The Natural Gardener
There’s a lot going around about ‘rewilding’ at the moment. It seems to be the buzzword right now, thrown with abandon into nature TV show narration and newspaper articles. It’s a wonderful word, with implications of War of the Worlds-type weeds weaving through streets and forests forming in car parks, but it’s also problematic, especially when it gets used in relation to gardens.
When it comes to the ‘Big Picture’ – our global environment and wildlife – rewilding is a sound and progressive concept. Defined as ‘restoring an area of land to its uncultivated state’, conservationists are looking to reintroduce endangered species to African plains, reforest overfarmed land and bring back key carnivores and herbivores long since hunted by humans to keep the ecological balance in check. This is just as it should be, and if accomplished – to mitigate climate change and halt environmental destruction
– the future looks bright.
On a smaller scale, though, ‘rewilding’ gets used a lot now in advice on how we should garden. Off-putting, isn’t it? This turn of phrase can seem daunting, a dispiriting hint that we need to leave our gardens to go wild and messy. It must also worry people that they’re not gardening right. Well, for me, the notion raises unrealistic expectations and is extremely misleading.
What we need is a clear and accurate definition of what people mean when they say ‘rewilding’. ‘Restoring a garden to its uncultivated state’ to bring back environmental balance is not ecologically sound advice and won’t be of huge benefit to wildlife. It’s not what will happen – instead a small number of species will simply take over rapidly, lessening the biodiversity, and your plot will be all the poorer for it.
Gardens, by their definition, aren’t wild. They’re carefully managed, controlled spaces; they’re astoundingly biodiverse just as they are and have become successful, vital conservation areas because of it. Because we curate and cram so much into such small spaces – ponds, trees, grass, flower borders and rockeries – our gardens are their own tightly-packed little ecosystems, buzzing with life, mimicking a huge range of wild habitats. Real wildlife gardening is about adding on beneficial extras to your already biodiverse, ordinary gardens. This is better, more realistic and sustainable than simply letting everything go wild.
Think of ‘rewilding’ as a loose term, aimed at changing your mindset a little, to let nature in, plant plenty of open flowers and greenery and reduce chemical use. So don’t put down your trowel and snips just yet!