At this time of year, we’re seeing the Wild Ouseburn come to life with floral diversity. From the formal planters, and urban gardens, to the pavements plants, wall, creeping Brambles, and impromptu meadows. The botanical life adds a vivid colour to the landscape, supporting a wildlife wherever it springs up.
This year, the Malmo Quay development site is host to a spectacular meadow, a wild patch of grassland on the banks of the River Tyne. The meadow, and it’s surrounding concrete and gravelly substrate are playing host to a variety of common, and rarer species.
Often in the city, we’ve adapted to ignore areas with haphazard metal fences and graffiti tagging, having been told that these areas are “wasteland”.
These patches of land are clearly “someones”, identifiable by the “PRIVATE” signs at every entrance – and are earmarked for eventual development.
In the meanwhile, however, nature doesn’t take note of this invisible ownership and these no-mans lands become skipping stones for colonisation and movement through the urban landscape. The patches give nature a break, and in doing so, enable us explore what we have, and what we are expected to lose.
These brownfield sites, as they’re called, are stunning urban examples of early succession – lowland, ad hoc rewilding – where communities of native species live alongside those which have colonised through our industrial heritage.
I took a stroll through one such patch in Wild Ouseburn, earmarked for the Malmo Quay development, after heavy rainfall yesterday. It was vibrant with life – an area of refuge for species, particularly invertebrates, on the banks of the Tyne.
