Sod’s law: what can two turf swaps 40 years apart tell us about Britain’s biodiversity crisis?

16 October 2026 · Conservation

In 1983, David Nash dug up a section of Kensington Gardens and swapped it with Welsh grassland. Four decades later, Mike Perry’s reverse swap revealed a striking reversal in the fortunes of urban and rural nature In 1983, an open-topped truck unloaded an unusual cargo in Kensington Gardens: 83 hunks of turf cut from Cae’n y Coed, a wooded hillside in the…