Make Space For Nature
Plants with Purpose: discovering green solutions for urban challenges
Join us as we chat to Caitlyn Johnstone, a Nature Based Solutions Scientist from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), to explore how plants and ecosystems can transform our cities.
Discover how integrating nature-based solutions can make monumental differences in tackling urban issues like flooding and heat. We hear about RBGE's Plants with Purpose research programme investigating the functional traits of plants such as temperature regulation and biodiversity restoration.
Caitlyn’s stories and insights bring to life the adaptability of green infrastructure compared to traditional grey infrastructure. Her passion is contagious as she demonstrates how small, actionable changes in urban planning can lead to significant ecological benefits.
We also discuss simple adaptations you can make in your own garden or greenspace to offer nature a helping hand, such as supporting pollinators throughout their lifecycle and managing rainwater efficiently, resulting in a more resilient environment.
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Royal Garden Botanic Edinburgh
Join us as we chat to Caitlyn Johnstone, a Nature Based Solutions Scientist from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE), to explore how plants and ecosystems can transform our cities.
Discover how integrating nature-based solutions can make monumental differences in tackling urban issues like flooding and heat. We hear about RBGE's Plants with Purpose research programme investigating the functional traits of plants such as temperature regulation and biodiversity restoration.
Caitlyn’s stories and insights bring to life the adaptability of green infrastructure compared to traditional grey infrastructure. Her passion is contagious as she demonstrates how small, actionable changes in urban planning can lead to significant ecological benefits.
We also discuss simple adaptations you can make in your own garden or greenspace to offer nature a helping hand, such as supporting pollinators throughout their lifecycle and managing rainwater efficiently, resulting in a more resilient environment.
More Information
Royal Garden Botanic Edinburgh
Hi and welcome to Make Space for Nature from NatureScot, the podcast that celebrates Scotland's nature, landscapes and species. I'm Kirsten Guthrie and in each episode we will help you learn more about our natural world. In this episode, tim Hancocks and I chat to Caitlin Johnston from the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh about nature-based solutions and green infrastructure. Caitlin explains what these terms mean and how they can be applied to urban environments. We also discuss changing weather patterns, the interconnected ecosystem and how we can all make changes to help ourselves and biodiversity, using nature-based solutions wherever we live. So hi, Caitlin, welcome to the podcast. Thanks for joining us today. Can you tell us a bit about yourself and the work and research you do at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, please?
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me today. So I'm a nature-based solutions scientist for the Royal Botanic Garden, edinburgh, which means that I look at how we can use plants and natural mimicry of the ecosystem to solve problems that we're facing in urban environments like flooding and intense heat. I'm an ecologist by trade, so what that means is that I study how the world is connected. It's really connected in very, very intricate ways. It's really connected in very, very intricate ways. Some of it is really easy for us to see, like the fact that insects pollinate the plants from which we get food. Very obvious connection we want to eat it. The plants need the bugs Bug, plant, person.
Speaker 2:Some of them are much harder to understand or unseen like fungus underneath of the soil. You know it connects tree roots that's called mycorrhizal fungi and it connects tree roots with one another and the trees can then talk to each other. They're sending chemical and, you know, sugar signals across that. So lots of different things are happening and we find how connected the ecosystem is. It's actually really really good at solving some of the problems we've created for ourselves in the way that we manage urban environments. So if we can mimic those ecosystems and help rebuild those connections, it's good for our urban environments, it's good for solving those problems and it's good for nature, so we can provide for biodiversity, provide for human well-being and solve the pressing problems of our environment by mimicking the ecosystem.
Speaker 1:And that's what nature based solutions are yeah, okay, so we, you know we do actually talk particularly within nature scott as well. We talk about nature-based solutions quite a lot on this podcast too, and how important they are and will be in the future. So can you provide any examples from your work of nature-based solutions?
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 2:So actually our flagship nature-based solution on site at the Royal Botanic Garden, edinburgh, which visitors can come and visit any day, so invite you to do, is a rain garden, which I would love to say we started because, you know, we wanted to showcase nature based solutions and you know, it started from that scientific and academic framework.
Speaker 2:But actually it started because we were experiencing flooding and, being botanists, we thought, hey, let's see if we can solve it with plants, and so we built a rain garden, which means it's a garden that is designed to control flooding and it's irrigated by rain instead of a person having to go out in water.
Speaker 2:So what we did is we dug out a little bit of the earth and then flipped it right next to it, kind of like if you're shoveling a driveway with snow and you build that little pile of snow at the end of the driveway. We did that with dirt. So what it created was just a very shallow depression which gave water that was coming down the hill. It gave it a spot to settle and then the berm, which is that little hill of soil, was like a lip on the little pool or a little lip on the edge of the sink, and helps keep that water in. So you're stopping the water, you're giving it a chance to settle and then you give it a spot to sink into the ground and then we put in a whole bunch of plants that really enjoy soaking up water, so that do really well for that and can survive drought conditions, because we knew that we wouldn't be irrigating these plants.
Speaker 2:So we have a mix of non-native and Scottish native plants in that space. That was five years ago that we put that garden in. That area has not flooded since. We do not water those plants at all and it's thriving. We even had a one of those, you know, 150 year storms in. I think it was 2022. I'd have to check. We have a weather station at RBGE that tracks, you know, the rainfall and everything. So it's really interesting to see how it's changed over the years. So I have to check the year it happened, but I believe it was 2022.
Speaker 2:And we got something like half of July's expected rainfall over the space of an hour. So that's one of the things we're seeing with climate change is that we are experiencing more rain, but we're experiencing more intense storms, which means the amount of rain that might have fallen over eight hours falls within three hours. So it's like turning on all the taps at once and just there's water everywhere, which is a resource we absolutely need. But you know we can't have all of it at once. We've got to find a way to control it, to hold it in place where it falls. So that's happening all over the place and then you have something like the 150 year storms, where it's half the month's water in one hour, which was above what we were expecting the rain garden to have to handle.
Speaker 2:We were expecting, you know, we designed it to do like a hundred year storm, so this was 150, big test for it and it was perfectly fine Plants, happy, water soaked in path didn't even flood. And this is an area of the lawn where we used to have to close off the path routinely for just general summer spring storms and, this being Scotland, definitely a lot of rain all the time. We would have to close it routinely for just a regular storm. And this was 150 year storm and no flooding, everything great. Plus, we have a beautiful new feature for visitors to come and see, instead of just a green lawn.
Speaker 3:That's incredible, caitlin, and can you tell us how you guys have monitored the rain garden over the time, or have you learned anything from watching it or collected data that you weren't expecting or you found particularly interesting?
Speaker 2:Yes, we actually just had a research update on this. So you know, we're not just putting in nature-based solutions, we're nature-based solution scientists, which means you're measuring and tracking and studying and then, using that data, you have evidence-based changes that you make. We partner with Harriet Watt University and they are doing a study on the rain garden. Actually, a PhD student was studying the rain garden these last five years. So we have sensors within the soil that track the soil moisture levels, temperature, water availability which is how to describe this. Okay, like if you get water water soaks into your shoes or water soaks into a t shirt, you know when you come home at the end of the day it might be the same amount of water. The t-shirt is really easy to wring out, and then you have all this water. Your sneaker not so easy to wring out. You know it has the same amount of water in it, but you can't actually access it. So that's what you're looking at with the water potential in the soil is okay, it has this amount moisture, but is it available for the plants to access at the time? So all these different things you could measure in the soil and it changes how things are functioning, how well the plants are doing that sort of thing. So we track all of that with sensors. We're turning RVGE into a living laboratory, so if you come on site you won't always see.
Speaker 2:With sensors we're turning RVGE into a living laboratory, so if you come on site you won't always see the sensors. They're underneath the soil or something like a leaf wetness sensor, which are my favorite because they look like little leaves and they even have the ribs on them to mimic the veins of a leaf. But what that tracks is the moisture that would be on a leaf and how quickly evapotranspiration happens. You won't necessarily see them. One of those might be like tucked underneath the foliage, but they're all out there tracking all of these things. And then we as the scientists, our research partners, we go and our horticultural team go through that research and then use that to inform changes that we might make.
Speaker 2:So do you use stones as cover? Do you use organic mulch as a cover? You know they have different properties, different temperatures. You can see it on a heat map. You can see how the plants respond to it. So all together, the horticulturalists, the scientists, the researchers from Harriet Watt get together and make all of these changes Because, just like a rain garden is bringing all those different connections to the ecosystem. It's really connected. So the people who are working on it. We can't study it in isolation, we have to work together too.
Speaker 3:That's so so, and I find that so interesting and so great that you know, with those nature-based solutions, you know, if anything goes wrong with a plant, it's fairly simple to plant a new one or grow a new one, rather than you know other infrastructure where people are going to be digging up your road and repairing pipes and huge cost With that in mind.
Speaker 2:are there other plants or areas that you think or plants we should be considering for projects like this in green infrastructure in the future. Yes, so that's another piece of the work that we're doing. We have a plants with purpose program which is studying exactly that. We're studying the ecological traits of the plants so that we know which ones function best in flooded conditions, which ones can handle drought conditions, which ones can do both, because that's one of the things we're seeing with changing weather patterns is that not only is the intensity of storms changing, but when they're occurring changes when they're occurring changes. So what we're seeing is that you get flooding, but you also have periods of drought in between those storms, which means all those plants are stressed by lack of water. The soil can get compacted because you lose the little air pockets inside it if it dries out too much. So then, when you get a storm which is going to have more water more quickly than it used to, when you get a storm which is going to have more water more quickly than it used to, the ground and the plants also can't soak up as much as they used to because they had a drought stress right before that storm, the end result of this will be a plant trait database that would be open access to anyone so that you can look and say, okay, I have these flooded conditions, what plants would go well in here? And then you can look it up and pick out those plants and for all the different types of things that you might come up against, and you definitely want to have diversity of plants in your area, so you'll have, you know, groups of plants that do well with flooding, do well with drought, are great for these particular climate conditions, grow well in sun, have red foliage in the fall. We also want to look at aesthetics, because a lot of people think you get in the mindset of it has to be functional and solve my problems or it can be beautiful in a park space I want to go and visit, and it's definitely not the case. There is no reason that functional solutions to major problems like flooding can't also be beautiful and green spaces that we want to visit. So if we didn't have interpretation in the garden to tell you these are nature-based solutions that are happening, you'd never know. It just looks like, you know, beetle heart you'd want to visit. So having a diversity of plants there, knowing which plants you can choose to put in there, and having a mix of non-native and Scottish native plants. It's really important too, because we have so many different purposes happening. You might have a plant that's not a Scottish native that's particularly good at soaking up water, and so it's one you might want to use in the garden. Use that non-native plant for the flood potential.
Speaker 2:But you also need to look at biodiversity. You know we talk about pollinators. We're defining them by their job as adults, that they pollinate, but insects have a whole life cycle and they go through changes. A flying insect the easiest one that people think about, would be a butterfly. It's not always a butterfly. It's a caterpillar, at one point that needs to eat particular plants, and if you don't have the particular plant that that caterpillar needs, you're not providing for the life cycle of that butterfly, you're not providing for the next generation. So you might see that butterfly in the summertime, but it's just a visitor. It's coming from somewhere else because you don't have the resources it needs for all the stages of its life cycle.
Speaker 2:And we definitely want to be supporting biodiversity because we're experiencing a biodiversity crisis right now. Insects are declining, birds are declining. Pretty much every species of its plant, its mammals. So many are endangered right now, and a lot of that has to do with the change in climate, and the plants and animals are experiencing changes, just the way that humans are. So that's a factor.
Speaker 2:Human interference it's a big factor. Diseases are a factor. As our climate changes, you're experiencing more diseases, new diseases, diseases that didn't used to be in an area, that are moving to that area because now the conditions are right for it and we didn't have those conditions before. You know so many different things happen. So you want to be tackling the current urban problems like flooding and heat. You want to be providing for humans and our well-being. You want to be providing for biodiversity, and it seems like it's just way too much to tackle all at once. You know you have to pick one or the other, but you don't. If you're taking lessons from nature, which is already an interconnected ecosystem, it's already providing for all of those. We just need to learn how to do that and then can we enhance it.
Speaker 3:That's great. I really like the term plants with purpose as well. Try and use that database in the future with, as you say, helping with flooding or heating and cooling buildings or whatever it might be that nature can help us with. Sounds like it goes a lot beyond what people might usually think of if you use the term green infrastructure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's like green infrastructure. It's often looked at as an afterthought, like we're going to build our city and then, oh right, let's put some green into it, when actually it doesn't have to be that way and it can be more powerful than that. You know, plants aren't just for aesthetics and if we work with green infrastructure from the get-go, you know if you're designing a new area, put in nature-based solutions and look on a catchment scale. So we've talked about a medium-sized example at the Botanic Gardens, which is our rain garden. We had water that was coming down a hill and flooding at the bottom. We put a rain garden at the bottom. That can also be done on a catchment scale. So for a whole town if you put in trees and such on those hills. So you have those root systems that are going to be soaking up water, that are going to be acting as a filter. So not only are you holding back some of that water, but you're also cleaning that water before it gets to the town. You're doing nature-based solutions on a massive scale, on a catchment scale, or it could be on a tiny scale Each individual person.
Speaker 2:If you're in your back garden, you can put in nature-based solutions. If you don't have a back garden and it's just like your little tenement flat. You can put in a window box and you can provide for insects with the plants that you put in there. Or if you have a downspout, put a stormwater planter under that downspout, which is basically a little mini rain garden right under that spout. So right now, if you don't have those on a regular building, we're all familiar with water that you know cascades off the side of the roof in just a sheet of water and it creates that little moat around your house as that water hits and like digs up the dirt or out of a gutter spout and then you have that just like a little tunnel of mud where that flood of water has come down, because you get so much at one time.
Speaker 2:But if, instead of having that water coming out of the downspout creating this flood of mud, you can put a stormwater planter under that so that the gutter water goes into or you don't call it a gutter, a drain pipe, yes, one of those you can put a stormwater planter underneath of that so the water that's cascading out of that waters the plants that are in the top of that stormwater planter.
Speaker 2:So you have beautiful greenery, lovely flowers, you're providing for insects, you're helping clean and cool the air, all the things that it can do. You don't have to water them because the storms are going to do the watering. And then underneath of the little planter, top is basically just a tank, a water butt to hold onto that water. So what you're doing when we have that flood of this incredible resource that we need but that we get too much of to handle at one time, you're holding back some of that water and you're giving it a place to be used, be filtered, provide for us in lots of ways and then slowly join the rest of the system and end up going into a drain or the sewer, but into a culvert, but not at the same time as all the water that's just flooding down the streets.
Speaker 3:Thanks, caitlin. I think you already covered this in your previous answer about stormwater planters. But obviously, being in Scotland where, as you say, it does rain quite a lot and people want to make the most use of that fresh water that lands on roofs or comes through the drain pipes, is there a difference between whether or not you should try and get a stormwater planter attached to your house or a water butt. That are often quite encouraged.
Speaker 2:Get a stormwater planter attached to your house or a water butt that are often quite encouraged. Ah, so actually, a stormwater planter is basically plants stuck on top of a water butt, so you're combining the two things together, you? It's. That's one of the great things about nature-based solutions. You don't have to choose either or um, and we tend to.
Speaker 2:We, being humans, we often make things difficult on ourselves. We like to think it's a huge problem, so it has to be a huge, expensive, difficult solution, and that's not always the case. It's just looking at each of these things we think of as as problems. You know, not having enough fresh water when we need it, having too much water when there's a storm, having it be really hot outside, having, you know, then having to think about the insects and, oh, this biodiversity crisis and all of that, all of the things that they're already handled and answered and addressed when you start repairing the broken connections in the ecosystem.
Speaker 2:So a water butt traps and holds water. Plants provide greenery, they soak up water, they provide for insects, all of that. So combining the two together and having a planter in the top part of a water butt means that the plants in the top are going to have all of those benefits the water that goes through it is going to be filtered by the roots and the soil, so you're also cleaning it, and then the extra water that comes through drains into the water butt that's underneath, like the little tray that you put under a potted plant when you water it, and it drains out and the water collects in the bottom. What you're doing with a stormwater planter is that, but on a larger scale. The plants use it, it drains out and it ends up in the water butt underneath yeah, it sounds like there's benefits to everybody.
Speaker 1:You know everybody and everything. Then by making these often small adaptations, you know it helps everybody. Um, and ultimately we've got to think kind of longer term as well, because the relationship between plants, animals, creatures and us must mean that any action we do take will have an effect on our interconnected ecosystem.
Speaker 2:Yes, and it's something we're also trying to look at at the garden. So we've been talking with you know, obviously we have botanists, we have have ecologists, horticulturalists, hydrologists from Harriet Watt. We also have entomologists we're working with in other departments, other partnerships. There's a PhD student at the garden right now that is studying the acoustics of bees in the garden and how they move around on the plants bees in the garden and how they move around on the plants and she's working with our horticulturists to move particular plants that that bee needs into. Well, so bees can regulate temperature to a degree, but also they're so small that it really doesn't make as much of a difference as is there sun on them or are they in shade, and so in the mornings it's often too cold for those bees to be in shade and if the plant they need to visit is in the shade they're out of luck. So the bee researcher is working with our horticulturalists and they found which plants the bees prefer and then our hort team is planting those plants in areas where you're going to have morning sun so that the bees have morning visit and like, stretch out the flowering and access time for that particular plant to relate to the bee, and then she's looking at what we have in the rain garden, helping us make changes there.
Speaker 2:So very easy things, like when you cut back your plants in the winter or you do spring cleaning, looking at not just the date on the calendar of oh it's this date, so it's spring cleaning time. It's more looking at temperature changes and looking at when the insects are emerging, when they're laying their eggs or when they're going into hibernation or whatever it is that they do all the different insects, timing human manipulation of your garden to when it works for those insects. Or when you cut back herbaceous material instead of cutting it all the way back to the ground, you cut it back so that you have some dead stems left over, which means you're providing habitat for cavity nesting bees. To be Very small changes for us, the humans that are doing that, or the look of our garden, but massive, massive changes for being able to provide for biodiversity and protecting that web of life that ends up being, you know, the meal that you're eating on your plate.
Speaker 1:We see it. We see the weather changes. You know, locally, globally, it's always on the news. I mean, it can be pretty grim at times let's be honest about it but we shouldn't really feel helpless or powerless, because we can all make changes, and I think that's what we're all trying to say here is we're not powerless, we can make changes and we can help ourselves as well as biodiversity. We just need to do these things. That's pretty much what we're saying, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yes, and it can seem daunting, but we are experiencing changes. Everyone is experiencing the changes as our climate is changing and it's just how can we adapt to that? And there is uncertainty to the changes that we're going to experience. But that's one of the great things about nature-based solutions. If, let's say, you have a particular plant that isn't performing as well in what you want it to do or that fails, you can pop out that plant and put in something else without digging up the entire garden. You're just continually, continually improving the function and all of the benefits of it.
Speaker 2:But if it's gray infrastructure, if it's pipes, you know, and they can handle a particular volume of water, and you find in a couple of years time that actually we need them to handle just 10 liters more a day, you're out of luck. That's a really, really expensive change. You can't just adapt that pipe to, you know, expand more. Or take your water tank that is rated to hold X amount of water and make a tiny adjustment that allows it to hold a little bit more water. It's a really, really expensive change. Or a building you know where you find the water that is coming down the slope of that building. If it were to be just a 10 degree change in the slope of the building, it would make a massive difference.
Speaker 2:There's not much you can do. That's an expensive change to all of the gray infrastructure. But when you use green infrastructure it's plants and it's soil, you know. You can go out with a shovel and you can make that 10 degree slope change. It has many, many more benefits and it's less expensive and it can be adapted to continuously improve. And we don't. We don't have to choose gray or green either and say like oh, we already have a gray city, so we're out of luck. You have to do maintenance and things do not last forever. So something like gray infrastructure when it breaks down or when it needs maintenance, that's an opportunity to see where you can retrofit, where you can add gray or where you can add green into the existing gray. Rather than having to make a massive change or pick one path or the other. We can combine them together as we move towards a better and better environment for humans, for business, for nature.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's brilliant. Thank you, caitlin, and I just wanted to ask you a question more about your own personal favourite kind of, I suppose, species. Do you have such a thing or a favourite plant that you like to work?
Speaker 2:with hazels and willows. They're ones that really like water. We've got a couple natives here. They're really fun to work with. I like how much they change throughout the season. As you get through all of those different things, there are a couple of plants that I just enjoy seeing, especially because you can tell from my accent I wasn't born in Scotland.
Speaker 2:I moved here from the United States about three years ago, where I was also an ecologist and what you see in the plant and insect and wildlife community is very different sometimes. And so something like Scotch broom. It's absolutely beautiful, it's supposed to be here in Scotland. I still get delighted every time I see it, even though I live here and it's everywhere. So I see it every single day. Because I could not be delighted by it in the States because we did have it, but it's an invasive species in the States it's just taken over hillsides and it's wreaking havoc. And it's not because it's a bad plant, it's just a ecosystem out of balance or something like garlic mustard Pretty little flowers smells fantastic, tastes, delicious. You're absolutely supposed to have it here.
Speaker 2:It's a host plant for a particular butterfly. They need it and that insect and that plant. They both have chemicals and as they've evolved together, those chemicals, like the butterfly, can handle the chemicals that the plant puts out and it's actually a good thing, necessary plant In the United States, especially in the East Coast. Garlic mustard is invasive and it's a population sink for a butterfly, one of our native butterflies, because the chemical signal that the butterfly gets from that plant it tricks it into thinking that this is its host plant and so it lays its eggs on it. But that butterfly has not adapted to the chemistry of this plant and so the plant kills the eggs of the butterfly, so that whole next generation gets wiped out. If the plant that's nearby for that butterfly is garlic mustard, so it's not native invasive, it's not bad plant, good plant, it's system out of balance. So I think a lot of my plant loves come from how they adapt to their environment and what role they play in their particular environment.
Speaker 2:And as an ecologist so I used to be I was a naturalist in the States. I was also a science communicator and you get into all the ins and outs of how the world is connected, which is what an ecologist is studying those connections. And if you're interested in connections and you start to dive into them more, you absolutely end up at fungus. There's no way you can't Connected to everything, and one of the coolest pieces of fungus is a lichen, which is a fungus that has created a symbiotic relationship with something that photosynthesizes. We call it a photobiont, so it's usually algae. It can be a cyanobacteria and the lichens that are cyanobacteria they do some really, really cool things, but the way that they work in their environment is just fascinating and they're connected on the tiniest little scale.
Speaker 2:So some of those things like if you understood the lichens in your environment, you could look at a forest and just by noticing, okay, it's got these six species. I can tell you about how much water, you know, is this a moist environment? Is it a dry environment? Is there high nitrogen in the area? If just by looking at the lichens you can tell environmental indicators. So it's all the tiny little connections of ecosystem. That's where I get a lot of my love. Particular plants is how they're working in their system. Particular plants is how they're working in their system. I just want to say lichens are not plants. I was talking about both there. Lichens are not plants, they are a fungus. Fungus is not plants and it's not an animal. It's the world of here. There be monsters, but that's the coolest world to explore.
Speaker 3:That's really great, caitlin. So you've given a lot of really great examples of what's happening in your work and your love for the world of monsters. But for any listeners who want to try and find small ways of making a difference in their own garden or their own life, do you have any top tips of things that people might be able to do in green spaces or in their own gardens? Because we're obviously not all urban planners who can do big policy changes, but people want to find ways of you know little things you can do to help benefit biodiversity and nature.
Speaker 2:If you have any top tips, Ah well, let's see Top tips for people. So looking at the environmental conditions you have in whatever the space is, and looking at ways to use what's already there to make some adjustments. So, if you've got flooded spaces, look at plants that are already growing in flooded spaces and shove them all into that area. Take the things they're already doing well and just make that work for you too. And looking at connections of everything. So don't cut everything back to ground level so that you're providing for overwintering space for insects really really big one. Leaving some leaf cover in an area really really big. A lot of things like to tunnel into the ground. They live in soil, having a bit of bare sandy areas in some places. That particular bees need that. That's where they're growing. That's where they're doing their thing.
Speaker 2:A lot of what's happening in the natural world is not visible to us. Of what's happening in the natural world is not visible to us, there's even flowers that they increase the sugar content of their nectar when they sense a bee's wings nearby. You know like they're basically like primping their dresses when the bee comes. So cool, but we can't see it happen. So we don't even know what's happening. We can't see what the bugs are doing under the ground or what the fungus is doing in the ground or what the roots of the plants are doing under the ground. So we don't know to to do something about it. But when we start thinking about those connections, then we know then we can do better and and for the, for the air. So that's not a, it's not visible but we're in it. That's one.
Speaker 2:We're having plants of differing heights is really really beneficial to our gardens and to the environment, but particularly to humans, because we are starting to get more.
Speaker 2:We're starting to get heat waves in the summer, which is not something the UK has historically dealt with, the kind of heat that we're experiencing now. Plants we know that they're producing oxygen, but one of the things that they do that we don't think about as often is evapotranspiration, which is where a lot of that water is getting sucked up and used by the plant, and then that energy action that the plant is doing actually cools. It has a cooling effect. And if you just have a tree and then like bare grass on the bottom, then all of that cooling effect, all the stuff that it's doing, is up in the canopy above you. But if you've got a tree, and then you've got small height shrubs and stuff underneath of that, and then you have herbaceous plants and herbs underneath of that and then something at ground level. If you've got greenery at multiple heights, then that evapotranspiration, that cooling effect, is happening in a larger space of the air, going to do a lot for people and help the environment at the same time.
Speaker 3:That's brilliant. Thank you so much, caitlin, and thank you for joining us today. Your passion and enthusiasm for this thing comes across really well and you've quite literally filled the title of our show that makes space for nature with all the connections and how we can try and find ways to get green infrastructure into our grey infrastructure and urban areas and the benefits of that. So thank you so much for coming on and, yeah, it sounds like we all need to plan more trips to the Royal Botanical Gardens to see what's going on.
Speaker 2:Please do and thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening. If you're enjoying Make Space for Nature, please follow it on your podcast app and leave a reviewer rating. We'd also love you to tell more people about the series. For more ways to connect with and help protect Scotland's natural world, go to naturescot.