We have already alluded to a certain ecological richness in the fringe: the unimproved grasslands where people walk their dogs (see also Chapter 9), the woodlands which have become battlegrounds for paintball, the old airfields with many hectares of open space, and the derelict buildings of the Industrial Revolution (see Chapters 2 and 5) all have an unplanned wildness that suggests potential diversity in flora and fauna. Shoard (2000) has called the fringe a ‘refuge for wildlife driven out of an increasingly inhospitable countryside’. In Edgelands (Shoard, 2002) she suggests that the diversity of plant life often found in fringes is commonly a product of local conditions – the mix of soil types, the ‘deposition of builders’ rubble’, and horse grazing (ibid.: 125) – which often come together in a way that is ‘highly unlikely in nature’. At Molesey Heath in south-west London, Shoard identified a total of 311 species of flowering plants and ferns (ibid.: 125) but she adds that the Heath

is not unusual in the rich diversity of its plant and animal communities. Other interfacial wildlife hotspots include the land around Beddington Sewage Works near Croydon, which is one of the top bird watching sites in southeast England, while all five species of Grebe occurring in Britain from the familiar great-crested to the rarely seen red-necked have been recorded at Stonar Lake on the edge of the small town of Sandwich in Kent.