Maps, satellites and the science of place From the ground, a garden can feel a bit like an island. A fence on every side, a gate, a boundary you mow up to and no further. You tend your patch, and the world beyond the hedge is somebody else's business. But if you see it from above, the way a swift sees it, or a satellite, or an ecologist bent over a screen, the fences dissolve. Your garden is no longer an island at all. It is one green cell in a vast, breathing tissue of garde