Throughout history, gardens have been created to impose order on nature. Rows of carefully tended vegetables, neatly manicured lawns and impressive herbaceous borders with serried ranks of ornamental flowers have long been the pride of British gardens. But now, as a response to climate change, we are seeing a tendency towards a much more relaxed, nature-led approach which means we have to adjust our eye to a different, not so neat-and-tidy aesthetic.
There is understandably some confusion here. Why should we be embracing this messy look? Does rewilding mean we simply leave our back gardens to get on with it and fill themselves with nettles? Emphatically not. In fact, allowing one or two weed species to dominate is the opposite of what we want. The main aim is to create as much biodiversity as possible with a wide range of plants that might provide pollen, nectar and habitat for insects and small mammals, and thankfully this can be done within the parameters of what we consider to be an attractive, ornamental garden.
Since the early 2000s we have seen a trend towards more naturalistic planting design. Spearheading the New Perennial Movement, Dutch garden designer Piet Oudolf created a series of iconic gardens with drifts of robust perennials designed to emulate natural plant communities. In the UK his gardens can be seen at RHS Wisley Garden in Surrey, Pensthorpe in Norfolk and Hauser & Wirth in Somerset. In the past decade the naturalistic trend has gone further, with many people planting wildflower meadows and embracing the seasonal highs and lows that go hand in hand with this. No-mow May has become a thing, and we are all encouraged to plant more for pollinators.
More experimental still are the sand, gravel and rubble gardens pioneered by many garden designers. The idea is that a huge diversity of resilient, drought-tolerant plants can thrive in the poor soil conditions without competition from nutrient-hungry weeds. At Knepp, Tom Stuart-Smith and James Hitchmough designed a free-flowing, ever-evolving planting matrix that includes both native and non-native species. The result is astonishing, and with species that provide both food plants for caterpillars and nectar for pollinators, the increase in wildlife has been exponential. Formerly a croquet lawn, the walled garden is now an undulating sea of plants, its rough paths peppered with self seeders. To many, this garden will seem chaotic and messy – but for others it has a wild beauty that presents a tangible connection to nature.
Other well known garden designers are following suit, often experimenting in their own gardens. Dan Pearson has added a sand garden to his own plot at Hillside near Bath in Somerset, planting Mediterranean zone plants such as santolinas and salvias that need next to no watering, while Sarah Price has transformed her former vegetable and flower garden into an intricate mass of plants that thrive in sand, gravel and crushed rubble.
If this type of gardening is a step too far, it is perfectly possible to boost the biodiversity in your garden in smaller ways. Allow a small patch of lawn to grow long for wildflowers; make a pond; mix vegetables with annual flowers; create areas of different planting around the garden. You can still have a knock-out ornamental border and a patch of lawn, but maybe create a gravel garden somewhere else where you can grow a completely different range of plants. If you go the whole hog and turn your lawn into a meadow, mow a margin around the edge or have paths running through so there is still an element of formality to show that it is a tended space.
The Bannermans are masters of juxtaposing formal against informal, designing gardens that look like real gardens, yet also have relaxed elements of meadow and wilder planting to attract the wildlife and make a link to the landscape beyond. Their own garden at Ashington Manor in Somerset is a perfect example, with classic topiary domes and lawn near the house giving way to relaxed cottage garden borders and a delightful orchard. Here the meadow grass is left to grow long in spring, with a froth of cow parsley to mirror the white blossom of the apple trees, but a grid of paths is mown through, leaving neat squares of meadow underneath each tree. It’s a win-win: a beautiful garden for its owners with plenty of room for nature too.
The ‘Rewilding Britain Landscape’ garden designed by Urquhart & Hunt that won Best in Show at Chelsea in 2022 was a sign of things to come, but it may have bewildered people. An evocation of a wild landscape shaped by beavers (a keystone species that is now being reintroduced to parts of Britain), this show garden could not really be called a garden, but it sought to highlight the urgent need for us all to engage with our wild landscapes in order to repair some of the damage that has been wreaked over the past 50 years. And if we can all create micro-havens for wildlife in our own gardens by being a little bit more relaxed about what they look like, then so much the better.
