Juno

If there isn’t plantain growing within twenty feet of where you are, I’ll eat my shoe! Broad oval leaves flat to the ground, deep parallel ribs, a rat's-tail flower spike: it grows in the cracks of paths, in the gateway of a field, in the compacted ground by a bench. It holds close to the ground, and of all the herbs it may have the strongest folk reputation for resilience. It is a totally extraordinary plant. Where I used to live, I made a regular appointment with a wonderful Thai massage...

It’s early July, glow-worms are lighting up the hedgerows and chalk grasslands after dark, swifts with this year's fledglings are performing their last displays before leaving for Africa, and the underground world of fungi has just made headlines for holding the planet together at a scale nobody had previously even guessed at. News Scientists working with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks have published the first - and frankly astonishing - global map of the planet’s...

A Gaelic word, dúchas in Irish Gaelic and dùthchas in the Scottish, crops up time and time again when I'm researching for Eden Rooted. It speaks of kinship with the land - a sense of belonging to a place and responsibility toward it, a way of life with it and a longing for it. It's not a uniquely Celtic idea. You find it the world over: from the Andean concept of ayni, to Māori kaitiakitanga ... and in the universal pull to get outside into the green and breathe. Science is catching up with...