02 there. Okay. So, thinking about life,
10:05 all life shares the same operating
10:07 system. We have different hardware, but
10:11 we all have the same software. We're all
10:14 carbon-based cellular forms using
10:17 chemical processes. Okay, these chemical
10:20 processes transform energy of different
10:24 sorts and use them with the information
10:28 our DNA provides to perfor allow us to
10:30 live the lives we do to allow other
10:32 species to live the lives we do. So I
10:34 think it's just interesting to look at
10:36 this quote from Paul Nurse who's a
10:38 genetic biologist. It's from his book
10:41 called What is Life?
10:43 We are bound by a deep connectedness to
10:46 all other life, to the crawling beetles,
10:50 infecting bacteria, fermenting yeasts,
10:52 inquisitive mountain gorillas, and
10:54 flitting yellow butterflies, as well as
10:57 to every other member of the biosphere.
11:00 Together, all these species are life's
11:03 great survivors. The latest descendants
11:06 of a single, immeasurably vast family
11:08 lineage that stretches back through an
11:11 unbroken chain of cell divisions into
11:13 the far reaches of deep time. Yesterday
11:16 we heard Eddie talking about that vast
11:19 tract of time, that geological time,
11:21 that huge expanse where life developed
11:26 from down here all the
11:30 way to here, right Eddie?
11:32 And those points where these things
11:35 happened are really crucial because life
11:39 began early on with that one cell. That
11:41 one cell that came together, those
11:43 components, those chemical components
11:45 that came together. Okay? They came
11:48 together and then through evolution,
11:50 through adaptation, there were changes.
11:53 Those cells divided. We had new species
11:55 develop. And our species was one of
11:57 those down the line.
11:59 He goes on to say, "As far as we know,
12:01 we humans are the only life forms who
12:04 can see this deep connectivity and
12:06 reflect on what it might mean. That
12:08 gives us a special
12:10 responsibility for life on this planet,
12:14 made up as it is by our relatives, some
12:17 close, some more distant. We need to
12:22 care about it. We need to care for it.
12:24 And we to do that, we need to understand
12:29 it." understanding it. Education, it's
12:30 that's what we need. We need to think
12:33 about it. We can't care about things if
12:34 we don't understand them. We can't have
12:36 empathy for them if we don't understand
12:40 them. That's why education is so
12:43 important. Okay? But not everyone thinks
12:45 like us. You know, we're a safe
12:47 community here. We can talk about these
12:50 things. But we're in a world which is in
12:52 a state called poly crisis. There are
12:54 all these different challenges facing
12:56 us. We talk about the climate crisis and
12:58 biodiversity loss which are you know
13:00 obvious ones uh which are relevant to
13:03 our professions but other people think
13:07 differently. Now this is an a a image
13:10 from the world economic forum and it's
13:13 of global risks. Okay. So these are the
13:15 people that are controlling banks
13:16 controlling governments. This is the way
13:19 that they think and these are global
13:23 risks which are threats to business as
13:26 usual capitalism to keeping things going
13:28 to keeping the power structures in place
13:30 and the inequalities within those power
13:32 structures. So what do they think's
13:34 important? Well, the size of these
13:37 circles represent their importance as
13:40 far as they see them. So it's a bit
13:43 unclear to see but societal societal
13:46 polarization is one lack of economic
13:49 opportunity economic downturn. Okay. So
13:51 you're seeing the kind of social
13:54 political economic things that they
13:55 think are
13:57 important. The different colors
13:58 represent the different kinds of things.
14:00 There are economics, geopolitical,
14:02 societal, technological, and
14:04 environmental. The environmental ones
14:07 are the green ones. those little ones up
14:09 in the corner, right? That's how they're
14:10 thinking. And look at all the
14:12 connections between all the social,
14:14 geopolitical ones. And look at this
14:16 fewer connections coming from the
14:19 ecological environmental ones. Now, they
14:22 put these into a chart, basically a
14:26 table, it's a bit blurred, but basically
14:28 the first one on the the right hand
14:30 side, which are two-year risks. So,
14:33 they're thinking in times, two years, 10
14:36 years. Two years time. The main one is
14:38 uh misinformation and
14:40 disinformation. The second one is
14:42 extreme weather events. This isn't the
14:45 causes of extreme weather events. It's
14:49 the effects e economically of those
14:52 events. Then there's uh it's hard to see
14:55 but there's interstate armed conflict
14:58 other things. Then in 10 years time we
15:01 have extreme weather events. We have uh
15:03 critical change to earth systems. those
15:05 biogeeochemical systems that I mentioned
15:08 just a bit earlier. Then there's uh
15:12 diver biodiversity loss, ecosystem
15:15 collapse, uh etc. So, you know, in 10
15:16 years they think these are a problem.
15:17 Well, if they're going to be a problem
15:20 in 10 years, they are a problem now. And
15:23 why would you wait 10 years to address
15:25 those problems? You know, what makes you
15:26 think you're suddenly going to deal with
15:28 all these other problems? We do need to
15:30 deal with them. Of course, we do. But
15:32 you know these environmental problems
15:36 underly all the other problems. If we
15:38 don't address those, we're not going to
15:40 be able to address the other problems.
15:42 So, you know, these are the challenges
15:43 we're up against. We all want to make
15:45 the world a better place. We want to do
15:46 good things, but we've got to convince
15:48 other people as
15:53 well, right? So, as you know, there are
15:55 these multistresses going on in the
15:58 world in a world of poly crisis. Plants
16:00 also face sort of these similar sorts of
16:03 situations often caused by a lot of
16:06 these same factors. So we you know
16:07 plants generally in their lives deal
16:10 with stress. That's what they do. Every
16:11 species has to deal with stress. That's
16:14 what it does. But when there are a
16:16 number of factors operating on plants,
16:19 it's called multiffactorial stress.
16:21 Okay? And you can see from this uh image
16:23 here that there are different types of
16:26 stresses. Climate, which is heat,
16:28 drought, flood, some of the things we
16:31 were talking about yesterday. Uh soil,
16:32 again, some of the things we were
16:33 talking about
16:37 yesterday. Biotic, viruses, funguses,
16:38 some of the things we were talking about
16:41 yesterday. And anthropogenic, okay,
16:42 again, things we were talking about
16:45 yesterday. Pesticides, heavy metals,
16:48 pollutants, these sorts of things. So,
16:50 plants can usually deal with these
16:51 because they've developed over a long
16:53 period of time. Plants have been here
16:56 for 420 million years, which is a lot
16:58 longer than our species has been here.
17:00 So plants can deal with them, but when
17:03 they have two factors operating at once,
17:05 then it's a problem. They can't
17:08 necessarily do it. So just looking at
17:10 climate, heat, and drought, we often
17:11 think about those things as going
17:13 together. Of course, they don't. Think
17:16 about 2020, the spring then when we just
17:19 gone into lockdown. We had a really dry
17:22 long spring. a lot of plants died. You
17:23 know, it wasn't any hotter than normal,
17:25 but there was a drought. So, those
17:27 things don't normally go together. And
17:29 think about yesterday when Tracy was
17:32 talking about stomata. What plants do in
17:33 those different conditions? Well, they
17:35 do totally opposite things. When it's
17:38 hot, they open their stomata to release
17:40 water to transpire to cool themselves
17:44 down. When it's drought, they close the
17:46 stomata to retain that water because the
17:48 moisture is not in the soil. can't pull
17:50 it up with their roots in conjunction
17:52 with all the fungi and bacteria. So, you
17:54 know, if you have heat and drought, then
17:56 plants are going to be, you know, trying
17:58 to make a decision. What actually
18:00 happens is drought wins out, so they
18:02 close their stomata. But there are other
18:04 conditions also in
18:07 heat, they are opening their stomata,
18:09 but then there's likely to be more
18:12 airborne pollutants, pathogens. So,
18:14 they're going to be taking in pathogens
18:16 because they're having their stomata
18:17 open. So, you know, they're under all
18:19 these challenges. They have to sort of
18:21 try and deal with these in different
18:23 ways. And plants when they're living
18:24 their lives have a different strategies
18:26 for dealing with the conditions they
18:28 find themselves and their environ they
18:31 find grow in environments that suit
18:33 them. We know that. But they also
18:34 transform those environments in
18:36 different ways as well. So, it's an
18:38 interaction going on. And plants like to
18:39 live in a certain range. We know there
18:41 are all the different conditions they
18:45 need, the soil, the heat, the water, all
18:46 of these different sorts of things going
18:49 on, but and they want to be in a
18:50 particular position according to their
18:52 species. They want to be in a a sweet
18:54 spot in the middle, which is called
18:57 their idealized niche. Okay? But plants
19:00 very rarely get to live there. They live
19:01 somewhere else in that kind of
19:03 ecological spectrum, either down there
19:06 or down there. And that is their
19:09 realized niche. Okay. So to deal with
19:11 that they have what's known as
19:14 plasticity. They can sort of change
19:17 their function or their morphology their
19:20 form slightly to deal with those
19:22 situations. So phenological plasticity
19:24 you know they may come out into leaf
19:27 earlier they may die back sooner they
19:29 may flower at different times according
19:31 to those situations they find themselves
19:34 in. And like any life form they have to
19:36 do that using the energy they've got. So
19:37 they will make decisions. These
19:40 decisions are called tradeoffs. We make
19:41 trade-offs all the time. We have certain
19:44 amount of time or money to do things.
19:46 So, we make decisions as to what we're
19:48 going to do with that. And plants do
19:50 that as well. These are the tradeoffs.
19:53 Now, plants do this as individuals. And
19:56 if those kind of traits that they
19:58 develop are passed on to the next
20:01 generation, then they're adaptations.
20:02 So, some of these things could be like
20:04 if it's a lower light situation, the
20:07 plants will grow not quite as tall, but
20:10 they'll grow bigger leaves. Or
20:12 conversely, they may grow taller with
20:15 smaller leaves to be able to, you know,
20:16 get above the other plants that are around
20:17 around
20:21 them. Now, if there are adaptations, if
20:23 there are number of plants in the same
20:25 area, in the same population, in the
20:27 same plant community, then that's
20:29 considered an ecotype. Okay? So they've
20:30 got these slight differences to other
20:33 members of their species. They can still
20:34 reproduce with them. They've got the
20:36 same DNA, but they're slight
20:40 differences. And then if they adapt even
20:42 further, then we have new species. So
20:44 that's the basic kind of processes that
20:45 they're dealing with. They're the
20:47 decisions that they're making as they
20:49 live their
20:52 lives. Now, obviously, we talk about the
20:54 climate crisis a lot and we should talk
20:57 about the climate climate crisis a lot.
21:00 You know, uh, we know that since the
21:04 industrial era era, we have been putting
21:06 carbon dioxide into the air. We know
21:08 we've been doing that by burning fossil
21:10 fuels. So, you know, it's a really,
21:12 everyone knows that 99.9% of scientists
21:14 say this and even, you know, most of the
21:16 public know this. We're still not doing
21:18 enough. And, you know, whatever we're
21:21 doing, good whatever good work we're
21:23 doing in our professional practices,
21:25 nothing is going to change unless we
21:28 change this. Okay, we can't necessarily
21:30 change that as individuals. We can do
21:32 things about it individually, but we
21:33 need to do things collectively and it
21:35 needs to be political decisions doing
21:37 this. You know,
21:40 uh petrol companies have known this for
21:43 a long time. In the 1950s, a petroleum
21:46 conference in the United States, uh
21:50 there was a biological chemist told
21:52 petrol companies that this is what's
21:55 happening. You know, 1950s, they knew
21:57 that. So what did they do? Did they
22:00 change? No, they developed strategies to
22:02 undermine what he said and everyone else
22:05 since has been saying. So, you know, we
22:06 need to be thinking about these things.
22:08 But obviously in the garden world when
22:10 we talk
22:14 about climate crisis, we often focus on
22:15 global warming. You know, global warming
22:17 is important. It's when that carbon's in
22:20 the atmosphere, right? It can't escape
22:22 uh because of the greenhouse effects.
22:23 So, we're getting warmer and warmer.
22:24 We're seeing this, of course, we are.
22:26 And that's quite an obvious thing that
22:27 we sort of
22:30 notice. But you know this is a bias on
22:32 temperature and we need to be thinking
22:34 wider than that. We need to be thinking
22:36 about all the consequences. And often we
22:39 think about plants and our work. We
22:40 think about okay well if it's getting
22:42 hotter then we can get plants from
22:44 somewhere else that's hot. But these
22:46 things aren't directly mappable. You
22:49 know in 2050 London's supposedly going
22:50 to be the same temperature as Barcelona
22:52 is now. But that doesn't mean we can
22:54 just get plants from Barcelona and put
22:55 them in London because the conditions
22:57 are totally different. They're not the
22:58 right plants for the right place or the
23:00 appropriate plants for the appropriate
23:03 place. Okay, so these things aren't
23:05 directly mappable. The geog the
23:06 geography is different. You know, are
23:08 plants near a coast? Are there breezes
23:10 from the coast? Are they in the mid of a
23:12 middle of a continent? All of these
23:14 sorts of things. Latitude, altitude.
23:17 Alexander von Hanold a couple of years
23:18 you know discovered that plants on
23:21 similar latitudes are sort of compatible
23:22 around the world they have similar sort
23:25 of str life strategies morphologies
23:27 these sorts of things or altitudes as
23:30 well altitude is another factor you can
23:32 play in with plants in that way the
23:34 geology you know Eddie was talking about
23:37 geology the minerality under there you
23:39 know what's under the ground what's in
23:41 that geology what how does that affect
23:44 plant communities moisture of Of course,
23:46 we know that we know how important water
23:49 is for plants. Humidity, we don't talk
23:52 so much about humidity. Alfred Tanley,
23:54 the British ecologist in the 1930s wrote
23:57 about it in his books. You know, we
23:59 don't talk about humidity. And again,
24:01 this goes back to the stamata being
24:03 open. They try and create their own
24:05 microclimates, their own humidity around
24:07 them. But we need to be thinking about
24:09 humidity. So, we need to be thinking
24:11 about all of these wide ranging factors.
24:14 You know, the weather is changing, but
24:17 it's extreme weather events. That's not
24:20 linear. Again, climate is like an
24:22 ecosystem. It's emergent. It's
24:25 nonlinear, and it's complex. We can't
24:27 predict it. It's erratic. We're having
24:30 these situations which we don't know are
24:33 going to happen when, how often, or
24:35 where. And this is all because of
24:37 feedback loops. These feedback loops are
24:39 happening. and what they something will
24:42 hit the tipping point that would go on
24:43 to a next thing. These positive
24:45 feedbacks, it'll build and build and
24:47 build. We can't predict these things.
24:49 We're not been predicting them as it is.
24:51 And so, we're unprepared for
24:54 them. So, thinking about plant selection
24:57 in this changing world that we're in,
24:59 you know, it's fine to just think, okay,
25:01 we'll go out and get a load of new
25:02 plants. We have to be careful because
25:05 that mindset's a legacy of colonialism.
25:06 when British botonists went around the
25:08 world stealing plants from different
25:10 countries, treating them as resources
25:13 like they treated minerals and people
25:15 that they could just transport from one
25:17 part of the world to another part of the
25:19 world for the profit of empire. So we
25:21 need to be careful how we think about
25:23 that. It's not to say that we shouldn't
25:24 use plants from other places, but we
25:26 don't want to repeat those mistakes. We
25:29 need to be working with others in our
25:31 field in different countries. We need to
25:34 be thinking about this and we need to be
25:35 thinking about consumerism because the
25:37 easiest thing is just get something new,
25:39 buy something new, buy something new.
25:41 Capitalism has got us into this problem.
25:43 Capitalism is not going to get us out of
25:46 it. So, we need to be thinking about
25:49 that. We need to be thinking about local
25:50 plants. You know, we've had a great
25:52 discussion about this this morning and
25:54 Rebecca was talking about it as well.
25:56 And I think you know that sort of uh
26:00 consideration of the terminology is
26:01 really important. You know I like to say
26:04 local plants because then it's local to
26:06 a particular place. The term native is
26:09 problematic. Ethmologically it developed
26:12 in medieval French. It meant that a
26:15 child was native to its mother. Think
26:17 about the word nativity. Okay. So that's
26:20 what it was. Then in the 16th century it
26:23 began being related to people and place.
26:25 What else was going on then?
26:28 Colonialism. Okay, so that was built
26:29 into the system. That was built into
26:31 that word. We can see it then used in
26:33 Nazi Germany about people and place. We
26:35 can see it used in other countries and
26:38 all the problems we have talking about
26:40 the global situation, about migration,
26:42 about people and place. So let's kind of
26:44 avoid that. But let's look at the
26:48 importance of local plants as has been
26:51 discussed this morning. Um, and
26:54 obviously these plants have all of these
26:55 relationships which we talked about
26:57 before, Chris talked about, Rebecca
26:59 talked about, they have relationships
27:00 with different
27:02 insects. We need to think about that.
27:05 And when I work and think about planting
27:07 plans, I have all these spreadsheets
27:09 which note all the different
27:11 interactions between plants and insects
27:13 and try and use those to sort of put
27:15 together these kind of novel ecosystems
27:17 we're creating. Okay, we are looking at
27:18 plants from other places. We're looking
27:20 at things. We're trying to second
27:22 guessess things. We're trying to deal
27:24 with the complexity of the world out
27:26 there. But using this as a basis is
27:28 really important. So thinking about
27:31 these kind of localisms is really important.
27:33 important.
27:37 But having done that and using this kind
27:39 of method you Chris mentioned about
27:42 warmer winters. So this winter over the
27:44 last winter in one of our projects in
27:46 London, we've got a real microclimate.
27:48 We do a lot of projects in central
27:50 London in the London Bridge area and we
27:53 created this uh it's called waste to
27:54 wildlife garden. We used to call it the
27:56 rubble garden because we got crushed
27:58 concrete from local buildings and
27:59 recycled sand from local buildings that
28:01 were being demolished in the area.
28:03 Created these mounds at the entrance to
28:06 Guy's hospital. So it was a barren area.
28:08 It couldn't break through surface. There
28:10 were services and tunnels underneath.
28:12 that we built up. We crowded these
28:14 things and we because we're using
28:16 crushed concrete, we were using a lot of
28:18 local wild flowers. Crushed concrete has
28:21 a high lime content like chalk
28:23 grasslands like low limestone areas in
28:25 Yorkshire for instance. So thinking
28:28 about plants from those kind of areas to
28:31 match that minerality. Okay. So there
28:33 were plenty of sort of native plant not
28:37 native plants local plants um in there
28:41 and so you know plenty of opportunity
28:43 for different creatures but as Chris
28:46 says you know a lot of things uh with
28:48 warmer weathers are changing I mean
28:49 we're in these projects we're finding
28:51 that perennials are not dying back in
28:53 the winter they're staying evergreen
28:55 over winter that's one change and then
28:57 the knock-on effects of that you know we
29:00 saw a moth caterpillar in the winter
29:03 Right? And it was on lemonium plat
29:06 platilum. Okay. An introduced plant. It
29:07 could have been with any of the other
29:09 local plants, but it wasn't. It was
29:11 choosing that. So, what's really
29:13 important is that these things are
29:15 changing. They're not
29:18 fixed. The idea that things are static
29:21 is what I'd call ecology without
29:23 evolution. Things change. Things are
29:25 dynamic. That's the very nature of
29:26 things. That's what I talked about right
29:28 at the beginning. That's what we're
29:30 trying to get across about things are
29:31 complex and they're changing all the
29:34 time. We can't be predicting what
29:36 insects going to be using which plant in
29:39 a hundred years time because you know a
29:40 couple hundred years ago they may not
29:42 have had the same relationship anyway.
29:46 That's how evolution works. That's how
29:49 life on this planet works. Okay? So we
29:51 can't get fixed. We can't get stuck in
29:54 one kind of place, one static mentality.
29:56 We need to be adapting to all these
29:59 changes. We need to be considering all
30:01 that complexity. The Greek philosopher
30:04 Heraclitus said it is not possible to
30:07 step twice in the same river. Okay, so
30:10 think about that change
30:13 flux. That's mind-blowing. You know,
30:16 we've got all of these all of these
30:18 factors. You know, Sheila kind of
30:19 mentioned some of them at the end of
30:20 yesterday. I've just introduced a few
30:23 more. Okay, so we're trying to deal with
30:24 all these things. We're trying to work
30:26 them out. What do we do? You know, are
30:28 we just paralyzed? Do we do nothing? Or
30:30 do we how do we make the right
30:32 decisions, the right, you know, the
30:33 right courses of action? Which is why we
30:35 had panel discussions yesterday where
30:36 they're all on and everyone talking
30:38 about these things. So, we need to be
30:40 discussing these things. There are no
30:43 right or wrong answers. I mean, I speak
30:44 to him all the time and she's always
30:45 like, "Oh, yeah, but what's the right
30:47 answer? What's the right thing? What's
30:49 this?" And it's like, there isn't one
30:51 right answer. This is complex. We want
30:52 those right answers. We want things
30:54 simplified. Of course we do. We want to
30:56 take courses of action. So what do we
30:59 do? We need to work together as a
31:03 unified industry. We need to break down
31:05 silos, which is what we're trying to do
31:07 with this symposium. We have got
31:10 academics talking about their research.
31:11 We've got gardeners talking about what
31:14 they do in practice. We've got designers
31:16 talking about how they work. Okay, this
31:18 is really important that we are talking
31:20 across the industry, that we have
31:23 dialogue, that we have discourse, that
31:26 we work together and we need to make
31:28 this accessible to everyone in the
31:30 industry. We need to break down barriers
31:33 so everyone can engage with this
31:36 information. We need to translate this
31:38 complexity, you know, which was, you
31:40 know, a lot of this academics research
31:42 is, you know, not accessible to it's
31:44 quite hard to understand. You know, we
31:45 saw some of that yesterday, but we also
31:49 saw, you know, the academics doing, you
31:50 know, great work trying to translate
31:52 this into other language. But we need to
31:54 take that further. We need to break it
31:56 down, make it more accessible as well.
31:59 The way we talk about these things, how
32:01 do we communicate? What platforms do we
32:04 do use? How do we communicate with each
32:06 other? How do we then communicate that
32:09 information with the public that aren't
32:12 part of our world? Eric's going to talk
32:14 about that later. So, you know, these
32:16 are all things we need to be doing. And
32:18 it's not just a top- down thing. It's
32:20 not translating scientific research
32:22 down. It's about practical hands-on
32:24 experience. What's happening in the
32:27 field? What am I seeing when I'm out
32:29 gardening in the projects? So, if I
32:31 design a project, I make sure that I
32:33 look after it for the first year. That's
32:35 built into the process at stage one. So,
32:37 I'm there with my hands in the soil all
32:39 the time. I'm, you know, picking up
32:41 litter and I'm talking to people on the
32:43 street. I do public projects, so I'm
32:44 talking to people telling them why we're
32:46 doing things. But, you know, we need
32:48 that practical information to come up as
32:50 well. We need to see what changes are
32:53 happening. So, it's all of these things.
32:55 It's using science. It's using
32:57 traditional ecological knowledge, local
33:00 knowledge. And we need to experiment.
33:02 You know, there is no silver bullet. We
33:03 need to be trying different things in
33:05 different situations. And certainly
33:07 working in urban areas, we have a lot
33:09 more freedom to be able to do that. And
33:11 people are a lot more accepting. You
33:13 know, people do understand these things.
33:15 People think the public don't understand
33:18 wild landscapes in in urban areas.
33:20 That's just not true. They like messy
33:22 situations. They understand that it's
33:24 good for biodiversity. The public are,
33:27 you know, ahead. They're there. And, you
33:28 know, if we just talk to them more about
33:31 it, then they totally get it and they'll
33:34 be on board. If we if I'm out doing some
33:36 afterare on a project and I have a
33:37 conversation with someone, they will
33:39 then go and tell someone else and they
33:41 will tell someone else and they will
33:44 tell someone else. Okay? So, we need to share
33:46 share
33:48 information. We're skilled knowledge
33:49 workers. You know, this is what
33:51 education is about. We're skilling
33:53 ourselves, upskilling, and we need to
33:55 recognize that, and we need to be proud
33:58 of that. David Cameron when he was prime
34:02 minister in all his eonian arrogance
34:04 said that if people weren't good
34:06 academically they should become
34:10 gardeners right yeah well thank god him
34:21 gone so John is going to address some of
34:23 these issues so I'm not going to go into
34:25 them but you know if we really believe
34:28 what we're doing is important. If we are
34:30 providing these frontline ecological
34:32 services that are helping ecosystems
34:35 that are helping biodiversity, then we
34:36 need to be sharing. We need to be
34:39 educating. We need to be working
34:43 together. We need to be caring. We need
34:46 to be doing and we need to be sharing.
34:49 And these need to be forms of activism.
34:51 Thank you. [Applause]
