Starting Small with Wilder Gardening

If we are to be trusted to restore nature across some of the largest estates and landscapes in the country, it seems sensible to practice at a much smaller scale.
For the past four years, CEO Benedict Macdonald has been transforming a bland lawn at his home into a complex food web of anthills, wildflowers, nesting scrub and wetland.
By restoring inch by inch, you develop a real understanding of how to transform land from the bottom up.
Benedict’s top tips include:
1) Use rocks to soak up the sun and create the perfect conditions for yellow meadow anthills to form underneath. The meadow ants will then harvest your lawn, creating more spaces for wildflowers.
2) Sow once and well with wildflower seed mix. Before you do, “rootle” your lawn with a trowel to create uneven areas and patches of bare earth. Scarify your lawn to put dominant grasses on the back foot. Sow both wildflowers and wild grasses, which create structural complexity.
3) Establish the widest array of vegetation heights possible, from bare earth to tall flowers such as foxglove to hawthorn, bramble, wild apple and dog rose. This creates the most complexity possible in a small space.
4) Sit back and let the food chain build. Ragwort may often be found by cinnabar moths; lady’s bedstraw by lesser elephant hawk moths. And it’s amazing what can find your garden. Benedict’s garden has since been colonised by glow worms, burnet moths, rose chafer beetles and hawthorn bee-flies - right on the edge of Bristol!
#restorenature #naturerestoration #nature #environment #wildlifegardening #gardening #naturefriendly

[@viralyak]

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