How to create a garden that looks gorgeous and supports wildlife

Do you want to have a garden that supports wildlife but still looks good and the way you want it to look? Gardening recently has become very polarized between those who want really quite a wild looking garden in order to support wildlife and those who believe that a garden is a managed space and they want things like herbaceous borders and topiary. Well you don't have to choose, you can have both. It's Alexandra here from the Middlesized Garden YouTube channel and blog and I went down to Great Dixter which is one of the most influential gardens in the world, certainly when it comes to a beautiful herbaceous long border and also when it comes to biodiversity and I spoke to the chief executive Fergus Garrett about what we can do in our gardens to have that same level of biodiversity while still having the gardens that we really love. One of his points is that although Great Dixter is a large garden, it's six acres and it's set in beautiful countryside, so in some ways it's easier for it to be biodiverse. He believes that all the elements there can be reproduced in town and city gardens as long as there are lots of different town and city gardens. So you might have one town garden that is very rewilded and that'll be great, but another which is neat with short grass which appeals to certain insects. I understand you've been running a biodiversity audit for several years and you found that one of the most biodiverse places is the long border and the most biodiverse place is the barn garden and I think a lot of people feel they have to be very wild if they're going to support nature and everything, but can you explain how these very actually managed places that look really gorgeous and not any of us would like them in our garden are also very biodiverse? I think diversity is the key, so if you have an area that's a short lawn and then another area that's long meadow grass or you have an area that maybe will be wild with brambles and things like that, next to an area which is garden that has dahlias and begonias and those sort of things, I mean that gives you diversity and with diversity comes the biodiversity because there are a variety of habitats and a variety of food sources. I think it's also really important to not to think that just because the long border has got a large number of insects on it that it's better than another place because one does feed into another and really what you want is that mosaic structure so and I think that's why it was so lovely at Dixter when we examined the whole estate including the woodlands and the pasture land and the meadows and the borders and the buildings that and we thought initially that the garden was going to be low in numbers because everything would be out in the long grass areas but actually it turned out that the garden was extremely rich, in fact had the sort of highest numbers of certain species in there and that it played a key part in all of this and so then we turned our attention to why that is and it was because there were obviously there's a long season of food for things here because we have from snowdrops right the way through to late flowering asters, there's some pollen and nectar over a long season but also that there was just such a sort of diverse range of habitats from little nooks and crannies amongst paving stones to dry stone walls to little cracks in the buildings and to water to detritus rich areas behind the borders to flower rich heavily tended areas that are worked over and bedded out yeah to areas that perhaps haven't been worked over but that have remained relatively static you know that are just maybe shrubs and scrub areas that we leave be you know so we had a whole range of habitats with a long season of pollen and nectar along with the countryside that was just right next door and you thought well actually if this happens at a place like Dixter why can't that mosaic system and that diversity of habitats and and with with people's gardens being the long border or the barn garden why can't that be mimicked in a town and city it's very you know it's the same thing isn't it you know we have short short grass and people have short lawns and we have long areas and you can have long areas in the town and city as well not all of it has to be long but you know you can have a mixture of long and short grass we cut erratically and people cut their grass erratically as well we have borders people have borders in their in their back gardens and and we have woodland edge planting on the edge of the wood as it comes into the garden and people you certainly get that in towns and cities as well so so it can be mimicked you know and and so it made me think actually it's it does relate to what can happen outside of Dixter and that's why it was so exciting and when it comes to managing some of the borders like in the barn garden or in the long border is there anything special you do with things like compost do you use fertilizer i mean how in the soil do you actually manage that i think soil is key to this but first of all i must say the most important thing is that you don't use chemicals you don't use any sides you know no insecticides or pesticides and and that was really key to us because when we first stopped using them we thought oh there's going to be you know we're going to be overrun with pests and diseases and we weren't in the first year that obviously we had a few aphids and things but it sort of balanced itself out because every time you spray you're not only getting rid of the the bad things but you're getting rid of the good things as well so and so far and many years on we seem to have a really lovely balance because there's a prey predator balance here so i think that's key not to spray you know i think the other thing is we try and cut down the amount of fertilizer we we use you know so anything that comes out of a bag and we do it with organic waste rather than having a sort of inorganic fertilizer we used to in the old days use things like grow more but we don't you know then we went on to using fish blood and bone bone meal which is organic and then we thought we don't actually need that at all because our ground is rich we add a lot of organic matter to it so that we need to supplement it with all this sort of extra feed so we cut that out and didn't make any difference you know things grew perfectly well and so organic matter is very important to us but but again if i was on growing stuff on shingle on a beach rather rather like the gardens you get on dungeness and things like that i wouldn't want to use any organic matter i would use the right plant in the right place that's absolutely adapted to those conditions but here right in the middle of the wheels you know with the sort of rolling countryside around us and we're on the edge i think putting that compost on has been key it's been key not only for the quality of the soil and all the mycorrhiza and everything that's in there so our soil is very healthy it's also been key because it means that we don't have to water week in week out you know the long border this this year has been watered three times last year in the drought it was only watered four times you know i think this year we could have got away with just watering it twice and so so you know because you've got this really wonderful root systems as a result of having rich soil but also the mycorrhiza tapping into the roots and making that root area much bigger as as well so so i think what we're finding is that we use less and less of stuff that we have to buy in you know that it's it's it's it's much more circular than it than it used to be which is which is wonderful with the compost and obviously you can make your own garden compost here do you also use well-rushed garden manure or what would you use if you can't make all the garden compost you need we make some of our own but that stuff never is enough so we have to buy in and so what we're looking for is buying in something that's a by-product or a waste product that's organic that hasn't got chemicals in it and and from wherever you are that that sort of varies but we're very fortunate in that there is a organization that makes electricity with green waste and and so we get the sort of the by-product of that so we get this wonderful compost relatively cheap that's actually been used in the green industry and and it's only just a stone's throw away from us and sometimes we use composted bark from the various industrial forestry areas that we had around us that isn't so good because it hasn't really broken down enough but you could buy it and let it sit somewhere and you'll make perfectly good compost with that of course you can use farmyard manure as well as long as you know what's what's in it you know as long as you know that very often it's riddled with weed seed but if i didn't have anything to use any alternative i'd use farmyard manure and in terms of plant choices how do you decide that how much do you take into account wanting to be biodiverse and wanting to be wildlife friendly and how much is it gosh we really love that flower let's have that dixie's a big garden it's about six acres in total so there's room for everything and but we've never ever chosen something because it was good for pollinators we've just chosen something because we like the look of it or it would fit into our scheme of planting if i had a small garden and i wanted a garden for wildlife of course i'd choose things that were pollinator friendly you know things that were single flowers rather than doubles and so on and you know there's certain things that really attract the various bees and and and butterflies so you'd make a sort of bee line for those but here we've never ever gone down that route because we think variety is key and there are sort of things that will like alliums and anything in the carrot family that will actually attract a large range of flying insects and they're almost like landing pads that they can land on but then there are sort of obscure things that we grow that will be sort of very specific for certain insects so we like the diversity here and we find that it's not just the diversity of flowers but the diversity of activities that you know we don't mind growing annuals for instance because that's that sort of mimics cornfield habitats for instance it doesn't all have to be perennials or shrubs or or woodies it's we grow a whole range of plants and i think you also said that you have allowed certain weeds to creep in so what's your approach to weeding we weed you know we don't but i i didn't allow things to creep in because they increased the wildlife value i allowed cow pasty to come into the borders because i thought it was a beautiful plant that was the reason for telling that i allow buttercup to come to certain areas because i think it's a beautiful plant and same with dandelions you know we're not overrun with them i suppose cow pasty does get a bit heavy sometimes but we cut it down before it seeds it everywhere but i just love the garden floating in that sort of white white mist cow pasty time and i don't even know what insects go on it you see so it's a very much an aesthetic thing that decision and the same with the buttercups as well i love those buttercups at that time that sort of that deep yellow amongst fritillaries and those sort of things popping up in the borders here and there and and they're the sort of the main weeds inverted commas that we're allowed to come in you know one person's weed is a another person's perfectly good garden plant and is it just hand weeding or do you do anything with a flame torch i mean i presume you obviously don't use weedicides it's all hand weeding but borders are pretty packed so once you once you weed them it's easy to stay on top of them things like bindweed can be a problem you know because their roots go everywhere and we've had a bindweed problem in the high garden but um you know and you know i i am not at that stage where i think it's a beautiful plant i've got a neighbor who thinks it's a beautiful plant who lets it grow and and she even goes out there and and waters it which i think is rather nice but it's not it's not for us and then speaking of watering you said you only watered the long border once this year and only four times in that really hideously long hot summer we had so how do you go about watering do you water it just very very thoroughly but very rarely so we watered long water twice this year yeah and four times in the drought and what we do each watering is a two-hour spot so we have a a small just a tiny sprinkler that fits in under the vegetation so it's not over the top it's under the vegetation we put it there and it just sort of dribbles out this this spray of water for two hours and then we move it to the next spot so it's had in essence the long border this year has had four hours of water and that's and that's it partly because plant choice is important so if something was needing watering every single week we wouldn't we wouldn't grow it here because it's just not for us it's for somewhere else so right plant right place comes first and the soil quality is important as well to allow a big root development which is very important and i think on time of planting we water really thoroughly and mulch immediately afterwards so we'll dig out you know we won't just put a little bit of water we give it a really thorough soaking and then we mulch it so that the moisture stays deep down and the roots develop deep down as well and is there anything about sort of pruning and deadheading and things that you would do differently if you're wanting to attract wildlife would you just prune and deadhead as you would otherwise well i think detritus has a value so we don't go in the autumn and cut everything down at once we do it very slowly so some of the cut down um begins in the autumn but it will go on till march so things can lay their eggs or feed off the seeds and so on so i think that sort of slow knocking down of browns is is is important for us and i think they look rather beautiful as as well i know other people have sort of experimented they said that if anything lays its eggs in the old stems of a perennial they'll do it in the first sort of six inches so they cut their perennials down you know and just leave six inches of of dead stem standing we don't go to that we cut it right down to the to the ground and and it was interesting with the biodiversity audit because when we asked our sort of lead ecologist what we should do differently in the garden and he just said no just carry on as you are because you're doing you know what you're doing seems to be really working but we're careful you know we're careful we don't cut things down unnecessarily and that goes with our meadow areas as well we leave certain areas of meadow standing for one year two years three years and then cut it down so that we have a diversity of habitats and you've just done a project haven't you to listen to all this diversity you've got a an audio project that will be coming in 2024 where people can actually listen to all the sounds of from people talking to the chomping away inside the habitat pile which is the most amazing sound it's all this little chompy chompy chompy bits and the habitat pile if you tell me how would someone in a smaller garden build a habitat pile like that well rather burn prunings and wood they just pile stuff up i know people who actually use logs to create walls and divisions in their in their border but just just a pile of logs rotting down somewhere would be it creates a they don't have to be the massive piles that we've got at dickster i mean i'd built big ones at dickster because i wanted to mimic hungarian haystacks you know that's what i wanted and they look rather like that and i wanted to have a no burn policy because i wasn't sure you know we used to pile up all the all the prunings and then burn it and i wasn't sure whether we had slow worms in there or hedgehogs in there and whatever and i thought it was just completely unnecessary so let's just let all of this just die down naturally so and of course we've got the space to put a big heap like that but you could always tuck these things away at the back of borders or behind plantings or behind the shed and just let wood rot and there's a sort of whole succession of insects that comes as a result of that you know the initial wood bearers and things that live underneath the bark and then something else and something else and and then then all the sort of the predators of the detritivores come and this is why it was so interesting to put that microphone into that habitat pile and hear all these things that are sort of chomping away and you know that there's a whole sort of microcosm of of predators waiting to get those things as well so the whole world opens up in in front of you that world in a in a pile of old wood i thought we'd all like to hear what happens when you put a microphone into a habitat pile so the people running the project sound matters have very kindly let us listen to a short stretch of it it'll just take a few seconds so what about moss fungus algae and things like that because i i love the sort of sense of wear and seeing moss on top of stones and how does all that fit into how you garden here at dixter i love it too and and that's part of being an old garden you know things weather very nicely and that weathering is not only just softening with the weather but they get completely inhabited by by all these amazing things and and i think what the audit did was made us look at them closer and made made us sort of be more aware of them the little speckles that you get on the wood and so on and the patterns you can say there's a sort of real deep beauty in in all of these and we were told by our head lichen person not to prune deadwood in in the orchard and we were always reluctant to prune deadwood in the orchard anyway but um because he just showed us a number of really rare lichens on there that exists on those trees and so that's why when you come to dixter you look at the orchard trees that there'll be elements of deadwood around them and this sort extraordinary beauty of of these things that that are made that that habitat their home so we're in favor of them the stones have got lovely patterns of lichen on them and and mosses are really interesting as as as well so i think just as a gardener being more aware of those things makes the garden more interesting is there any other advice that you might have think about diversity so have water that's always good you know and when you build your pond make sure you build it in such a way that there are shells within it so things can get in and get out i think it's it's nice to to have little openings in your gates and and so that things can crawl in and crawl back out again don't worry about brown seed heads and things like that the birds will enjoy them gardening for a long season really helps as well you know and this is why dixter works really well because we've had that sort of succession planting where we plant you know under plant everything with bulbs so when the queen bees come out of hibernation they've got crocuses to feed on you know if you look at the asters now and the ivies that are flowering the tree ivies that are flowering the garden they're just just alive with all those sort of bee flies and bees and wasps and things like that so just be open to to grow in a lot wide range of things and just cram it cram it full of full of stuff and maybe not clear away all the leaves and if you do clear away the leaves maybe you tucked them at the back of the borders and people always worried about leaves and you had to be clean because they they're that's where the slugs used to lay their eggs but actually the predators live amongst those as well so you know if you want that balance in your garden then perhaps that's some of that detritus you can hide away in the back somewhere and and that will be of of of benefit and i think also exciting is actually start educating yourself about you know what is the bumblebee that you're looking at you know is it a buff tail or something else or something else and maybe you should you know start with something like bumblebees that are only 20 odd species or 24 species so you can start identifying them and that you know you then get drawn into this this new world which makes it really exciting you know the first time i set a moth trap uh where you should have a bright light and a sheet and the moths come to that it was just extraordinary because i never knew there were so many varieties of moth over 300 varieties of moth or something in the uk maybe more than and whereas there's only 50 species of butterfly but there's a whole sort of nightlife opened up in front of your eyes so enthuse yourself and be inquisitive about it and you'll get drawn into it if you'd like to know what else you can do in your garden to help wildlife then don't miss this interview with the royal horticultural society's senior wildlife specialist and principal horticultural advisor in this video coming up now and thank you for watching goodbye