Rewilding the rooftops of Brixton

Or how I became a guerrilla gardener

This is the third and concluding part in a series on my attempt to create a corridor for wildlife in the middle of Brixton.

It started with the comings and goings, human and otherwise in ‘Brixton’s Orchard’.

The next article was ‘We must cultivate our garden’ about planting up a windswept balcony.

I moved into the flat nearly six years ago. At that point the view was one of the main attractions.

From one corner of the balcony you can take in the sweep of London, from Battersea Power Station, to the London Eye, the Shard and the City, Canary Wharf, right round the corner to the twin radio masts of Crystal Palace.

I used to track the planes overhead on their flightpaths into Heathrow and London City via an app. I would invent stories about who was in that private jet coming from Kazakhstan or destination ‘Not Available’ when there weren’t supposed to be any flights at all.

I tried to hire the flat out for location shoots.

All I got was a visit from a scout looking for somewhere to double as a paparazzi’s pad in New York for a Netflix series on Prince Andrew’s recent woes.

I never heard from them again.

The attraction that didn’t wear off though was the sky itself.

I was one of the few of my male cohort that didn’t have a Kate Bush poster on their wall in the 80s. But her song ‘The Big Sky’ said it all about my new home.

I could watch storms roll in from the west and smite first the West End, then the City and a few minutes later, Canary Wharf.

All this pre-dated the rewilded me, the man with his eyes newly opened to nature.

That’s when I realised that my armchair could become my bird hide.

And that I could change the environment around me for the good to attract more wildlife. That was in no way a consideration when I moved in.

Now post Pandemic and my conversion on the road to Damascus (or at least to accidental re-wilding) it was everything.

Opposite me is a council building whose roof is a couple of storeys lower than mine, separated by an alley way. It is what they call a ‘green roof’ with a thin layer of sedum sown into matting and recycled aggregate as far as I can see.

Last spring I thought I would try a spot of guerrilla gardening. I ordered some wildflower mix and then went on-line to get directions on how to make seed bombs.

It all sounded terribly subversive to a generally law-abiding citizen who had lived through the IRA bombing campaigns in London in the 70s and 80s.

But I justified it to myself that the roof was a de facto commons. If I got something to take, I would be doing my bit to increase the biodiversity of London.

The idea was to create a place where invertebrates and pollinators could flourish that in turn attracted the birds, a wildlife corridor linking the Orchard to the balcony.

My throwing arm could get the seed bombs to just one corner of the green roof. To attempt to rewild the whole thing would create unnecessary jeopardy. There was a real risk that I would land a seed bomb onto the head of a passer-by 11 floors below with possibly deadly consequences.

But turning that around, creating a guerrilla garden on just a portion of the roof could create a neat controlled experiment. Would that corner attract more wildlife than the rest?

In May the wildflowers came into bloom. And in the autumn there was a bonus second flowering.

I was over the moon.

Now I devote more of my time to observing what goes on there, it is clear that the most obvious bosses of the green roof are the carrion crows. They like to use it as a lookout perch from which to spot jerk chicken detritus on Brixton’s high street.

I am biased and could have been imagining it but I could have sworn the crows were choosing my corner of the roof rather than anywhere else.

The next in were the pied wagtails.

Known as ‘ballerinas’ in Italian, you cannot mistake them, their heads and tails moving in tandem like they were dancing.

Like the crows they are also incredibly confident amongst us humans. I had earlier spotted one outside Greggs in Clapham Junction, patrolling their patch, giving way only to buses, never to humans.

Brixton High Street, one of the most crowded places in London, also has its own pair. You’ll only see them if you look down at your feet as they will often be scavenging for insects amongst discarded wrappers outside McDonalds.

I often hear their cheerful twittering above the hubbub of the traffic and it lifts the soul. Birdwatcher and TV presenter Bill Odie calls them ‘Chiswick flyovers’ on account of their call of ‘chis-ick’ when they pass overhead.

I fancy it was the same pair of wagtails that visited ‘my’ roof top once the wild flowers came out.

More than that, it was clear that they had created a nest under some netting on the roof, a smart move as humans rarely ventured up there and predators would find it difficult to get through.

My heart was in my mouth when I saw that two baby wagtails had fledged. They were moving across the roof rather too slowly for my liking.

However my panic subsided once I saw that their parents had created a diversion, mobbing a pair of crows on the roof that were getting a little too curious.

I could easily be projecting a success onto my re-wilded haven that it doesn’t deserve.

After all it is not like I am approaching it scientifically and watching for hours on end making extensive notes about which quadrant of the rooftop the birds are gravitating towards.

I can kid myself that the flock of two dozen starlings that alight there on a frequent basis had never visited before my seed bombing.

But if my wildlife corridor has made London a more biodiverse place by one iota then that’s good enough for me.

If a few more pollinators come along, a handful of invertebrates attract a few more birds to linger then I will be over the moon.