Started reading over the summer. Just picked it up again to finish. Inspiring book on gardening in a manner I like: naturally, local, native, not fussy. Has helped me to be less bothered by bugs and worms and more enthused (if that’s possible) to can, preserve, and make cider. Also, it has recipes. I more or less followed his simple manner of making cider.

If you are fortunate to have a garden but don’t really pay it much attention, then you might not be aware of the insects and other wildlife that inhabit it at the moment. It is a jungle out there, but one that you need to get down on your hands and knees to see properly. Everything from the microbes, worms and ants in the soil, to the insects that pollinate and right up to the small mammals and birds that prey on all of these creatures lower down the food chain.

If you can tear your attention away from the screen and take a few moments to go out into the garden, then we need to understand what makes them tick and some of their lifecycle to help these creatures. For a lot of them, their lives are short, sharp and very often brutal. Oh and weird, very weird. Goulson ventures beneath the soil, into the compost heap and rootles around at the bottom of the pond to find out more about their lives and just how intertwined all layers of life are on this planet.

Insects are the bottom in a very long food chain, if they collapse in numbers then everything further up will suffer and the current evidence is suggesting that that collapse has already started. A garden that is sensitively planted can bring a huge number of insects in and will help all types of wildlife. Some insect-friendly’ plants that are available from garden centres but a crowd-funded PHD project found a cocktail of insecticides, in particular, neonicotinoids, fungicides and other pesticides on them. When Goulson raised this publicly, some organisation have made steps to do something about this, but other organisations who really should know better have maintained a worrying silence about this.

Didn’t feel that this was as good as his previous books, but it is still as well written with the occasional humorous moment. You also get a sense of his anger over the way that some things are continuing with the overwhelming evidence that drenching our land in chemicals, is doing far more harm than companies would have you believe. His greatest ire is for the insect-friendly plants that are being marketed, his advice, don’t look for the label, look at the plants that have lots of insects gathering around them and buy those instead and don’t use chemicals on them when you do get them home. He has a strong message that we would be wise to heed. It is worth reading alongside The Bumble Bee Flies Anyway by Kate Bradbury and her account of changing a garden from a wildlife blackhole to a place full of life. 3.5 stars ( )

So Goulson's advice is TERRIBLY British, with his call for annually-mowed wildflower meadows instead of lawns, which makes no sense in New Zealand; we should be planting tussock scrubland on our lawns instead. But the spirit of what he's calling for is admirable: creating a native space, grow intensively without sprays, push back against the commercial gardening industry, make lots of compost instead of buying Estonian peat, and the like. Very inspiring. ( )

Parts of this are very interesting and useful.

I read this in German. It reads well, and I appreciated the footnotes that made certain parts more meaningful to a German audience. ( )

De tuinjungle. Tuinieren om de wereld te redden door Dave Goulson.

Wat een supermooie cover en wat een boeiend onderwerp, ook al heb ik geen echte tuin, alleen maar een koer vol potten. Ik kan alvast zeggen dat Goulson een geweldige man is. Dit is het eerste boek dat ik van hem lees, ik wil al jaren zijn bijenboek lezen maar dat blijft maar uitgeleend in de bib, zegt genoeg hé. Dave is slim, wijs, bevlogen, nieuwsgierig, een geweldig schrijver en enorm grappig. Vaak zat ik luidop te lachen met zijn boek (ik duidde de grappen aan, ze zijn niet te tellen), dat was wel nodig want De tuinjungle is best zwaar en soms heel wetenschappelijk én best deprimerend van tijd tot tijd maar de humor en vlotte pen van Goulson maken het vlot leesbaar.

Elk onderwerp/hoofdstuk is even boeiend; van de mieren die ‘wandelende honingbommen’ zijn, over de oorwormen ‘die in groepjes rondhangen als tieners op voorjaarsvakantie’, tot volkstuintjes die de wereld gaan redden. Echt. Zijn idee daarover is zo geweldig, het klinkt als een waterdicht plan en tevens als ‘het enige voordeel van de Brexit’.

Tuinieren kan écht de wereld verbeteren/redden, dat laat Goulson duidelijk zien. Er is al onherroepelijk veel schade toegebracht maar het is nog niet te laat: koop wat kippen, knutsel een wormerij in elkaar en sla je slag op de plaatselijke plantenruilbeurs (mijdt de grote tuicentra) terwijl je op de wachtlijst voor een volkstuintje staat.

Dave Goulson laat alles eenvoudig lijken, zelfs de recepten aan de begin van elk hoofdstuk (vlierbessenwijn: mmm!). Misschien omdat het ook eenvoudig is? “Verbeter de wereld, begin in je tuin.”
En koop eerst even dit boek, in de bib ga je het komende jaren toch nog niet kunnen ontlenen ;) Greta, Anuna, Jonathan en Dave. En jij en ik. Wij gaan de wereld redden! Begin met een boek. ( )