How to let your garden go wild
Would you like to attract more butterflies and birds to your back garden? The answer is simple, says Verity Sharp – just let it be
Acaterpillar doesn’t just gradually change into a butterfly. While in the cocoon, it completely dissolves into a liquid before then rebuilding itself entirely.
This is an awe-inspiring fact that’s been on my mind recently for two reasons. One, because it was given to me as a powerful metaphor for how we need to adapt to climate change, and two, because my extremely ‘messy’ garden has this year become home not just to the cabbage white butterflies that I’m used to seeing vying for my brassicas, but to red admirals, peacocks, tortoiseshells, small blues, meadow browns and a whole host of moths. They’ve arrived because I’ve been busy doing very little. I’ve been rewilding – on a minute scale.
True rewilding is the process of stopping cultivation and allowing nature to reclaim land at scale. In the race to sequester carbon, it’s one of the most powerful tools. Typically, in our human-centric world, rewilding is often described as ‘people doing nothing’, whereas, in reality, it’s ‘nature doing everything’. The ultimate aim is to restore entire ecosystems, from the microscopic soil bacteria to top keystone predators, such as lynx; hunters like these need expansive territories. Even the inspiring rewilding of the 1,400-hectare Knepp Estate in West Sussex is considered a small project. The organisation Rewilding Britain is setting the bar higher with its rewilding of some 40,000 hectares in mid-Wales. But even if you don’t have access to great swathes of land, the principles driving the theory of rewilding are well worth a look. Our garden amounts to a little more than a third of an acre. Set in Wiltshire’s Vale of Pewsey, it is blessed with black, richly fertile, free-draining soil. Pastureland wraps around us on two sides and Holstein cattle periodically brave the barbed wire fence to twist their tongues around some of our carefully planted booty. The rest of the garden is flanked by a thick beech hedge, loved by nesting birds that are rewarded each summer by fruit from three large, established cherry trees. There are two mature hollies and one large privet, and a tall, gangly silver birch stands sentry at the bottom. But save for a couple of flowerbeds planted with pollinator-rich perennials and annuals, and a large central, circular bed, sown with blue tansy
(Phacelia tanacetifolia) for our honey bees, what dominates our garden is grass.
Lawn grasses are notoriously robust. Grass seed mixes are chosen for their ability to withstand the most tortuous of football-playing activity, so by allowing those species to have their head, we were essentially welcoming in an invading grass army. But having taken the rewilding pledge, our lawnmower was under lock and key. It was time to stand back and do nothing but observe.
WORKING WITH NATURE
We have a saying stuck to one of our kitchen cupboard doors: “Learn to let go. This is the key to happiness”. It’s token Taoism, but what interests me is just how difficult it is to let go. As gardeners, we want to control everything. We’ve been straightening things up, deadheading plants, mowing lawns and weeding borders for so long, the habits are ingrained.
While neatness might bring a sense of personal pride and fits in with the norm, it is at odds with nature. Nature seeds, nurtures and thrives in a glorious, multifarious muddle. It turns every bit of surface and microclimate to its advantage, transforming even the smallest
patch into a riot of diversity. And with diversity comes life. But even though I’ve held these principles for a while now as a wildlife gardener, rewilding was a whole new challenge.
The first test, aesthetically and psychologically, was early spring, when the grasses really started to get going. Each species had its own plan, a different habit and growth rate. The garden became a randomly undulating sea of variable green with little interest or structure.
But then, quite quickly, flowers started to appear. Speedwell laced its way through the blades – tiny purple faces turning up to the sun. The radiant yellow of lesser celandine was swiftly followed by bursts of dandelions. I counted more than 300 one day, crouching beside one to witness just how many tiny black beetles and different species of bee made use of its abundant nectar source. A few more days and a lone ox-eye daisy appeared in the middle of the lawn, while red campion began shyly flowering in the privet’s shade. Later came clover, self-heal and buttercup.
By mid-June, the grasses were breathtaking – flowering in abundance, strong and graceful with the wind teasing them on all sides. By now I’d scythed a few snaking paths which had brought a sense of order and temptation to it all. Passers-by exclaimed in surprise and delight, with one neighbour even confessing to an urge to strip naked and run right through it! I understood why. There was something about the garden’s wildness that elicited a similar, primeval response in the soul.
Grasshoppers, which I realised I hadn’t heard in the garden since childhood, were now singing everywhere. Ladybird larvae and small caterpillars were making regular use of the vertical stems, and as the now waist-high grass started to blush pink and ripen into a floating carpet of seedheads, it all began to quiver with dusty meadow brown butterflies. One evening, as the sun was going down, a barn owl swooped in low, on the lookout for small rodents – a heart-stopping moment of rewilding gold dust.
Things started to become mentally challenging towards the middle of July. Although stunning, the grasses were essentially a monoculture, and if they dropped seed, their dominance would be strengthened. I found myself contemplating a scissor mower, but having spent so much time witnessing the life that was still fizzing in this jungle of stems, I knew it wasn’t really an option. Once again, I had to attune my mind and see this not as a vision of decay, but a vital link in the chain of sustained life.
There will come a time when we will cut the grass, but that will be after temperatures have dropped and life cycles have come to a natural lull. During the autumn and winter, we plan to spend hours scratching yellow rattle seed into the soil. This is the wonder plant that feeds on grass, so it will weaken the sward and give dormant wildflower seeds a better chance of germination. It’s going to take a few years to bring diversity into this garden, but we’re in no rush. The best thing about rewilding is that we’re slowly learning to let go.
“Grasshoppers, which I hadn’t heard in the garden since childhood, were now singing everywhere”