In this episode of Invisible Ecology, I chat with David Bavin, an interdisciplinary conservation scientist, exploring the Welsh concept of gofal—a word that reaches beyond “care” to embrace stewardship, responsibility, attention and our relationship with the land and the living world.

Together we reflect on peatlands, woodlands, community, time and the quiet work of looking after places that, in turn, look after us. Our conversation wanders through climate change and future generations, asking not only how we care for landscapes, but how landscapes have always cared for us and we can ensure more care.

Perhaps care is one of the great invisible ecologies—woven through everyday acts of kindness, patience and stewardship that often go unnoticed, yet quietly sustain both people and place.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. What does gofal mean to you? Is there a person, a place or a landscape that has held you in care? Leave a comment below—I always enjoy reading your reflections and hearing your own stories.

Thank you for listening.

Heledd

Links: https://www.cambrianwildwood.org/

music live at Cambrian Wildwood open day: https://cynefinmusic.wales/en/home-page

From birdsong and bees to meadows, trees and pond life, this episode explores the countless living relationships that surround and sustain us. Drawing on my work with the Machynlleth Community Gardens, MUST project, community gardens, medicinal meadows and a film made for the NHS during the pandemic, I reflect on what happens when we stop seeing ourselves as separate from nature and begin to recognise ourselves as one voice within a much larger chorus.

Perhaps belonging isn’t about standing at the centre.

Perhaps it begins when we discover our own note within the song.

I’d love to hear your thoughts. What sounds, places or living communities help you feel most connected to the world around you? Leave a comment below—I always enjoy reading your reflections.

Thank you for listening.

You can watch the film I made in the Community gardens below.

Heledd

From sourdough starters and sauerkraut to compost heaps and woodland soils, fermentation reminds us that life is constantly transforming. Things don’t simply disappear. They change. They become part of something new.

In this episode of Invisible Ecology, I reflect on the unseen communities of yeasts, bacteria and fungi that quietly sustain life beneath our feet and within our kitchens. Fermentation invites us to think differently about decay—not as failure or loss, but as renewal, resilience and relationship.

What if some of the most important work in the world happens out of sight?

Perhaps transformation, like ecology itself, is often invisible.

I’d love to hear your own thoughts, memories or stories inspired by this episode. Have you inherited a family recipe, baked with a sourdough starter, tended a compost heap, or simply noticed the quiet transformations happening around you?

Please leave a comment below or share this episode with someone who might enjoy listening

What does salt preserve?

A swim in the sea at Aberbach, in Pembrokeshire, becomes the starting point for an exploration of one of the most ordinary – and extraordinary – substances in our lives.

Salt seasons food, heals wounds, preserves harvests and carries memories. It is present in our tears, our sweat and the sea itself. Through stories of recipes, coastlines, seaweed, walking and the tides, this episode reflects on what we choose to keep, what we allow to fade, and the invisible relationships that sustain both culture and landscape.

Drawing on the Welsh word heli – the traditional gathering of sea salt – this episode asks a simple question:

What is worth preserving?

Because perhaps preservation isn’t only about food.

Perhaps it’s also about language, memory, belonging and the quiet practice of paying attention.

I’d love to hear your own thoughts, memories or stories inspired by this episode. Please feel free to leave a comment or share it with someone who might enjoy listening.

You can listen and watch a music video I made inspired by rocks and the beach at Aberbach.

What does it really mean to be nourished?

In this episode of Invisible Ecology, I explore the Welsh word maeth—a word that reaches beyond food towards care, growth and the relationships that sustain life.

Travelling through markets, farms and gardens in the Dyfi Valley, I reflect on community food projects, growers, generational farming and the invisible networks that make every meal possible. From the hum of bees and the stories exchanged between market stalls, to the place names Cwm Llinau (Flax Valley) and Cwm Cywarch (Hemp Valley), the landscape itself becomes a living archive of nourishment.

Along the way, I wonder whether food is ever simply food.

Or whether every loaf of bread, every apple, every bowl of soup carries with it the work of soil, weather, pollinators, memory and human care.

Perhaps maeth is not only about what feeds us.

Perhaps it is about how we nourish one another—and the places we call home.

Thank you for listening.

— Heledd Wyn

A choir rehearses. Football training finishes. Someone celebrates a birthday. Someone prepares a meal. Someone is washing cups after a community meeting. Someone is arriving. Someone else is leaving.

In this episode of Invisible Ecology, I explore the unseen relationships that hold a community together. Through the sounds of laughter, applause, conversation and shared spaces, I ask what makes a healthy cultural ecology.

Perhaps belonging isn’t something we possess.

Perhaps it’s something we participate in.

Perhaps community isn’t built through sameness, but through countless paths crossing, again and again.

Thank you for listening.

— Heledd Wyn

In this episode, a childhood fascination with patterns leads to a conversation about hives, collective intelligence, participation and community. Through reflections on bees, choirs and the town of Machynlleth, The Hive Pattern explores the invisible relationships that make both ecological and cultural life possible. Watch the film here.

What does it mean to belong?

In this episode of Invisible Ecology, I explore the Welsh concept of perthyn — belonging — through music, memory, family and community.

From choir rehearsals in Machynlleth to lullabies sung across generations, from farmyards in Pennal to songs shared around kitchen tables, this episode reflects on the relationships that help us feel connected to people and place.

Along the way, I consider culture not as something that exists only in festivals, performances or institutions, but as a living ecology of care, participation and shared experience.

Through stories, songs and personal reflections, Perthyn asks how belonging is created, sustained and passed from one generation to the next.

Perhaps home is not simply where we live.

Perhaps home is what we continue to care for.

Beginning on a train platform in Machynlleth and travelling towards the coast, this episode explores the Japanese concept of Ma—a word often translated as “the space between”, but whose meaning reaches far beyond simple emptiness.

Through childhood memories of train journeys with a beloved relative, observations from the carriage window and reflections on ecology, creativity and community, Heledd considers how pauses, transitions and thresholds shape the way we understand the world.

Along the way, the episode explores the role of silence in music, the spaces between images in film, the ecological richness of estuaries and edges, and a family story that reveals how memory and identity can sometimes live quietly between generations.

Part travelogue, part meditation and part creative enquiry, Ma invites listeners to slow down and consider the often-overlooked spaces where meaning emerges.

Moving between geology and family stories, ancient Welsh knowledge and contemporary questions of regeneration, this episode reflects on the visible and invisible forces that shape both places and people. Along the way, we encounter mosses and lichens through a macro lens, traces of forgotten farms on historic tithe maps, the legacy of the Physicians of Myddfai, and the enduring relationships between land, culture and care.

From Cwm Alys and Cadair Idris to farming, stewardship and the future of Welsh landscapes, Graig asks a simple but profound question:

What knowledge, stories and responsibilities do we choose to carry forward?

Themes: landscape, geology, memory, family history, Welsh culture, Meddygon Myddfai, regeneration, farming, stewardship, observation, place-based knowledge and belonging. #stone #memory #landscape #culture

In this episode of Invisible Ecology, Heledd reflects on observation as a creative and ecological practice. Through walks in the Celtic rainforest, photography with a macro lens, sketching, field notes and everyday encounters with landscape, she explores how attention reveals hidden relationships between people, place and the more-than-human world.

Moving between the microscopic and the expansive, the episode considers intuition, pattern, interconnection and the ways ideas seem to emerge from beneath the surface before taking shape in the world around us. Drawing on concepts including Gaia, relational thinking, cultural ecology and the Japanese notion of Ma—the space between—Changing the Lens asks what becomes visible when we slow down and look more closely.

Part meditation, part field note, and part creative enquiry, this episode explores how observation can become a form of learning, replenishment and belonging.

From lichen on stone to the movement of weather systems, from instinct to imagination, this episode invites listeners to consider how changing the lens can reveal the invisible ecologies that connect us all.

Themes: observation, macro photography, Celtic rainforest, creativity, culture, Gaia, ecology, intuition, interconnection, landscape, belonging, Ma, attention and the invisible patterns that shape our lives. #rainforest #landscape #Ma

It moves between essay, field recording and reflective journal — tracing the subtle relationships between people, landscapes, language, sound and attention.

At its centre is a simple question: what actually holds a culture and community together?

Through voice, listening and sensory observation, the series explores what might be called an invisible ecology — the often-unseen structures of care, imagination, ritual, belonging and interdependence that sustain everyday life.

Episodes unfold as journeys of attention rather than fixed arguments. They move through towns, coastlines, kitchens, archives and walking paths, following the textures of experience that are often overlooked: weather, conversation, food, silence, memory, and the atmospheres of place.

This is not a podcast of answers, but of attention.

A space for listening more carefully to the world already here.