With a centre page spread of beautiful photographs of local fruit and nuts by Robin Mills, this month’s issue is packed full of themes related to nature, the environment, and the beauty of the world around us. In our cover story, Jo Revill recalls her time working on the global scandal of the ivory trade, something that local author Sophy Roberts will likely touch on when speaking about her book A Training School for Elephants at BridLit in November. We welcome back Seth Dellow this month with his interview of Baroness Jenny Jones. Speaking about political attitudes towards the environment and climate change, Baroness Jones says: ‘They don’t get that if you start killing off species, it actually affects humans. We are in a mess.’ In his instalment of The R Word, Sam Rose examines the complex impact of the UK’s deer species on natural recovery, while Bob Ward discusses Net Zero and the UK’s small percentage of annual global emissions. This month, we also welcome back Fergus Dowding, who, like many growers, is trying to find ways to use and store the glut. Caddy Sitwell presents part six of her series about judging at horticultural shows. She recounts a story that after past shows, ‘unsuccessful leeks’ were cooked into a recuperative soup, and the post-show day was called ‘Broth Day’. While we are delighted to bring back Seth Dellow and Fergus Dowding to these pages, we also bid a sad farewell at the funeral of Humphrey Walwyn who wrote the popular column, Laterally Speaking, for twenty years. We look forward to sharing memories of Humphrey and his writing in an upcoming edition. Another great supporter and inspirational artist, Hugh Dunford Wood, recently passed on after a short illness; some of his work will be showing at Sladers Yard in West Bay in November and on page 51 his son Jesse pays tribute to him.
