On my recent writing retreat to Norfolk, I dropped in at a garden that is in the midst of a five year restoration. It is at a place called Holkham Hall where they have 6.5 acres of walled garden, originally created in the late 1700s.
I visited on a warm late September day and the thing that it really reminded me was how much time and effort is required to restore a garden that had for a long time been a bed of brambles and nettles.
Here is one of the new herbaceous beds: see how sparse it still looks, how much bare ground there is.
...this one even more so
These beds will look magnificent in a couple of years' time. And they are full of plants that I can see are going to be insect heaven, But right now it is all about those three magic ingredients - time, patience and belief.
There is an interesting conundrum here - would this have been a better garden for wildlife if it had been left as Brambles and Nettles? Certainly, any creature that relies on those two plant species will have less of a home now than it did originally. But the scientific evidence that we have is that, as a general rule, a well-tended, plant-rich garden, if full of flowers that are pollen and nectar rich and which bear seeds and fruit, will have a greater diversity of life than an abandoned garden.
If you are still developing your garden to be a better home for nature, I hope you've still got some of those magic ingredients - nature really repays in spades if you do.
If you want to drop by my RSPB wildlife gardening blog, it is updated every Friday, and I'd love to see you there - www.rspb.org.uk/community/blogs/hfw
Hello Adrian,
I too an interested in your conundrum as to would it have been a better garden for wildlife if left as it was (a terrible waste of a walled garden!)and the evidence that 'a well tended garden has pollen/nectar/seed rich garden' can have a greater diversity of life than an abandoned one.
It does make me wonder what that evidence is - I can believe that the flowers would attract many insects but its harder to see how many of those it attracted could complete their life cycles without native 'weeds', and undisturbed soil, debris and places to overwinter. I think every street needs a couple of neglected gardens!