By Andy Winfield
Fire has become a terrifying normality for many people around the world; a natural inclination for us here in the UK is to watch from afar and be thankful it isn’t happening to us. We all do it, look at the hurricanes, tornados, and fires with a furrowing of our brows and concern but deep down the safety for ourselves is at our core. In Tipping Point, an installation by Luke Jerram in early October this year, visitors were plunged into the reality of communities abroad by creating a simulation of a forest fire right here in the Botanic Garden.
I’m currently reading Braiding Sweetgrass for the second time, this time as an audiobook. For those that haven’t read it, it’s a series of essays and memories from Robin Wall Kimmerer; an academic and botanist of Native American heritage. She says of the book, “I wanted readers to understand that Indigenous knowledge and Western science are both powerful ways of knowing, and that by using them together we can imagine a more just and joyful relationship with the Earth”. Reading this book makes me feel very happy; it taps into something that is lost but was so important to humans for thousands of years all over the world, a connection to the seasonal changes, the life around us, and a respectful coexistence. 
‘Survival of the fittest’ is a phrase used to describe the natural world; the spoils are to be won and the strongest live on. Life is more complicated than this, and there are many lives that endure through building partnerships and being good neighbours. New discoveries are being made all the time about the adaptations that organisms make to survive. Many of these discoveries are in the plant world; our understanding of reciprocal relationships between plants, animals and fungi is growing all the time and perhaps the natural world is more companionable than we originally thought. There are brutal elements, but all the while connections are being made, trades agreed, and reciprocal back scratching develops, aka ecological mutualism.