The concept of ARK and how it might relate to PARK

One of my holiday reads was a book written by Mary Reynolds called 'We Are the ARK'
My first thought when coming across the book was that Ark referred to the biblical Noah's Arc - a refuge for each species and a way of protecting the gene pool. I could see the connection to the loss of biodiversity but this was not what it was about for the central narrative of the book is that we 'return our gardens (at least half of them if possible) to their true nature with Acts of Restorative Kindness' For Mary, an ARC is a small native ecosystem that has been created by people helping nature to restore itself. The book contains many useful ideas and practical advice on how this might be acheived and the philosophy/ideology is entirely consisten with the Gardening for Biodiversity apprach we are taking. In fact the whole idea of ARK fits within the concept of a Community Biodiversity Park. Perhaps we might visualise the Park as a multitude of small scale ARKs co-created by people, communities, landowners and estates working with nature through acts of restortaive kindness, sitting within the more or less natural landscape.​

On Wednesday we held the third of our Gardening for Biodiversity talks - this one was in Betchworth. Our audience of nature enthusiasts were keen to learn more about how they could do more to help wildlife flourish.

Norman Jackson