The most obvious feature of a butterfly garden are nectar-bearing flowering plants. Plants commonly visited by butterflies are those which provide sugary nectar used by many species as an energy source. Types of flowers vary greatly in this regard and many commonly used bedding plants such as geraniums and petunias are rarely visited by butterflies, although the latter may be visited at dusk by...

as the outdoor activities of mental defectives in institutions had previously been limited to elementary jobs, such as sweeping the paths, and generally acting as labourers to the staff engaged on the ornamental gardens. It was recognised that, for many years, patients in large mental institutions and colonies had been employed on farms, pig feeding, etc.; some of them had been taught to milk c...

Speculating about the future of science seems to be genetically encoded in scientists. We all do it. We also take it as an article of faith that serious predictions are almost always wrong. Is thinking about the future an important thing to do, or just a diversion—like daydreaming, or gardening, or playing the lottery? Why do we spend our time guessing about matters we believe we cannot predict...

Private gardens collectively comprise the largest green space in most cities and the greatest potential for increasing the extent of wildlife-friendly and native-dominated habitat, improving the quality of ecosystem services, and providing opportunities for urban dwellers to reconnect with nature. Because attitudes and values driving landscape preferences in gardens are complex and often not co...

A consideration of occupation and space is outlined to advance non-representational thinking about human-landscape relation. Empirical findings are presented from a research project based on data from the Mass Observation Archive (1) relevant to gardens and gardening. This data is analysed to explore how ‘ordinary’ people (who have contributed to this Archive) express and experience issues conc...

This paper lays the groundwork for a theory of time allocation across the life course, based on the idea that strength and skill vary as a function of age, and that return rates for different activities vary as a function of the combination of strength and skills involved in performing those tasks. We apply the model to traditional human subsistence patterns. The model predicts that young child...