ONE YEAR 1000 PLANTS

Discover how Mike Dilger accomplished his lockdown-inspired botanical marathon

- MIKE DILGER

AT THE RISK of stating the obvious, it has been a difficult couple of years. Very few of us have remained unaffected by the consequences of Covid-19; many people have lost loved ones or livelihoods. Certainly, for most of 2020, my normal day-job of filming British wildlife for The One Show all but disappeared, and my daily wild fix became limited to short walks close to home.

Initially, with my wings clipped, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was missing out, but the simple act of taking my foot off the accelerator meant that I suddenly had time to appreciate the botanical wonders just beyond my doorstep. Lockdown, as it happened, came with the silver lining of reigniting my long-buried passion for plants, turning what was the worst of times into some of the very best of times.

In those early days of confinement, as I paused to identify and observe the forgetme-nots and violets I’d been blithely walking past for years, I was hit with a preposterous notion. Could I attempt to see 1,000 wild plants in just 12 months? Once the idea had taken root, I couldn’t stop it from growing. And so it was that 2021 became my big botanical year.