Tag Archives: allergy

Was I an inventor of rewilding?

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BETWEEN 1983 AND 1994, I owned a house in Gillingham, Kent. Number 148 Napier Road was a detached dwelling with a narrow garden that stretched 180 feet behind it. Most of this long stretch was covered with grass.  After I first moved into the house, I purchased an electric lawn mower, and regularly trimmed the lawn. All went well at first. However, after a few months and several mowing sessions, I found that when I was cutting the lawn my eyes streamed, and I sneezed uncontrollably. I tried wearing a facemask when mowing, but this did not relieve the symptoms. Eventually, I decided not to bother mowing the lawn.

The grass grew. So did the anger of my immediate neighbours, both of whom were elderly and believed in tidy gardens. One of them said that because my lawn was so unkempt, insects were travelling from it into her garden and destroying her plants. She was so upset by this thought that she did something extremely unwise. One summer evening, I returned home after nightfall, and because the weather was pleasant, I decided to spend a few minutes in my back garden. It was dark. I sniffed, and believed that I could smell burning. I saw no flames, and retired to bed. On the next day, I met my other neighbour – a very practical old gentleman who had built his own house. He told me that during the previous day, he had had to enter my rear garden to extinguish a fire which had been started by the lady, who believed that my garden was infecting hers with pests.

Meanwhile, the grass grew longer. It reached a point where it was so tall that if someone sat down, they became hidden by it. As autumn approached, the tall grass just fell over, and seemed to disappear gradually. It returned without fail every spring, and despite not being mowed, it grew healthily. However, the neighbours were unimpressed by my lawn, the untidiest in Napier Road. I decided that I would have to do something to give the impression that my wild garden was by design, rather than simply the result of neglect. So, what I did was to use the mower to create a sinuous, narrow mowed path that ran along the length of the lawn – I created what might be described as a landscaped lawn. I am not sure that this impressed my neighbours, but I felt that I had ‘done my bit’.

In addition to the lawn, I planted shrubs, which I allowed to grow ‘willy nilly’. My seemingly wild garden was a haven for butterflies. As I walked along the garden, following my sinuous path, clouds of butterflies used to shoot out of the shrubs and other plants.  Unwittingly, I had ‘wilded’ or ‘rewilded’ my garden, which in the 1980s and early 1990s was not something that was done. Had I invented what is now known as ‘wilding’, also known as ‘rewilding’?  Probably not, but it only began to be adopted as a strategy for reducing loss of biodiversity following work done in the mid-1980s (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewilding). I must confess that my pioneering rewilding in Gillingham did not result from a desire to save the natural world, nor from laziness, but to save myself from symptoms of allergy.

In the late 1990s, we put the house up for sale. The garden had become such a veritable jungle that our estate agent described it as being “… in a natural state.” Interestingly, the people who bought the house from me liked it because they were looking forward to taming the garden – there is no accounting for taste!

Just let it grow

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BETWEEN 1983 AND 1994, I owned a house in Gillingham, Kent. It was not an exceptional building, but it had a long back garden – 180 feet in length and about 22 feet wide. Much of the garden was covered with a lawn bordered by plant beds. When I first moved in, I attended the garden keenly even though I had little idea about gardening. As soon as I unearthed weeds, they re-appeared. It was most disheartening.  I discovered that planting shrubs was the best way to hide the weeds, about which I soon stopped worrying.

As for the lawn, I acquired a mowing machine, and for some months, or maybe years, I trimmed the grass regularly. Then, I found that whenever I cut the lawn, my nose would start streaming and I would have fits of sneezing. I realised that I had a grass allergy. So, I decided to cease mowing the lawn. I let the grass grow higher and higher. When it reached its greatest height, people sitting in the garden would be hidden by it. At the end of the year, the grass collapsed and more or less disappeared – only to begin growing again the following spring. I let nature take its course, and ceased worrying about it until a deputation consisting of my immediate neighbours came to my house to complain about my unruly lawn and garden. One of them, an elderly lady, was convinced that all the weeds and insects in her garden had come from mine.

One summer evening, I came home after dark and as it was a pleasant evening, I stood in my back garden looking up at the stars. As I did so, I was aware of a slight smell of burning. The following day, one of my neighbours saw me in the street as I was setting off for work. He told me that the neighbour on the other side of the garden had set fire to mine, hoping that the flames would kill the weeds. Luckily, he had spotted the conflagration, and extinguished it before it did too much damage.

Following the neighbours’ complaints, I conceived an idea about how to deal with my lawn. I decided that I would let it grow without interference, but I would mow a narrow sinuous path along its length. The idea was that I could then explain to the neighbours that the wild grass was part of my garden design. Meanwhile, my shrubs increased in size steadily and the weeds flourished. In the warmer months of the year, whenever I strolled in my garden, clouds of butterflies used to billow from the luxuriant vegetation.

Today, in June 2023, whilst walking in Kensington Gardens, I noticed that much of the grass was growing wild – not being mowed. Here and there, the gardeners had trimmed small areas of grass with a lawnmower, much as I used to do back in Gillingham in the 1980s.

To be honest, I let my garden grow wild because I could not be bothered to spend hours of my life making it look neat and tidy. Today, what I was doing – letting the plants ‘do their own thing’ – is known as ‘wilding’. Maybe, unwittingly I was a pioneer of wilding.

GOING NUTS

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I was at school throughout most of the 1950s and ’60s. I came into contact with numerous other children. As far as I can recall, not one of my fellow pupils ever admitted having a food allergy. A few had asthma or wore spectacles, but none seemed to suffer from allergies.

When our daughter attended schools at the beginning of this, the 21st century, many of the children with whom she studied had food allergies, notably nut allergies. Some of them even carried adrenaline filled epipens with them to be used should they come into contact with allergens. Our daughter was, luckily, not allergic to anything, but felt left out because she did not have an allergy. It seemed to her that having an allergy or wearing orthodontic appliances were almost ‘fashion statements’

Why are food allergies so common now? Is it a result of obsession with today’s hygiene and fear of germs. We live in the era of the hand sanitizer and obsession with ‘use by’ dates. Today’s children are shielded from allergens from a very tender age and this impedes the development of an effective immune system.

Research done in the USA some years ago compared the incidence of allergies in kids brought up on farms, where dirt and animals are hard to avoid, with that in children brought up ‘hygienically’ in cities. It was found that the city kids had a far higher incidence of allergies than their country cousins.

Our daughter first visited India when she was 7 months old. It was impossible to stop her putting just about anything she found on the ground into her mouth. I like to think that this might be why she differed from many of her peers in that she missed out on having allergies.

So, if you have young children, do not go nuts about shielding them from external factors that might prevent them needing to carry an epipen in the future.

Now, I will play the part of the Devil’s advocate. It is remotely possible that the apparent absence of children with allergies during my school days was because any kids with allergies had died of anaphylactic shock before they were old enough to attend school. I hope not!