All things wild and wonderful
How to have a wild and beautiful garden that both you and the wildlife can enjoy, with advice from Garden Designer Jo Thompson and RHS Senior Wildlife Specialist Helen Bostock
But, in a world where our wildlife is in tragic decline, we all have a responsibility to consider how we can help in any small way we can and there is so much we can do by starting in our own backyards.
Taking a sensitive approach
RHS Senior Wildlife Specialist Helen Bostock says that even if we can’t recreate exact natural habitats in our gardens, we can adopt a more nature-sensitive, sympathetic approach to gardening, which accounts for it being a shared space, one in which many organisms interact in complex and beautiful ways – what we rightly refer to as the garden ecosystem.Elements of natural systems definitely have a place here, and can work even on a small scale. Hedges and shrub borders, for example, provide conditions similar to a woodland edge habitat, offering nesting opportunities for blackbirds and robins, and safe connective cover between gardens for small mammals. The ‘wild’ in this context would refer to allowing the hedge to grow full enough to provide decent cover, and adopting a pruning regime to maximise flowering/berrying while minimising disturbance to nesting birds.
What can we do to help nature
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Let it grow - leave some areas unmown for all, or part, of the year
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Design your space with wildlife in mind - create different habitats in your garden
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To weed or not to weed - is it necessary or can you leave as a habitat?
Let it grow
One simple thing you can try is to not garden a small area. This could mean leaving grass to grow tall against a wall or fence, around trees or shrubs, or around a pond. This provides opportunities for invertebrates to complete their life cycles on the grasses and flowers as well as providing safe cover for them to move between areas. Extending leaving long grass areas to late June or beyond is better for pollinators than cutting at the end of May, and also saves you precious time.
- 97% wildflower meadows lost in UK in last century
- Long grass better at flood mitigation, cooling, pollution capture, resisting drought than short grass
- Long grass reduces some of the 80,000 tCO2/yr emitted by petrol lawnmowers
But having a ‘wild’ lawn can also mean short grass that is managed without weedkillers, mosskillers or synthetic fertilisers to allow a rich mix of low-growing plants to flower (e.g. lawn daisies, dandelions, selfheal, speedwell) and provide for pollinators and nesting opportunities for ground-nesting bees.
The RHS Wild About Gardens lawn theme in 2023 highlighted how short grass, if well managed, can benefit biodiversity just as much as long grass.
Design your space with wildlife in mind
As plants start their growth in spring, decide where you need to be able to walk, sit and play. This will help ‘design’ your space by showing where you need paths, where you need room for kids and animals to play freely, and where you like to sit at various times of the day. You are essentially designing your garden.
Add a small pond or water feature
Think about the wildlife you share your garden with and the habitats they need. Can you add a small pond? By encouraging a variety of creatures into our gardens we provide food for others in the food cycle, maintaining a healthy balance. Slugs hoover up garden detritus, frogs munch the slugs. Each has their own vital role to play in the natural world.
Try to find an area tucked away, maybe behind a shed, where you can leave some wood to decompose and make a happy home for a wealth of creatures, maybe even build a hedgehog home. Leave a corner where you let the thistles grow, excellent plants for pollinators. Encourage children to start their lifelong adventure in gardening by giving them a plot to tend, teaching them how to grow plants and how that feeds both us and the wildlife, they develop an understanding and respect for our planet that is right there at their fingertips.
To weed or not to weed
Next, think about the plants you already have, be that planted or inherited. There is so much confusion around weeds and how we should tackle them but we need to change our mind-set if we are to maintain a balance.
The key to using this thought in your garden is to decide if a plant is in the right place, regardless of whether you planted it there or not. If you love the pretty herb robert in the walls with its dainty pink flowers leave it be; the Mexican daisy Erigeron karvinskianus is the most prolific seeder, happily throwing itself into every nook and cranny but if you love its happy white and pink petals, enjoy it, removing the