Olympia

Garden Design and Ecology

Roger the Plant Doctor and Nigel presented at the Landscape show at Olympia London 12th April on the importance of striking a balance between, Garden design and maintaining ecology. Set out below is a precis of the areas covered.

In my mind, ecology is nature, and it is our responsibility to look after it and actively encourage it, whenever possible.

An alarming statistic is that we have so much man-made infrastructure we must have a quarter of all our gardens left to nature.

If imaginatively approached, this doesn't mean you have to have a fence going from one side of your garden to the other, 3/4 of the way up in the garden and wildlife beyond this point!

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It easy to create corridors at the back of borders, where most garden waste can be left to break down naturally.

Nature does not thrive if everywhere is sterile and swept, no leaves left on the ground, and nowhere for the creatures to feel secure.

One of my articles in the ‘articles’ section of this website is entitled Encouraging Wildlife, so I would recommend you to read this for ideas.

Things such as an old log, left in the back of a border can slowly rot away and creatures, such as stag beetles, will then be encouraged to stay. The log needs to have been there for a long time, for this to take place, so start today!

We need to think carefully about the layout of the garden to ensure that every plant has its moment of glory, whether it is flowers, autumn colour, catkins, silhouette, winter stems, new growth, etc, so that the plant can be seen by the person who lives there.  An example of this would be, if you visit a shed during the summer months to collect your lawn mower, and the rest of the year, and never went to the shed and it was out of sight from the house, it would be irresponsible for the plants-man or designer to position winter flowering plants around the shed! Whereas if lots of wonderful late spring, summer and early autumn plants were positioned around the shed, then the whole experience of collecting the lawn mower, becomes a better one!

Make sure you really achieve the maximum out of your garden, and that it has all the right bells and whistles for your requirements.

The plant world is so enormous, that if you decided to have a specifically coloured border or there was a colour you didn't particularly like, a clever planting scheme can accommodate all of this. For example,
if you decided that Orange was your favourite colour and you required an orange planting scheme, in order to achieve this with flowers, you would need a sunny orientation, but if you could only do it in the shade, then there always berries or leaf colour to consider.

There are also masses of plants that attract wildlife, for example, Buddleia for the butterflies,  lavender and foxgloves for the bees, the Guelder Rose for blackbirds etc. It is important to get the right balance between the ‘ornamental’ and the ‘helpful’ for the encouragement of the wildlife and I have to say, there is very little that is more striking than a group of foxgloves erupting out of a border between the shrubs or herbaceous perennials.

In a nutshell, we need to think hard about how to encourage habitats for wildlife in all of our gardens, if we are going to keep our food chain alive. We owe it to our Creator to look after this wonderful planet we have been given and to preserve it for the generations to come.Nature's balance, needs to be kept and improved, not reduced.

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