Back in 2021, sick from blood loss and illness, and mired in the sticky silence of lockdown, I read about the urban cliff hypothesis in a column by Alys Fowler (this is another infill post, written in February 2023 from the barely-there notes I took at the time).
"the urban cliff hypothesis that suggests our cities are surprisingly similar habitats to rock faces, that our homes still resemble caves, and that the plants and animals that thrive in our harsh cityscapes evolved from those natural places: species such as rock doves (pigeons), goat willows, buddleia and red valerian."
Links are from the original column, which was mostly about gardening when your garden is a small patch of concrete, or a windowsill.
Barren Rock Ecosystems. Urban Cliff Hypothesis. Three word agglomerations. Trendy apartment buzzwords. But also; it is my biome.
My garden is a freshwater cliff and stone pavement environment. It doesn't have a visible stream, but both our position on a slope down to a confined waterway and the column of midges that gathers at the front corner of my back patio is suggestive of something part spring-line, part ancient water-pipes. The pebble dash is skittered over by squirrels and perched on by sparrows. Doves and pigeons coo in the chimneys. Oregano and Thyme do well, as you'd expect, but Thrift hates it - not quite bright enough to go coastal. Though the odd shade-loving exotic does well, and brings a pleasing sort of rock-jungle-stream vibe.
With her usual tendency to find something bizarre and left-field, Alys includes a name-check for Geranium robertianum 'Celtic White' which is a sport of the pink weed that grows everywhere and kills whatever it's growing with. No word if the white one is as murdery, but although colour sports are sometimes less vigorous, I'm disinclined to make the experiment, not least because they smell of armpits.
I'm going to stick with my junglicious brights looming out of my shady, tree-buried space, as the animals flicker and skitter over the rocks, the trees, and kites quarter the upsky, looking for the abandoned kills of domestic cats.
