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1. Locked out of Nature

Talia Randall meets beekeeper Carole Wright who connects everyday people with nature and Mothin Ali, a YouTube gardener who is tackling racism with mulch

When someone described Talia Randall鈥檚 council estate as 鈥榯he road with the most burnt-out cars in London鈥, she was baffled. Why not describe the blossom trees in the front gardens, blushing pink every Spring? Why had they overlooked nature and beauty and focused only on the grime?

In the first episode of 鈥楤lossom Trees and Burnt Out-Cars鈥 Talia explores if access to nature is linked to social status. With 1 in 5 people unable to access green space she asks, who has the keys that unlock those gates? Talia meets beekeeper Carole Wright, who runs 鈥楤lak Outside鈥 and is helping to connect working class people to green spaces. In Leeds, she finds Mothin Ali, a YouTube gardener who started 鈥楧ig it Out鈥 to tackle racism in horticulture.

Produced, Written and Presented by Talia Randall
Researcher: Erica McKoy
Contributors: Mothin Ali, Carole Wright
Production Mentor: Anna Buckley
Tech Producer: Gayl Gordon
Executive Producers: Khaliq Meer & Leanne Alie
Commissioned for 大象传媒 Sounds Audio Lab by Khaliq Meer
Artwork by: Mike Massaro

Release date:

Available now

41 minutes

Locked out of Nature

Way back when, when I was 22 i听got a job at a youth charity fresh out of Uni. I loved this job. It was a rare paid internship which included a free London Travelcard. Someone I worked with who didn't know where I was from described the counsellor state. I grew up on as the road with the most burnt out cars in London.听

It was just a little quip.听But her description jarred me.听Why? There were a few burnt out cars. She was just pointing them out right?听 But she could have chosen to describe my estate by the blossom trees in our front gardens, blushing pink every spring.听Or by the spiky grass pitch, golden in summer.听

Maybe it was her way of seeing that irked me.听Her apparent comfort at describing a working class neighbourhood by what was ugly about it instead of by what was beautiful.听What you choose to see and what you choose to skim over, it has power.听It contributes to how a group of people are viewed.听

When I think back to this small, flippant comment.听I think it's interesting to reflect that my view was framed by nature.听The blossom trees and so on.听And someone else's view of the exact same place was framed by the grime - the burnt out cars.听Neither view was wrong.听

Or right?听It's just that they were shaped by our individual experiences.听And our position in the world.听

I'm thinking about all this today because I've come back to the estate I grew up on.听I spent most of my life here in an area full of small terraces that backed onto a busy train track.听I'm stood in a very specific, very special place to me.听The gates of the nature reserve that sits at the very edge of the estate.听

I seem to remember that when I was little these gates to the nature reserve were always locked.听But that never stopped us.听All us kids on the estate were roughly the same age and we made this place one of our many playgrounds.听

We would unscrew the bolts till the slats loosened.听Then we'd swing them open, slink through the gap, and slot the fence back into place.听Some call this trespassing.听Others call it playing out.听

As a kid, this place felt massive.听But I can see now that it is so small.听You ever gone back to a childhood place and been stunned by the size of it? It is tiny.听I can also see that the gates to the nature reserve, although locked on this humid Wednesday morning, are sometimes opened now.听Not every day.听But there are times when people can enjoy the space, come together and take part in community events.听I never remember this happening way back when and I'm properly happy to see this now. But part of me also hopes that there is still a group of kids sneaking in on days like today, when it's locked.听

Nearly half of London is greenspace.听Does that sound like a lot to you?听 It does to me.听

But who is all this green space actually for?听I desperately want to say it's for everyone and that all are welcome, but there are barriers to being in nature.听

What if you don't live near a nature reserve?听 What if you work two jobs and don't have the time to jump on a bus to the nearest woods?听What if people stare you out when you go to play in the park?

Recent research from Friends of the Earth showed that about one in five people in England struggle to access quality greenspace.听At these locked gates to this nature reserve, I'm stood in front of a visible barrier to a small but lush section of green space.听And look, this is just one tiny example from my childhood in London. But what about people in different regions who are from neighbourhoods similar to mine?听What visible and invisible barriers are they facing when it comes to being in nature?听

I'm Talia Randall, and you're listening to Blossom Trees and Burnt out cars, the podcast where I dig beneath the surface and chat with the people who are opening up nature to everyone.听

Episode 1: locked out of nature.听

Today I'll meet two nature lovers will tell me about how their relationship to nature is connected to class, race and status.听I'll be talking to Carole Wright, who, like me, wants to celebrate the nature on council estates.听

鈥淚 think it's important to understand nature exists around us, even just the cracks in the paving and what wild flowers are growing? I love it. I love walking around this estate and seeing the nature. Seeing you know this time of year, the dandelions the butter cups coming through, the cherry bird blossom, you know, we've got Rowan trees on here and the berries, which are very tart by the way, people, yuk. But we are blessed on this estate with trees which go back 150 years. London plane trees. We've got amazing trees that frame the playground and the ball court on the estate鈥.听

But the first person I want to introduce you to is Mothin Ali, a gardener and family man.听 Growing up in a small terrace back to back house in Leeds, Mothin first learned gardening and plant knowledge from watching his mum grow food in upcycled containers.听

Mothin and his family welcomed me with samosas and juice. His kids gave me a tour of the garden.听Here they are introducing me to the chickens.听

鈥淎nd there's the chicken, but the Rooster scares me a bit鈥

鈥淚 was talking to your dad and he was saying that the roosters got quite a lot of attitude鈥.听

鈥淗e's mine though, he's mine, I had him since I was a chick鈥.听

鈥渢his one time, he nearly fell鈥

鈥淭he rooster?鈥

鈥淵eah, it looked a bit funny鈥.

When Mothins not cooped up at work in an office, he's out in the garden with his kids, growing vegetables and making videos for his popular YouTube channel called My Family Garden.听

He also runs 鈥楧ig it out鈥, a campaign tackling racism in horticulture, which is all about creating an environment where everyone can enjoy gardening.听

In his sprawling suburban garden in Leeds, Martin and I sat down in front of the swing set and I wanted to ask him about some of the barriers he faces in feeling safe in nature.听But first I wanted to hear about what he grows in his garden and some of his techniques.听I'm not a gardener, but I've heard that he's got some experimental things going down in his vegetable beds.听

MOTHIN: Some of the stuff that we do here is absolutely completely different to what normal, you know, normal gardeners or traditional gardeners would do. I mean, like the way I grow my potatoes.

I take wood chips, you know, it doesn't matter if they're fresh. If they're old, whatever. I'll just take a pile of wood chips, stack them up a foot high, plant my potatoes in yhere and leave them forget about them.听

Come back, come back four to six months later and I've got a massive crop of potatoes. It was really clean, really healthy size, pest free. I don't have to worry about watering them because the wood chips hold onto the water. I don't have to worry about the pests like wireworms and stuff like that because they live in soil, not in the wood chip.听 So I'm doing stuff that's really, you know, completely different.听

And then once that you've harvested the potatoes and those wood chips have broken down after a year, or they're starting to break down.听It's just feeding the soil, you're locking up loads of carbon into the soil because we're not digging.听That's and it sets us up for the next four or five years.听

You know, and then you can plant something else into there and I'm not really digging. All I do is I'll shovel the woodchips about I shovel the deep mulch about.听And when you walked up around my garden it you might have noticed lots of grass and lots of hay and stuff thrown about all over the place.听So I believe in a lot of deep mulch

TALIA: Its really interesting hearing you 'cause like I'm noticing how much you're lighting up when you're talking about compost and you're like I really like deep mulch. I'm like.听Great! I love it.听Deep mulch, I don't know what that is, but I it sounds like a sort of experimental band in my mind 鈥榟i we鈥檙e deep mulch鈥

TALIA: its great how passionate Mothin is about mulch.听

Although I鈥檓 here to talk about gardening I also want to find out more about the work that Mothin does with 鈥楧ig it Out鈥, to tackle racism in nature spaces. And I want to know if this issue is something that he's always thought about.听So I asked Mothin about his experiences of nature as a kid.听

MOTHIN: The only green space that was around us was a local park and that was pretty much a dump site, so you had a you had a drug, needles you know bottles smashed up everywhere because people were using it as a pub.听

If I'd have gone from where I grew up to the parks in what I'd call the posh areas.听Because you're one of the few people with brown skin, people just look at you.听And they might not say anything, but they just look at you.听And because they because they're just staring at you, it just makes you feel uncomfortable.听

TALIA: As a Muslim gardener from a working class background, what are some of the challenges that you face in the gardening world?听

MOTHIN: We do all our gardening in our backyard. We're lucky enough to have a decent, uh, a good sized back garden.听I have felt uncomfortable going into an allotment or taking an allotment simply because of, uh, quite, the otherisation we talked about going to things like the park.听

So you do feel odd. You do feel like it's not your space. A lot of our allotment committees are still managed by old white men and it can be quite difficult for women.听It can be quite difficult for minorities to go and establish themselves and to be treated fairly.

So I run the anti racism campaign called Dig it Out. we handle all kinds of complaints and the number of complaints that I get from people who were on allotment sites that have been racially abused that have been attacked physically, that that they've been treated unfairly.

You know, like things like that.听They've been accused of not cultivating their plots when they actually have, other people plots are in worse situations, and their plots are taken off them.听And we've got photographic evidence. We've won quite a few cases against people, and we've got their plots back so we can see the kind of discrimination people do face.听

And that was one of the things that has stopped me because I knew it was there. I mean, now that we've run the campaign, we can document it.听We can put it out into the public eye. But when I was younger or when we didn't have this garden I knew it was there but you couldn't just, you couldn't articulate it and you couldn't back up your feeling.听

And that's one of that's one of the things that a lot of people do. They sort of do a lot of gaslighting, so unless you've got the evidence to back it up.听It's like, yeah, they almost treat you like you're making it up.听And that's one of the worst things that because you start to think am I really making it up? Am I starting to lose my mind? What's going on? You start to question yourself and that's a problem. That's a real problem.

Britain is a brilliant country, but we still do have a problem. We do have a problem with racism. Unfortunately, we do and a lot of the time the discussion is quite toxic when it comes to discussing racism or discussing any issues around racism.听It is quite toxic. You've got the one extreme that everyone is racist and you got the other one extreme that there's no such thing as racism.听Uhm, so it does get quite nasty.听

TALIA: I wonder if there are people who are listening to this thinking 鈥榦h gardening nature, that's lovely. How can all these things exist within these beautiful tranquil hobbies or pastimes?鈥櫶

MOTHIN: It's a reflection of society. I mean with within our society there's all kinds of things going on. There's racism happening. There' sexism happening. There's all kinds of discrimination going on. Just like it happens in our society, it happens in gardening as well.听

When I did a video a couple years ago, just on some of the abuse that I get, you know, 'cause on the YouTube channel we the amount of comments that we get. The quite typical thing is calling me a terrorist because I'm Muslim, I've got a beard, so I must be a terrorist.听

You know, accusing me of oppressing my daughter? You know these kind of things right? To some pretty gruesome nasty things about my children and some really disgusting things.听So it is that is that.听

TALIA: Listening to Mothin experiences is sobering.听For many people, gardening, having an allotment growing veg, these are simple things.听They don't have to think about whether they'll face abuse for posting a family video about compost.听

I also want to reflect on the stereotypical image of a gardener.听If you picture a gardener who do you see?听Perhaps an older middle class white guy?听I guess that can make gardeners like Mothin hyper visible.听Instead of just being able to get on with gardening, there's also this extra job of having to be a role model.听A representative.听

MOTHIN: My YouTube channel is called my family garden, right? It's supposed to be about gardening as a family, but then people are almost hold you up to another level because now I've got to be the ambassador for Islam, an s ambassador for Muslims. Or I've got to set and example, so I can't set a foot wrong because if I've set a foot wrong then the whole of the Muslim community, its like you have done them some sort of injustice or have damaged them.听

You can see that in some of the comments you know, like the positive comments, that 鈥榦h, it's nice to see a Muslim mum behaving like this鈥. I'm like have you ever seen a Muslim man?

TALIA: The very loaded comment isn't it yet.听

MOTHIN: Yeah. Its like have you have you ever seen a Muslim man?听Have you just have you ever interacted with one? That's the automatic thing that goes through your mind, but.听

The fact is, I'm just a guy with some kids in the garden.听(laughter)

You know I grew up in in some quite poor areas and we finally got a house.听We finally got a garden and we're just enjoying that. These are some of the comments that you get there. 鈥極h, it's nice to see a Muslim gardening rather than blowing things up鈥. Uhm, there are comments that you get. There are things that people actually say as though the paying you a compliment.听

TALIA: 鈥業t's nice to see a Muslim man behaving like this鈥. That is such a loaded comment! I think this apparent well-meaning stuff that Mothin has to deal with, is for me, probably the most important thing to reflect on.听

We're going to come back to Mothin in a bit. There is a lot more that I want to chat about.听

But for now I'm going to travel from suburban leads to a central London housing estate.听

I'd like to introduce you to gardener and beekeeper Carole Wright.听

Carole鈥檚 got years of gardening arts and community work under her belt. She runs 鈥楤lak Outside鈥, which creates events for social housing residents to enjoy the outdoors.听She's also a little bit of a local celebrity, and being a South Londoner, in her words, she loves a bit of banter.听

I met Carole on an estate filled with 150 year old London plain trees.听We planned to talk in one of the community gardens that she runs.听But this is England, init, it rained.听So we sheltered from the drizzle in a small shed which looked out onto a garden that is shared by some of the tenants.听

I asked Carole about the stereotypes and expectations she faces as a working class nature lover.听

CAROLE: It's not about the knowledge, it's about being here and showing people you care and not living up to a stereotype that says 鈥榶ou live in a housing estate, you don't like nature. You look about concrete and a bit of you know, mildew on windows. That's the only nature you should have鈥. No, we should just say no.

You don't expect working class people to take a lead on community growing projects.听So you're not used to hearing that voice. Not expecting women, particularly black women, to be talking about these things, to be setting up projects with their friends and neighbours on the estate where they live and taking the learnings from your culture and your background. It's like, why shouldn't that black woman also mention Black Lives Matter, Stephen Lawrence? Because you're not being listened to because it's a female voice from a social housing estate.

And that's really important.听To me, and the way that I practise what I do. It's just like continually being told to squeeze yourself down and fit a narrative and behave yourself.听

It's very Victorian virtue. The narrative is you must always be grateful, and it's kind of like doing this community garden projects. It's like, 鈥榳e've tolerated you for long enough now. We've tolerated you for long enough. I beg you to behave yourselves and remember your position in life and society鈥.

It's like this whole notion of what you're allowed to do. And that's what community gardening still feels like - you are allowed, or you're not the accepted black person to have this dialogue, now. It's very obvious you know, and I just look and I smile.听And I think we have things to do. There's still a lot of work to do.

TALIA: I think what you're saying about the assumption that working class people or people who live on estates or from estates don't like nature is an important one to acknowledge because there is that assumption that you live in concrete, therefore you are concrete or whatever.听

CAROLE: Yeah, exactly.听

TALIA: But I also think that it can be internalised as well. So even when I reflect back on my childhood growing up on an estate, now looking back, it was actually quite like a wild childhood. I was in nature all the time. And like, we were lucky that we had gardens which was amazing, like a big privilege. But there was also like a big grass pitch where we weren't supposed to play ball games, but we did. A nature reserve that we sort of broke into and played around in and at the time I didn't think about myself as being connected to nature.听

Like uh, a child growing up in the country, who would have a similar childhood as me would maybe think about themselves as being connected to nature. I don't know. Like do you know what I mean?听

CAROLE: Yeah, I used to be that kid. We used to be known as latchkey kids back in the day.

You know 'cause I grew up in the 70s, so we would still have the remnants of bombsights. So in that there were lots of Bramble bushes so we would spend whole days unsupervised 鈥 that鈥檚 a different thing now people - playing on what used to be bombsights and we would go blackberry picking all about Kennington. Or we just jump on bus 'cause it was like Red Bus Rover and go Wimbledon common.听We literally just go 鈥榦h, let's go Streathem Common 'cause our cousins live up in Streatham鈥 and we didn't think o鈥檋 we're going out in nature.听

TALIA: Its just playing out

CAROLE: We would just go run up and down on the common or Wimbledon. The Wombles was popular on the telly.听So we'd go wombling and we'd be singing, and we'd have our Bay City Rollers tartan clothes on 'cause then we were devoid of fashion.听(laughter)

TALIA: I can picture it Carole!

CAROLE: You know?听But you know, these were the important things. We just bop on the bus - it just makes me laugh when I think about it - different social services now people. We would bop on the bus and off we would go for a day of blackberry picking.听Be out in nature.

At that time things like the settlements, the movement to help, working class people go out into nature. You know Easter holiday, summer holidays and so on. For the working poor families.听They鈥檇 take us, they take us out into nature as well. So I remember coming to Blackfriars settlement with my brother.听We鈥檇 go out into nature, they鈥檇 take us for day trips out. We'd go Brighton. And with our school, we'd go to the Isle of Wight and look at fossils and things like that.

So the schools play a really important part when I think what we were able to access of nature through schools and the summer play schemes and how expensive that's become. And all the youth clubs which have closed down around the country pre covid, covid has got nothing to do with those services being cut.

TALIA: Yeah this is all linked to austerity.听

CAROLE: : Yeah exactly. So with those youth clubs, come in and do gardening.听

TALIA: It was fun reminiscing with Carole about our childhoods.听We're from different generations, but have similar experiences of playing out. And despite us both growing up in urban areas, on reflection, we both had strong connections to nature in our formative years.听

The pictures we painted have almost got like an Enid Blyton vibe to it.听But I guess the difference is, is that some communities aren't talked about in that same innocent, playful Blytonesque way. Kids from estates are often depicted as a threat or aggressive when they're just out playing.听You might be behaving in the exact same way as other kids, but because of who you are and where you live, your behaviour is deemed dangerous.听

I mean, think about it. If you're regularly made to feel that people see you as a threat when you go blackberry picking in the park, it's going to impact your relationship to the outdoors. It might make you feel unsafe or paranoid.听

And when it comes to the often fraught relationship that some communities have with the police, then his feeling can be heightened.听I asked Carole about some of the experiences of the children and young people on her estate.听

CAROLE: The young people came over and, uh, teenagers aged about 15 and upwards I said, what's going on? And they said well for the past however many weeks we've had the police coming round and shouting at us. And I said, excuse me?!

And so then I spent the next however many days standing in the back square, outside of the basketball court. I contacted the parents and guardians 鈥 鈥榙id you know this was going on?鈥 Not a one of those parents and guardians knew that the police were coming three times a day.听In the police van.听Winding down the window 'cause I bore witness to this. This is actual fact and were shouting at their children.听People as young as seven years old.听Saying go inside. Broad daylight, hot day.

I then asked who has a meeting with young people over in a coffee shop across the Blackfriars Rd.听The thing which kept on coming up while when we sat down together in a coffee shop was 鈥榳e're rooted. We live here, we're we supposed to go? This is our estate. This is our home.听This is where we live鈥.

They like the layout and the design of this estate. They feel safe.听鈥榃e're rooted, we're like the London plane trees鈥. So I said So what?听What's the response then? What should we do to make people know that they don't come in here and then intimidate us?听I said my background in art so I'm always going to lean on some art thing and I said so shall we have a festival? And they said, yeah, they would back it, get involved and I said all right. Well, we鈥檒l have The Blak Outside festival and so that's what we did. We'd had rootes, that was the theme. So the Blak Outside festival started in Black History Month.听

TALIA: I love how the young people on Carole's estate compared themselves to the London plane, trees that surround the playground.听How deeply rooted they are to their neighbourhood. These trees, they're 150 years old. They were planted when the area was first built. They're iconic.听And that creative response to the experience of intense policing.听

To run an outdoor nature focused festival.听 A celebration that links to a sense of black history.听

In my chats with Carole and Mothin, I'm glad we've talked about the gatekeeping and brought that all to the surface.听But I don't just want to talk about that, I feel like sometimes only focusing on the traumatic and heavy experiences can pigeonhole people when really there is so much more to share.听

I wanted to ask Mothin if he ever felt like he had labels placed on him that he didn't ask for.听

MOTHINL You know, it's almost like a box ticking exercise.听And it's one of the things that I saw after I started Dig it Out. People wanted to talk to me about Dig it Out. But I'm doing some amazing stuff in the garden and you know. I don't dig my soil.听I grow with stuff that people say you can't grow with no one else is doing that sort of thing. I'm growing, you know, I'm using things for free.听To grow the amount of food that I grow I spend maybe.听

100 pounds 200 pounds.听In my budget a year.听

TALIA: Oh my God.听

MOTHIN: I don't buy plants. I grow plants from seed.听I garden on a really tight budget.听

Because simply because we're, we've always struggled , with money I mean.听We come from that poor background.听

You see these celebrity gardeners, I don't think could do what I do. But no one wants to talk to me about that. They want to talk to me about, you know.. They do the thing that a lot of uhm, companies do is we bring the brown guy in or the black guy in to come and talk. Come and talk about racism.听There we've ticked off box.

Or we'll bring a woman in and she'll be the HR specialist. You know we're not going to bring the woman in as the head of finance, so we're not going to bring the black guy in as the head of marketing or something?听Like that, no, we'll bring them into the box that they need to fit, you know, so we can tick our box

And you see not just in horticulture, but you see that in in pretty much everything and we've got to get beyond that because until we get to a point where we can be recognised for the skills that we're bringing to their table.听Then how we are going to be equal?听

TALIA: This point about box ticking. I mean more slender skilled gardener.听He wants to spend days working in the soil, not fighting racism.听And I think there's this tender duality that's about wanting to highlight what's wrong and do something about it.听 and also just get on with your life in the garden.听

It's not all doom and gloom though.听I asked Mothin about the things that lift him up.听That make him feel good about what he does to tackle the barriers.听Like the work that he does with his gardening YouTube.听

MOTHIN: You get some of the nicest people that are around.听Because everyone is enjoying a hobby together and you build that connection with people. The amount of people that I get coming me and say, 鈥榣ook, I learned something from you鈥. There's people who started YouTube channels because they've seen us do YouTube. There's people who have taken on allotments because they see what we're growing.

I've done this video on growing coriander.听And there's so many people that have just commented. Look thanks to your video I can do this now. And ehen you get that, there's nothing more satisfying than that you know, look, I've helped someone grow their food. I've helped someone feed their family.听

There are the barriers there. There are people who talk about the barriers or make an issue of the barriers. But I think sometimes the hardest thing is hard for an individual to step up.听

But it's so satisfying if you can just kick one of those barriers down, you know. Sometimes we've got to put ourselves on the line and open up the doors for everyone else.

It's satisfying once you break the barrier down. It's emotional, it's lonely, it's difficult, but once you do it, it's wicked.

TALIA: It must be an amazing feeling to know that you've helped someone feed their family.听

I wanted to ask Carole some similar questions.听What aspects of nature and her work does she take joy in?听

CAROLE: This just used to be tarmac. This was like, uh, nothing space years and years ago there used to be pram stores and now we have these beds with all this wildlife attracting plants in there.听

You know you've got cabbage from Portugal. We have got seeds that people are brought from South Africa. Yes, I do understand about bio security before people make鈥檕oo鈥 that noise! Yes we understand it. But this is very common is that people bring things back from what they're familiar with, which says to them about homelands, which says this is what I grew up with, and I want where I live to reflect where I grew up. Bbecause I'm looking out the window at Kiwi, Aronia berries, you know a plot full of black currants and there's cabbages in pots, nasturtium's, bleeding heart plants. There's kind of like Herb Robert grown out a baked bean canned which were really rusted

And I love the bird song here 'cause at 5:00 in the morning from about 4:30 the dawn chorus on this estate is..

TALIA: Yeah!

CAROLE: I think the takeaway from this is people can't even begin to imagine urban nature in zone 1 in a housing estate. What you hear. And the neighbours - when they pollarded the London plane tree鈥檚 the complaints from residents! - they actually phoned up to say 鈥榶ou never told us we were going to cut the trees. Do you know what that's going to do to the birds? Because we're used to the dawn chorus!鈥.

They just thought some people might think of it. They just thought I nobody paid it no mind and I'm like, Oh yes, they did!

TALIA: I think that is so interesting because I wonder how many of those people that called and complained and said 鈥榙on't cut down our trees, the birds lived there鈥. How many people would think of themselves as advocate for nature, custodians of nature, protectors - 'cause they are. And also the fact that the managers of the place can think these people aren't going to care

What solutions do you want to see from the gatekeepers themselves?听

CAROLE: Oh, I'm not really looking for nothing from them to be honest. I really not looking for it, because when I'm starting to give them power over my life then I might as well just stay in my yard init.听

TALIA: How Carole framed the solutions -waiting for something from a gatekeeper gives power to them.听I know that's not how everyone sees it, but I think that's an interesting way to think about it.听

The barriers that prevent everyone being in nature.听They're made by us.听They don't just come from nowhere.听Some of the barriers are visible, like these locked gates.听Other barriers are just as real, but you can't always see them.听

Mothin talked about how gardening is a reflection of society and the racism, the sexism. They won't just disappear as soon as you decide to share a video about mulch.听Carole said the even in gardening you're expected to squeeze yourself down and fit a narrative of being grateful for whatever you're given.听Until these things change, nature and green space will still feel like a hostile environment to some people.听

But just as the barriers are made by us, they can also be unmade.听Carrole is doing that by helping young people to feel rooted to the nature in their areas. Mothin is making videos with his family and sharing gardening knowledge with people who might not find it elsewhere.听

Being in nature can deeply improve the quality of our lives.听But it needs to be opened up to everyone.听And I think each of us hold a key to unlocking these gates.听

In the next episode of Blossom Trees and Burnt out Cars, I'll be delving deeper into the idea of who gets locked out of nature.听

鈥淚 think that people don't understand or realise how connected that travelling people are to nature鈥.听

Join me, Talia Randall, as I dig beneath the surface and chat with the people who are opening up nature to everyone.听

Blossom Trees and Burnt out Cars was written and produced by Talia Randall.

The researcher was Erica McCoy.

The technical producer was Gayl Gordon and the production mentor was Anna Buckley.听

Executive producers were Leanne Alie and Khaliq Meer.听

This podcast was commissioned by Khaliq Meer at 大象传媒 Sounds Audio Lab.听

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