Don’t you love this time of year? The wildflowers outside my office window are in full bloom (above) and are attracting bees, hoverflies and lots of other wee beasties. In our small garden, the Prof and I have been working on a pond for what seems like decades, but yesterday we scooped up a newt when clearing out the cherry blossom that was covering the surface. We later saw it surface and gulp down some other pond life, so it had clearly recovered from the shock of its temporary incarceration. And having spent the day worrying that the blue tit chicks in our nest box had been orphaned (and thus doomed to starve), we were elated to see a parent heading in with a fat green grub in its beak (our sympathy didn’t extend to the grub). Who needs Springwatch when a seat and a cuppa gives you all this drama?

It’s well known that nature has a therapeutic effect – unsurprising really given we are part of nature. Studies have shown that hospital patients with a view of nature recover more quickly than those without. More recently the NHS has been experimenting with Green Social Prescribing – literally supporting those with mental health issues to spend more time in nature – with positive results.

But this also supports my theory that everybody is an environmentalist, you just have to work out what kind of environmentalist. Many sustainability managers have used conservation tasks like creating butterfly gardens or pond digging as a first step in engagement, literally getting people’s hands dirty as a very visceral first step to start the Sustainability conversation. It works, I should know, my first Sustainability job (albeit unpaid) was leading conservation tasks – and look where I ended up!