Royal Horticultural Society's Wild About Gardens campaign

Along with the ability to queue, a cultural reference I associate with being English, is a love of gardening, or certainly enjoying other peoples’ gardens. Be it the grounds of a stately home, or the care invested in a small window box, we value and admire a well-loved garden.       

My mind’s eye has a romanticised picture of an English garden, one of a pipe smoking gent pottering about in an old shed, having tendered his colourful borders - hollihocks to the rear, pansies to the front. Next door is a lady in a sun hat, tidying a flowerbed, a wicker basket at her side and bumblebees buzzing around her. Amongst the apple blossom a chaffinch’s descending song is joined by the laughter of children as they chase one another around a stripy green lawn. Fanciful I know, but I think we all have a notion of gardens being beautiful, gentle places, an attempt to replicate paradise.   

Just as Roman Amphitheatre encompassed depictions of their wider empire, our gardens have been a subconscious representation of a miniature Eden. A place to enjoy the flowers, grow vegetables and provide a sanctuary for butterflies, bees and birds; a haven for us to relax in after a period of toil. Unfortunately, like the Colosseum, they’re not what they used to be.   

In many ways, modern gardens mirror the wider countryside, particularly the general deterioration of our natural environment. Front gardens of privet hedges and flower lined paths are now driveways. High fencing, with concrete gravel boards, closes off back gardens and isolates them from their surroundings. Hot tubs have replaced flowerbeds and lawns are being eaten away by patio and decking, or worse, substituted for the dreaded plastic grass!

This is understandable, most of us really don’t have time to tend a garden, we need it to be simple, functional and time efficient to manage. However, with very little effort it is surprising how easy it is to bring colour and new life into your garden.

Gardens, even small urban ones, are exceptionally important for wildlife. The decline in hedgehogs, moths and some songbirds has been linked to changes in the way we use our gardens. That is why each year, in late March, the county Wildlife Trusts come together with the Royal Horticultural Society to encourage people to go ‘Wild About Gardens’. As part of this annual partnership, Norfolk Wildlife Trust is providing information on how to make your garden more wildlife friendly, for even the smallest gesture can have great results. By putting up a nest box, sinking a washing-up bowl in the ground as a small pond or planting a little patch of nectar rich wildflowers, you will be helping your local wildlife. 

This year’s Wild About Gardens campaign focuses on bringing your lawn to life. You can sign up now to receive a free information booklet including information on how to grow wildflower lawns, and how to cut your lawn to make it the best home for nature it can be. A small patch of most lawns, if left to grow, will have daisies, buttercups and dandelions within it, all rich in nectar and great for attracting bees and butterflies. 

There are 23 million gardens and over 62,000 urban green spaces in the UK. Nature is in trouble, but the great news is that each and every one of us can play our part in helping it to recover – right in our back yard! If we work together and provide wildlife-friendly gardens and green areas across the county, we will be able to create crucial space for nature and corridors for wildlife to move around our countryside. These are vital stepping stones to support wildlife, particularly as it faces the impacts of climate change. In time, by giving our gardens a bit of love, we can help reverse the loss of biodiversity and increase our wildlife populations.

Large or small, ledge or yard, your nearest green space can be a vital mosaic piece in a county-wide network for Norfolk’s nature, linking our urban green spaces with villages, nature reserves and the wider countryside.