Are you going to re-wild your garden?

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

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 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.

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.

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.