It's a truism that London never ceases to surprise. But still. Having lived in the same area for ten years, I came across a nature reserve I never even knew existed - a mere 15 minutes stroll from my doorstep! Mind you, it has only been open to the public for about two years, and only on limited days. That it is open at all now is thanks to a project called Phytology and it was the latter that brought me there.

Someone I'd met (thanks Leila!) had told me: "Google 'phytology' and 'Bethnal Green'." I did. And then I went last weekend to see for myself. It was late afternoon and it had been raining heavily for most of the day. But now the sun peeped out behind clouds and the air was warm and freshly washed and full of steam (or should that be "vapour"?). Everything was drenched in that smell of lush vegetation, moist soil and other heady scents of early summer, most notably elderflower.

The site of the nature reserve is well hidden in a bland and non-descript housing estate. I'd walked the streets nearby many a times without once suspecting there'd be an urban wilderness so close. Apparently, this "invisibility" is deliberate. High metal fences surround the plot, erected in the early 1980s by the local council to prevent fly-tipping. And then there is an opening in the fence, a gate, and a sign-board inviting you in. I followed it and suddenly, like stepping through the wardrobe into Narnia, I was in a different world.

Narrow paths snake through a gloriously overgrown plot, trees and shrubs close over you and shut out the rest of the world. A clearing, furnished with bits of tree trunks: the "amphitheatre". On you sneak, ducking the branches that at the lightest of touches are ready to soak you with a shower of still-there droplets. Suddenly a female voice out of nowhere, singing what sounds like an Irish folk tune to me. Stopping in my tracks I look around and detect a little black box strung among the trees, a speaker - the song triggered by my motion.

I was "warned": online I'd read about the sound installation, an art project exploring the cultural heritage of this particular place. Up until industrialisation arrived, the area consisted of fields, meadows and market gardens. In the early part of the 19th century, urban poverty took over.

The next "stop" on the sound installation is about war, a poetic male voice talking about the experience of utter destruction. From 1846 on the site of the nature reserve was that of a church, St. Jude's, until it was bombed in World War II. Beyond rebuilding, and perhaps due to a lack of the means for it, nature took over. Decades later, locals recognized its value as a new sanctuary in its own right, cleared the ruins and campaigned for it to be protected.

As I stood and listened, sun streamed through the green, drops glistened everywhere, birds sang, a red robin sat close and the bells of a nearby church started to ring. It felt almost clerical or spiritual, for want of a better word.

On I went, passing fungi, piles of brushwood and more art works. Street Artist Lucy McLauchlan has created what is called Places to Dwell that May Never Have Been Seen. In essence, these are found materials, waste if you want, fashioned into sculptures and painted on in Lucy's distinct style that are to double up as a home for various wildlife. (I loved the idea, but I did wonder if some of the more intelligent wildlife, such as birds, might be put off using a nest box that looked like e.g. a long-nosed face - perhaps they'd object to "big eyes staring" every time they wanted to enter?)

The last of the sound installations I listened to eventually created the link to the next part: Something akin to a woman's prayer or invocation about delayed birth, in the spirit of old folk traditions. This is apt because the Phytology project came into existence when its initiator Michael Smythe looked for a place to create a medicinal field containing plants used in herbalism. "Phytology" is an old word meaning "botany" and the aim was to grow common plants, often regarded as weeds, that nonetheless have been used to heal for centuries, another term for the latter being "phytotherapy".

32 species have been sown or planted in one area of the nature reserve, among them comfrey (Symphytum officinale), common nettle (Urtica dioica), dandelion (Taraxacum officinale), greater burdock (Arctium lappa), marsh mallow (Althaea officinalis), ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolata), shepherd's purse (Capsella bursa-pastoris) and yarrow (Achillea millefolium). Now they are established, everyone is invited to come on opening days (Saturdays from 11am to 6pm) and harvest them for their own use, with the Phytology team on hand to educate and advise and to show how to brew teas or make lotions. There is a hut containing a library on the subject which you are welcome to explore, or you may be offered to sample some of the infusions the gardeners have mixed.

When I ambled around, I was approached very friendly by a man who turned out to be Michael, asking me whether I had been here before, wanted information or help and then encouraging me to pick from the plants according to my own needs or desires. A young woman had gathered a lovely bunch that looked more like a wildflower bouquet than herbs destined for use as DIY apothecary stock. It's easy to forget just how beautiful "medicine" can be.

Foraging and herbal remedies were a normal part of my childhood. We picked fungi and all sorts of berries regularly. This was mainly for culinary purposes, but I also remember being given juice from sea buckthorn for the vitamin C it contains, "to ward off colds". For the same reason, we'd sip tea with elderberry juice or have elderberry soup in winter. I remember young stinging nettles cooked and eaten like spinach, and plantain (Plantago major) being applied on scratches, often much readier to hand than a sticking plaster. There are plenty of other examples.

Likewise, it is commonplace in Germany to buy dried medicinal herbs - readily packaged these days - in an apothecary or sometimes at markets. My "medicinal cabinet" used to include elderflower, lime-blossoms and the flowers of camomile, cowslip, coltsfoot, common mallow, great mullein, lavender and pot marigolds, as well as hop cones, fennel seeds, lemon balm, common sage, thyme, eucalyptus, hyssop, lady's mantle, hairy willow-herb and bearberry leaves amongst others. And that's not even counting the  branded over-the-counter herbal remedies you can buy: ointments, balms, tinctures, extracts, pills... From upset stomachs to insomnia, these are the go-to-remedies for any minor illness. A GP might well prescribe say a particular, branded, extract from thyme and cowslip roots for your cough.

On coming to Britain, I was most surprise to find it wasn't the same here, too. Chemists stock next to no herbal remedies, products with Echinacea perhaps being the exception to the rule. Neither have I ever been prescribed one, not even for the children. When I once asked a GP why, the answer quite shocked me: "We don't believe in it!", I was told. Well - until comparatively recently in human history, herbal remedies were the only medication that mankind ever had. And what was pharmaceutical chemistry based on to start with?

While I'm sure you can buy dried medicinal herbs in Britain, so far I've never come across them - safe for those also used in the kitchen. (I didn't look online though, I must admit.) That's why my interest was piqued considerably when I first learned about the Phytology project and its medicinal field.

But there is so much else to this project, a lot of which doesn't meet the eye immediately. As they describe themselves on their website: Phytology is an artist and community led project exploring the use, value, resilience and function of wilderness within urban ecosystems. Launched at Bethnal Green Nature Reserve in 2014, Phytology is part physic garden; part cultural institute; part urban wilderness; and a platform for collaboration between artist, musicians, writers and a wide variety of community groups.

I will have to come back to it with another post, I think. For now, here are a few pictures of the wildlife most visible in the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve last weekend: Hard to navigate as they were everywhere, thanks to the rain. Unlike in my own garden where inevitably they pose a threat to my beloved and cosseted green treasures, over there I could wholeheartedly enjoy them and admire their patterns and acrobatics.

Once again a post about painted flowers. Unlike the art of Emily Burningham which I wrote about in my last post, or those currently on display at the Royal Academy, the paintings in question here are botanical art in the strictest sense: flower painting with a scientific approach. Recently opened at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery in Kew Gardens is "Brazil, a powerhouse of plants. Margaret Mee - pioneering artist and her legacy".

Margaret Mee, for those who have not come across her name before, was an Englishwoman who – in 1952, at the age of forty-three – moved to Brazil and only there found her true calling as a botanical artist. Fascinated by the flora of her adopted country, over the next thirty years she went on fifteen expeditions into Amazonia. These were self-arranged, and often she was accompanied by no-one but native Indian guides.

There in the wilderness Mee would search for and collect plants and sketch them at great detail in situ. If possible, she'd then bring them back to Rio, to be grown on in her own garden or that of her close friend, the famous landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx. Back home, she'd also compose and work on her paintings from the many field sketches she had made. These paintings instantly met with great acclaim from botanists and lovers of botanical art.

However, Margaret Mee is famed not only for her outstanding art but because she became one of the first people to draw attention to the wholesale destruction of the Amazonian rainforest. Extremely concerned by what she saw, she publicly and very outspokenly campaigned for it to stop. This earned her so much affection and respect that apparently she had a samba school named after her in the Rio Carnival, with three thousand eco-friendly dancers parading to a Margaret Mee theme song – the ultimate honour in Brazil!

This celebration of a remarkable woman probably happened after she died in 1988. I myself have been enthralled by her work and life since I first came across it in 2004 via the book Margaret Mee's Amazon. Diaries of an Artist Explorer. It beggars belief what this by all accounts petit, shy and almost frail woman took in her stride: not just the physical hardships of journeys at the most basic levels of comfort, but malaria, hepatitis, tropical fevers and several near-drownings. Oh, and a direct threat to her life by drunk, belligerent gold prospectors! Luckily, she’d also carry a small revolver amongst her brushes and paint pots…

All the more tragic then, that she would eventually be killed in a car accident on a British motorway! It is tempting to conclude that British roads are more dangerous than the Amazon jungle… But back to the exhibition at Kew. I had not come across her original paintings before, only reproductions in books. They are – quite simply – magnificent.

What I found particularly touching, however, are the little marks left by her pencil: painted over, sometimes apparently erased but not quite, they talk of changes she made on the go - from her first lay-in to the finished painting. You only see them at close quarters and you won’t notice them in quite the same way in any printed reproduction. For instance, in her picture of Urospatha sagittifolia (see below) Mee changed the picture from including an inflorescence on the far right to only its stalk, realizing that the overall composition would gain. So she erased the top bit – you can see this in the original.

To me, those “blemishes” are what make these paintings “human” and approachable. In most reproductions they are so immaculate, it’s hard to believe a real human being, some actual person created them. Which, by the way, I find true for most of botanical art: it’s so perfect, so blemish free, every last mark and smudge carefully removed, I find it sterile in a very strange way, hard to grasp this art is “hand-made”. But here you can see someone painted these amazing pictures by hand! And it makes you realize all the more the whole scope of Mee’s artistic ability.

Also, her colours have a vibrancy, depth and saturation that I find lacking in the work of many other botanical artists. All too often, colours in botanical paintings are pale, translucent, almost anaemic and without any sparkle – a ghost of a plant. Mee’s colours sing with joy and life. But that may be to do with her having worked in gouache rather than the more common water colours.

I was intrigued and inwardly smiling to discover that her first painting in the Amazon was of a Cannonball tree (Couroupita guianensis). This plant – or rather its flowers and unusual fruit which give it its common name – stole my heart on my first ever taste of the tropics in Singapore so many years ago. The unusual, fleshy blooms are pollinated by bats, though insects will also visit. It is one of those species which you can only meet in the tropics: a huge cauliflorous tree, i.e. flowering from its trunk, you can’t grow it properly in our climes, not even with the help of a greenhouse or conservatory.

But the paintings Margaret Mee perhaps is most famous for are also the ones I love best by far. Increasingly concerned by the destruction of the rainforest she witnessed, she wanted to show people in her paintings that plants do not exist in isolation. That there is a whole ecosystem behind which we cannot afford to lose but should cherish and protect. So to raise this awareness, she strayed from the traditional path of botanical art which demands a plain white background to aid scientific identification of a plant.

Instead, in some pictures she would paint a particular species in the foreground, detailed as usual, but include a whole rainforest setting as the backdrop. Thus, she dramatically altered the paintings’ mood. You no longer see just an orchid, or a bromeliad or a flowering branch – you are transported into the green gloom and eternal twilight of the jungle, a magic world, realm of fables and fairy tales or the green hell of the tropics, depending on your disposition. It was the cover picture of a Gustavia (see below) which drew me to her Diaries in the first place.

I love forests and woods of any kind, they are my favourites – whether European woodland or temperate or tropical rainforest. And years ago, before we had children, my man and I spent a little time travelling Ecuador. There, we also went to the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, near the border with Colombia. Whilst not on the banks of the Amazon itself, it is part of Amazonia. I remember the flooded rainforest, trees half submerged or growing out of the water, laden with bromeliads, orchids and other epiphytes. Swampy tracks. Access to many parts only by boat. So Mee’s pictures resonate on that front, too: they bring back precious memories.
(Speaking of Ecuador, I loved the cloud forest even better! I took so many slide photographs... Maybe I’ll write a post about Ecuador one day, but currently I do not have the equipment to digitalize those slides.)

Anyway. Even though I have dwelled on Margaret Mee for so long, hers are not the only botanical paintings currently on show at the Shirely Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art in Kew! There are those of early explorers to Brazil and those of established contemporary Brazilian botanical artists, most of them inspired by Mee, sometimes hung in direct comparison with her paintings of the same plant. And finally there are those of scholarship students on the Margaret Mee Fellowship Programme: in her honour, one Brazilian botanical artist per year gets a grant to spent five months at Kew to be tutored by Kew’s own resident botanical artists.
The exhibition is on until the 29th of August. While perhaps not such a blockbuster as the Royal Academy's Monet to Matisse show, it sure is more than worth a visit.