Wild in the CITY

Let Nigel Dunnett’s urban wild flower garden at Chelsea Flower Show inspire you to create one

Nigel Dunnett may not be a household name, but you’ve almost certainly seen his work. If you marvelled at the wild flowers at the Olympic Park during the London 2012 games, have seen the artfully layered planting at London’s Barbican Centre, or felt your spirits soar at a tapestry of bright flowers surrounding an urban roundabout, then it’s Nigel you have to thank.

His day job is as a professor at the University of Sheffield, where his subject is ‘planting design and vegetation technology’. Nigel, 53, who is married with two grown-up sons, is also one of the pioneers of ‘pictorial meadows’ – swathes of wild flowers which do equally well in a small town garden or on large expanses of motorway verge.

He came up with the idea of these mini meadows two decades ago to show what could be achieved in areas like unused scrubland or a strip of soil alongside a road. Nigel ended up starting one of the first companies selling meadow mixes, which are pollinatorfriendly, need little watering, no fertiliser, and have a long flowering season.

His mantra is ‘high impact, low input’, and his planting schemes manage to be both stunning and good for the environment. ‘There’s been too much of a hair-shirt approach, telling people they must garden in a certain way for the sake of the planet,’ he says. ‘When you hear that, you switch off. What’s exciting is when people see a piece of public land which is planted with flowers, and they want to copy it because it’s beautiful – and it just happens to be good for birds and insects and water conservation as well.’

If you want to create a wildlife haven in your own garden, Nigel’s planting will certainly inspire you. This month you can see his work at the Chelsea Flower Show, which will be brought to your TV screens on the BBC once again. He has designed the Royal Horticultural Society’s garden on the theme of ‘Greening Grey Britain’. It will feature a mock-up of a high-rise block of the sort you find in any city. The block’s balconies will be filled with colourful, undemanding plants like alliums, euphorbias and grasses; at ground level there’s a communal table, incorporating insect-

friendly fruit trees and herbs, where residents can gather. There will also be plenty of room for wildlife, as well as Chelsea’s first ever ‘graffiti’ wall.

This will be the fourth garden Nigel has designed at Chelsea. Although his show garden is excluded from competition as it’s sponsored by the RHS, he is taking the challenge seriously. ‘I want it to have a real wow factor; I hope people will be inspired and want to make their own environment more attractive using plants. Most importantly, I want to get over the message that you can have a beautiful, easily managed garden, however small, which is also good for nature and doesn’t need masses of water or fertiliser. If I can achieve that, then I’ll have done my job.’ The Chelsea Flower Show is on 23-27 May. For tickets, visit rhs. org. uk/ chelsea. Watch coverage of the show on the BBC throughout the week.

Nigel’s planting at The Barbican