Making time stand still for a moment

The face of a clock. By Andy Winfield

So, we’re at 2024, which seems a bit weird. 2020 seemed like it would never end, and now time is swishing by. Marking duration with dates and times is now baked into our way of existing; getting somewhere by a certain hour and organising an event for a particular date is how our lives work. St Augustine wrote in 400AD “No time is wholly present, all time is forced on by the future”.  That was said a long time ago, and that idea has only accelerated. Humans today, myself included, are constantly looking ahead to the next thing, squeezing ever onwards. But what about now? What about the present? In the natural world, and the Botanic Garden, there are moments that aren’t defined by our perceptions of time; these moments give us opportunities to disembark the time train for a moment, and observe what’s happening right now, in the present. (more…)

And we owe it all to leaves.

A silhouette of acer leaves against a pale sky.

By Andy Winfield

In summer a breeze will work its way through the boughs of a tree and the resulting sound is one of the constants in our lives, a white noise of leaves dancing on their stems. Right now, in autumn the leaves are at our feet, or swirling around corners, collecting at the foot of a tree, or at the base of a wall. Leaves stimulate all of our senses; we calm down merely by touching a leaf due to our innate evolutionary programming, and the sight of them emerging in Spring is enough to quicken our heartbeat. When we give leaves a bit of thought, it’s a wonder every tree and shrub doesn’t have a group of people staring up at them in awe. (more…)

Toxic beauty

Daffodils on a sunny bank.

By Andy Winfield

The daffodil is symbolic to many of us; an innocent sign that winter and spring are side by side before walking away from each other taking the past and the future with them. The nodding yellow flowers of Narcissus can be bathed in sunshine or covered in snow, or, as I write this, blown horizontal by storm Eunice. It will weather all of this, experiencing everything that this time of year throws at it until it fades while other flowers form. Playing the role of seasonal buffer to perfection, the Narcissus must be able to withstand hungry bulb grubbers as well as the weather; it has become the icon it is through its attractiveness and its defences. (more…)

Our Green Planet

A copse of verdant tree ferns around an old log.

By Andy Winfield

I may be biased, but plants are amazing! They tell us all we need to know, they feed us and can make us feel better in the mind and body, they can clothe us, make us warm and cool us down; they were here a long time before us and they’ll no doubt be here a long time after us. Plants are everywhere with thousands of stories to tell, the planet’s true survivors adapting to everything thrown at them; we could live to be three hundred years old and still discover new and bewildering ways that plants have found to exist. They are the dominant life form on earth making up 83% of all biomass; without them we are nothing, they literally give us the air that we breathe. (more…)