Gardeners, a force for good
The vast majority of us gardeners really garden for pleasure, not to save the world or engineer a green-thumbed revolution... However, while we’re upside down in our borders or potting up our spring bulbs, we should remember that we are part of something bigger!
How big?
Well, if you took all the residential gardens of the UK and laid them out side by side, they would cover roughly 430,000 hectares! Read on to find out just how big a deal this is!
When I mention “wildlife friendly” to some gardeners, I can practically hear their eyes rolling, such is the over-exaggerated effort. I wonder if it’s because maybe the ‘wildlife friendly garden’ triggers negative connotations among those Victorianesque gardening practitioners, when images of uninvited weeds and pests run rampant through their mind. No order. Just a big weedy patch. The horror! The horror!
Jokes and minor slights aside, we are gardeners, not professors of ecology. Well most of us, anyway. It wouldn’t be particularly satisfying or rewarding for gardeners to nurture a patch of brambles, although blackberries are incredibly delicious! Gardening is our raison d’etre! To garden is to nurture a green space, whether it’s inside or out, ornamental, or productive. To garden is to nurture ourselves. I garden, therefore I am. That kind of thing.
A successful nature-friendly pollinator garden is a mutually beneficial garden. A garden that meets the needs of many wild species but also one that keeps the gardener happy and contented, nurturing their green space for beauty and beasties alike. If a garden is unkempt, if it becomes bothersome, the majority of gardeners are far less likely to maintain it and persevere. It’s hard to gauge the difference you’re making to an overgrown patch, of what is effectively scrubland. A gardener that doesn’t feel needed is often disheartened and disengaged.
Many gardeners simply want beauty and interest and something to keep them occupied and pottering. The vast majority garden for pleasure, not to save the world or engineer a green-thumbed revolution. However, while we’re upside down in our borders or potting up our spring bulbs, we should remember that we are part of something bigger. How big? Well, if you took all the residential gardens of the UK and laid them out side by side, they would cover roughly 430,000 hectares, that’s 500,000 full-size football pitches!
Half a million football pitches!
I’ll just let that sink in…
Now consider that the UK, our green and pleasant isle, is one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world, with only about half of its biodiversity left. Yes, an inexcusable and gargantuan loss in wildlife and habitat, but we gardeners (and households) do have the green spaces to help start a recovery.
Just as a side-note: The UK's working agricultural area is approximately 17 million hectares, which is 70% of the country's total geographic area. In 2023, the UK's organic farming area was roughly 3%, just 498,000 hectares … little more than our gardens!
As gardening is concerned, I feel the tide is turning. But it feels like a rather weak and feeble tide across a vast mudflat, rather than a once in a generation syzygy-induced Spring Tide. Nature needs our help. Nature needs us gardeners to stop thinking selfishly about what aesthetic we’re aspiring to and what minimalist low maintenance plastic planting we want. Collectively, with 430,000 hectares of land between us (in the UK alone), we could make a huge difference and quickly.
Here’s a snapshot from the UK Government's 2023 State of Nature report:
“Pollinators such as bees, hoverflies and moths, have decreased by 18% on average, whilst predatory insects, like the 2-spot Ladybird which help control crop pests, have declined by 34%1. Since 1970 more than half of our flowering plants, mosses and their relatives have been lost from areas where they used to thrive1”
“In the UK, we have already lost around 13 species of bee and another 35 are currently at risk. Nearly 1 in 10 of Europe’s wild bee species is facing extinction.” Read more here
1 Key statistics from the State of Nature 2023 https://stateofnature.org.uk/
As gardeners, we need to evolve. Adapting the way we garden and the plants and crops we choose to grow. When you think of wildlife-friendly gardens, it’s all too easy to think of untended grass and scruffy nettles. For some gardeners, there is a deep-rooted divide (forgive the pun) between what we want as emotional big-brained humans, and what nature needs. But, the two are not mutually exclusive. You can have a gorgeous garden with a wealth of wildlife. A garden that enriches your life, but also provides food and cover for countless others.
Take my garden as an example. Not a shining example, by any means, but a garden that has been developed over the years with nature firmly in mind. My garden planting is 80% for the pollinators and other wildlife, 20% for me. It’s wholly organic. No chemicals, synthetic fertilisers, pesticides, herbicides, etc. There are container gardens, a vegetable garden, huge ornamental mixed borders densely filled with the entire gamut of planting: trees, flowering shrubs, herbaceous perennials, grasses, annuals, and flowering bulbs.
There are also bird baths, nest boxes, and feeding stations. Piles of logs and twiggy prunings. Bays of compost and leafmould. Undisturbed soil with a thriving biome. Evergreen hedging, open native deciduous hedgerows and gaps under fencing for hedgehogs. More than 180m² of embankment given over completely to wildflowers and wildlife. The ‘Bank’, as it’s known here, is home to a bewildering number of burrowing bees, frogs, shrews, mice, and bank voles, plus an alarming number of thistles, docks, ivy, ground elder, and dandelions! But the spring carpets of common forget-me-not and sweet woodruff, with large stands of cow parsley are simply stunning! A highlight of the garden. Although we have two water features, really the only thing missing is a pond, but that is on the project list.
A wildlife friendly garden doesn’t mean derelict scrubland. If you do nothing to your space, it will be dominated by the most vigorous plants which tend to be nettles, thistles, brambles, and the odd pioneering buddleia. Unless you’re highly unusual in your feeding habits or choice in pets, there won’t be any large herbivores keeping them under control, creating that essential bare open ground for pioneering wildflowers to blow in and colonise. Our intervention as gardeners can have a very positive impact on the richness and diversity of the species in our green space.
We are a force for good! Just so long as you put the damn chemicals away!
Coming up… The unbelievable cleverness of plants!
How plants and pollinators have co-evolved over millions of years and their incredible adaptations.
Honestly, my mind was literally blown reading and researching this part! Hope you’ll enjoy it too!
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