Moving heaven and earth: A garden inspired by nature

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of doing a wildlife mini-makeover of a garden down in Devon. More of that little venture later this autumn. But today's story is what I managed to squeeze in around it - a trip to a garden that I have long wanted to see.

Wildside is the imaginative, extraordinary garden of Keith Wiley, the renowned plantsman*, and one that has featured on Gardeners World and in many a leading gardening magazine.

It is only open to the public a few days a year, and my trip to Devon fortunately coincided with the last open day of 2021. Would it live up to my expectations? And what could I glean from it with wildlife-friendly gardening in mind?

Well, I can answer that first question immediately - it blew me away. In my gardening 'pop charts', it is an instant high-flying entry, one of my favourite gardens anywhere - and I've seen a lot!

Here is just a flavour of the visual feast on offer, but recognising that this would have been a changing tapestry from early spring onwards.

What Keith has done is take a four acre grass field and, instead of just accepting the lie of the land, he has moulded it and sculpted it and turned the very form of the ground into a new landscape, before planting it up with such verve and skill.

This is not some garden borne out of big budgets and deep pockets; this is Keith using little bits of savings to hire a mini digger and dig deep. Literally.

In many places he has excavated right into the shillet, the shaley rock that underlay the thin layer of topsoil. In other areas, the shillet has been mounded up, 50 feet or more high.

And then all these valleys and peaks have been planted up with the most astonishing variety of plant communities.

What this then allows is two things.

• The sense of excitement you get when there is so much exploring to do. I have never been in a garden of this size which has SO many views and vistas and hidden surprises.
• And to create different habitats and microclimates that then allow different plant communities to flourish. This is a garden with ponds and marshy areas in the hollows, alpines on the exposed, sun-drenched slopes, areas of deep shade and more.

And once you have such a diversity and density of plants and such a richness of habitats, you know you are going to get wildlife.

I was fortunate to get to have a chat with the man himself, and I got a sense of the labour of love it has been; this garden has been in creation since 2004, and there are still bits in the process of creation now.

He talked about the dragonflies and bats and birds that use the garden, and the abundance of insects. And how taking time to sit and enjoy all that is so important.

Keith is part of the movement of gardening called 'new naturalism'. This is all about looking at what Keith calls "the treasure trove of gardening ideas to be found in nature, from under our noses to far-flung corners of the globe" and then allowing those observations of natural landscapes to inform what we do in our gardens.

In my blog next week I will look at some of the plants and plant communities that Keith grows in more detail, and the wildlife that I found.

But for now, the biggest takeaway message is about that modification of the land surface. Keiths began with four acres; just by creating all those hollows and peaks, that area magically became five.

It shows how, in our gardens, we don't have to accept 'flat'. The digging of a pond can be the start of that process; what you do with the spoil from that to create mounds and hummocks might then be the next step to actually increasing the surface area of your garden and with that its diversity and wildlife.

* Plantsman - a person of any gender who is experienced in growing, and with a deep passion for, plants.