Heroes Not Zombies

I was walking around Western Harbour between Leith and Newhaven recently. There are a collection of high rises there built at great speed during the last house building boom.

It’s not a pretty development, and it hit the buffers when the financial crash came so there is more green space between the blocks than the developers had planned.

Perhaps one of the biggest advantages of living in one of these flats is the view across the Firth of Forth.

I noticed the plants growing on this one balcony on the second floor. Somebody here is creating a green space right outside their window by filling the balcony with plants. If you look closely you’ll see a climbing, flowering plant is heading on upwards to the third floor.

I wonder if it will start to make it along that next balcony and if the residents will see that as a bonus and encourage it, or as a nuisance and cut it back.

There’s quite a boom in interest in gardening and green spaces. The lockdowns which accompanied the pandemic forced many people to confront the realities of their immediate living space and three things have happened.

Those with gardens have spent more time in them, enjoyed that space and realised how much a garden can add to your quality of life so they’ve started to learn a bit, to tend the garden more and to grow more of what brings them joy. There’s a growing body of evidence that time spent close to Nature in green spaces is good for health and well-being.

Others have started to put more indoor plants into their living rooms, their kitchens, and to plant up window boxes. Why are they doing that? Because it brings them joy, and adds to the quality of their everyday.

I wonder if this caring and tending does something else. I wonder if spending some time nurturing, looking after and encouraging plants develops our capacities to nurture and care more generally? I don’t know if it does but I know that whatever we pay attention to, whatever we focus on, whatever we practice tends to increase.

There’s a third thing which is happening since the onset of the pandemic. A boom in house sales outside of cities. In France the most active housing market is in Brittany, right out there on the Western tip of the country and I’ve read several reports saying there’s big demand for houses with gardens within an hour to an hour and a half of all the big cities in France. Teleworking is part of that shift, and changes in work patterns to spend only a day or two at most every week in city centre offices, while the rest of the time is spent at home is also a growing trend.

The shift from city to smaller towns has the potential to revive local communities as people commute less, spend more time in local cafes, stores and shared spaces.

So seeing this single balcony starting to flourish and the climber spreading upwards makes me think of these changes and gives me hope. We humans are creative creatures. We have fantastic powers of adaptation and a love of Nature brings out some of the best in us.