Leave Well Enough Alone

Letting Your Garden Grow:

Today we give over to letting stuff grow and ease you into doing things for nature by, well, not really doing much at all!

The main reasons for letting your patch grow out its fringe are for biodiversity, productivity, resilience and habitat provision. We shall talk about all the above, below. So read on, do.

It was long considered that the best way to keep your garden was with short grass, precise borders and neatly pruned foliage. I can understand that. There aren’t straight lines in nature and things tend to grow at odd angles or billow out over each other. I understand why keeping things tidy and undeviating would make people feel that they were in control and decide that well kempt was nicer to gaze out at than loosely kempt. I think that is just why neatness was long favoured over ‘natural’, because people were looking at what they had made and got satisfaction from observing the precise control they had achieved. Now, a shift has begun towards less linear and more free growing, liberal looking beds and lawns.

This movement started a way way back, in part, with an Irish gardener and journalist called William Robinson (1838 -1935). He pushed for mixed beds, instead of the highly patterned Victorian styles and was a pioneer of the cottage garden, which is widely loved today. That’s a while back though and there have since been several show pieces in the likes of the Chelsea Flower Show which may have helped to stimulate change.

In 1993, for example, Julie Toll’s ‘Seaside Garden’ was so different that it caused people to say that it wasn’t a garden at all and a whole new category in the competition was called for! What was so challenging about Toll’s true-to-life planting, you ask, well it only went and used ragwort, thistle and bramble!! WEEDS GOSH DARN IT!!

…….OK, it did use a lot of sand too…... but the principle of using unconventional plant types and aesthetics was there and it drew people in to reconsidering the options available. Suddenly there were more!

People have begun again to see that you don’t have to keep plants looking like they’ve received a military haircut to maintain a high level of control.

It is the shift in perception that is key and it is only when people start to leave gardens to grow out that the alternative aesthetic can be appreciated.

E.g. “That bush is large and across its boundary, but that’s how I have intended it to grow and I like it.”

Similarly, I experienced the flip of that when two friends were visiting and saw a small, unintentionally overgrown patch in my front garden. They started talking about how they loved the natural looking flow and overspill of the bed.

’Well great’ I thought to myself, ‘that is how I intend it to grow, now.’ and ‘Yes’ I said aloud, ‘it’s nice isn’t it.’

We are far better informed now about ecology, a relatively new discipline that, at its heart, is about how things, both living and abiotic, interact in their given environments.

Simplistically, one of the major ideas within ecological thinking is that heterogeneity and diversity go together. What this alludes to is the more heterogeneous an environment is, the greater a diversity of biota it is likely to support.

Heterogeneous is the opposite of homogenous and just refers to there being a mix of things rather than everything being pretty much the same.

< Field of rapeseed. Not a garden, granted, but a common example of a homogeneous monoculture that doesn't offer up much in the likes of habitat or nutritional variety - which we all know is important!

Eat your greens and reds and yellows kids!

(Image credit: @etiennegirardet?on unsplash.com)

I reckon you can get your thinking gear around the tenet that an environment boasting a greater variety of resources and living conditions would encourage a greater assortment of things to live there.

‘Different things like different things’ (Wisp, 2021.)

If I may crudely illustrate this, your garden won’t get tadpoles without water nor a bee without a flower.

This is pertinent to the ‘let it grow’ lobby. If you keep your lawn tightly mown then very few creatures can make any use of it due to it not providing either much to eat or shelter in. However, if you allow it to lengthen out a bit there will be better shelter from wind and sunlight (both drying elements), hiding places from predators and more things to monch when the inevitable few non grass species rise up.

On that note, let’s take a rapid-quick look at some common plant species you’d likely find sprouting up through the grass should you choose to leave the mower in the shed a stretch longer.

Plantains –Greater plantain (Plantago major) or? ribwort plantain (Plantago lanceolate) are visited for nourishment by bumble bees like the teeny Bombus pratorum as well? as hoverfly species. Bonus, they’re also said to be good for treating cuts and bruises, so that’s handy! (Image credit: @thereon on unsplash.com)

Docks – Water / curly leaf dock (Rumex hydrolapathum) and broad leaf dock (Rumex obtusifolius) are both fed on by dock bug (Coreus marginatus) nymphs and the broad leaf dock is a host plant for the knot grass moth (Acronicta rumicis) on which they lay their eggs and the emergent caterpillars feed.

Dandelion – Don’t get rid of these. Taraxacum vulgaria provides a great deal of nosh to the expected hoverflies, bees and butterflies when in flower, but its seeds are also eaten by siskins and goldfinches among other birds. An important trait of the dandelion is that its flowering season is really wide, giving both early emerging and late settling pollinators an option when looking for some sugar.? You can use the young leaves in salad and old books will tell you that their sap cures warts.

Forget me nots - Myosotis arvensis is widely regarded as a weed, but is rarely pulled up when in flower. Its plentiful, bright blue bouquet wins over most gardeners and is visited by bees, hoverflies and butterflies. In terms of control, it’s very easy to pull up by hand but you won’t want to till the flowers die back!

(Photo credit: Wispy 2022)

Buttercup - Ranunculus repens is a great flower for the short tongued bees who can’t feed from deeper flowers.

Daisy - Bellis perennis is again great for short tongued bees but is visited by a good mix of insects, including ladybirds and other beetles. It also has a wide flowering season, roughly March – October. It got its name from being called the ‘day’s eye’, which referred to it closing at night but opening up for the sunlight.

That’s a cute thing you can ponder while regarding your eco-healthy sod.

Clover – Red (Trifolium pratense) and white (Trifolium repens) are loved by nectar hungry beasties. Clover stays green all year and resists trampling so helps toughen your lawn. A benefit of clover is that it is a nitrogen fixing plant, taking atmospheric nitrogen and converting it to a bioavailable form, with the help of symbiotic bacteria in its roots, enriching the soil around it.

Thistles – Creeping thistle (Cirsium arvense) or spear thistle (Cirsium vulgare) are highly likely to pop up their wonderful purple heads in your garden. Much maligned because of their all-over prickly nature but, like your uncle Pete, you just need to learn how to love them. Growing tall they can add a lot to the back of a bed. Their large purple flower heads are great for insects, their seed heads are great for birds like the goldfinch and their foliage is food for a bunch of butterflies and moths!

(Image credit: Benjamin-Kaufmann on unsplash.com)

Ivy – Hedera hibernica is another often offered up for scorn but I think it’s great! It’s evergreen so gives shelter to loads of little critters (including the Brimstone butterfly) all through the year, birds nest in it as soon as it’s thick enough and it’s another top food source that flowers Sept-Nov before providing berries for shtarvin’ birds! The reason many people don’t like it is because of its quick growth, but actually this makes it really easy to train and cover fences or walls. Bonus – it’s said to be pretty good insulation for your house too! Champion plant!!......I won’t deny that it may have some undesired impacts on walls, but like I said, pretty easy to control, so just control it.

Having a variety of plants and habitat types in your garden will lead to a greater variety of animal life using and living in your garden. Great! Why is it great? Well, for a few reasons….

Selfishly, for your own pleasure. The more you see, the more enjoyment you’ll get. Variety is spicey after all.

Secondly, because species are increasingly under threat. Numbers of animals in general as well as numbers of species are in decline for a myriad of reasons like habitat loss, reduction in food sources, habitat fragmentation, herbicide and pesticide use, persecution and pollution.

If you provide somewhere that a few creatures can rest up, then that’s one more refugium added to the global conservation effort.

Thirdly, studies show that not only are areas with greater biodiversity better off in terms of resilience (how well they bounce back after stresses) but, fourthly, that they actually produce more too. More production of mass means more carbon taken from the atmosphere! And that’s a big win!

Remember the earlier quote ‘different things like different things’? Well, different things do different things too (also Wisp, 2021)! Each species interacts with its environment differently and fills a specific niche. Of course tasks overlap, like millipedes and woodlice both eat detritus (dead organic matter) but basically, each species is valuable in its own right and contributes to the overall function of the system.

This means that when a species is removed from a system, functionality or efficiency is reduced. Other species might compensate to an extent, but it won’t be quite the same.

There are a bajillion and ten jobs done by the flora and fauna in your garden and they all feed into the wellbeing of the system as a whole.

Once all of a system’s functions are being satisfied, conditions for growth should be pretty good. If, however, system efficiency were to dip then it is likely that there would be some stress on the inhabitants and they might not do so well.

OK, so we got a bit into it there…. I’ll reign it in again now.

Unfortunately, I am not going to tell you to ignore garden care completely. What typically happens in neglected gardens is that a few plant species take over and effectively reduce the diversity in that patch. What we are looking for is something in between the extremes, but you still have options within that.

For a start, commit to not mowing your grass for maybe six weeks. See what comes up, try to identify it. If you’re not enjoying it then clip it down again. That’s fine, but I bet you’ll miss the daisies.

If you are looking to dive deeper in you can plan to leave the mower away till June or July. Given that it’s a different time of the year, different plants will be springing up and once they die off you can get back to mowing however you like. If you’re lucky you might even lay claim to a host of bee orchids like the ones that popped up around Ireland due to reduced mowing from COVID-19 restricted council works!

Another step up the commitment to inactivity ladder is sticking it out to see what develops when you mow at the end of march but not again till August or even September! Phew!!

You should probably however then mow it back before the winter.

Now listen. Don’t expect to have a patch like you see in the park sprout up in your first season. You have a lawn sown with lawn grasses, not tall meadow grasses. But you’ll get there and can introduce different grass types when you feel like it.

Your options don’t just end there though, because of course you don’t have to dedicate your entire grass footage to free growth. If your garden is used a lot by kids chasing balls or you need a path to the washing line, then cut where you want! Short grassy paths look wonderful bordered by long flowing foliage.

It’s your garden for you to enjoy and nobody should tell you to do something you won’t like with it. You should still get a kick from looking out, walking through or sitting in it.

If your garden gets a lot of footfall but you want to do a little, then maybe just set aside a corner of your garden for longer grasses, thistles, nettles, bird’s-foot-trefoil, dandelions or anything else that has a go. If something grows that you don’t want, clip it.

In our own small patch, a couple of years ago, we didn’t have a lot that attracted pollinators. We did have white clover and I made sure to leave it well enough alone. Any time that I went out I was promised bumblers, hoverflies or butterflies. It was so satisfying.

The three things to note in this image of my former garden are the lush patch of clover in the middle, the small patch of long grass at the back of the garden and the small hedge on the left. You really don’t need much in order to offer a useful square metre!

I did have to cut things back before I had wanted to let my kids run more freely though. I always retained some long bits and one good way to do that was to cut different parts of the garden at different times.

Gardens are versatile and you can exercise flexibility with them. If you cut one section in April, leave it to grow when you’re cutting the other section in May.

Letting your garden find its inner Nick Cannon and ‘Wild Out’ shouldn’t focus solely on the lawn space. Hedging is crucial for both insect and birdlife alike. As important as anything else in this shpeel, make sure that hedges are only cut September to February and never March to August. Under the Birds Directive, Habitats Directive and the Wildlife Act, hedges should not be cut or disturbed from March through October unless necessary for road safety reasons. So leave them be and put up with the few loose twigs as penance for your inability to organise a set of clippers in the allotted 6 months.

See the relevant, very brief and very clear legislation here: https://www.npws.ie/sites/default/files/general/section-40-wildlife-acts-consolidated.pdf

Finally, I’m going to encourage you to not do something else. For the sake of all that’s living, don’t use chemicals. Pesticides and herbicides are horrible, long-lasting, poisonous things. Some of them say that they target only specific species or plant types, but to be honest, not everything hits the target. These chemicals are detrimental to pretty much anything that comes across them. What’s more is that when they get into the soil they are taken up by plants, including your delphiniums, which store the wretched toxins in their tissues. If they are eaten then the animal ingests the toxin or if they are put on your compost the bad rests there. They have a habit of finding ways into waterways too. Either way, they persist and are damaging to any system they enter. Do not use them.

Nature balances itself. Where you have greenfly, ladybirds will follow - you can even buy a freakin’ packet of them at www.internet.com/money to aid you in your battle.

If you have a few holes in your leaves or spotty foliage…..get over it. Are you entering any competitions this month? We don’t want plant diseases to spread, but we can clip leaves and bin the debris (see my previous article on composting). Everything that unfolds in your garden will be part of a natural process and is graaaaand.

So leave well enough alone.

Now

I know that you want to buy a bucket of seeds and that you long for a rich, wild looking meadow on your doorstep. But just take a minute as there are a few things that we have to discuss first. Thankfully there’s an article coming that does just that!

In the meantime you can check out www.pollinators.ie and www.wildflowers.ie who are both ace. You can even register your garden on pollinators.ie showing your commitment to helping wildlife.

If you want to do more than you have space for, I'm sure there are others in your estate or local area that feel the same, so why not test the waters at your next residents’ meeting.

In summation: Leave things grow but don’t let the few take over. Encourage a variety of plant types but keep your garden working for you. Only cut hedges when appropriate. Enjoy.

Thanks for reading, I hope it was a good one for you and throw me comments and suggestions of what you’d like to see featured.