I thought I’d walk you through one of my favourite garden design projects here in West Yorkshire. The owners are amazing people who wanted a colourful wildlife friendly plot and to only reuse existing materials on site. It’s a wraparound garden with an ornamental terrace to the front of the house and a heavily sloped meadow bank to the rear.

Starting with a blank canvas it’s been an incredible transformation. The garden is directly next to a moor, meaning it’s at a high elevation, very wet in winter yet can be extremely dry in summer and is exposed to blasting wind and sun year round.

Before

Since moving to Yorkshire many of my design projects I’ve been commissioned for have been to remove paving and restore areas for wildlife with plant communities. When the owners moved into their new home, the garden terrace had been completely covered in quite a dramatic quantity of paving and gravel. The owners wanted to remove almost all of it (rehoming it) but we decided to keep the oddly shaped black brick path and the step into the house.

I wouldn’t have designed this exact shape of path - the kink is too severe - but felt I could certainly work with it. There wasn’t any point ripping up the concrete sub base only to relay it slightly differently when the plants could make sense of it.

We also kept some of the stone sculptures and pieces of wall from a secondary unnecessary gate that cut the space in half.

As with many gardens I design in Yorkshire, it has incredible views that needed framing and very steep slopes. We decided to remove the gate that divided the paved and gravel areas to make the garden feel as one.

The above awkward corner is one with more shade allowing for a different mix of plants in this space and beyond, the meadow slope I will explain below.

Now

I visited in July, two years after planting and was blown away at how the terrace has developed. The garden was prepped, planted and then cared for by the owners, who really get stuck in, as well as a professional gardener. I always recommend working with a professional gardener for a garden of this size, which is just under one acre. Gardens can be a lot of work even when the planting is low maintenance, it’s well worth having a knowledgeable plantsperson who can help at points through the year.

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Which plants in your garden are coping with heat and drought? Please fill in this short survey

It’s long been said the only thing we can predict about British weather is that you cannot predict it. Something that has ramped up as global warming continues to rise.

Two things we do know is that according to the MetOffice, summers are more likely to be hot and dry, especially in the south east of the UK, and winters will become milder and wetter everywhere.

British gardens - and I suspect most other temperate regions - now need a set of plants that can tolerate both extremes. Very dry summers and reasonably wet winters. Otherwise, we need to just live with gardens that dieback in summer, the subject of my column in Gardens Illustrated this month. It’s an option.

The point about wetter winters has led many gardeners to proclaim that Mediterranean and other drought tolerant plants will rot in winter wet. While there is some truth to this, it’s a bit of an exaggeration.

We live on an exposed but free-draining south facing hillside in West Yorkshire. In hot weather the clay-loam ground does dry out, perhaps not for as long as down south but almost as much.

However the interesting thing I’ve noticed from our location is not what survives summer but what survives winter.

Living above Hebden Bridge, there are a number of things the area is famous for: being the lesbian capital of the UK, a Bohemian hippy and artist hotspot, lots of small farms and flooding. Yes, it rains a lot in our garden, especially in winter.

Our garden has extremely high winter rainfall and in mild winters the heavy soil can be exceptionally wet. Parts of our meadow become fully waterlogged with underground springs bubbling up directly next to our garden.

Winters here are generally growing warmer with less freezes, making them wetter, made worse by increased rainfall. Two winters ago we lost all but one of our Monarda to that combination of wet and cold. And certainly there are some plants I could grow down south that aren’t hardy enough to survive in Yorkshire.

But the Monarda have been one of very few plant losses to winter wet, despite the fact I have planted predominantly drought tolerant species for summer directly in our heavy wet soil. When we moved here 6 years ago we came from twenty years of gardening across London - I knew what dry summers could be like.

So, while our garden may not be as dry and hot as down south, I am growing a lot of drought tolerant plant species that thrive in the south. And these plants are also surviving the extreme winter wet and cold of a West Yorkshire garden sitting next to the Wuthering Heights moor. Far wetter than southern winters are.

I chose plants with the knowledge they could survive drought and winter wet but I was surprised how many plants I’d been told couldn’t survive that actually did. I began to notice drought tolerant plants were better able to survive soggy winter soil when Dahlias, Verbena bonariensis and herb fennel emerged from winter unscathed on our allotment. I didn’t plant them.

Others include all the herbs lavender, rosemary, thyme, bay. Plus the likes of Echinops, Jarava, Centranthus, Althaea cannabina. Hylotelephium and true hardy shrub salvias thrive! Some shrub salvias are said to be hardy but aren’t, so you have to choose wisely.

Plus every wildflower I’ve ever thrown at it: ox-eye daisies, knapweed, Knautia arvensis, Verbascum, musk mallow, lady’s bedstraws. You name it. Achillea millefolium and Jacobaea vulgaris are indestructible - they look better now everything is drying around them than before. Something I’ve observed countless times around Surrey, Kent and London.

Of course, there will be gardens that genuinely flood and that’s a separate issue for a specific minority of gardens. Most gardens have high rainfall and soggy very wet soil, and as our garden shows, there is plenty of hope for a set of garden plants that work in all extremes while growing in regular soil.

When most of our gardens start to wilt and show drought stress, it’s an excellent chance to spot the plants that relish dry and heat. Which is why I’ve started a survey asking what plants are thriving in your garden during the hot spell right now?

Complete survey

Please take a few minutes to look at your garden and fill in the survey to help inform gardeners for the future. I will share the results with you here on the Wild Way.

Available to pre-order today!

Grower Gatherer has been many years in the making and my hope is that it helps you grow more food more easily. It includes over fifty of my favourite perennial crops that look beautiful and are also great for wildlife.

It’s been such a joy to create this book, I can’t wait for you to see it. I will share more details with you in the coming weeks including a garden club tour I’m currently starting to organise!

1) Monarda ‘Lodden Crown’

I love monarda, I love their colours, flower shape and bergamot scent when touched. ‘Lodden Crown’ has proven more reliable for me than most other cultivars. Monarda are fairly drought tolerant, to a point. They certainly prefer to be drier in winter and won’t survive overly soggy soils. In summer however, they are actually pretty tough as long as the season doesn’t start too dry. Even in high drought Monarda will actually survive, the leaves will just get some mildew and crisp. I don’t really care about that though.

Drought tolerance: 3/5

2) Veronicastrum verginucum ‘Fascination’

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By chance, this year I’ve found myself in cities during the three heatwaves and the one thing I noticed is how much I sought out the shade of large trees. In fact, it was the only place I could find any kind of reprieve from the burning, sweat inducing sun.

I’m talking about towering trees over 20-30m tall with the same spread. Trees that form cavernous understories to cool huge areas of towns and cities, sometimes by up to 10C.

Trees like the hybrid plane Platanus × hispanica, oak, sweet chestnut and various cultivars of horse chestnut, Aesculus spp. Plane trees are a hybrid of Platanus orientalis and Platanus occidentalis, which themselves are large trees that can be seen around city streets.

Why and when did we stop planting these trees? Given they cool our streets, are drought tolerant even in long periods of heat and create huge habitats for thousands of species high in their branches. Oak alone we know supports over 2,000 species.

Sadly, we seem to have stopped sometime toward the end of the last millennium. Deemed too large for modern society, too intrusive with their shade. Instead, we’re making streets as narrow as possible and filling them with tiny little ornamental cherries and amelanchier. Beautiful and useful trees but their impact is significantly reduced by their scale.

As the climate warms, the UK and other northern European countries can learn from our southern neighbours. Here big trees are used to great effect in parks and around the countryside to shade people and understory plants.

Many trees are more drought tolerant than we might think and southern drier regions help inform us what trees can tolerate. Above is a walnut with more space around it, the mix of shade and light allowing for plants to grow beneath. Below are enormous elderflower around Mount Etna growing to well over 10m tall and wide. Here summers can be very sunny, hot and dry.

I do understand the challenge, in the rush for space for buildings it’s easy for politicians and developers to brush aside green infrastructure. Making new roads wider to accommodate trees up to 30m wide with buildings either side may sound like a challenge too far for many.

Things like longterm maintenance to reduce canopies and worries about trees falling on buildings all put a stop to architects and planners planting these trees. Fear around what will survive - even though with eyes open we can see what will survive in regions to our south. Also what has survived past heatwaves and drought. these Victorian era trees all lived through the heatwave of 1976, the heatwave global warming deniers are so keen to harp on about.

20th Century architects and planners didn’t get everything right. I’d suggest they planted the big trees too close together, preventing other understory plants growing well beneath them. They also planted the same species in monoculture avenues, rather than mixed planting. Both of these decisions will have reduced wildlife value - but we live in a different time with better knowledge of nature’s decline.

By spacing out a mix of different big tree species, it means we can also underplant them with smaller shade tolerant trees, shrubs and perennials. Giving them plenty of root space is critical.

To cope with the hot summers it feels like we’re missing out on one of our cheapest natural assets: big trees. Look at European cities with mature big trees and how well they work. I would also argue the obvious: slotting green space between buildings is better for our health. Better for a feeling of space, better to cool living areas naturally, better for bringing biodiversity close to our homes.

What do you think? Can we make room for big trees in our towns and cities once again? Should we? Or am I barking up the wrong trees? Has our need for buildings outgrown the possibility of big trees in urban areas? Are they actually just too big to grow around houses and workplaces?

One of my favourite wildflowers is Valeriana officinalis, the true wild valerian, not to be mistaken for Red Valerian, Centranthus ruber.

When we first moved to Yorkshire I scoured the surrounding area seeking out all of the wildflowers that grow locally. This simple exercise, looking at local plants, tells us everything we need to know about plants for our gardens. It is our living plant catalogue. A catalogue that happens to be free, with a little patience and gardening knowledge.

I found a patch of valerian plants in flower next to a river and waited. A couple of months later they had begun to produce fluffy seeds and I gathered a tiny pinch placing them into a little paper packet - not many, to leave most for the wild.

Back home, I sowed the seeds into pots of peat-free compost and watched as those tiny seeds sprouted and grew into fine young plants. At which point, in the following spring, I planted them out in different spots in our garden where their offspring flower today, a number of years later.

Need to know information about Valeriana officinalis

The shape of the inflorescence is interesting and a bit of a mouthful, it’s called a corymbose cyme. To explain this, the word cyme describes the flowering sequence in a cluster of flowers where the oldest central flower opens first with side shoots following. In valerian’s case, there are multiple cymes (or stems) in each flower head. You might be able to just see a few spent flowers on different stems across the flowerhead in the above photo. Corymbose describes the overall shape, where stems are of different length to create a flat top, or in this case, slight dome.

Valeriana officinalis originates from all across Europe down to Iran, making it a widespread hardy perennial wildflower of a temperate climate. In terms of growing conditions it is adaptable but the essentials seem to be a good amount of sun, moisture retentive soil that does not dry out but is also not waterlogged and reasonable soil fertility. I tend to see it looking its best in the wild and in our garden with a little shade, those spots that receive direct sun for a lot of the day, but not all.

Valerian tolerates heavy clay soils and is usually seen in damp woodland edges, ditches or along rivers. I find it struggles in areas where the soil dries out too much in summer, so in drier areas be prepared that it might not work - but give it a grow, as you never know.

Wild valerian grows to about 1.5m tall with gorgeous ferny leaves in a lush green. The stems are also a lovely fresh green colour and very smooth. Overall this creates a beautiful, tall and airy plant that combines well with almost anything.

The other main thing you need to know about Valeriana officinalis is that it has the most incredible sweet scent. One of the best fragrances in gardens and reason enough to grow it.

Is wild valerian good for wildlife?

Valerian’s primary role is for pollen and nectar in mid to late summer rather than as a larval food plant. It’s a generalist plant used by a wide number of species from within the butterflies, moths, beetles, hoverflies, flies, bees and wasps. One of those flowers where you can see dozens of species of insect in a single hour. I’ve noticed it is particularly loved by smaller solitary bees and wasps. As well as moths at night.

Using Valeriana officinalis in garden design

In gardens valerian is a fantastic addition to part-shade or hectic borders. As a vigorous wild plant it can cope with the hustle and bustle of an active plant community.

From a plant design perspective it is an almost perfect vertical accent plant that flowers from midsummer for a month or two. I find the white to pale pink flowers refreshing in gardens. The colour of the flowers tends to lean toward white in more shade, while the pink tinge comes with more sun.

It combines well with any fluffy, fountain or airy plants, such as sanguisorba, geranium, ox-eye daisy and all ornamental grasses. It also looks really good in foliage plantings, such as with ferns and the larger flowering heuchera.

Plant it among shorter perennials such as astrantia and its flower stems will rise above these for visual interest at different heights.

How to propagate Valerian officinalis?

It’s easy to grow valerian from its minuscule seeds, which can be sown on the surface of damp peat-free compost or direct in the soil - though I find wildflowers easier to establish from plants. Just as easy is dividing the plant as it clumps up and spreads slightly by underground rhizome. Dig out a new shoot with some roots and pot up or plant somewhere else. These always take happily for me.

People often warn me that wild valerian can be a bit of spreader but I think that is in more traditionally managed gardens where borders are weeded to leave bare soil. In our garden I would actually like it to spread more! It is slowly spreading by seed and rhizome into new spots in our main garden, whereas in our more shaded wilder areas it struggles to compete, though it is slowly establishing.

Is wild valerian edible?

Yes Valeriana officinalis is edible but I wouldn’t use it for food. The leaves don’t taste very nice though when young can be eaten, and the flowers can be added as a garnish. The roots are edible but again, I wouldn’t ever use them myself.

Wild valerian’s main use - again, not to be confused with red valerian, Centranthus ruber - is for in herbal remedies. Famously used in natural sleeping tablets, teas and tinctures. If you’re interested in exploring that, please research more first, though essentially you dry the roots, chop finely and then use about a teaspoon to make a tea to have before bed.

I love wild valerian, in my eyes it’s a perfect plant that we can all grow for free or find in independent nurseries. I’m hoping it spreads all around our garden in time, though I have noticed it can have some off years where the plants appear in spring and then don’t grow any more or flower. I wonder why? When they do flower, wild valerian is fabulous. For others they seem reliable each year.

I’m interested in your experience, how does it grow where you live? Do you grow wild valerian in your garden and if so, what are the conditions? Or have you seen it growing somewhere in the wild?

Discover wildlfowers in the Wild Way wild plant directory…

Growing salad over the years has given me an inordinate amount of pleasure. Being able to grow at least some salad for every day of year is heartening and builds confidence. More delicious than I’d expected, fresh leaves from a mix of plants have varied flavour, texture and colour that’s hard to match in packaged stuff. I grow and forage plenty of leaves from perennial plants and also love the simple process of sowing and growing a colourful row of annual lettuce.

Harvest

Few things taste better than a fresh homegrown new potato. New potatoes are ready for us now - signalled by pheasants digging them up for seemingly no reason. This year I’m growing ‘Jazzy’, though I also often grow either ‘Anya’ or ‘Pink Fir Apple’ depending on which is available.

Other crops are starting to produce summer gluts including pea ‘Meteor’, which are still cropping for us. Keep picking peas and beans and they’ll produce more. Raspberries and gooseberry are ripening and our rhubarb are still producing strong stems to eat.

Semi-hardwood cuttings of shrubs

July is an excellent month to propagate new shrubs. Softwood and semi-hardwood cuttings root quickly in the warmth of midsummer. Key is to take a 10-20cm new shoot, strip the lower two thirds of leaves, place in compost in a bright spot out of direct sunlight - so they don’t cook. Cover with a transparent propagator lid or bag until new leaf growth is seen. I’ve written a guide on shrub cuttings with more detail.

You can take cuttings from all sorts of shrubs now including gooseberry, currants, honeyberry, rosemary, thyme, sage, potentilla, roses, salvias, fuchsia and hydrangea. Search online for your shrubs to see if they are suitable - most are!

Annual vegetables

A lot of my time and attention in summer goes on the tomato plants because we really love fresh summer ripened tomatoes. In fact, I get a little obsessed with tomato plant watching. Ours were slow to get going this year but are fast catching up. I tie thick 3mm twine to the beams of our polytunnel and then loosely tie the other end around the lower stem. I can then gently twist the plant around as it grows, this is enough to support the vine. Pinching off side shoots to put all energy into vertical fruiting. Once set up, I find vine tomatoes easier than bush types to harvest because the fruit is easier to reach.

I’ve pinched out the top lead shoot of our aubergines (above) to encourage the sideshoots to grow. This causes the plant to bush up, producing more fruit. It also makes the plants sturdier and less top heavy.

There is still time to sow and grow French beans, including borlotti and orca types meant for dried beans. Read my guide to how and the differences between these beans.

These are seedlings of Chicory ‘Rossa di Treviso’ sown a few weeks ago, they can be sown now too. Chicory makes a great crunchy base for a salad. Other crops to sow now include Florence fennel, spring onion, radish and turnip. We’ve been making delicious pickled turnip!

Meadows

If you are trying to introduce or enhance a meadow or pasture area, around about now (earlier down south) both yellow rattle and eyebright will start to have ripe seed. The best way to use these is to collect and immediately spread where you would like the plants to grow. Bearing in mind that eyebright grows best in already quite short or open grass, such as path edges or in already short patches.

Above are yellow rattle seed capsules that can be tipped into your hand. Eyebright seeds are produced next to their stem and need to be picked off painstakingly.

I find the most reliable way to start wildflowers is from small plants in plugs or 9cm pots. At this point in summer I would hold off planting these into dense meadows or other planting, and instead now wait until late-summer or autumn. Unless you can keep them watered and ensure they have enough sun. Otherwise they may dry out in heat or have light blocked by larger plants.

Wildlife

At this point in the year the most important job for wildlife is to provide water during long dry periods as puddles will have dried up. If you have a pond, keeping it topped up is enough.

If you don’t have a pond, a low and wide dish is great. Or ideally a couple, one on the ground for ground dwellers and one higher up for birds and flying insects, out of reach of ground predators. Add a few pebbles or bits of wood for insects to land on or use to escape the water if they fall in.

The RSPB advice for birds was to only provide water in dishes if you can wash it every day to prevent the spread of disease, and I think that is sensible.

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Workshop focussed on establishing wildflowers

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I wanted to share that RHS Harlow Carr blew me away yesterday thanks to extensive and well managed wildflower meadows that extend throughout the entire garden. With an hour or so spare after judging the new plant trial I’m on I enjoyed a wander. It struck me how the team at Harlow Carr have hit that magic balance of practical habitat management thanks to their gardening expertise that has resulted in meaningful conservation. On show right now across acres of meadow filled with orchids and other wildflowers that were teaming with insects. If you can visit this week I strongly recommend it. Plants you’ll see include an abundance of common spotted orchid, ox-eye daisies, knapweed, cat’s ear, meadow geranium, wild lettuce, jacobaea, yellow rattle, self heal, achillea, tufted vetch, common hogweed. The great thing is that it is the most accessible meadow I have ever been to because of the great parking and path facilities the RHS provide.

As I peered round the door, the chittering stopped, and I looked up to see three young swallows on a rafter, already out of the nest, quietly staring back at me with their juvenile white faces. I snapped a photo and said hello before slowly backing away to leave them to it.

To my surprise they all flew out shortly after. Not only were they already airborne but flying confidently. I’d obviously missed their initial tentative practice.

Soon the three young swallows circled overhead looking at me before their mum and dad came over to join them. One of the parents paused on an adjacent roof.

They stared at me for a long time, sussing me out. Their gaze protective but I also read pride in their stance and an understanding between us. They were right to be proud, I was proud of them too, that they raised three fine offspring. Against the odds of woodpeckers and magpies sneaking in to steal some of the chicks, and everything else nature throws at them.

Swallows have been one of the small success stories of our garden. When we saw them for the first time in the summer of 2021 it was a magical moment for me. I must have seen swallows before in my life, but this time I really saw them. How they swim and glide through air currants like fish in water.

In the first few years we kept the doors to the stable shut because there was a small square cut out we assumed was meant for them - there being dried nests inside already. And because they appeared to be nesting in an old pigsty on the other side of our drive. But I began to realise the nests in the pigsty weren’t used and they weren’t going in the hole, though they were nesting in our neighbours’ outbuildings. There were no signs of chicks in ours for the first couple of years and I began to panic we’d made a big mistake.

That’s when, in 2024 I swung the top of the door to the end stable open. Within days swallows were inside checking out the potential new digs. Perhaps the old nests gave them ideas, perhaps these swallows had used them before or grew up in them. Chris and I were so excited, and I more than a little relieved, though I cursed myself at the lost couple of years.

Sadly, this was also the year of a very wet and cold spring and early summer that made it difficult for insects, the first set of chicks starved to death. An active nest requiring 5,000 - 8,000 insects per day. Their tiny bodies removed from the nest by the parents somewhat brutally but also necessarily. After our initial joy, Chris and I were devastated, and we carefully collected them from the floor to bury.

Later that season, the weather picked up along with insect activity, enough to feed a swallow family. A second clutch of eggs was laid and hungry chattering could soon be heard once more.

One day I peered in to find a tiny swallow staring back at me from the floor. Panicked I ran to get Chris, both of us unsure what to do. All advice is to leave wild bird chicks for parents to deal with - interfering can cause parents to abandon nests, starving the chicks. Or sometimes the chick is sick and cast out intentionally to protect the others.

In this case, it was too cute, too defenceless, healthy looking, and the swallow parents had no physical way to lift the chick back up. I threw caution to the wind and donned my muddiest, most mud and plant scented garden gloves and - when the parents were out hunting for insects - gently clasped the chick within my two palms. Wobbling up a ladder that Chris steadied, I raised the young swallow up to the nest. It knew what to do and casually walked from my hand into the nest again with its siblings. I advise others to not do this, but in the interest of being transparent, we did.

I checked the floor daily in case they fell out, though we never saw the chick on the floor again. A week or two later I was overjoyed to see three young swallows on a beam away from the nest. They had flown. Was one the sweet little thing from the floor? We like to think it was.

Last year was more successful with one, perhaps two broods. This year, with one brood flown already, I’ve seen the parents flying in and out of the pigsty, gathering mud and perched on a nearby post. When I looked into the stable last night during a downpour the first brood was huddled sheltering from the rain. They are still being fed and taught to hunt insects by the parents.

I suspect the parents are both caring for their first brood and readying a second nest in a new spot in the pigsty. Away from their chicks and perhaps in a more secure spot away from magpie eyes.

Of the things I love about our garden in Yorkshire - and there are many - the return of the swallows in spring is one of the greatest. I love their presence so much I have a fear of their loss - what if they don’t come back? Right now though, I will watch their antics as they feed on insects from our garden’s rich ecosystem and hope for a second brood for this year’s successful pair, increasing their number further. Until the time comes when autumn arrives on the wind telling the swallows to ready for the long migration back to Africa or Southern Europe for winter.

Yellow rattle. It’s yellow and yes, its seed pods rattle - quite loudly in fact!

We mainly talk about Yellow rattle, Rhinanthus minor, in a utilitarian manner. The main reason people want it in grasslands is to keep the vigour of strong wild grasses like cock’s foot under control. It does this by attaching its roots to those of grasses and other plants, extracting nutrition weakening those other plants. Very useful indeed.

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Our garden is so exciting this year and it’s amazing how much it has changed since the alliums only a month ago! But I am aware it can veer into unkempt mess. Which is why I keep a few planty tricks up my sleeves and I’ll reveal some to you below…

1) Geranium x oxonianum f. thurstonianum

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Walking around the garden in the early morning sun I can feel the impending heat of the day. Curiously birds aren’t singing, perhaps I missed their four o’clock start and they’re having a siesta ahead of a busy day feeding and teaching fledged chicks.

I have loved our garden from the beginning and this year there is something more, something bigger. Change is happening, plant communities I started six summers ago are demonstrating they are becoming independent, allowing me to better spread my attention around other areas. For whatever reason Valeriana officinalis is thriving this year, after almost three years in stasis.

Change is happening within me too, it’s one of those years where I can feel the need for a new phase in my life. Spurred on no doubt by the passing of my dad back in January, the world hasn’t felt the same since. I feel a need to step up. That his death was when I became entirely adult. It’s not a bad feeling, a realigning of my life to better contribute to the world - to future generations. Seeing the responsibility of the platforms I’ve grown with your support. I am ready.

Today I plan to spend searching for my favourite orchid, the greater butterfly orchid, Platanthera chlorantha. I’m unlikely to be successful, it’s rare and inconspicuous, but it’s a good way to spend a day outdoors in beautiful wild places. I want to paint some landscapes, as I haven’t had a chance to pick up my watercolours for a while. And I plan to plant our squashes.

I continue my walk around areas of the garden taking photos to try and capture it - how it feels to me - to share with you, here, on the Wild Way. How beautiful it is with the excitement of many more plants yet to flower or fruit.

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When we first moved to our garden in Yorkshire, I started noticing a tiny white-flowered plant in our meadow. At first I acknowledged it but thought little of it until I looked up and discovered it was eyebright (Euphrasia spp.) a hemiparasitic plant, it attaches its roots to other plants to extract nutrients from them. Hemi, which means half or partially, because it can still absorbs nutrients from soil and photosynthesises. The gardening world champions yellow rattle in meadows but eyebright is rarely mentioned. Yet as I’ve learnt, this tiny wonder is every bit key piece in the grassland puzzle.

Need to know information about Eyebright

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Solstice, on 21st June, is the scientific term for when one of the hemispheres of Earth is most inclined toward the sun on the planet’s orbit.

For us in the northern hemisphere, summer solstice is the longest period of daylight and the shortest night. It’s one of the most important markers of the year for gardeners and farmers because two things now happen:

1. Night lengthens: many plants have evolved to trigger into flowering and fruiting as days shorten. For example, dahlias, salvias, asters and nerines. Potatoes now know to flower and set tubers, while others will bolt (rush to flower), such as radishes.

2. Consistent warmth: we enter the summer months that usually have the most heat and consistent warm temperatures.

By this point, most plants will be growing strongly with luxurious leaves photosynthesising in the long daylight, flowers burst open and fruit is starting …

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I write a lot about the benefits of wild design, primarily for biodiversity and climate resilience but what about aesthetics?

The word ‘design’ can make some scoff, it’s easy to think design is all about shallow looks that don’t matter compared to more important things, like helping wildlife. As with most things in life, it is never either or, we can have purpose in gardens and an aesthetic that we enjoy. Design is about more than looks, it is far from shallow. To me the core of design is problem solving, creating a space that fits all requirements. Usability, productivity, wildlife friendly and yes, beautiful.

After ten years of designing gardens across the UK in an increasingly wild style of design I know it is possible to create gardens with purpose and beauty. In fact, the two things go hand in hand.

I’ve learnt a huge amount about the psychology of what people perceive as beauty in gardens and how it affects them emotionally. Perceived beauty in gardens matters because it sparks something in us that makes us happy, excited and able to relax. It helps break us away from our daily worries.

To me, wild style design is about emotion. When I design a garden for someone else and in our own garden at home, what I am trying to do is create the emotions we feel when our breath is taken away by a beautiful scene in the wild.

For that to work, the planting can’t simply be an artificial recreation of what we think the wild looks like. It has to be an active plant community and ecosystem with a life of its own. I don’t want naturalistic, I want real natural. The garden has to be alive and free and that to me is the defining element of wild design.

As gardeners we are part of the garden ecosystem and part of what we do as humans is play with plants. Which means we can steer the plant communities to our preferences in terms of looks - the colours we like, the structures and effect. Some plantings may contain only native wildflowers, others cultivars too. Yet it is free to grow and change around our plans, the garden and gardener work in tandem.

In terms of looks, it is entirely possible to have a fully formal garden with topiary and rigid structure that is wildlife friendly. It’s not true that I don’t enjoy gardens like this that other people create, I am just not the best person to create that. However, this is not wild style of design. To return to the core point for me, wild design is about drawing on the emotions we feel in nature.

This means that yes, wild design gardens are looser, more chaotic. Plants are allowed to mingle and flop into one another. Yes, weeds may grow between cultivars we planted. These unplanned events give the garden life. There is so much going on around the plants and this creates habitat for so much wildlife. The garden is alive in ways a more pristine or manicured garden cannot be.

For us, I believe this freeness has a psychological effect that can relax us. If the garden is free and untamed, we draw upon that.

I don’t deny however that there is a part of us as humans that needs a kind of order. I like this quirk of humanity, the part that feels relieved after we’ve returned order to a messy room following a good tidy up. I feel it when I mow the path through our chaotic garden.

To deny this part of our psychology in wild gardens is a mistake that turns many people off the style. A garden without an obvious path to walk or an open area to sit will send the mess alarm in our brain into overdrive. I totally understand this and the fact some people don’t like wild design at first. We’ve been so conditioned against it, it has even taken me this long to feel confident to say, this is my style, this is my art.

I often call our garden a nest and I think there is more to that casual term than I first thought. Throughout history we evolved in wild nature and would have made comfortable clearings to live. There’s something about that part of us I feel is more important than we realise or understand.

A wild style design garden is wild but it needs humanity. Humanity makes a garden as much as the rest of nature. As we are part of nature, we are part of the garden. Is the gardener the garden?

In our spaces we can choose to blur the boundaries between the wild areas of planting and tidy areas for us as much or as little as we like. One person may have no path or seating area, others may like a clearly defined planting area next to a patio. In our garden I do both with areas blending the planting and space for us.

So what is the wild aesthetic? I believe the wild aesthetic is authentic, it embraces plants growing how they want to grow. Perceived imperfection to some is social conditioning against true perfection of nature. Wild design loves nibbled leaves, it loves dead and broken stems, it embraces flopping and the subsequent regrowth, it embraces the unplanned. It embraces life, as much life as we can conjure with plants. And it has enough of an element of humanity to balance nature’s beautiful chaos with space and structure for us to relax and feel comfortable in our nest.

Wild style gardens draw on the plant structure we see in nature, when plants spread in a random way that gives it a loose structure to our mind. Repetition of plants, an anchoring shrub or the edge of a path helps our mind to understand what is a complex scene.

At many times through my design career I’ve felt a societal pressure to give our garden more structure, that perhaps I really should weed out the buttercups. It never happens, I cannot do it, I love the freeness of our plant communities too much. I love waiting to see what will happen. The reason I love it so much is because I haven’t intervened at times when I could have and the garden has a life of its own. Though I do intervene, I don’t want to give the impression I do nothing, I help by pulling out a nettle or bramble that might crowd out five other important smaller plants. I plant wildflowers and cultivars for colour I like and for specific wildlife purposes. Overall though, the garden is leading the way as much if not more than I am.

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1) Prioritise growing more plants

One thing I do recommend to all gardeners: keep growing. Keep sowing seeds, keep taking cuttings, keep dividing plants. Enjoying these processes, they form the engine room of garden success.

My primary focus in our garden has always been to grow new plants above anything else. By prioritising plants I have a constant supply of low-cost or free plants. This means I worry much less about everything else.

I absolutely never prioritise weeding, tidying or other admin over growing new plants. I do these activities but they come last. This is because there is no point weeding an area if you don’t have an…

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One of the hopes with my book A Greener Life was to change opinions on unfairly maligned wildlife including moths and hoverfly. These two groups of insect are completely harmless to humans, they don’t sting or bite. In fact, they are very gentle and cute creatures.

I have a particular fondness for moths because there are so many species in the UK that are hugely varied and incredibly beautiful. Their colours and shapes are inspired by nature to camouflage themselves against bark, lichen, leaves, twigs and flowers. They are also often easy to observe and identify with a few techniques.

Having a wide diversity of moth species in your garden is one of my key pillars to a healthy ecosystem. Moths prove the garden has a wide diversity of plants on which their caterpillars feed, eating leaves, stems or flowers. In turn, moths are a core food source for birds and other insects. The more moths you have, the more other wildlife you will attract.

Turn any worries you may have about moths into wonder my taking a closer look.

1) Study day-flying moths

No equipment required except your eyes and a camera - your phone camera will do, especially if it has a macro and zoom mode to zoom in from a distance.

As you walk around your garden you’ll start to notice some moths fly in the daytime like butterflies - many people do mistake them for butterflies. If you brush foliage it’s likely you will disturb a moth causing it to fly to another spot.

All you have to do is move slowly and follow where the moth eventually lands. You can then look at it from a short distance and try to take photos to study the detail on their wings later.

2) Study night-flying moths

The real fun begins with the magic of studying night flying moths because that’s what the vast majority are active. Here are two easy ways to study night-flying moths.

i) White sheet and lamp

Super simple, peg a white bed sheet up somewhere and when it’s dark place a lamp behind it. Obviously be careful with the electrics, you can buy fairly inexpensive bright camping lights made for outdoor use. A good method is actually to place the sheet in front of a house window with the light in the room on. Moths will fly into the sheet allowing you to take a look and snap some photos. Take a torch to see the moths more easily.

ii) Moth traps

The name moth trap is unfortunate because it sounds like you’re harming them but all you do is attract them to a container overnight, study them either at night or in the morning, and then release. If you check first thing in the morning and don’t repeat night after night, this is not harmful to the moths. It is also the easiest way to study them as they are sleepy and slow in the cold of morning.

There are various moth traps available that all tend to be extremely expensive for what they are. Portable fold up traps exist, battery powered vs mains, as well as different sizes. I wanted to look at the moths in our garden so I bought a trap with a mains cable I power from our shed’s electricity using an outdoor extension lead.

It’s the special actinic light bulbs that make up the cost. Actinic bulbs produce UV light frequencies we can’t see that are highly attractive to various moth species (it’s dangerous to our eyes so never look directly at the bulb and consider wearing special protective glasses). In the past mercury vapour bulbs were used that were really bright, got very hot and needed more power including a cumbersome additional electrical control box for safety. These are being replaced by less powerful lights better for the environment that don’t need the heavy electrical control box. While it’s felt these new bulbs don’t attract as many or different species of moth, for everyday purposes I find it absolutely fine.

Considering how expensive the traps are, it makes me laugh that the way to line them is with upturned old egg boxes. Moths seem to like clinging to the inside of these - it’s where you’ll find them in the morning.

When releasing moths after trapping them, leave the egg boxes somewhere sheltered and shaded under a shrub or other plants. This allows the moths to fly away in their own time out of sight from birds - birds can learn to visit moth releases if done too often in the same spot!

Other equipment you’ll need

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What is wood pasture?

Our garden is almost entirely a mix of trees and open areas of grassland. This mix is often called wood pasture, when grass and herbs are grazed by livestock, deer or other animals (rabbits and hares are also key grazers for us!)

However I’d say a lot of ours is actually wood meadow because the flower rich grassland areas are mown by a farmer for hay or by me using a mower or scythe. Either way, the aim is largely the same, to have areas of trees growing in open areas of grassland.

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Weeds and pests. It seems for some people worrying about these two things is a large part of gardening. Personally, I gave up worrying about the concept of weeds and pests in gardens years ago when I realised they weren’t the problem they were made out to be. Problems? Pff. Throw those thoughts away. Gone! Poof!

Take one of my young food forests above, I know many people would be itching to get those creeping buttercup and grasses out. But if you look closely, like one of those Magic Eye pictures from the 90s, you’ll start to spot the leaves and flowers of other plants that I intentionally planted. They’re growing happily regardless. The problem is in our head.

Sure, I do stomp, yank or cut back the leaves of some around the younger plants until they are established and we do have to keep the roe deer out of some areas of the garden otherwise those large fluffies eat everything. I net some brassicas in summer, though not all, to preserve some leaves for us to eat, but that’s it.

I’m not going to spend hours weeding out everything for it to grow back a few weeks later and I’m certainly not going to wage war on gentle slugs and snails. I simply do not have the time and those weedy interlopers are actually serving an important purpose. One they are a moisture locking groundcover, two they increase biodiversity and three they help improve soil fertility.

In our main garden I’m following the same laissez-faire approach and with each year it works better and better. Perennials establish and spread (naturally or by my helping hand) slowly crowding out the buttercups and dandelions. The buttercups will always be there, benefiting wildlife and the garden only more diluted.

I went cold turkey on worrying about insect and mollusc damage years ago. As soon as I did I saw gardens differently, I focussed on the big picture, not the odd lost leaf or plant. My eyes were also opened to the complex ecosystem in our garden and the joy to be had from knowing each plant supports tens, sometimes hundreds of species of animal. In turns sometimes supporting other animals that eat the smaller ones.

Outside our house is a small patio we don’t really use for sitting on so I co-opted it as an extension of the planting areas, discussed in last week’s newsletter. It’s pretty fun watching this space change each year as the plants seed, kinda like slices of a meadow with some ornamental plants thrown in. We do have another patio with pointing and no plants in the cracks, I like that look juxtaposed against the chaos. It’s good everyone has a choice by casting aside society’s expectations of what a garden should look like.

I know I won’t win some people over with all of this, their world view of gardens is too fixed. But when I hear people spending money and time on remedies for things like a leaf being nibbled or whatever, I want them not to worry about it for their benefit as well as the wildlife.

I’ve learnt that by accepting perceived problems in gardens it reframes everything and we plan accordingly - they are no longer problems. Rather than weeding out buttercups, what will grow alongside them? Rather than worrying about slug nibbles on leaves, what is tolerant or resistant to them?

My number one tip is to focus your time on growing more plants. When you know there is a constant supply of plants to fill gaps or cover buttercups, it makes everything better. Growing plants from seed, cutting or division is always time well spent.

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