Are you going to re-wild your garden?

We have an area of our l-shaped garden that last year we scarified and scattered with wildflower seeds as well as planting a few wildflower plugs. In the autumn I added yellow rattle to help cut back the grass, after its single autumn cut. We’re waiting to see what grows there this year and will maybe cut just once in the autumn again, there are lots of interesting looking green bit coming up!
It’s not an acre, but every little helps.

It's interesting seeing what comes up. Our house was built on a field that had either oil seed rape or mustard, I'm not sure which. It's too big for us to make a "proper" garden so most of it has been left. We tried various methods but in the end just left it. We were surprised at the variety of wild flowers that appeared. At first stronger plants like plantain and thistles were in the majority but gradually others took over. I started to keep a list of the flowers that came up and mean to keep a diary. We are lucky because we have different types of terrain. One part is heavy clay and another is very shallow soil over limestone rocks. We have at least 5 different types of orchid, plus scabious and wild rock rose. We also cut just in the autumn and have the cuttings raked off.

We made the mistake one year of cutting part of our garden in Suffolk (not the field) in spring. The year before we had a splendid display of wild ox eye daisies and star of bethlehem and they didn't appear. We'd cut at the wrong time. It was several years before they started to come back.

We have many butterflies and moths and it's very soothing to wander around and watch them all.

I have been keeping a wild garden for years. My garden was originally a barley field and I have gravel all over the front garden on the natural soil without a membrane. The parts of the front garden not driven over are now grassy and flowery, although I do remove large weeds such as holly, cherry, and hawthorn seedlings. I notice birds like to peck at the growing things in March.

I never cut the grass last summer, and this summer I will cut only the surrounds of the slabs that are set into the grass.

I have a big enough back garden for an oak and have grown one from its seedling.

We have a large area (just under an acre) that's always been known as the meadow. It was never a lawn before that however. You have an almost blank canvas when turning a lawn into a wild flower meadow. We didn't have that luxury.

Maintenance of meadows is vital. We haven't been able to this constantly with ours over the 45 years of living here. Consequently it is now very uneven due to extensive mole activity and brambles and couch grass are a battle. 5 years ago we started to cut it regularly (every Autumn). We use a brushcutter and then rake it. I've tried a few times to introduce new wild flowers in this time with no success. It is very heavy clay soil that gets waterlogged. We'd have to make the decision to completely clear a very small area and then try some plug plants.

What we are amazed with are the amount of pyramid orchids we get in one corner. They've always been there. Also find them in our lawn.

Be prepared for the work a wild flower meadow needs. Check your soil first ! The main problem, is getting rid of the abundance of weeds or dominant grasses. Oh, and lawnmowers can't cope with the cutting. I broke the shaft on ours twice. The brushcutter has a big heavy-duty machine!

This year I'm paying someone two days work to do it for me. I like to mow but hate the raking and collection afterwards.

I am moving soon and plan that the new virgin garden will be part wild. And a wildlife pond too.

My garden's wild already. Current count of wild plants is 215. I haven't identified all the mosses.

There are a few non-wild plants but most of them have to be protected from the munchings of wild roe deer.

My garden has been re-wilding itself for years. It is in need of some TLC, but we’ll be keeping it wildlife friendly.

The little points just poking through are the tops of Northern Marsh Orchids, of which there were 52 last year. None of them planted; they just appeared and I mark their whereabouts so that they don't get mown.

These two are one step outside my back door.

I have a small wildlife pond and a small back garden but half of that has been left to go wild. Wish I had the amount of land that a lot of you have......

Muse, might a forest tree or three keep the weeds under control?

My garden is doing very well all on its own; just trying to clear away all the wild garlic.

I live in a tree lined London street and our council have asked people to adopt the tree pits in their street and plant wild flowers at the base of the tree. They have provided a label to attach to the tree so that the council will not spray the adopted pits with weed killer in the summer. We are to plant wild flowers only so that we can increase the availability of pollen for insects.

The tree pit outside my house contains a beautiful flowering cherry that brings me a lot of pleasure when it flowers so I am looking forward to getting it planted next week.

Ours is not nearly big enough, so no, though it’s hardly manicured to within an inch of its life anyway, and our little so-called lawn is a mass of violets and buttercups in their seasons.

I seem to remember a gardening article in the Telegraph where a ‘small’ garden was anything less than about half an acre - ? - wherever would one put the tennis court and swimming pool?

Ours is tiny, paved with raised beds. I don't use weed killer, and most of our plants attract pollinators. However we also have an allotment, on which we keep bees and DH planted five new fruit trees in the bee area and we are also going to seed that part with a bee friendly wild flower mixture.

I have lived in my house for around 35 years and it was built on a field the year before that. We had to reconstruct the topsoil, terrace it to stop our garden sliding into next door when it rained and clear the buried junk (car steering column and axle anybody?) but its never been unwild. I had 7 trees when we moved here, have lost 5 due to disease and the fact that one tree was trashing the foundations but have added rowan, spindle, holly, mirabelle and amelanchier. The only chemical I use and that rarely is brushwood killer because if I didn't, I would have nothing but brambles. Some are allowed but they are rampant and need controlling. Its not a big garden, I would say good size for suburbia.

25 years ago when we bought this house, I ceased doing anything to one area of grass. I did proper rewilding, just leaving it and seeing what happened. I live in a village and I am surrounded by uncultivated land.

The result is a rather scruffy area of land with all the usual thugs growing there.

What Monty Don is recommending is not proper rewilding, it is fashionable rewilding, consisting of sewing wild flowers and keeping everything nice and tidy, removing the thugs.

It is as much gardening as mowing your lawn.

muse is right! the happy theory that all you need to do is leave land alone and mother nature will do its bit is complete bunkum. Mother nature's "bit" is to alow the coarsest most robust vegetation to take over and this usually means nettles, brambles, and so on. Areas that are genuinely re wilded need much research to find out how they have changed and what point in time you want to rewind to. Meadows were managed and used, even huge areas like the New Forest or the Moors have been shaped by human use, grazing, agriculture, game management and so on.

Even sinking a washing up bowl into the garden is sufficient to attract wildlife.

Our garden is surrounded by various trees, some conifer, some deciduous. The garden near the house and patio is more manicured, but gets wilder away from the house. The garden isn't huge but reasonable for a modern house. We have never used weedkillers and one part of the garden has been overtaken by nettles, and the brambles and ivy get everywhere and are really difficult to control. On the plus side we get loads of wildlife - hedgehogs, foxes, field mice, loads of different birds from sparrowhawks to wrens, and a number of bees, butterflies and moths.

Luckygirl Remember Geoff Hamilton? He was our guru when we started gardening On his advice we sank a bucket in the garden and filled it with water and for a while had newts. Unfortunately our garden is clay and gets very muddy and the bucket eventually filled up with mud - we never emptied it because we were always a bit worried about hedgehogs falling in and not being able to get out as it was deep.

I have a little rotting wood pile for beetles, dead trees which are left to rot for mining insects like wasps etc and every flower must be bee or insect friendly.

I don’t tidy up the garden until this time of year and have a little pond, which used to be much bigger but our dog spent all day stood in it or racking around the edges and it became a muddy giant puddle.

I garden organically, but I don’t have a lawn so can’t have a meadow?

It always looks lovely in pictures and for real, but it does sound like a lot of hard work to get established.
The wildlife aspect, particularly butterflies, would be the attraction for me.

It's interesting seeing what comes up
A huge number of dandelions.

I have tried this for 3 years now and have scattered wildflower seeds, scraped up soil and put in seeds, dug little holes and planted wildflowers, followed instructions, but it is nowhere near being a wildflower meadow or wildflower strip.
It is just a mess.

I could take up all the grass and put down turf with pre-planted wildflowers possibly. But will that fail too?

The garden is nowhere near perfect, it's too big to manage now, so I reckon we're doing our bit!