THE SUSTAINABLE HOME Sebastian Cox’s garden is a mini nature reserve

Designer Sebastian Cox charts the renovation of his home, one inspiring and innovatively eco-friendly idea at a time

It’s strange to start a renovation with the garden, but that’s what we did when we moved to our Victorian terraced house in Margate. Most architects or builders would recommend leaving the garden so you have a space for mixing mortar, washing out plaster buckets or storing materials during the build. But where’s the fun in leaving the part that takes the longest to mature until the end?

When we bought the house, I immediately made friends with the neighbours by hiring a breaker and smashing up the six-inch thick concrete that suffocated every square foot of our outdoor space. The soil front and back had been buried under one continuously poured ecological tombstone. Brogan hid indoors while I tore into it, avoiding window contact with locals.

Once the concrete was removed, I forked the compacted earth for the first time in decades and raked it level. In three days, I didn’t encounter a single worm. What right do humans have to sterilise land like this?

The soil was reassuringly poor, perfect for wildflowers. As I hung up my rake, my Meadowmat wildflower turf arrived and by the afternoon I’d rolled out the new lawn. We opted for the ‘species rich’ turf – a mix of slow-growing native grasses with wonderful names like sheep’s fescue and small leaved Timothy, and wildflowers that can survive in a lawn, such as sorrel, selfheal, yarrow and birdsfoot trefoil. I’m waiting with huge excitement to see what pops up first in spring, and will be not cutting it until July. I’ve refused family offers of hand-me-down lawnmowers, explaining that I’ll scythe it twice a year. Pollinators will thank me for letting the taller flowers actually reach their height and complete their flowering cycle.

During the winter I planted a half-pint hedge of terrace-friendly shrubs such as dogwood, hazel, hawthorn and crab apple, and set hops and climbers next to it, ready to colonise the fence and connect the hedge. This cover will be essential to garden birds trying to avoid the cats on our street.

In a sunny spot I’ve made raised beds, soon to be planted with veg for the kitchen. Although our garden is only 18x25 feet, this is the only area directly designated to us, save for access paths and log storage. Our toddler and baby may well trample through the long grass and wildflowers, but we have no need for a billiard lawn; we’ll let insects use that space.

Owning a garden, however small, is a privilege, pleasure and a responsibility – a responsibility not to lay that land useless to other species. An astonishing 87 per cent of households in the UK have a garden, totalling 400,000 hectares of land – an area nearing double the size of the Lake District. If that land is patio, Astroturf, hard driveway, decking or even fertilised and weekly-mown lawn, or heaven forbid all of the above, it’s hostile to wildlife already hard pressed by our intensively farmed countryside.

If, however, that space is seen as shared between man and nature, or even spared by man for nature, then we could create a connected national nature reserve spanning the whole country. I couldn’t think of anything better than being a part of that, and I hope that our scruffy and teeming patch will encourage our neighbours to join up too.