Blog

The Habitat Aid blog is set in Somerset. The blog tries to introduce some of the issues surrounding our natural environment as understood by a non ecologist. You’ll also find some practical “how to” guides. It’s written by Nick Mann, who runs Habitat Aid. Nick is an increasingly curmudgeonly bald middle-aged bloke of familiar type.

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Interesting Times
November 15, 2020
Supply chain disruption and rising prices will pose challenges for garden centres and online plant and seed retailers.
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Disconnected
November 2, 2020
We need to re-engage people with the landscape. Here's something which might help...
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Blossom, Blossom, And More Blossom!
April 18, 2020
You can have blossom in your garden from January to May. Here's why you want it and how you can have it!
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Coping With Lockdown I: Recording Wildlife in the Garden
March 29, 2020
The first in a series of wildlife gardening ideas to help stop you going bananas over the next few weeks...
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The Problem With Chlorinated Chicken
February 5, 2020
Why we should all fight for high food standards. They're good for our farmers, good for consumers, and good for the environment.
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The Need To Give : A Crisis in Environmental Philanthropy
October 27, 2019
Nearly 2/3 of people in the UK earning over £250,000 gave nothing to charity last year (Source: HMRC, cited in The Times). Of those who did, the a...
- biodiversity
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The Garden Jungle (Dave Goulson)
July 28, 2019
I don't think I've written a book review since third form, but felt moved to write briefly about Dave Goulson's The Garden Jungle. Spoiler alert...
- biodiversity
- gardens
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Notre Dame and the Great Yellow
April 18, 2019
Like you, I watched appalled as Notre Dame burned. It felt like a complicated metaphor for all sorts of things, and a crushing visceral wound. It ...
- biodiversity
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Industrial Moonscape v. Green and Pleasant Land
April 7, 2019
Last week entomologist Liam Olds published a fascinating study on invertebrates living on colliery spoil heaps in the south Wales valleys. If you ...
- bees
- biodiversity
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Where Have All The Hedgerows Gone?
February 13, 2019
What people need on Twitter is more education and less politics. I had a classically nonsensical conversation with a couple of twitterati over t...
- biodiversity
- hedges
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The Green Blob Fights Back
February 9, 2019
I have avoided politics in my blog as much as I can over the last 10 years. So you can tell I'm pretty upset to break this cardinal rule. For the ...
- biodiversity
- Digressions
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Farming With Wildlife in Mind
November 25, 2018
Farming With Wildlife in Mind This weekend the Times recommended Isabella Tree's excellent Wilding as one of its books of the year. It "forces us ...
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