The Story of the birth of the Ark.
One fine morning last year, I was sitting at my desk, designing a garden, when a fox ran across the garden in front of my window, into a patch of brambles. Quickly after the fox, two hares followed in pursuit and soon a little hedgehog scuttle along after them. All these creatures were running away from something, and it was like the reverse of the Ark stories I had heard as a kid. When I went to investigate, what was happening, it turned out that the neighboring field across the road was being cleared by a digger. A house was being built at the top of the field and the owners had gone in and cleared out years of growth, communities of native plants that were a home for many families, wiped out in an instant. This cleared ecosystem across the road was to be replaced with a pretty, fashionable mixture of non- native plants that would support little life and give little sanctuary.
I immediately realized I had done the same thing myself many times over.
At that moment, ‘We are the Ark’ was born.
• Mary Reynolds, Ireland 2019.
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Isikhathi:
Building an Ark can take a lot of time or very little time, depending on the land in question- e.g. if there are lots of non native plants to remove then there is a lot of work to do. After that, the effort put in depends on how many layers of creature support you want to create e.g. a pond, a drystone wall or a wild hedge. Time also depends on how many layers of plant communities you want to create. Depending on your space, you can create many layers of plant community, such as a mown area, a meadow, a shrubby area, a woodland etc.
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