What’s in your garden?

From the DNA in our bodies to far-distant galaxies, Creation is amazing, incredibly diverse and complex.

The same is true just for the variety of wild plants and animals on the Earth, which scientists call biodiversity. The relationships between species are part of what makes biodiversity so fascinating, with flora and fauna designed to play unique and specific roles in different habitats like woodland, grassland, or the oceans.

However, Creation also suffers the effects of the Fall. Disturbing a small part of the ecosystem risks major and unforeseen effects, and this is very apparent when humans move species around the world. Cereal crops we now eat, like wheat, are domesticated versions of plants that come from the Middle East. Potatoes are from America. Most of the flowers and shrubs in your garden are probably not native to the UK. There are many other examples of plants and animals which have been introduced to this country to great benefit.

But sometimes it goes horribly wrong. Which brings me in my series to the fourth horseman of the so-called ecological apocalypse, invasive non-native species. What’s in focus is the introduction – intentional or otherwise – of a species into a new place where it plays havoc with the existing wildlife or causes damage to crops or buildings.

You’re probably familiar with the grey squirrel, introduced from North America in the 1870s at great cost to the native red squirrel. The red squirrel is hanging on in Scotland, but in most of England and Wales it’s a lost cause.

If you’ve bought or sold a home recently you’ll know that Japanese knotweed, originally introduced as an ornamental garden plant, is a problem to look out for. It causes damage to buildings, spreads easily and is terribly difficult to get rid of.

Rabbits may be cute and seem like part of our native wildlife but were introduced to Britain by the Romans. They breed like – well, rabbits. Although they are a source of food (I live on the site of what must have been a medieval rabbit warren) they can be a pest to farmers.

There is a story that a 19th-century Shakespeare enthusiast named Eugene Schieffelin decided to release all the birds named in Shakespeare’s works in Central Park, New York. Although many of his schemes failed, the introduction of the European Starling in 1890 was so successful that it rapidly spread across the entire continent, which is now home to an estimated 200 million starlings that cause millions of dollars of damage to crops. He was a member of the American Acclimatization Society, part of a movement which sought to harness the world’s biological resources without regard to national boundaries.

I’ve previously written about mice on Gough Island in the South Atlantic which escaped from visiting ships and now decimate the chicks of seabirds. Hedgehogs have caused havoc on Scottish islands where ground-nesting birds previously had no predators. There’s the cane toad, introduced to Australia to control beetles in sugar-cane crops. It didn’t, but displaced native amphibians instead and poisoned anything that tried to eat it. Closer to home, rhododendrons adorn many a country estate but outcompete native flora. American mink escaped from fur farms in the 1950s and have almost driven the native water vole to extinction. I could go on.

Creation suffers as a result of ill-considered schemes, ignorance or neglect. There’s a lesson here in humility, knowing that despite our science we are not the Creator and need to tread carefully in stewarding His Creation. In some cases, it is possible to restore ecosystems by controlling or eradicating the invasive species, but it comes at great cost. We can all play our part by being alert to what’s in our garden, planting native species and, when we travel, following any biosecurity measures to prevent further damage being done.

Simon Marsh works in nature conservation and is a member of St Neots Evangelical Church.