Putting down roots

For Earth Day on 22 April, we’re digging deep into the housing crisis and how it has made access to green spaces a social justice issue. While some of us are lucky enough to have lawns to mow this spring, many more are locked out of the wellbeing benefits that being close to nature brings. So we spoke to a YouTuber who has turned growing indoor houseplants into an art – and a career, and caught up with the 77-year-old Tiktoker whose enormous veg got him into Vogue magazine. There’s also a look at the magical healing powers of our humble wildflowers, and a tour of the urban jungle that peeps out from the pavement cracks beneath our feet. And we report on how the UK’s first geothermal electricity plant is potentially bringing mining back to Cornwall in the form of lithium extraction.

Also inside

• Playing Aunt Lydia was life-changing for The Testaments star Ann Dowd. But it took a long time to get there, as she recalls in her Letter to my Younger Self
• Ex-miners are on strike again. Photographer and Big Issue Changemaker Marc Davenant met them on the picket line at the National Coal Mining Museum
• Nicola Coughlan and Lydia West talk mental health ahead of their second season of Big Mood
• The terrifying things you hear as a probation officer
• Why the new Michael Jackson biopic is unlikely to give us the full picture
• How Robin Ince got roped in to break records at the world’s biggest book swap
• And Canterbury vendor Mark Stevenson is looking forward to celebrating his 60th in May

And much more

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