Wilding the Garden
August 2024
The land is still uncommonly verdant for the time of year; instead of a vista of pale straw, the meadows are a deep, sea-green, dotted all over with lacy white plates of wild carrot flowers and bursts of sulphur-yellow ragwort. The beginning of the month was punctuated by thunderstorms and intense downpours – in nearby Hampshire, two months of rain fell in an hour.
A garden in August can seem as though it’s holding its breath between seasons. Those perennials that have a late second flowering, such as the catmints, are beginning to look dusty at the edges before their blue burst of flowers emerges; spring performers are bowing out of the limelight with fading seedheads. In the Rewilded Garden, the extreme rainfall of the summer has benefited the moor, elephant and feather grasses (Molinia, Miscanthus, Stipa), creating a shoulder-high pasture in places. They give the garden an air of secrecy and surprise as you walk the winding pathways through the hollows and mounds of crushed concrete and sand. Some of the mid-summer colours that had been flowering for weeks last year are only just beginning to open. Tall tickseed (Coreopsis tripteris) with its deep-yellow daisy flowers, the petals surrounding a chocolate-button brown centre, waves its multiple heads next to the stately, yellow-frilled domes of giant coneflower (Rudbekia maxima). The bowl of the dry ephemeral pond is ringed by great clusters of deep maroon–hued burnets (Sanguisorba officinalis ‘Red Thunder’ and S. ‘Cangshan Cranberry’), their drumstick heads a bobbing blur in the wind.
All along James Hitchmough’s ridge the golden oatgrass (Stipa gigantea) is living up to its name, their great drooping seed heads bowing to the compact dusky pink whorls of Tennessee coneflower (Echinacea tennesseensis ‘Rocky Top’ – see photo above). The evergreen, shrubby hare’s ear (Bupleurum fructicosum) has bulked out this year and is covered in delicate, lime-yellow umbels thronged with numerous species of flies whenever the sun has shown its face. Flies, as well as bees and butterflies, are attracted to the pale-pink and off-white dense flowers of the biennial moon carrot (Seseli gummiferum) that has flowered in the garden for the first time this year. From limestone cliffs in the Aegean and the Crimea the lacy, silver-blue filigree leaves are a delight.
The curious flowerhead of moon carrot (Seseli gummiferum) and the fly-attracting shrubby hare’s ear (Bupleurum fructicosum).
One or two mountain spinach or red orach (Atriplex hortensis) – an erect, blood-red annual with plumes of seedheads like brown sequins – have found their way into the Rewilded Garden from the Kitchen Garden. It was interesting to hear the thoughts of one visitor who exclaimed “You better get rid of that, or it will be all over the place!” This is a really good example of the change of mindset that we, the garden team, discuss very often between us – the idea of relinquishing a degree of control, of freeing ourselves from a fixed picture of what should or should not be in the garden. Orach may or may not “take over”. It is a plant with multiple benefits. A spinach alternative that can be grown in drier conditions than other annual spinach varieties, it was first described around 400BC and used for thousands of years. It is very salt tolerant, beneficial for wildlife and has medicinal properties. Common orache is often used in river restoration projects for soil stabilisation and erosion control, providing habitat and food for wildlife where little else grows. Its plentiful seeds are food for birds and small mammals. Our only concern will be if it becomes so dominant in the garden that it begins to reduce plant diversity overall, in which case we would graze out the majority after flowering. As far as aesthetics go, we feel a generous scattering of two-meter-high, large-leaved, wine-hued plants will bring pleasure as well as an increase in songbirds.
In conversation with those same visitors, after explaining how we drive the natural processes in the garden by mimicking the actions of the herbivores, they wondered how far we take that imitation when it comes to fertilising the landscape. This is an interesting point, notwithstanding any off-putting images it might inspire. When we first planted the Rewilded Garden back in 2021, James Hitchmough suggested we might want to add some ‘hoof and horn’. It is a traditional, organic slow-release fertiliser composed of a slaughterhouse by-product – essentially, the hooves and horns of cattle – cooked, dehydrated and ground to a powder. It provides plants with nitrogen and phosphorous, increases root growth and aids overwintering, and is often used with brassicas and rhubarb to increase green leaf production, and added to poor soils. At the time, we decided not to, preferring to begin the journey of allowing the garden to develop in a self-willed way, and accept potential failings as part of the natural balance of winners and losers in a process-led landscape.
But this idea of mimicking the actions of free-roaming animals in the Rewilding Project as they move through the landscape, randomly dropping their dung, is something we haven’t explored in any great detail. As horticulturalists, we’re accustomed to adding manure or compost to plants in a homogeneous way at the same time every season, such as after pruning roses during the winter or adding to the no-dig vegetable beds in the autumn. And of course, many seeds are distributed by dung, which is not necessarily the case with horticultural soil improvers. In the Rewilded Garden the idea of the addition of various mixes of crushed concrete and sand was to increase the plant choices by reducing the fertility of the growing medium and including plants that have evolved in soils with a high PH. So it seems counterintuitive for us to add fertility and potentially change the soil composition, although the natural process of a slow build-up of organic matter will eventually change the nutrient content, and thus, the plant community.
Some studies have researched how plant communities respond to the dung of different herbivores. The quality of dung and the ratio of carbon (C), nitrogen (N) and phosphorous (P) it contains varies between herbivore species, depending on their feeding strategy (ie browsers versus grazers), their digestive systems and body weight. The availability and nutrient quality of vegetation during different seasons also affects CNP ratios in the dung. Some plants are better at competing for different nutrients within soils, and their higher productivity (ie bigger, dominating and shade-producing) leads to a reduction in plant diversity. So the way diverse animals behave in a landscape (as well as trampling, selective herbivory and avoidance of heavily soiled areas) impacts the plant community and species diversity, in dynamic and constantly varied ways. In the garden, the addition of well-rotted manure, fertilisers like blood, fish and bone or compost is really about replacing natural processes that we’ve removed. We have separated the relationship between plants and animals, clearing away decomposing or dead material driven by a desire for order and tidiness.
The upshot of looking into this is that, as always, the issue is much more nuanced than simply the decision as to whether to fertilise or not to fertilise. But we can utilise our knowledge to provide as many different habitats as possible by our actions. As composting season approaches we’ll take a closer look at how, where, when and with what we might add nutrients across the garden.
The last week of the month feels as though summer has arrived, just as meteorologists cite autumn is about to begin. A stretch of deep blue skies and warm, sunny days accompany us with the annual cut of the meadows. The Kitchen Garden is filled with the colours and scents of hairy mountain mint (Pycnanthemum pilosum) – a magnet for pollinators, the pinks of ‘Smarty’ roses, the mauves and purples of Russian sage (Perovskia atriplicifolia) and vervain (Verbena bonariensis), and the striking scarlet hips of the rugosa roses. Despite so little sun this growing season Suzi has managed to fill trugs with tomatoes, cucumbers, red peppers, aubergines, runner and dwarf beans, potatoes, onions, courgettes and squashes, spinach, chard, kale and a colourful and diverse array of salad leaves.
Clockwise from top left; Climbing beans ‘Gigantes plaki’ and ‘Rhondda Black’ in the no-dig veg beds; the giant Greek beans; Tomato ‘Green Zebra’; a trug of D’Asti sweet peppers, courgette ‘Cocozelle von Tripolis’ and ‘Golden Burpee’ and a ‘Custard White’ squash; New Zealand spinach.
Some of the successes of the more obscure trial vegetables we’ve tried this year are New Zealand spinach (Tetragonia tetragonioides), which has romped away under the statuesque towers of Peruvian black mint or huacatay (Tagetes minuta). The giant Greek beans ‘Gigantes Plaki’ are a little late getting to their reputed large size, but though they dry well – and grow as well as Borlotti- are tasty eaten raw when the beans are small. The quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) planted in the ornamental beds did well once they got going, producing a good head of grains on each plant and we’ll wait to try the colourful tubers of oca, a pretty-leaved plant from South America later in the season. Those that sadly didn’t feel comfortable in the spot we’d chosen, were ravaged by slugs or voles, or needed more warmth than the season provided were okra (Oxalis tuberosa), groundnut (Apios americana), Caucasian spinach (Hablitzia tamnoides) and Malabar spinach (Basella alba). The last were struggling in small 9cm pots until we tried a much deeper one and saw an immediate and positive response. Success! This is the wonder and attraction of a garden and having the privilege of being a part of it – there is always something new to experiment with, always something to marvel at.
Moy Fierheller Deputy Head Gardener August 2024
Photos courtesy of Karen Finley, Joshua Chalmers, Moy Fierheller