Ellen Miles
Ellen is a public speaker, activist and guerrilla gardener who founded Nature is a Human Right, the campaign to make access to green space a universal right. She also edited the book Nature is a Human Right: Why We're Fighting For Green in a Grey World (DK 2022) and founded Dream Green, the social enterprise that empowers people to become guerrilla gardeners.
Describe the nature around you at this moment?
Blurry. I’m on a train galloping through Tottenham. The nature on the train – the people – wear weekday evening weariness. One man is looking out the window.
How would you describe your nature connection?
I’m trying to be a better daughter to nature. For a long time, our relationship was very one sided – nature did all the giving.
Part of that is to pay better attention. The more I learn about nature, the more I fall more in love with “it”. And with that expansion, grow my reserves of energy and motivation to restore our dying goddess to her full health.
Where do you feel most at ease?
In my parents’ garden, by the Crouch river in Essex. Far, far away from the messengers I often want to shoot: social media and emails.
What is your best vision for the future?
A future in which social and environmental factors hold as much significance in policy and business as financial profit does today.
Community-led cities, where every neighbourhood is a biodiverse ecosystem, thronging with plants and wildlife, and fresh, nutritious, organic food is affordable and accessible to everyone.
Is there anything you’re curious about right now?
How we can shift society out of the individualist zeitgeist, and wake politicians and CEOs up to the realities of the ecological multi-crisis.
What’s your top tip?
Become a guerrilla rewilder. We’re constantly told that regular people don’t have the knowledge or skills to protect and support biodiversity, but there’s a wealth of ability and potential out there. If you’re unsure of where to start, sowing pollinator-friendly native wildflowers is a no brainer.
What is one thing we should all do, every day?
Be kind.
What inspires you every day?
Brave people who are putting themselves out there to challenge the petro-patriarchal status quo. Whatever their cause… climate, trans rights, women’s reproductive autonomy, fair housing, food sovereignty. Even when (especially when) the progress is slow and incremental.
What are you reading, watching or listening to?
The Uses of Disorder: Personal Identity and City Life by Richard Sennett
What question would you like to ask a future guest of #TheNatureKind?
Are nature connection and digital technology fundamentally at odds with one another?
Could you suggest someone else or other organisations you admire that we could approach for #TheNatureKind series
@nowadaysonearth and @georgiesmason
You can find out more about Ellen on her Instagram, Dream Green and Nature is a Human Right pages.