New Wild Garden

Natural-style planting and practicalities

Ian Hodgson

• Publisher: Frances Lincoln
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780711260108
• Topic: Biowissenschaften
• Subtopic: Gartenbau

New Wild Garden combines new approaches to a more naturalistic design with the practical side of growing wildflowers and shows how to incorporate wildflowers, real meadows and a looser meadow-style planting into gardens and wild spaces.

With serious concern into the decline of pollinators and habitats, meadows are currently the focus of enormous creativity. Gardeners, wildlife lovers, professional designers and seed manufacturers are all pushing the envelope of what can be grown, the pictorial effects that can be achieved, and the benefits that this provides for gardeners and wildlife.

This book includes 15 step-by-step projects and an essential plant list, as well as offering inspiration to gardeners and an overview of the most influential movement in garden design over recent decades.

In this book you can learn:

* How to sow or plant meadow to suit your space

* Planting plans for every plot size: from a container, small patch, allotment or an acre

* How to grow and propagate more than 50 kinds of wildflowers

* Understand and emulate the new natural style followed by designers

* Meadow recipes for every soil, situation and wildlife habitat.

1 creating naturalistic landscapes

Besides having a timeless beauty, grassland is also a valuable habitat for many kinds of insect and invertebrates. The distinction between short mown turf and longer grass also exerts a dynamic rhythm that can be tailored to suit any space.

inspiring natural landscapes

‘Destruction of wildlife habitats has displaced many organisms, which now have to survive and co-exist in dwindling areas of natural space, their existence often balanced on a knife-edge.’

With the preservation of natural habitats and wildlife essential to our planet’s future survival, it is now widely recognised that home gardeners can collectively play a major role in the conservation of our precious flora and fauna.

RECONNECTING WITH NATURE

Recent years have seen a significant rise in the global interest in wild landscapes and there has been a major drive to protect them and preserve their intrinsic value to wildlife. This change in attitude is largely borne out of a desire to reconnect with nature and a concern for the future existence and well-being of these wild places, as increased expansion of urban, agricultural and industrial developments demand more space, putting further pressure on fragile ecosystems. Fragmentation and destruction of wildlife habitats has displaced many organisms, which now have to survive and co-exist in dwindling areas of natural space, their existence balanced on a knife-edge as the tide of destruction continues apace.

The plight of bees and the loss of other pollinators has made us critically aware of our dependence on the wildlife around us, particularly insects, which perform a wide range of ‘ecosystem services’ including pollination, decomposition and recycling of organic materials, pest control as well as providing food for other species. Without pollination many crops would fail, with serious implications for our future survival. With an estimated worth of around £690 million to UK farmers alone, and £120 billion worldwide, over 80% of crops, including fruit, vegetables and plants grown for their oils, such as sunflowers and rape, depend on insect pollination. By the end of the 20th century, 97% of flower-rich hay meadows and 80% of chalk down-land were destroyed. Conversely, UK gardens are estimated to cover 0.5 million acres of land, an area larger than all our nature reserves put together, not counting all other green spaces such as 27,000 public parks, most of which is maintained as short, highly manicured turf. It would make sense then, to use our own space to provide a refuge for wildlife by creating plantings that are both attractive and useful to us all.

A grassy meadow full of flowers is a captivating sight and a feature that has long inspired gardeners and designers around the world. The choice and type of wildflowers used in such plantings can be adapted to suit a wide range of garden conditions.

Water is a powerful and important element in any wild garden. A magnet for wildlife, it provides a breeding ground for amphibians and a place to bathe and drink for birds, but features do not need to be large to make good habitats.

REFLECTING ECOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES

Nature is an important aesthetic and technical role model for those of us wishing to recreate a natural environment in our gardens. When looking to natural landscapes for inspiration, we need to take into account that some, such as pristine deciduous woodland and prairie grassland, comprise the native vegetation that has evolved in that particular climate, while others, including meadow grassland, field hedgerows and coppiced woodland, which we may think of as natural, have in fact been altered and manipulated by man over thousands of years. Historically, the agricultural techniques used to create these man-made landscapes worked in sympathy with natural processes and allowed the plant communities we now cherish to evolve and adapt.

Narrow steps weave through a tumble of shrubs from Mediterranean climates in this sunny, sheltered, hillside garden. Yellow Phlomis longifolia, blue Ceanothus thyrsiflorus var repens and a maroon-blotched rock rose Cistus ladanifer thrive in the well-drained soil, providing colourful summer highlights.

But in recent years, the demands of intensive food production and use of modern machinery, along with the liberal spraying of pesticides and herbicides, have erased many of these special habitats.

While the agricultural industry grapples with ways of integrating nature back into farming practices, as gardeners we can harness the ecological principles and techniques that underpin both native and man-made plant communities to create beautiful spaces that are in tune with and support wildlife and the environment. By studying natural landscapes, and matching those with similar site and soil conditions to your own, you can recreate these habitats at home. You can also employ a number of planting and design techniques that take inspiration from nature, but have been adapted for garden settings.

A grassy meadow dotted with ox-eye daisies, Leucanthemum vulgare, creates a tranquil scene. This adaptable species is useful in meadow mixes as it is long-flowered and naturalises well. For a uniform visual statement it is unsurpassed, but you can also grow it with other species.

naturalistic planting designs

THE HIGH PROFILE WORK of influential designe...