8 - Community Engagement in RBG Kew - Simon Cole
Managing for species with a known dependence on deadwood should not be a practice exclusive to woodland habitats. Indeed, as we learn more about the stag beetle we realize that the habitat preference for this species is much more varied than just woodland.
Kew is an example of a garden that many people visit and draw ideas from. It is not a place where you would necessarily expect to see or learn about stag beetles and deadwood habitats or for that matter encounter strange inverted tree trunk sculptures. But dead wood has become a matter of growing importance, a depleted resource, essential for the growing number of declining species that depend on it. The culture of ‘clean and tidy’ has put added strain on species such as the stag beetle.
London with its complex mosaic of gardens, parks and linear green corridors is still a stronghold for this species, but is time running out for dead wood?
Shouldn’t gardening be a holistic endeavour that marries both horticultural and ecological principles? Of course, it would be dangerous to leave standing decaying trees in situ and similarly, piles of logs scattered throughout the dahlia beds may be deemed by many to present a rather untidy picture! The first is an issue of health and safety, the second (although no less important to consider) is one of perception: all that which describes the aesthetic assumptions and expectations we ‘inherit’ and project onto the landscape in general. The challenge is to recognise that, given the obvious constraints with regard to public safety, land managers should look closely at the ways in which it is possible to broaden the experience of the landscape and reflect the deeper understanding of the necessity for habitat richness in general. And in so doing set in train new and exciting ideas so that the public might develop these ideas in their own context.
We need to be promoting deadwood as a landscape material that should be part of the ecological fabric of parks and gardens and as an abundant resource that can be used aesthetically in new garden and landscape design. Of course, attitudes are slowly changing and the public’s sensitivity of the need for diversity rather than simply pure ornamentalism is reflected, for example in new materials and ideas being utilized or adopted.
Ironically, with the new trend for a greener way, a lot of these materials and ideas can be easily recreated in the home for absolutely no cost at all and with a good deal more fun and learning too. Those cut branches, which look ‘unsightly’ in the garden, could perhaps be reorganised into a more aesthetically pleasing manner, such as in the form of a dead hedge. Neatly stacked, inverted or even partially buried logs can be created or installed in any number of imaginative ways.
From what we know about the declining status of the stag beetle in London, this along with increased cooperation and education should go someway in providing suitable egg laying sites for the stag beetle and other wood decay dependant organisms into the future. Hopefully, Kew will be one of these sites.
This presentation looks at some of the ways that Kew is trying to manage dead wood issues within the Gardens practically and through its educational programmes.
To conclude then, the Deadwood Amphitheatre (picture here & in construction here) has an important part to play in the Kew experience as a whole. Just as the Amphitheatre in modern society stages the whole gamut of performance, sound and colour, so to this structure, which houses the vast natural web of all that is intimately involved in death and decay, creating new life and colour and form? This symbolic connection has influenced its shape so that we are more aware of these connotations. We are presented through the simple arrangement of dead wood with a subtle and shifting scene which requires close inspection and association with. The organisation of the deadwood here might even be seen to be ‘sculptural’ or conceptual, and it is this, which marks out one of the ways in which Kew is developing the experience of nature.
