A chaotic-looking tangle of weeds and scrub can provide an array of niches and opportunities for life.
It is a mistake to think of these areas as messy in the sense of being neglected. You might allow selected corners to become “self-willed” with nettles, brambles, dead branches and the like. Naturally, there will be limits to how much change is acceptable, and these will be different for every gardener. A person can mimic the other creative influences at play in nature (such as large herbivores): learning to think like a beaver, wild boar or browsing pony will almost certainly change the way you garden.
Certainly, relaxing the normal garden obsession with tidiness will almost always increase the potential for wildlife, and using traditional tools instead of labour-saving devices – swapping the leaf-blower for a rake, for example – can increase a garden’s hospitality to wildlife.īut rewilding a garden is more about focusing on ecological results – to establish a mosaic of habitats. This is not about “letting your garden go”. He’s keen to get people thinking about their gardens with a ‘slightly different mindset… rather than quite uptight and manicured’.īut although some gardeners are abandoning their rollers in favour of initiatives such as No Mow May and wildflower turf, Mr Harpur admits that gaining acceptance for some of his ideas might be an uphill (no pun intended) struggle.Rewilding can take a garden to another level of species richness. There’s great interest in Mr Harpur’s work on garden rewilding: more dates are to be released for his tours at Knepp and he dashes off from our interview in order to prepare for a talk at RHS Wisley. It’s a case of ‘getting as much variety into the space as possible’, whether on a bigger scale or that of ‘my old roof garden in Camden’.
The result is a ‘more complex ecosystem’ that has gone from 150 types of plant to more than 900, ranging from moist meadow plants, such as irises and filipendula meadowsweet, to drought-tolerant herbs, including sea kale, planted into the paths.Įveryone, Mr Harpur believes, can improve biodiversity in their garden. Crushed concrete from a farm building, which would otherwise have gone to landfill, was used to create conditions ‘akin to a Mediterranean hillside’. Country Life's Top 100 architects, builders, designers and gardenersĪssisted by deputies Moy and Suzi, Mr Harpur has dug out the middle of the walled garden, ‘dumping it on the sides, making lumps and bumps to get this undulating landscape with sheltered and exposed parts’.
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