The burgeoning organic movement should only be applauded and encouraged, but is there is a lurking danger of its philosophy being preoccupied chiefly with food? For every child who has devoured Jamie inspired school dinners, there are those, and their mothers, who view the menu of the day with grave suspicion because they don’t recognise some of the ingredients. Now a chip – we know where that comes from – a plastic bag in the frozen food section of the supermarket.

We’ve heard the tales about inner city kids who’ve never made the connection between the carton of semi-skimmed and a cow, and my contention is that unless we are encouraged to interact with Nature and observe its rhythms, patterns and creatures, we will never learn to deepen our relationship with the world or realise what it offers in terms of physical, emotional and spiritual nourishment.

We all sit transfixed as celebrities in the Australian outback are showered with maggots or devour witchety grubs, but it’s a sterile curiosity, from which none of our senses derive any significant benefit; I suspect that for many children their experience of nature is similarly vicarious and they never actually get their hands dirty.

I was fortunate in having a father who, having been thwarted in his aspirations to be an artist by the outbreak of the Second World War, channelled his creativity into the family home and garden. Admittedly this ‘urge’ ran the gamut of many fads and fancies, and embraced such diverse areas as baking wholemeal bread, (much to his children’s horror,) making Christmas decorations cut out in the same patterns as snowflake crystals and making his own bow and arrows, but, running alongside all these ephemeral joys was his lifelong passion for his garden.

One weekend in 1960, this passion initiated me into the mysteries of the carbon cycle. Father announced the impending arrival of manure for the garden, which was to be dumped outside the garden wall, and we should all have to help move it through the gate. The word ‘manure’ meant nothing to me, it had never featured in Schoolfriend or Girl, so I blithely awaited the delivery of what I presumed to be choice shrubs, and didn’t wonder at the need for wellies when my mother handed them out. When the steaming mass slid off the lorry, I was aghast. Not only was there a load of poop outside our house, but I was expected to interact with it! Worse still, as I shovelled and snivelled, the son of a neighbour, and the remote object of my affections, hove into sight on the side path and boggled openly at the sight of most of the family shovelling horse s—t for England. (The two youngest offspring had been spared, as they would probably have fallen into it.) I don’t remember now which was hotter, the manure or me, but I wouldn’t go outside the house for days. Persuaded by my father’s zeal, I did eventually experience a fascination for the process of decomposition, and now feel a deep satisfaction at the sight of charcoal coloured, crumbly earth.

Such was the beginning of my own closer relationship with the natural world. We had already been introduced to the more aesthetic aspects during regular Sunday walks, but now I wonder, when I see the children with mobiles, intent on their texting, if they ever look up to spot the first swallow, or catch a snowflake on their sleeve.

Memory’s a funny thing. I was watching the Remembrance Day Service last Saturday, and as the evening came to a close and red poppies drifted down from the ceiling, childhood memories flooded back of shuffling through drifts of fallen leaves on autumn pavements, and of looking for sweet chestnuts in the New Forest, where the earth was springing under our feet with the energy of centuries of leaf mould.

The rosy-hues of autumn can lend our trees the resonance and texture of a Degas pastel, bringing a seasonal beauty that looks particularly stunning when set against a clear blue sky. When the leave finally fall to the ground it’s a chance to see close up the unique spectrum of colours that only Mother Nature can display en masse, and get away with.

For some of us however, leaves bring an altogether different scenario. “How was your weekend?” you chirrup to neighbour / colleague / fellow traveller on a Monday morning….”Oh, busy… you know… it’s the leaves…..sweeping up the leaves….bagging up the leaves…taking the bags to the tip…. burning the leaves…..

Honestly, what a waste of time and effort!

If, like me, you have a garden with soil that would not look out of place on Bournemouth beach, then those fallen leaves are an opportunity to provide your garden with some much needed soil structure. Heaped up into a uniformly shaped container – wire mesh ones are ideal, those untidy offerings will slowly dwindle down over a year or so into a crumbly mass that will help gardens like mine retain water in summer. Conversely, if you have inherited a predominantly clay site, then leaf mould will help transform those sticky slabs on your spade into something altogether more friable.

If dealing with them separately is not on your list of priorities, dry leaves, (providing essential carbon,) can be used on the compost heap to mix in with the green, nitrogenous stuff. For years I followed Lawrence D. Hills’s advice (He of Grow Your Own Fruit and Vegetables fame) and never put any leaves in my compost bin. Then I read John Roulac’s Backyard Composting and never looked back.

You don’t even have to be that organised. I have a huge tree in one corner of my garden, one of the malus brigade, bordered by a substantial stone wall. Most years I simply rake most of its fallen leaves into a pile against the wall, with a few logs for ballast, and after two or three years the rich brown residue gets raked back across the soil and helps lock in the moisture that is constantly under threat from the greedy tree roots. Such is my typically indolent approach to most matters horticultural that I no longer consider myself to be a gardener in the ‘manicuring’ sense, but one who ‘co-operates with Nature.’ So now it isn’t childish footsteps rustling through the leaves outside my window, but a seemingly inexhaustible pair of blackbirds on patrol, gorging themselves with the choice pickings and seeing off all comers – well those with feathers anyway. I tell myself that hedgehogs will bed down for the winter by the stone wall, knowing they won’t be disturbed by zealous raking, and that other creatures will find refuge in the ivy that advances relentlessly along the cracks and joins. Yes, there’s a lot to be said for leaving well alone.

Another few months pass and the site is still ticking over.  But thats not what I want! I want the site to be at the front.

To this end I’m glad to announce we will be having regular articles on the site bringing fresh insights into the organic/environmental world.

Bring ‘em on!