I'm on my way through the old city of Strasbourg, and gardens here are vanishingly small.
I'm on my way through the old city of Strasbourg, and gardens here are vanishingly small. The occasional secret courtyard houses a giant ginkgo or has its walls swathed in lobelia and Virginia creeper. The breakfast patio at the Hotel du Dragon has a tight-pruned lime and a small cypress. Nevertheless, the city is splashed all over with natural colour as sills, walls, yards and railings are covered with pots and window boxes.
Some buildings in the rickety 'old quarter' are so bedecked they look as if they have erupted out of the ground, dragging cascades of geranium and morning glory up with them on to every available level surface. Even the bridges that clutter the L'Ill, a tributary of the Rhine that encircles the city, are lined with pots and planters.
I'm surprised, though, to see little sign of wildlife at any of these flower pots - just a lone honeybee and a couple of pigeons.
It is only down by the river's edge that I can see what I might call real wildlife in a garden. A tiny concrete balcony-cum-quay, the size of a single bed has been so enthusiastically decorated with plant containers that the table and chair are lost in herbage.
Several hoverflies and bumblebees are visiting the flowers. Chaffinches and sparrows flit noisily through the climbers, no doubt they take sustenance at the cafe/bistros in the square next door, but here is where they roost and maybe nest.
And hidden in a narrow side alley, thick with natural vegetation as well as garden escapes is something you might only find in the largest rural garden, but here has made their home in the smallest city corner - a pair of ducks.
Slightly untidy, overgrown, partially neglected and out of passing view, this narrow plot might be the most promising wildlife zone I can see. But like so many such plots in cities the world over, humans see little value in it and have parked a car there instead.
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