Discover an easier, more relaxed and flower-filled gardening style! Instead of an endless list of chores, the @TheRHS is now advising us to let go of some of the old gardening rules and garden in a different way.
Gardening for biodiversity means leaving leaves on borders, less mowing and filling your garden full of plants and plants and flowers. Here I talk to the Royal Horticultural Society’s Senior Wildlife Specialist, Helen Bostock and the Principal Horticultural Advisor, Leigh Hunt to find out why changing the rules is good news for garden lovers as well as the environment.
If you’re looking to garden for biodiversity, then this video is for you! By understanding the basics of gardening for biodiversity, you’ll be on your way to creating a garden that is full of life and beautiful to look at!
RHS wildlife friendly tips: https://www.rhs.org.uk/wildlife
Cover photo of sparrow on canna by Molly Hollman: https://mollyhollman.myportfolio.com/
00:00 Welcome
00:39 The Royal Horticultural Society: https://www.rhs.org.uk/
01:14 The Wildlife Garden at RHS Hilltop Wisley. Sculpture by Tom Hare
01:33 What is biodiversity in the garden?
03:20 Slugs and snails can benefit your garden – don’t call them pests!
03:40 A wildlife friendly garden will help control slugs, snails, aphids and more
03:54 Even the smallest garden can help – the importance of wildlife corridors
05:05 Three easy steps to make your garden more biodiverse
07:51 Does leaving your lawn long damage it?
08:41 Why you don’t need to water your lawn in a drought
08:59 Cutting a lawn after leaving it long
09:39 What are the big mistakes to avoid if you want a biodiverse garden?
10:05 Pull up a paver and plant it up
10:50 Think about ‘input’ and ‘output’ – reduce your input to save money and be more biodiverse
11:23 Leave autumn leaves on borders: https://youtube.com/shorts/PREn71Wo6zY?feature=share
14:57 How to make your own potting compost
13:39 ‘Right plant, right place’ – choosing plants that will grow well in your garden also saves money and environmental resources
14:50 New ways of gardening playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrZRLHPUbGmC-l-9hucD4BXre5GjJo4gJ
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24 Comments
I love these concepts and how they combine into a whole philosophy. You do a great job of gathering information from experts, and crystalizing it into these beautiful videos. Grasshoppers always seem to go straight for my roses, lol. We have a number of native oak varieties in San Diego county, and I've been lucky enough to find volunteers in my suburban garden. I've allowed some to grow where they are, others I've dug up and put in containers to plant elsewhere or share. Maybe this will offset the trees that people in the neighborhood decide to cut down. On a larger scale, your viewers might like to know about the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing project in Los Angeles, or as I like to call it, 'The Mountain Lion Bridge'. Scientists were concerned that the Mountain Lion population was becoming too genetically limited in the small areas of habitat left to them, because of the extensive Los Angeles Freeway system. This bridge will allow the big cats, and many other species a safe green passageway above the 101 Freeway. 🙂
Thank you for a very enjoyable video – both educational and entertaining!! It is hard to set aside years of doing what was considered absolutely essential in my garden and letting go a little bit….or a lot!
Yes, no chemicals and no mowing noise. Men like lawns and mowing, military men are lawn-prone in particular.
Let"s plant flowers, veg or meadows.
Very wise 👍🏼Good that the RHS is picking up some ideas of permaculture 👏🏼
Good on you for talking about this important subject. Well done.
Too many people feel that native plant gardens are messy. Well any garden can be messy. It’s the design that determines messiness. Many native plant enthusiasts like natural design but if one wants native plants but a more formal garden can do so. Garden design determines the look of a garden. We plant native in our front yard using mostly native plants but with a formal design. In the backyard we plant less formally
Mmmm – I agree this can be done and done right. I try. But so many are using "natural native planting" as an excuse to do no yard work at all. I Iive in Utah, USA and that results in morning glory (bindweed) and dandelion takeover
As a person who hand digs both these ( I try to use the dandelion roots) I'm not thrilled.
Great episode. I'm surprised no one mentioned native plants though.
What an excellent video. Well done you.🤗🤞✅💐
It's this nonsensical thinking which causes our WILDFIRES in our western States in the USA. Flying over Colorado with perpetual wildfires which decimates our wildlife! Because not taking proper care of underbrush which fuels the wildfires, either natural or set.
I get so excited seeing bunnies and hummingbirds in my community gardens, which now have NO PLACE to live because of the impact and destruction of woods to build another elementary "cesspool" school!! I miss the morning bird song and the delightful sounds of spring frogs. I planted sunflowers to attract birds and flowers/plants for hummingbirds. Most importantly I plant veggies for canning.
Beautiful episode 🥰
Excellent info! Thanks so much!
Gr8 episode i live in Australia so water in the garden can be a issues re mosquitos which carry fevers i dont garden 4 neatness
This was an excellent episode, it's the way we've been gardening our small to middle-sized garden for several years now and it really works for bringing more birds and other wildlife into the garden. And if the larger organisms are there, then so must be more of the life that's too small to see. We gather leaves onto a sheltered border as you mention, then water them if it's a dry autumn and make sure they stay damp over winter. That way they don't blow around much and rot down faster and the birds love to hunt through them. We converted 3/4 of our lawn into a mini-meadow from 2019 (only one cut per year) and it's got better every year, but we only had very limited success by the raking/seed-scattering method. So, as it's a garden mini-meadow, I garden it. Bought some individual packets of wildflower seeds, grew them from seed trays to 9cm pots like any other plant – they're very hardy of course so can be left outside – and then planted them into the lawn in the autumns – hundreds in total. This way they can out-compete the grass and the meadow looks great and it sailed through last year's drought with ease. Of course the grass went dry and brown in August, then one cut with long-handled shears and a mow on a high setting (65mm) and it greened up in the autumn and now the primroses, cowslips and wild daffodils are coming up to start the cycle all over again. Birds are nest-building and the 6m2 wildlife pond is full of frogs and newts. And most of the time the wildlife side of the garden looks after itself. Great to see the RHS talking about this.
I have a question. I live in the US but watch many UK gardening shows. Here we have potting soil for containers and compost to enrich beds. However, often I see UK gardeners use what they refer to as compost for containers, and the bags of material used say Compost. My question: Is UK bagged compost the same as US potting soil?
What do I do about voles? They have moved right in and I’d love to welcome them, but they do so much damage to my already untidy, biodiverse garden.
Fabulous episode.
Thank you very much for your program and the efforts that you invest in them. I have enjoyed, you, Monty Don and Carol Cline, and others on Youtube.
I would like to vacation in England perhaps later this summer, or early autumn and was wondering if there is a ??? gardeners/gardening travel guide available for planning purposes? i am not so much interested in crowed events like the Chelsea Flower show, but rather country gardens that are open to the public, or perhaps estate gardens open to the public. I was also planning on walking/hiking tours and visiting some heritage sites. If you have any resources you could alert me to i would appreciate it.
If such a thing does not exist I personally feel someone could develop a niche business opportunity for themselves by creating one.
Thank you for hearing me.
Great information
I think compared to French, American and Australian gardening and farming youtube channels, and their understanding of modern agriculture in general, this video is still a bit behind. There's a few key elements that are still "old science" in this video.
1) Compost feeds the soil ? It does not. Mature compost is like potting mix. It will feed your plants, but all the materials have been digested already by some form of soil life. So there's nothing left for mushrooms, bacteria and worms to eat except a few twigs left here and there. So rather than putting your grass clippings, leaves and wood chips in the compost bin, put them on your soil. Feed the worms and shrooms directly, so nothing is wasted. A compost pile will heat up and you'll lose about 20-30% of the carbon content in the form of CO2… So while it's practical as a substrate, to sow carrots for example, it DOES NOT feed the soil. The confusion comes from people who claim they have great gardens using only compost, like Charles Dowding. But they don't use mature compost. They use half done compost, so there is still stuff to eat in there. In my own garden, I only compost stuff that would take root again if I left it on the ground as chop & drop (couch grass and nettle rhizomes for example).
2) Snails, insects and disease only attack weak plants. The previous "science" was saying that if you have too much snail and slug damage it's because you don't have enough predators. That's not the main reason. The main reason is that we plant stuff that's not gonna grow strong enough. For example, we tend to put hostas in a rich soil with plenty of fertilizer coz it gets us big leaves. Well, newsflash, these big leaves are WEAK. They're not healthy even though they look great. So snails and slugs will destroy theses easily digested leaves. While a hosta in a "normal" soil, no fertilizer, like in its native Japan, will grow thick normal sized leaves pests can't eat. It's that simple. With trees, it's often the tree alone in the middle of the lawn that'll make it being attacked by insects and diseases. It's not a healthy tree. A lawn is not a healthy ecosystem, in fact, except bare soil, it's the worst environment. Put the same tree amongst perennials, grasses, shrubs and other trees, and that tree will grow faster and healthy.
Glad to see that the mentality is changing. It's less work and beneficial for the garden itself. Leaving leaves under my trees also promotes bugs that break them down. And that has attracted a green woodpecker for some years now. It's good that this is being promoted now instead of what came before.
Lovely plants 🪴
Like it ❤️
My friend, thank you for good sharing 😊
Dear Alexandra, your channel and your posts brightens my days and I am keen on learning more but there are some points to consider.
1. Many modern gardeners are still following the long and worldwide highly appreciate tradition of english gardening. They attempting to step into the shoes of Capability Brown, Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West by realising their principles. Passionate gardening is not only providing food for the family like in a traditional cottage garden. It is creating a smaller version of Garden Eden, a private heaven on earth. Surely, one could discuss whether an area with hard landscaping only should be called a "garden" but nevertheless it is the creation of its owner and should be respected.
2. Establishing a garden means establishing a very small ecosystem. Due to its size the ecosystem is not only well balanced but even very sensitive. I think a sudden change in this system i.e. installing a distinct concept like "let it grow, dont mow your lawn and put a pond in it because you need frogs and toads and other amphibias if you want to be really ecofriendly and reduce the carbon dioxid footprint" while sticking to neat and tidy borders and beds does not get along well. It is not only a stylistic inconsistency. Probably one will invite competitive species but changing the established ecosystem and therefore changing the grown composition, coexistence of species and the character of your garden is for sure.
Furthermore a garden that is housing annuals, perennials, shrubs, trees, flowers, crops, fruits, herbs and even a piece of lawn and that has been developed and maintained over many years is home for a wide range of animals as well. It is already wildlife friendly and ecological.
3. The mere allegation that one can reduce the carbon dioxide footprint for a long time or permanentely by planting and not digging up the soil neglects the complex relation between temperature, microorganisms, moisture, soil and other unknown influencing factors on which the ratio of absorbed and released carbon dioxid depends. Basically the more carbon dioxid in the atmosphere exists the faster plants grow and the more carbon dioxid will be absorbed and released. It is one of many circles of life which we do not fully understand so far. The topmost soil layers absorb carbon dioxid by binding it to other minerals. In this way it gets more nutritious. These are not new insights. Mindful following the traditional way and realising the already known basic principles of gardening is the way I have chosen. I think it is not necessary to fill old wine in new bottles and to call it a "revolution".
Brilliant and inspiring. Thanks Alexandra!