Nature everywhere

When I started this blog back in 2020 I didn't feel like nature was everywhere, or at least not in places where it wasn't expected. I've always loved to notice the dandelions conquering the concrete and have celebrated the seasonal quarterly festivals ever since my well-spent youth, hanging about with the druids at Avebury stone circle, but it never felt particularly mainstream. Of course nature writing has a long and established history, but it has undergone something of a renaissance in recent years with whole sections of bookshops (and indeed my own bookshelves) now dedicated to nature writing. My substack feed (and I realise this is partly due to self selection) is full of celebrations of nature (I commend The Nature Library to you) and of Spring (make a Spring Equinox zine - or download Zabby's own one.) Even newspapers are telling stories of nature every day but not just the usual Nature Diary, which the Guardian claim to be the oldest newspaper column in the world, but also environmental information about what is happening to the natural world and even more interestingly in my world, tales of how nature is helping humans recover. I have mixed feelings about talking of nature like it's a pill, but this article was really inspiring, both in what it is achieving for people with profound and enduring mental health conditions, but also the way it has been grasped by medical professionals as a truly alternative model of healthcare.

Nature documentaries have been around for a long time too. David Attenborough's first production for the BBC was in 1952 and was a piece about the rediscovery of the prehistoric coelacanth. A topic he revisited in Zoo Quest to Madagascar in 1961 with a particularly traumatic introduction here about catching sharks although not as grizzly as it could be since it's in black and white. Attenborough has been bringing nature into our living rooms ever since, but these days you don't have to be an experienced naturalist to bring nature to your audience. Getting into the car, the radio tuned to Radio 3, the presenter was talking about music for springtime and the equinox, then mentioned that the opera The Cunning Little Vixen is about our human connection to nature. I don't know much about opera, although Gilbert & Sullivan operettas are one of my guilty pleasures, so I had to search the internet to learn more about Janáček's opera. Written in 1924 it's said to be a profound exploration of the connection between human life and the natural world, emphasizing the continuous, cyclical nature of existence. It also appears to end badly for the poor lady fox, so I'm not sure I could bear it - however if you happen to be in Manchester this weekend or next week, the Royal Northern College of Music are staging it, and the watercolour pictures accompanying the information are beautifully delicate. I also hope the person playing the part of a mosquito relishes telling people their part, as I assume it's not something you get to do often in a musical career. In the same way that nature writing has made a comeback, it's no longer just classical music that is celebrating nature. I've written before about the Tune Into Nature music prize founded by Miles Richardson from the University of Derby to help highlight environmental issues and to help young musicians celebrate their connection with nature. Who would think pairing drum & bass with the sound of a nightingale would work - and yet it does in the hands of Wildforms, one of the winners of the 2025 prize. And from nightingales who will be arriving in the UK from the start of next month, to the flowers already appearing.

I've been trying to improve my knowledge of wild flowers for quite a while now, and although a few species stick - quite literally in the case of cleavers, or sticky willie as it's more commonly known, most don't. So I was thrilled to find out about the 2026 challenge from the Botanical Society of Britain and Ireland (BSBI), the 100 Plants Challenge which they describe as being a gentle, year-long invitation for beginner botanists to identify and record the first 100 wild plants they discover over the course of 2026. Whether you’re completely new to botany or just starting to look more closely, this challenge is designed to help you build confidence and your skills - one plant at a time. What's more they are running a series of webinars to help give you the tools you need to be able to take part - from how to sign up and download their monitoring tool of choice iRecord, to how to take photographs of the plants to upload to the portal. If you miss a webinar (and four have already taken place) they're all available on their YouTube channel so plenty of opportunity to catch up. Apart from cleavers, the first wildflower I spotted this year was the coltsfoot in the photograph above - at least, I think it's coltsfoot, and it was a real reminder that nature really can be anywhere. This was at the foot of a lamppost on a very boring, busy urban street.

I'm not sure that when Wordsworth was writing about his daffodils he anticipated the hosts of golden municipally planted daffodils, but what a joy it is to see, banks of yellow alongside main roads and motorways and while they look great under bright blue skies and sunshine, how nice is to see a rush of colour on a drizzly day. As a self confessed pluviophile - that's a rain lover - (since I live in Glasgow I'm working on a fake it 'till you make it basis) - i have been enjoying also how luminous moss can be on dreary days. So many people have mentioned to me how long and dark this winter has seemed, even in comparison to usual winters and so the return of the light is even more of a delight. In places usually much lighter and drier than here, such as Cornwall, they've had almost continual grey and rain so far in 2026 so the whole of the UK seems relieved to see Spring. And by whatever measure you use, it's Spring. Or it will be by the time you read this. The Spring Equinox this year falling on 20th March at 2.46pm for those of you who are keeping track, and from then onwards, we can look forward to more light than dark. Never mind pre-hibernation unhinged squirrel energy, writing this from the garden, I'm surrounded by the little chaps leaping from branch to branch, swinging off ropes of ivy and generally losing their tiny little minds - spring squirrel mania is also obviously a thing, and if I'm not careful it will be for me too. It's easy to leap straight from the restful time of year into doing all the things all at once - this is another benefit of something like the 100 Plants Challenge. Pausing, taking notice, focusing on one plant at a time, learning something new, giving something back through citizen science, connecting with nature. It's like a one way street to the 5 Ways to Wellbeing, as presumably you'll be getting active going out to look for the plants in the first place. I have to admit to being a bit overwhelmed by the number 100, so I'm just going to focus on the one at a time. It's an invitation not a deposition as they say. And it is supposed to be a challenge. I'm never going to swim the channel or run an ultra, but I can delve more intensively into noticing plants! Excuse me, I'm off to take some better photos of that coltsfoot, and then I'll only have 99 more to find.