Garden of the Week
Near the ‘city of dreaming spires’ is an eco-friendly garden that achieves the ideal – a wealth of wildlife in a serene setting of colourful beauty
It’s hard to believe that Steve and Mary Woolliams’ garden is only a couple of miles from the bustle of Oxford’s city centre because it teems with wildlife. There’s a nature reserve at the bottom of their westfacing slope in the Lye Valley, and Otmoor, an unspoilt area of wet grassland, is only a few miles away as the crow flies. Steve, a keen butterfly and moth man, has seen rare brown hairstreaks in his own garden and has also spotted their eggs on blackthorn bushes on the plot, too. He recently found a rare moth, the currant clearwing. “It has only been seen in Oxfordshire three times, although it’s small so it’s probably under-recorded.” It was probably attracted by his edible hedge of gooseberries and red, white and blackcurrants, planted to segregate the ornamental garden from the vegetable beds.
Steve, a self-employed gardener, was lucky to find a house with a good-sized garden in this expensive area of Oxfordshire. He says: “When this 1930s semi came up for sale we bought the garden and the house came with it!”
Most of the garden was lawn then, but there were three mature apple trees. The oldest,
which Steve had identified by experts from Brogdale in Kent, is ‘George Neal’.
“My tree is probably 100 years old. It’s mainly a cooking apple although you can eat some when they’re fully ripe,” Steve says. “I’ve also got a ‘Bramley Seedling’ and a russet variety.”
Apple trees are one of the best wildlife trees you can have and there’s so much mistletoe that Steve has had to trim some off. Blackcaps, one of the many birds visiting this garden, feast on the berries. “You can see them scraping the seeds off their beaks,” Steve adds, and this helps explain why mistletoe is so prolific in this west-facing garden. “Greater spotted woodpeckers drink water from the holes in the trunk and there are lots of insects, and blue tits
nest in any crannies they can find.” He also has wrens breeding close to the house, so there’s plenty of birdlife. Steve, who has always been interested in wildlife, grew up on a 50-acre farm near a village called Clanfield. “Dad was always bringing things home from the fields, and I learned a lot from him. My grandfather was a great vegetable gardener and he had huge greenhouses full of chrysanthemums and pelargoniums in the Vale of Evesham. I went there as a child and learned a lot.”
There are bee boxes, used by red mason and leafcutter bees, at strategic points, bird boxes in the trees and piles of wood that are allowed to rot down. “I try to put them in different places to encourage greater diversity. Frogs hibernate in the damp pile. But I’ve also seen lesser stag beetles,” says Steve.
There’s also a wildlife pond, but don’t imagine this garden’s running totally wild. Steve spends at least two hours a day tending his vegetable and flowers plots. Mary, the cakemaker of the partnership, cooks all the fresh garden produce.
Four rectangular vegetable beds are separated by grass paths, with a soil strip around the edges to deter slugs. Steve grows the easier crops, such as potatoes, onions, squashes and perpetual spinach, on his nearby allotment and puts the more demanding plants, such as runner beans, in the garden. He uses stored rainwater from his 14 water butts which collect all the rain from the roof; Steve can store 3,500 litres altogether.
An old bath, behind his greenhouse full of melons, cucumbers and tomatoes, converts to a comfrey tea maker once the water in it gets low.
The flower beds, which bloom from February until October, contain plants suited to dry conditions and attract bees. Thymes, lavenders, purple sage, rosemary, Californian poppies (eschscholzia) and morning glory thrive here. Moths love the long-tubed flowers of valerian ( Centranthus ruber) .
Steve also uses salvias, such as ‘Hot Lips’ and ‘Indigo Spires’, and shrubby potentillas. “If there’s a late gap in the flower beds, I use dark-leaved, single dahlias to fill it.”
Steve is obviously a man happy to garden from dawn to dusk!