The Bumblebee Flies Anyway

A memoir of love, loss and muddy hands

By: Kate Bradbury

Narrated by: Kate Bradbury

Bloomsbury presents The Bumblebee Flies Anyway, written and read by Kate Bradbury

'Wonderfully intense and honest - a poignant manual of how to grow hope against the odds.' Chris Packham

Finding herself in a new home in Brighton, Kate Bradbury sets about transforming her decked, barren backyard into a beautiful wildlife garden. She documents the unbuttoning of the earth and the rebirth of the garden, the rewilding of a tiny urban space. On her own she unscrews, saws and hammers the decking away, she clears the builders' rubble and rubbish beneath it, and she digs and enriches the soil, gradually planting it up with plants she knows will attract wildlife. She erects bird boxes and bee hotels, hangs feeders and grows nectar- and pollen-rich plants, and slowly brings life back to the garden.

But while she's doing this Kate's neighbours continue to pave and deck their gardens locking them away, the wildlife she tries to save is further threatened, and she feels she's fighting an uphill battle. Is there any point in gardening for wildlife when everyone else is drowning the land in poison and cement?

Sadly, events take Kate away from her garden, and she finds herself back in Birmingham where she grew up, travelling the roads she used to race down on her bike in the 80s, thinking of the gardens and wildlife she loved, witnessing more land lost beneath paving stones. If the dead could return, what would they say about the land we have taken, the ancient routes we have carved up, the wildlife we have lost?

©2025 Kate Bradbury (P)2025 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Critic reviews

'A moving, unpretentious account of starting again.' (Patrick Barkham)

'A truly inspiring account of transformation, The Bumblebee Flies Anyway made me simultaneously want to read on to the final page, and rush out to my garden.' (Melissa Harrison)

'Bradbury makes a passionate plea for us all to follow her example - to ditch the decking and fill our own outside spaces, however small, with plants.' (Jane Shilling)