I did my PhD under the supervision of Tony Bradshaw, a truly remarkable (and delightful) man who bridged the pure/applied divide in science with enthusiasm and aplomb (Fitter, 2010). He was an evolutionary ecologist who wrote an immensely influential review on phenotypic plasticity (Bradshaw, 1965), at a time when the subject was viewed as being in the province of taxonomists rather than evolutionary biologists. His early work on the evolution of resistance to heavy metals in grasses (e.g. Gregory and Bradshaw, 1965) – still one of the best demonstrations of evolution in action, even if largely ignored because the organisms in question are uncharismatic – led directly to his major contributions to the scientific approach to the reclamation of derelict land. He took me on to work on reclaiming old coal tips in the Lancashire coalfield, north-west England, which already by the late 1960s was largely abandoned.