Note from the editor
Attitudes to native wildlife and wild flowers in the garden have changed markedly over the last 150 years. Although the towering figure, William Robinson, was an enthusiastic advocate of ‘wild gardening’ from the 1870s onwards, His advice mainly fell upon deaf ears, since gardeners were seduced by the exotic riches of other countries and were often dismissive of their own flora. It was not until the 1980s that the grievous and inexorable loss of natural habitats, which has occurred since the Second World War, and the effect this has had on both native flora and fauna, were brought starkly home to us by ecologists, and the wildflower, wildlife-friendly garden began to be widely advocated. Before that time, it is hard to imagine a big garden being made largely with native plants, as is the case with Julie Wise’s in Hertfordshire. And it was not until the 1990s that New Naturalism began to have such an impact on the thinking of ecologically minded professional gardeners like Keith Wiley.
The process was promoted by the sterling scientific research undertaken by zoologist Jennifer Owen, who minutely examined the inhabitants of her Leicester garden for 30 years, and greatly influenced a group of forward-thinking plant scientists and landscape technologists working at Sheffield University, in particular Ken Thompson, James Hitchmough and Nigel Dunnett. These men were responsible for helping to change common attitudes on wildlife gardening and sustainability by their work on pioneering urban meadows as well as green roofs. Articles by these scientists–also able writers–have been prominent in The Garden, which has always been keen to inform gardeners about the non-vegetable inhabitants of their gardens–beneficial and otherwise. The result has been that RHS members are now both more likely to include wild flowers and habitats in their gardens, and to understand better how wildlife, especially important insects like bees, operate. I have a personal interest here: my husband keeps honeybees, which has had a profound effect on my choice of plants, and we leave a large area of rough grass to suit the nesting habits of bumblebees.
But there is still a way to go. If Kevin McCloud is to be believed, we should really think in terms of tearing down the boundaries between our gardens to give wildlife the best chance. I cannot see it happening soon but you never know.
URSULA BUCHAN, editor
Ecology Begins at Home (part 1)
It is a familiar scene. You are being shown round their garden, pausing occasionally to murmur your appreciation of this choice shrub or that artful piece of sculpture, when you come upon a corner that appears to consist largely of tall grass, nettles and brambles. Your guide, with a light laugh, describes this as ‘the wildlife garden’, and you both quickly avert your eyes and move on to something less distressing. ‘The wildlife garden’ is a superficially appealing idea; after all, other parts of the garden have their specific uses (patio, veg plot, rockery and so on), so why not have a ghetto for wildlife?
“Why is all this wildlife at home in an ordinary suburban garden?”
And there probably is plenty of wildlife in there too–indeed the idea of ‘wildlife garden as wilderness’ has been a stock in trade of cartoonists for years. One of my favourites has two people looking at the uppermost extremities of a rhino projecting from some tall grass, one of them remarking, ‘My, that’s some wildlife garden’. The concept of ‘wildlife garden as wilderness’ also has the obvious attraction for many of requiring little actual gardening.
But does this mean there is little or no wildlife in the rest of the ‘real’ garden–the bit designed to look good and do what people want? It is worth considering ecologist Jennifer Owen’s garden in Leicester, the only suburban domestic garden in Britain for which we have anything even approaching a complete wildlife inventory. For more than 15 years, Jennifer’s garden was home, at least part of the time, to somewhere in excess of 8,000 species of insects. We do not know exactly how many because assembling a team of naturalists with the combined ability to identify everything living in the average garden would be almost impossible. But we do know, because she counted them, that her garden was host to around a third of Britain’s large moths, butterflies, hoverflies, lacewings and ladybirds.
Jennifer’s garden is really average. It is not unusually large (740sq m/7,970sq ft). It has a lawn, small pond, glasshouse, vegetable plot, fruit bushes, herbaceous borders, trees and shrubs. If it were lined up in an identity parade, along with my garden and another six randomly chosen suburban gardens, you would be hard put to pick it out as unusual. Perhaps its chief feature is that it is not particularly tidy. But I suspect–among Britain’s 16 million gardens, many of whose owners are ‘gardeners’ by default rather than inclination–that makes it even more average.
So what is going on? Why is all this wildlife at home in an ordinary suburban garden? The fact is that gardens are just another habitat; wildlife does not care whether it lives in a ‘garden’, ‘park’ or other human-defined piece of land. In comparison with most natural landscapes, gardens are both intensively managed and hyper-fertile. This suits many animals, not least because there is usually plenty to eat, and a huge variety both of species and sizes of plants in a small space–far more than in any natural habitat.
On the other hand, undisturbed living space tends to be at a premium, which is why the chief feature of a garden good for wildlife is an abundance of permanent structure, both living and dead: trees, shrubs and hedges, compost heaps, fallen leaves and dead wood. In short, gardens, and the elements that go into them, are no better or worse for welcoming wildlife than any other space–they are just different. Consider this approach, and the designated ‘wildlife area’ soon seems counter-intuitive.
Thus wildlife gardening–or better still, gardening with wildlife in mind–is not about abdication of responsibility for part of your garden. It is not about trying to reproduce pale imitations of countryside habitats, first because this is almost impossible in an average garden, and second because the wildlife you are trying to please is very unlikely to notice anyway. Nor is it about sticking to a limited palette of native plants, not least because most native plants are not in cultivation, and you would not want to grow them if they were. But go ahead and grow natives if you want–some deserve to be more widely grown. Rather, it is about welcoming wildlife to your whole garden, not just a defined ghetto, whatever your gardening taste.
Many of the extraordinary number of species in Jennifer’s garden were residents, but it is equally clear that many are part of a larger community that exploits a network of gardens and linked areas of other green space, such as parks, river banks, railway embankments and churchyards. All these parts of the jigsaw working together is what really generates the major benefits for wildlife, so one of the best things you can do is provide something otherwise lacking in your neighbourhood–a pond maybe. But just keep two thoughts in mind: don’t be too tidy, and never forget that the wildlife in your garden is not there despite your gardening, but because of it.
Ecology Begins at Home (part 2)
Earlier this year, zoologist Jennifer Owen received two awards with little, at first sight, to connect them: the RHS Veitch Memorial Medal, and the British Ecological Society’s Ecological Engagement Award. The former recognises Jennifer’s unique contribution to gardening and the latter to the science of ecology. Both were for her long-term study of the wildlife inhabiting her modest suburban garden, and it is the garden’s ordinariness, coupled with the length of the project–three decades–that makes her results so valuable.
“Few would contemplate assembling a complete inventory of the species in their garden for even one year; to persist for 30 years is an achievement that will probably never be equalled”
Jennifer graduated in zoology from the University of Oxford in 1958, then gained a PhD at the University of Michigan. In 1962 she moved first to the University College of Makerere (now Makerere University) in Uganda, then to Fourah Bay College, now the University of Sierra Leone. In Sierra Leone she first noticed that there seemed to be more wildlife in her garden than in the neighbouring forest. When she returned to a post at Leicester University in 1971, she wondered exactly what lived in her garden. Thus began the study that was to occupy the next 30 years.
Jennifer brought to this endeavour a thorough academic training in zoology, passions for natural history and gardening–and what turned out to be almost superhuman ‘staying power’. Few would contemplate assembling a complete inventory of the species in their garden for even one year; to persist for 30 years is an achievement that will probably never be equalled. She recognised long before ‘wildlife gardening’ was fashionable (14 years before Chris Baines’ first wildlife garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show), that gardens were an important, but unrecognised habitat for native wildlife. She saw that this did not depend upon creating ‘fake countryside’: her own Leicester garden is a neat, productive suburban garden for growing flowers and vegetables. Her only concessions have been to avoid pesticides and excessive tidiness.
From the start, Jennifer reported her findings in scientific journals, but she soon also began to communicate with a wider audience. Early results were published in a book, Garden Life (1983), and there were numerous articles in The Garden, New Scientist and the magazine Organic Gardening. In 1991 Cambridge University Press released an exhaustive summary of all her research in the book The Ecology of a Garden: the First Fifteen Years. This remains compulsory reading for anyone seriously interested in garden wildlife, and was at the time the most complete account of the wildlife of any garden anywhere in the world.
This month, the RHS publishes the complete story: Wildlife of a Garden: a Thirty-year Study. A third of a century is long enough to record many changes, the reasons for some obvious, others less so. For example, the effects of climate change are clearly shown by the arrival in the garden of gatekeeper and speckled wood butterflies, among the most abundant butterflies in the garden when surveying ended in 2001.
The study has demolished the belief that gardens are wildlife deserts–clearly the only reason anyone believed that was because no one had looked for wildlife there. Her meticulous records of herbivore host plants also led her to the insight that non-native, exotic garden plants can support a surprisingly high diversity of native herbivores. Jennifer has shown that any garden can be home to a range of wildlife. With recent well-documented declines in biodiversity in the agricultural landscape, this is a timely message–gardeners have never had such a responsibility for wildlife.
The Ecology of a Garden feels like a textbook, with long lists of Latin names. Wildlife of a Garden, though not a beginner’s guide, is more accessible: anyone interested in garden wildlife will find it absorbing. You may think that does not include you, but this book could change your mind.
Embellished by Nature
Natural history has been a passion for Julie Wise since childhood, when she would walk the Hertfordshire lanes identifying and picking wild flowers, her knowledge winning first prize for the most species in a posy at the local flower show. Rather than picking, Julie now plants. Over the past 15 years she has created a garden approximately 1.6ha (4 acres) in size–of which 1.4ha (3.5 acres) is wild flower meadow–at the cottage she shares with husband Tim, near Codicote, Hertfordshire; native plants blurring boundaries between countryside and garden. Hedges are shaped to echo the landscape, while wild flowers such as red campion and ox-eye daisies (blown into the garden or introduced by animals) are used as ornamentals, contrasting with garden plants such as grass, Anemanthele lessoniana, or peachy-pink poker, Kniphofia ‘Timothy’. The garden is more than a hobby Julie enthuses, ‘it was an antidote to my working life, as cabin crew, spending hours in an aircraft’.
“…a giant laurel, with twisted stems and a crown raised by nibbling muntjac deer, provides an umbrella against winter wet…”
Julie’s early experiments with rampant roses and lavenders growing in clay were rapidly rejected. ‘As I was away eight months of a year, my garden had to be self-managing; my whole philosophy had to be re-assessed,’ she explains. The site is divided into several ‘rooms’, bounded by hornbeam and yew hedges radiating out from the cottage, creating a series of microclimates from shady borders to bogs and parched sunny areas.
Although Julie’s job meant she was often unable to maintain the garden regularly, nature took up the task; self-seeded Verbascum thapsis (mullein) and patches of red campion soon appeared while she was not around to weed them out, and helped to shape her gardening ethos: ‘I realised their beauty as garden ornamentals; where serendipity forms a pleasing combination, they are simply left to grow.’ Wandering the meandering paths or from room to room, you find unexpected associations–bulbous buttercup with Ligularia dentata ‘Desdemona’; cow parsley posing elegantly beside emerging foliage of Crocosmia ‘Lucifer’; and the delicate features of common valerian highlighted by Lysimachia ciliata ‘Firecracker’.
Yew hedges emanate from the lines of the cottage, creating a vista along double borders planted with robust, late-flowering herbaceous plants and grasses. One border is dry, the other wet. ‘I wanted to use the colour and texture of emerging foliage as a feature, particularly in spring,’ says Julie. A stellar blue haze of Camassia leichtlinii subsp. suksdorfii bursts above for a few weeks in May before foliage returns to the fore. There has been much experimentation and results are impossible to predict.
For example, Digitalis ferruginea was expected to cope in the dry border but failed, whereas October flowering Aster lateriflorus ‘Lady in Black’, with its purple-pink flowers and mildew-resistant dark foliage, has been a success. Julie takes advantage of the natural vigour of Eupatorium purpureum, growing it in the dry border, where conditions are not entirely to its liking; the location prevents it from becoming invasive, growing to only half its usual height, but it proves self-supporting and remains statuesque.
The double borders are weeded just once in the growing season (early April) and cut back in late January. Stems are shredded and material from the moist side is put onto the dry side, where the soil benefits from additional organic matter. Other areas are cut back earlier and debris thrown to the chickens who pick it over, adding their high nitrogen manure; composting is speeded up to about three weeks.
In the pretty kitchen garden where raised beds are filled with healthy looking vegetables, not all joints in the brick path are mortared. In some, pot marigolds, nasturtiums and Chenopodium bonus-henricus (good king Henry) self-seed to great effect. Elsewhere, below embracing boughs of a giant oak, an area that was constantly waterlogged proved to be the site of a woodland pond after it was found on an old map. The pond was re-dug and is now alive with newts, toads and frogs as well as the calls of young moorhens in spring. Around it, robust natives such as Caltha palustris (marsh marigold), Iris pseudacorus ‘Variegata’ (variegated flag iris) and Osmunda regalis (royal fern, thought extinct in the county as a wild plant) revel in moist shade. Nearby a giant laurel, with twisted stems and a crown raised by nibbling muntjac deer, provides an umbrella against winter wet. The area in its shadow has been topped with gravel to aid winter drainage, and is planted with dry-loving plants such as Phlomis russeliana, Origanum laevigatum ‘Hopleys’ and self-seeded Agrostemma githago (corncockle).
One surprising element to this garden is a formal-styled area, with a rectangular pond surrounded by lawn, yew cones and two tiers of clipped hornbeam hedges. It is a place of structured calm, whose green shades contrast with the billowing ebullience of the late summer garden. It has also become a valuable wildlife habitat. Frogs inhabit the pool and since the cutting height of the mower has been raised to 3in (7.5cm), Prunella vulgaris (self-heal) and daisies have colonised the lawn. Birds, including long-tailed tits, nest in the hedges.
‘Throughout my career the garden was a saviour; it brought me back to reality, away from hotel rooms and airports to the wild flowers and countryside of my childhood. I’d often arrive home at dawn on a summer’s day, exhausted from a long flight, put on my wellingtons and walk round the garden, still in my uniform–there’s nothing more special than that,’ Julie smiles.
Wildlife and Rain-fed Ponds
Some 50 percent of British native fresh-water plants and animals will thrive in non-permanent ponds, such as those fed by rainwater. Temporary ponds that may dry out completely are highly valuable habitats; the majority of aquatic animals live in shallow water only a few centimetres deep, so shallow ponds with gently sloping sides are best for wildlife.
Water levels in natural ponds usually drop 30–80cm (12–32in) between spring and autumn, so naturally-shallow ponds often dry out in summer. This is not a problem as such ‘drawdown’ leaves a valuable habitat of moist, muddy or sandy substrate around the edges colonised by a range of species, including many now highly endangered in Britain.
“Even newly-created wildlife ponds are quickly colonised”
Temporary ponds do not support fish, which are significant pond predators. Even newly-created wildlife ponds are quickly colonised. Try to resist the temptation to stock them with plants or animals–pond dwellers are adept colonisers by nature.
Among the invertebrates that will use non-permanent ponds are southern hawker dragonfly (Aeshna cyanea), which lay eggs in damp pond margins. Many aquatic insects, including the common great diving beetle (Dytiscus marginalis) and common backswimmer (Notonecta glauca) are good fliers, quick to colonise new ponds, and capable of leaving as they dry. Many caddis fly larvae also favour temporary ponds. A range of invertebrates can survive dry periods as eggs in the mud.
Amphibians such as frogs, toads and newts can all breed successfully in such ponds, providing they don’t dry out until summer when their tadpoles have successfully metamorphosed into young adults. These in turn may attract predatory grass snakes.
Garden ponds may be visited by shrews, including the water shrew (Neomys fodiens). Our largest shrew, growing to 9.6cm (3¾in) and with a poisonous bite, hunts pond margins in the drawdown zone.
In Praise of Bumblebees
Have you ever watched a worker bumblebee suck nectar from a honeysuckle flower? What I find so fascinating about it is the way the bee balances on the protruding stamens of the flower to do so. ‘Bumblebees are the best’, my son used to say when he was small, and I couldn’t find it in me to disagree. They are more interesting to a child than any other kind of bee, because the queens are so comparatively large, slow and clumsy, drone like Lancaster bombers and, if childish hands are very careful, can even be gently stroked on their backs without alarm (to them, that is, rather than the child).
To intrigue our children, we used to name bumblebees ‘white bums’, ‘orange bums’ and ‘ginger bums’, according to species. The use of the demotic appealed to them and so made these bees memorable. Its use also hid the fact that we grown-ups couldn’t remember their Latin names, since bumblebees mostly don’t have the common sort.
Quite a lot of what I do in my garden is aimed at fostering bumblebees, if only because they are excellent pollinators of fruit; indeed, they are as good as honeybees, although rarely given enough credit for it. Recently, when I opened the garden to visitors, I was asked why there were great swathes of thick and waving grassland, in what we call the ‘paddock’ beyond the garden proper. The grassland probably looked a little lank and dull to visitors, and was certainly an invitation to hay fever.
However, for me, it is a draw for butterflies, insects of many kinds, and a haven both for small mammals and bumblebees, which often nest in old mouse holes or in the basal tussocks of thick-growing grasses. Our policy of only mowing paths through the paddock, and leaving the rest to grow tall, has considerably increased the incidence of the commonest bumblebees–Bombus hortorum, B. lucorum, B. terrestris, B. lapidarius and B. pascuorum–in the garden. And, what’s more, I now know their names.
Get Extra Nectar Points in your Borders
Some garden favourites such as lavender and catmint have been recorded as being up to 100 times more attractive to pollinating insects than other equally ornamental plants.
A two-year study has revealed a surprising variation in how useful different garden plants are to bees and other pollinating insects. Researchers at the University of Sussex have been looking at the role flowering plants can play in helping to reverse declines in insect populations. Their report notes that by more judicious plant selection, gardens can be more bee- and insect-friendly at no extra cost, effort, or a loss of aesthetic attractiveness.
The results were striking. Of the 32 commonly grown summer-flowering garden plants assessed (including dahlias and borage), there was found to be a one-hundredfold variation in attractiveness to pollinators. Agastache, Nepeta and Origanum rated highly, as did lavender. However, the results demonstrated that not all lavenders are equally valuable. Cultivars of Lavandula × intermedia were much more attractive to pollinators than both English lavender (L. angustifolia) and French or butterfly lavender (L. stoechas).
Whether or not plants are native, a hybrid or a cultivar did not seem to affect its attractiveness to insects–openness of its flowers was far more important. Open-flowered Dahlia ‘Bishop of Oxford’ came 10th, whereas semi-cactus D. ‘Tahiti Sunrise’ was ranked 31st.
Coffee ‘Improves Bees’ Memories’
Bees may enjoy a caffeine boost just as much as humans, suggest scientists at Newcastle University.
They found that bees that feed on nectar containing caffeine–present in the flowers of Coffea (coffee) and Citrus species such as grapefruit and oranges–are three times more likely to remember a flower’s scent 24 hours later. Some bees remembered the scent for up to three days.
The team was studying caffeine as a defence compound, but found flowers seem also to use it to influence the behaviour of their pollinators, encouraging them to prefer their plant type as they are better able to remember it is a good nectar source.
Stag Beetles
Stag beetles (Lucanus cervus) are Britain’s biggest and heaviest beetles and should be encouraged by gardeners, as they help to break down dead wood and cause no damage to living plants. They can be relatively common in gardens in southeast Britain with light, sandy soils; small populations exist in a few other areas but elsewhere they are rare.
The male beetle gives this insect its common name–its pair of enlarged mandibles or jaws have a number of projecting spurs, like stags’ antlers. Males vary considerably in size, being 35–75mm (1½–3in) long, including the mandibles, which they display to impress females and also use to push rival males aside. Despite their size and ungainly shape, male stag beetles are able to fly, doing so at dusk on warm evenings from May to August.
Female stag beetles have small mandibles without any spurs and range from 30mm to 50mm (1¾–2in) in length. Size probably relates to how well each insect was able to feed while it was in the larval stage. Grubs can be up to 110mm (4¼in) long, and curved like a letter C, with a plump, creamy white body and an orange-brown head. Larvae feed only on dead, rotting wood, so females seek out stumps and dead roots of deciduous trees, where they burrow into the soil to lay eggs.
The larval stage takes four to five years, sometimes longer, to complete before the grub is fully fed. It then encloses itself in an egg-shaped cocoon consisting of wood fragments and soil in which it will pupate. Adult beetles develop in autumn but remain in the pupal chamber until early summer of the following year.
Stag beetle larvae can be confused with cockchafer (Melolontha melolontha) grubs, but these feed on live roots and are unlikely to be associated with dead woody plants.
Numbers of stag beetles have declined in many parts of western Europe but distribution in Britain seems stable. The People’s Trust for Endangered Species has organised several surveys since 1998 to help map UK distribution and to detect whether this may be changing. Stag beetles are most likely to be found south of a line from the Wash to the River Severn, especially the Home Counties, but there are scattered records in Wales, the Midlands and Yorkshire. Even within favoured parts of the country, stag beetles can be localised: they are uncommon in areas with chalky or clay soils.
Adult stag beetles are sometimes killed in large numbers by magpies and cats. In areas where stag beetles occur, they can be encouraged by leaving stumps of felled deciduous trees in the ground. Logs can be partially buried in the soil to provide feeding sites for larvae.
Stag beetles will also lay eggs in deep accumulations of wood chips, which provide moist conditions in which the larvae can develop.
Natural Selection
A new style of gardening has been evolving in a relatively small number of gardens that has been loosely called ‘new naturalism’. Its inspiration comes from natural landscapes and from the way plants grow in the wild. Around the world and independently of each other, some gardeners and a few designers are experimenting with a looser, freer form, each interpreting it in their own way. The style in my case differs from traditional planting primarily in the diversity and density of species occupying any given space. It appears as a flower-rich natural planting with certain species haphazardly recurring throughout the scheme. When wild flowers are part of the planting, these areas merge seamlessly with the broader natural landscape and, due to the greater number of species involved, the style lends itself perfectly to even the smallest of gardens. The relationship between new naturalism and traditional gardening is similar to that of the impressionist movement in art, in that I attempt to capture the impression of a natural planting rather than one of harmonised blocks, using colour in informal, blended drifts and dots instead.
“Many people return from overseas holidays or days out with postcards or small mementoes–but I come home with ideas, which may turn into another part of the garden”
When The Garden House, my garden in Devon, expanded into an adjoining field in 1993 I had room to give rein to this new style which had been slowly evolving in the older part of the garden. In this area, I have attempted to capture the essence of plantings that have caught my imagination in natural locations, not by slavishly copying them, but by using plants that I know will enjoy our exposed north-facing slope, high rainfall and acid loam soil. Many people return from overseas holidays or days out with postcards or small mementoes–but I come home with ideas, which may turn into another part of the garden. Touring the garden then becomes an exercise in revisiting all my favourite natural haunts–from Dartmoor in Devon to the South African Cape. New naturalism offers limitless possibilities to gardeners in that no two interpretations of the same landscape will be the same, but it may help to give a few guidelines that have produced a coherent style at The Garden House.
There are striking differences between communities of plants growing in the wild and in gardens. In nature it often appears that only a few species are dominating a given area. When I visited the south-western Cape of South Africa, one of the richest plant communities in the world, one specific area seemed dominated by the white, pink and blue of Dimorphotheca, Senecio and Heliophila. On closer inspection, the diversity became apparent, and I guessed that there could have been as many as 50 species in any square metre. Plants were growing at many heights like a miniature tropical forest, with various understoreys beneath the forest giants. The same colour combinations can be found in many West Country lanes in May with bluebells, pink campion and stitchwort–and other plants, notably ferns, primroses and buttercups–weaving almost unnoticed among these wonderful tapestries. This pattern is repeated time and again in nature. I interpret this in the garden by repeating a small number of species throughout the scheme as a framework, and allow other species to fill in the gaps.
Nature provides strong clues to the density of our planting. Gardeners traditionally plant at ‘textbook’ recommended spacings but these are more generous than usually occurs in the wild. For an example on a large scale, look into any natural woodland and notice the density and spacings of the trunks, or on a smaller scale how naturally occurring herbaceous plants find themselves only inches from their neighbours.
When making a new bed with herbaceous plants I do not deliberately plant close, in fact quite the reverse. The framework species are planted in informal groups with outlying singletons. Gaps are left before the next framework group and these spaces are filled with different species acting as dot plants or left unplanted to allow room for self-seeding. Quite deliberately, dot plants are often inveterate self-seeders, which are then able to colonise any space they can find. As I use home-made compost to make up many new beds, the surprise arrivals from self-seeding are usually most welcome. They are often seedlings of species growing elsewhere in the garden whose seedheads have been cut back and composted. Verbena bonariensis established itself initially by this unplanned route and is now determined (and invited) to colonise the garden.
Self-seeding in my informal naturalistic planting is one of the most important factors. However hard you try to plan informally, the finished result often looks as though it has been planted precisely. By allowing self-seeding you break up the ‘planted’ look and give the whole scheme a natural-looking diversity.
When making new beds it is more difficult to maintain a rich diversity of flora in a high-rainfall area and moisture-retentive soil unless the drainage is improved, as most of the best wild flowers occur on well-drained soils. I achieve this by raising the beds by 30cm (12in) or more into gently undulating mounds with whatever I can lay my hands on–often upturned turves buried 15cm (6in) deep, or spent potting compost and the soils from my own compost heaps.
This style of gardening may not suit everyone: there are no rules, no right or wrong way, and much is left to experimentation. But for those romantics flexible enough to enjoy the uncertainty of success, I guarantee a journey into an exciting new branch of gardening.
Mini Meadows
Interest in using wildflower meadows in gardens is still on the increase, but anyone who has tried to make a garden meadow from scratch will know that it is not as simple as it first appears, particularly if the meadow is in a small garden, or if it is intended to be attractive throughout the year.
When I began developing my own seed mixes for meadows it was with urban public space in mind, places such as housing areas and highways, where we desperately need to bring back nature, diversity and excitement into our everyday surroundings. Subsequently, however, the mixes have been used just as much at the small scale.
The term meadow is, in truth, something of a misnomer when applied to my mixes. Although they look like, and are managed as, meadows, these are not true wildflower meadows. They are a different concept: ‘pictorial meadows’, designed for visual impact and appeal, ease of maintenance, reliability, and non-stop flowering. True, I was partly inspired by beautiful displays of cornfield poppies in the countryside, but I soon realised that British native species on their own have a short flowering period, with little colour after mid-to-late July.
“…I soon realised that British native species on their own have a short flowering period, with little colour after mid-to-late July”
I began to look further afield for species that come from similar habitats but which flower either earlier or later, or which give colours that are not available in the UK. For example, North American ‘prairie annuals’ such as Rudbeckia hirta (black-eyed Susan) or Coreopsis tinctoria (tickseed) do not flower until July and August, and will continue into the autumn. If I combined these exotics with British natives, could I develop a continuously flowering mixture?
Sixty hardy annuals were trialled at Sheffield Botanical Gardens. They were assessed for length of flowering, visual impact and ease of germination. The plants crucially received no irrigation or deadheading; only those that gave exceptional performance were considered further.
Colour-themed combinations of the best performers were then trialled for another year until we were confident enough to try the mixtures in large- and small-scale areas in public parks in Sheffield. Subsequently the mixes have been used in other locations, and then further refined according to practical experience and public reaction. The key to these mixes is that they have a long flowering season in the same piece of ground, with minimal input. We achieve this by using a successional approach to formulating mixes. Early-flowering species (usually flowering in about eight weeks from sowing) are short, and we use them in quite low numbers: they flower against a foil of the fresh green foliage of the later-flowering species.
We include a higher proportion of the later-flowering species in the mix–they are taller and grow up and hide the dying remains of the earlier species. After flowering, mixes can be left to stand over winter for their seedheads and skeletons, or can be cut back to ground level in autumn. They are annuals, so they do need to be re-sown each year, and grow best in good soil and full sun. In heavy shade or wet conditions they will not be successful.
The beauty of these mixtures is that they create big, impressionistic effects at the large scale, while at the same time they are highly effective used on a small scale, such as in a domestic back garden, or even, potentially, in a window box. Wherever the mixtures are used, the response is positive: they seem magnetic to children and adults alike. Looking forward, new and exciting colour blends, as well as mixtures for difficult or troublesome locations are in development, which will help broaden the appeal of these ‘pictorial meadows’ yet further.
Leaps and Bounds
We British are careful about delineating the edge of things. We love borders, fencing, trellis. Our lives are marked out by boundaries–the threshold of our home, the bodywork of cars, the office divider. Planning applications and deeds are marked with red boundary lines; garden edges are marked with red mist. And Leyland cypress.
I would argue that, right now, our attitude to the world outdoors is pretty dire. Garden design, thanks to the likes of Tom Stuart-Smith and Dan Pearson, may be attempting to reconnect to the rhythms and energies of the natural world but for most people nature is still the enemy. Gardening remains an introspective, artificial and chemically intensive activity. Every year in Britain (according to Georgina Downs’ UK Pesticides Campaign) we tip 7,300 tonnes of pesticide, fungicide and herbicide onto non-agricultural land, comprising, in a large part, gardens. A 2007 survey for the Pesticides Safety Directorate revealed that 45 percent of us that own a patch of land use lawn treatments, and 50 percent use weedkillers. Half of us also put unwanted pesticides in the dustbin ready to contaminate someone else’s land. All together this makes gardening something of a selfish activity.
“…there are signs of more open and co-operative attitudes to gardening”
I say ‘right now’ when I really mean ‘until recently’ because there are signs of more open and co-operative attitudes to gardening. We are working more with nature: although no one knows just how many organic gardeners there are, organic clubs are available across Britain and the number of people applying to learn how to ‘no-dig’ garden, for example, with the luminary Charles Dowding and others, are increasing exponentially.
People are also co-operating more with each other. Guerrilla gardening–the practice of cultivating someone else’s barren land without their permission, often on redundant building sites–has not taken off in these peaceable isles as it has on the streets of New York, but the blistering increase in allotment applications is testament to how we Brits like to redistribute the wealth of our land. As is the swelling interest in landshare, where growers are put in touch with landowners who hold fallow land; at least 50,000 people have subscribed so far.
But for some, this is not enough. Researchers from the University of Leeds, writing in February’s Trends in Ecology and Evolution magazine, are calling for us to take down our boundary fences and smudge the red boundary line. Their paper says that if we act together we can create wildlife corridors through suburbia. If we collaborate with our neighbours we can form interlinking habitats, increase biodiversity and encourage more birds, mammals and insects. We need to start gardening ecologically and collectively.
I do not know if we are ready to break down the larchlap and merge our gardens, but I intend to find out. In Swindon, where my company, Hab, is building ecological housing, we are offering residents both small private gardens and larger shared spaces in collective ownership. We are letting people own fruit trees on the corner of the street and the polytunnel in the allotment. Let’s hope our residents do not decide to buy up their share of those 7,300 tonnes of biocide.
Pooling resources
Plans for future projects include private gardens shared between a dozen or so households (just look at how London squares have managed this idea so well for several centuries), shared sheds (think of the scale and the chance for bonding over the workbench) and shared power tools. The latter idea seems sacrilegious, but not when you consider that the average power tool only gets used for a total of four minutes, ever.
Sharing is the great secret weapon of sustainability, the principle of co-operation and coexistence that allows us to enjoy choice, as well as better relationships with each other and the natural environment. And gardening should be part of that natural environment. So let me suggest that although we would find it difficult to knock a row of houses into one and share our private dwellings, I think we would find it refreshing and rewarding–and so, it seems, would the wildlife–if we gardened with biodiversity in mind. Even a little. I’ll be the first to visit a suburban street where the residents demolish half their fencing and co-garden a shared strip of biodiverse, organic land running behind their houses. I might even buy them a shed.
