Simon Armitage: ‘Our pace of life is unhelpful to nature, it’s burning it up’

Simon Armitage at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, which have been restored after becoming overgrown when many of its gardeners were killed during the first world war. Photograph: Jim Wileman/The Guardian

His new poems celebrate the extraordinary homes of the creatures tucked away, usually out of sight, within the verdant nooks and crannies of the Lost Gardens of Heligan.

But during a stroll with the Guardian around the sub-tropical garden on the south coast of Cornwall, the poet laureate, Simon Armitage, explained how the pieces could also be taken as a plea for humans to slow down, think about the damage we are causing to the natural world and, hopefully, do something about it.