Apithanny Bourne takes readers through a year of changing seasons in a story about conservation and sustainable farming.
 
On a farm in an overlooked corner of Scotland, wildlife flourishes. Borderlands documents a year of changing seasons as Apithanny Bourne returns to the landscape that inspired her love for nature. Together with her family, she moves into a large tumbledown farmhouse, which has been abandoned for 5 years. There are birds in bedrooms and bats hanging in hallways ' the grounds are an untamed wilderness. Throughout, she deals with the loss of her former family home and the circumstances that led her to return. She discovers the secrets of a new garden and revisits childhood haunts, now with an ecologist's eye and as always, with her sketchbook. The paradise Apithanny fell in love with as a child after relocating to Scotland from a housing estate near Birmingham has experienced much change over the past 20 years.
 
Borderlands does not attempt to sugarcoat the drastic declines of British wildlife ' but it does aim to be a story of conservation optimism. It endeavours to demonstrate that preserving land for nature is completely possible with a bit of hard work, determination and a lot of passion.
 
This is a book about hope. After befriending a farm manager who is struggling to write a biodiversity action plan for a local property, they embark on a shared mission to rewild the land. A project that sees the creation of a species-rich meadow, installation of hedges, and the planting of native woodland. Towards the end, they open up the house and farm to the public for a bioblitz ' emphasising the importance of communicating nature to others. Whilst this is essentially a nature journal about conserving wildlife on a Scottish farm, there is a strong underlying thread emphasising the healing properties of the natural world. Apithanny is forced to return to her roots in the Borderlands during a difficult period of her life and in attempting to restore a fractured landscape, she restores herself.
 
The Borderlands are a geographic region through which people hurry on their way to visit more dramatic landscapes, which has lent a strong metaphor this work. It's a heartfelt message to embrace the seemingly unimportant and in-between phases of life, the times when we often grow and learn the most.