Barnes Common frequently receives enquires from people who want to make their gardens more sustainable, and here, we respond to some of these queries. If you have a question you would like us to feature – whether related to food growing or sustainable gardening in general – please contact Nicky. If you have tried these ideas at home, let us know how it goes!
This month we address the question, “how messy should my garden be?”.
It is well established that urban gardens can be a great source of habitat for wildlife. Many of us think about how we can maintain our gardens in order to support pollinators, invertebrates and other creatures. While there has been a long-standing tradition in horticulture of taking pride in a neatly manicured lawn, regimented rows of veg and weed-free flower beds, we are increasingly coming to realise that sometimes, messy is better! But what exactly does this mean in practice?
As gardeners, we put a lot of time and effort into our growing spaces, but there are times when we could simply do less, and wildlife will benefit as a result. For example, leaving leaves on the soil in autumn rather than raking them up provides valuable habitat for worms, woodlice, millipedes and centipedes over winter. These in turn provide food for other creatures such as hedgehogs. If you have a hole drilled in your wall or fence as part of the Barnes Hedgehogs programme, ensuring you’re providing food is an important next step. Piles of twigs and stones fulfil a similar role. It’s especially important to create this kind of habitat next to a pond, so frogs and toads have a spot to shelter.
If you’d like to connect your garden to the network of local hedgehog habitats, we’ve got an upcoming session on 10th July where volunteers from our partners The Handyman Station drill a small access hole in your fence – book online.
Many of us have spent hours on our hands and knees pulling out dandelions, alkanet or whatever other weeds we find the most troublesome. But do we really need to? There are times when we need to remove certain plants because they are compromising others – we weed around young vegetable seedlings, for example, so that they can flourish without competition. However, plants we refer to as weeds are often valuable wildflowers, and leaving some in the garden is of enormous benefit.
Dandelions, for example, bloom in early spring, providing an important source of pollen for butterflies and bees when little else is flowering. Birds make use of the seed heads. Green Alkanet is fantastic for pollinators – bees, hoverflies and butterflies all flock to the flowers. Stinging Nettles are particularly good for butterflies, with Peacocks, Red Admirals and Commas all using them as a food source. These plants can be a valuable addition to your garden in other ways as well – dandelions and alkanet have a long tap root that breaks up compacted soil and brings nutrients to the surface where they can be used by other plants. A few young dandelion leaves can make a tasty addition to a salad, too. Plants are designated ‘weeds’ when they conflict with human needs and preferences, but when maintaining your garden it is worth also considering the needs and preferences of other members of the ecosystem. Whilst the garden does not have to be left to go completely wild, having areas where these plants grow will allow many other species to thrive.
It is perhaps worth thinking about our mindset and cultural expectations when it comes to what we see as a ‘well maintained’ garden. Claire Ratinon wrote an interesting piece about a visit to West Dean Gardens just after the end of lock down, reflecting on a conversation she had with the gardener, who was concerned about all of the tasks that hadn’t been completed during the pandemic. Despite this, plants and nature thrived, and she questioned who created the aesthetic expectations we have about gardens in the first place. Perhaps, instead of putting pressure on ourselves as gardeners to keep the garden very regimented, we could relax our expectations slightly and allow nature to do some of the work, by, for example, letting a patch of nettles thrive.
How ‘messy’ we want our gardens to be is undoubtedly a balancing act. Perhaps as a guiding principle, we could consider everyone who is using the garden – ourselves, our families and our pets, alongside birds, butterflies, bees, invertebrates and other urban wildlife – and attempt to strike a balance that meets everyone’s needs.
Previous blogs:
How to Plant a Pollinator-Friendly Garden