Internet of Nature Podcast

Dr. Nadina Galle
  • 5.0 (9)
  • SCIENCE
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

How can we make our communities wilder, greener, healthier, and happier—and which technologies can help us along the way? Ecological engineer and National Geographic Explorer Dr. Nadina Galle—best-selling author of THE NATURE OF OUR CITIES and pioneer of the Internet of Nature®—shares stories of people using tech to bring the wild back into streets, schools, and homes. This is where the wild meets the wired.

  1. S6 Bonus Episode: “This Used to Be Concrete” — Lessons from One of London’s Most Unexpected Pocket Forests with Adrian Wong of SUGi

    12/28/2025

    S6 Bonus Episode: “This Used to Be Concrete” — Lessons from One of London’s Most Unexpected Pocket Forests with Adrian Wong of SUGi

    What happens when you plant a forest where nothing should grow? In this bonus, end-of-season episode, I’m joined by Adrian Wong of SUGi inside a dense pocket forest tucked into London’s Southbank Centre—surrounded by brutalist concrete, cultural landmarks, and constant city noise. Just two years ago, this space was solid concrete. Today, it’s six metres tall, alive with insects, birds, bats, and its own cooling microclimate. Recorded entirely on location, we talk about: how a 130 m² pocket forest transformed one of London’s hardest urban landscapesurban acupuncture and why small interventions can have outsized ecological impactthe Miyawaki method and forest succession at speedecoacoustics and what sound can tell us about biodiversity returningwhat this forest proves about nature’s ability to rebound when given space—above and below groundYou’ll hear drilling, footsteps, and the city all around us—because this forest doesn’t exist outside the city, but right in the middle of it. A reflective bonus episode to close out a beautiful Season 6 of the Internet of Nature Podcast. Follow SUGi’s work at @sugiproject on Instagram.

    19 min
  2. S6E10: “Mushrooms Aren’t a Death Sentence” — Fungumentals for Arborists Who Diagnose Before They Cut with Kyle McLoughlin of Ironwood Arboricultural

    12/14/2025

    S6E10: “Mushrooms Aren’t a Death Sentence” — Fungumentals for Arborists Who Diagnose Before They Cut with Kyle McLoughlin of Ironwood Arboricultural

    A mushroom on a tree isn’t a verdict — but in arboriculture, it’s often treated like one. In this episode, Nadina Galle talks with Kyle McLoughlin, a Board Certified Master Arborist and founder of Ironwood Arboricultural, from his two-acre, tree-filled property in St. George, Ontario. Together, they unpack why fungi should be foundational knowledge for anyone caring for trees — and why “there’s a mushroom, cut it down” is more often fear than good practice. They explore Armillaria and other misunderstood fungi, how decay actually affects tree risk and failure probability, and why arborists should think more like physicians: diagnosing before treating. The conversation also examines how many urban fungal problems are created not by nature, but by how we design, dig, drain, and pave our cities. Nadina and Kyle discuss the tools that could help shift tree care from reactive removals to proactive preservation — including pneumatic excavation, sonic tomography, and ground-penetrating radar — while returning to a core insight: better growing conditions matter more than any technology. This episode will resonate with arborists, urban foresters, city managers, and anyone involved in tree risk, urban tree preservation, or the future of urban nature. By the end, you’ll never look at a mushroom on a tree the same way again. Find Kyle and Ironwood Arboricultural at ironwoodarboricultural.ca and @ironwoodarboricultural on Instagram.

    51 min
  3. S6E9: Trees on Top — How Stress Tests, Substrate & Sensors Green “Impossible” Places with Daan Grasveld of The Urban Jungle Project

    12/07/2025

    S6E9: Trees on Top — How Stress Tests, Substrate & Sensors Green “Impossible” Places with Daan Grasveld of The Urban Jungle Project

    On a rooftop disguised as a public square outside Amsterdam’s public library, Nadina sits down with Daan Grasveld, co-founder of Urban Jungle Project, to explore how trees can thrive in the most unlikely urban places. What looks like a normal city square is actually the top of a parking garage—once barren, hot, and lifeless. Today, thanks to modular “jungle blocks,” it’s a cool, shaded micro-jungle alive with bees, birds, and people. Daan breaks down his “three S’s” — stress tests, substrate, and sensors — and explains how Urban Jungle Project lifts fully grown trees onto roofs, squares, balconies, and other “impossible” sites where traditional planting can’t go. We talk about green-as-a-service and why maintaining living systems is as important as installing them, the role of citizen science through QR-coded monitoring, and why the long-term goal is actually less technology through passive, resilient systems that let nature do the work. Together, we explore how modular forests cool cities, create instant biodiversity, and turn overlooked spaces into places people want to be. If you’ve ever looked at a roof, garage, or forgotten corner and wondered what it could become, this episode opens a new window into the future of urban nature.

    47 min
  4. S6E8: “National Park City” — What If the Whole City Were a Park? with Mark Cridge of National Park City Foundation

    11/30/2025

    S6E8: “National Park City” — What If the Whole City Were a Park? with Mark Cridge of National Park City Foundation

    In this episode, Nadina meets Mark Cridge just off Oxford Circus, inside a quiet, plant-filled HQ that serves as the visitor centre for something radical: a city that calls itself a park. London was the first place in the world to become a National Park City—but what does that actually mean when you’re standing in the middle of one of the busiest urban intersections on Earth? Mark shares the story behind the National Park City idea, from the map that rewired how London sees itself to the moment the city formally embraced a new identity as a living landscape. We talk about how over 50% of London is already green and blue space, why perception matters as much as policy, and how reframing a city can unlock entirely new conversations about health, belonging, biodiversity, and the future of urban life. At the heart of the movement are the community Rangers—ordinary people running extraordinary local projects, from tracing hidden fruit trees across neighbourhoods to turning allotments into spaces of healing, mental health support, and connection. Together, we explore how these small, human-scale interventions quietly reshape entire neighbourhoods from the ground up. We also dig into the deeper questions beneath the movement: the global collapse of human connection to nature, why teenagers so often lose that bond, what it means to raise nature-connected children in dense cities, and whether cities—rather than rainforests or remote wilderness—may now be the most important battleground for reconnection. This is an episode about maps, movements, rights to grow and swim, and what happens when a city stops treating nature as decoration and starts treating it as its backbone.

    55 min
  5. S6E7: “Urban Acupuncture” — How Pocket Forests Heal Our Cities with Adrian Wong of SUGi

    11/23/2025

    S6E7: “Urban Acupuncture” — How Pocket Forests Heal Our Cities with Adrian Wong of SUGi

    In this episode, Nadina sits down with Adrian Wong, SUGi’s UK Forest Lead, in the middle of the Forest of Thanks—a 10,000 m² Miyawaki forest planted in one of London’s most under-resourced boroughs. What was once a simple lawn is now a thriving woodland of oaks, elders, cherry trees, brambles, birds, and even resident foxes. Adrian explains the Miyawaki method, a powerful approach to creating fast-growing, self-sustaining native forests in urban areas by planting densely, rebuilding living soils, and embracing the natural “messiness” of ecological succession. With 31 SUGi forests across London, most no bigger than a tennis court, Adrian shares how tiny forests can improve biodiversity, clean the air, soften noise, cool neighborhoods, and help stitch ecological corridors back into the city. We also explore the human side of this work—from greening schoolyards next to airport runways, to kids planting their first-ever trees, to how daily access to nature boosts mental health and builds community resilience. Along the way, we discuss bioacoustics, iNaturalist, parakeets, fox dens, community gardening, and why messy forests may be the future of urban greening. This is an episode about what happens when you loosen your grip on a piece of land—and watch life flood back in.

    59 min
  6. S6E6: Microdosing Nature with Pieter van den Braak of N8RLND

    11/16/2025

    S6E6: Microdosing Nature with Pieter van den Braak of N8RLND

    Filmmaker and N8RLND founder Pieter van den Braak joins the Internet of Nature Podcast for a walk through Eindhoven’s Philips de Jonghpark—a city park dense enough to feel like a pocket forest. Pieter shares how, during a period of feeling unmoored in his early twenties, nature became the one place that offered clarity, calm, and a sense of belonging he couldn’t find anywhere else. We talk about the quiet drift into burnout, why awe can reset an overwhelmed mind, and how “microdosing nature” for five minutes a day can shift the tone of an entire morning. Pieter explains how this personal turning point led him to build N8RLND, a media platform designed to counter doomscroll culture with films and stories that reconnect people to the living world. Along the way, we explore why solitude in nature feels different from loneliness, how simple outdoor rituals can anchor mental health, and why, as Pieter puts it, “you don’t need to know anything about nature to feel part of it.”

    26 min
  7. S6E5: Don’t Count Trees; Count Crowns with Jan Willem de Groot of Terra Nostra

    11/09/2025

    S6E5: Don’t Count Trees; Count Crowns with Jan Willem de Groot of Terra Nostra

    Amsterdam’s trees haven’t “stopped growing” — they’ve stopped growing the way they should. Arborist-turned-CEO Jan Willem de Groot explains why maturity matters more than planting counts, why crown volume is the metric that actually reflects ecological function, and what happens when cities focus on keeping the trees they already rely on. We explore why large trees provide exponentially more shade, cooling, habitat, and carbon storage than saplings; how risk-averse maintenance has erased vital hollows and “imperfections” that wildlife depends on; and why the real frontier of the urban forest is private land, where most canopy sits and most removals happen. Jan Willem shares how Terra Nostra and greehill are using LiDAR-based smart inventories to create accurate, city-wide digital twins — not to replace arborists, but to free them to focus where their expertise matters most. We also talk about Ukraine’s lanes of heroes — memorial trees that carry names, grief, and continuity — and what they teach us about trees as living memory, not just infrastructure. Technology can help us see what is worth keeping. But meaning is what keeps it standing.

    53 min
  8. S6E4: The Garden That Listens — and Teaches: eDNA, Bioacoustics, and the Secrets of Urban Life with Dr. John Tweddle

    11/02/2025

    S6E4: The Garden That Listens — and Teaches: eDNA, Bioacoustics, and the Secrets of Urban Life with Dr. John Tweddle

    John Tweddle joins the Internet of Nature Podcast to share how the Natural History Museum in London turned five acres of ornamental lawn into a living laboratory for the future of urban nature. From eDNA that uncovers invisible life to bioacoustic microphones that map the city’s soundscape, John and his team are reimagining what a museum can be: not just a keeper of fossils, but a sensor-rich, public-facing experiment in coexistence. We talk about the 2,000 species found in a single acre of soil, why “data alone will not help nature recover,” and how machine learning and citizen science can work hand in hand to monitor—and mend—the living city. Along the way, we explore what it means to listen to landscapes, how five million visitors a year unknowingly become research participants, and why, as John says, “the Internet of Nature isn’t about more data, but connected data that works for nature.”

    55 min
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How can we make our communities wilder, greener, healthier, and happier—and which technologies can help us along the way? Ecological engineer and National Geographic Explorer Dr. Nadina Galle—best-selling author of THE NATURE OF OUR CITIES and pioneer of the Internet of Nature®—shares stories of people using tech to bring the wild back into streets, schools, and homes. This is where the wild meets the wired.

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