36 Gardening
In Your Garden Monthly gardening ideas and tasks by Andrew Staib, Principal Designer of Glorious Gardens Rewilding your garden - 8 easy steps Firstly, what is rewilding? Rewilding is returning outdoor spaces to a natural state where nature can evolve without the intense involvement of humans. It allows original ecosystems to reassert themselves, thereby supporting damaged natural systems to heal and threatened species to recover their populations. The scale of rewilding is normally whole valleys being returned to forest or boglands being left to replenish after years of vegetative extraction. But we can rewild our little bit of the earth that we have inherited! Here are 8 ways to go about it: 1) Not so tidy Think differently about needing a tidy garden. Nature can start to shape your garden, or parts of your garden, and the need we have for straight lines and clean lawns and beds can relax a little. Leaving piles of leaves, mounds of fallen apples and crab apples and old logs to house insects can make your garden into both a factory and a hotel for life. You can leave a whole area of your garden over to nature. You may start to see tidiness as barrenness after a while, a garden stripped of natural abundance. Your neighbours, once you show them the increased amount of wildlife that your approach has yielded, may start asking you for advice. 2) Food for nature You can plant trees and shrubs that are rich in berries all year round to feed the myriad of garden visitors. From bats to bees and birds to frogs, your planting decisions will foster a smorgasbord.
Buddleia and Lythrum salicaria for bees, Sweet Chestnuts and acorns for small mammals, plus for the birds plants such as Cotoneaster, Black Cherry, Hawthorn, Ivy and Holly will keep a good supply of nutrition going all year. For butterflies and moths, try nettles and Lilac, Lavender, Foxgloves, Angelica and Honeysuckle. 3) Homes for nature As well as leaving piles of leaves about, and decaying logs, you can create your own insect hotels and bird feeders. (If you put your bird feeder near your rose garden you can keep the aphid population down rather than using insecticides). Having some evergreen shrubs can provide valuable protection as well as cool shade in summer.
