The riches of Pigeon Valley Nature Reserve explained by Crispin Hemson, Glenwood resident and chair of the Friends of Pigeon Valley.
This is the 117th article in an ongoing series that highlights the riches of Pigeon Valley, the urban nature reserve in the heart of Glenwood. The focus of this article will be on the messy places in nature.
I grew up surrounded by formal gardens, both in the grounds of the middle-class families we knew and in the constant images in the books I would read, many, of course from a British or North American background. That was the prevailing idea of beauty, something I was not told directly, but learnt nonetheless. There is of course beauty in this, but there is also a spirit of control, of showing that you can beat nature, a spirit that has led to the constant use of poisons to tame nature. It has led to a great reduction of biodiversity, declines in the number and variety of living things – even of insects like bees on which we rely for pollination.
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Against that, in my past, there was a different view of nature, the beauty and complexity of places that are truly natural, such as the view over the Valley of a Thousand Hills that I grew up with, of grasslands and patches of forest, in which humans were a part but not in charge.
I took this photo of a particularly messy patch in Pigeon Valley – a spot where low-lying thickets adjoin coastal forest. It lacks order and neatness – but it is remarkably rich in biodiversity. While watching there, I saw and heard over 30 species of birds in the area.
When you allow leaves to gather in your garden, when you allow a section where the indigenous ‘weeds’ grow – and where you end the spraying of poisons – you find all forms of life surging. Any mental agony from the diminished neatness is more than compensated by the profusion of birds and butterflies that result.
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