There’s a new diary on my desk, its months, weeks and days yet to be filled.
Our gardens follow nature’s calendar and that is full of a whole year’s worth of opportunities for us to help a struggling natural world, by giving back as much and as often as we can.
Indigenous peoples understand the reciprocal arrangement with nature which, over recent years, we have lost, and which our traditional farming methods used to follow. Leaving fields fallow to aid the soil’s recovery, putting sick animals in the ‘hospital’ field, full of medicinal herbs on which they grazed to aid their healing. Industrial farming, and the widespread use of herbicides, pesticides and fungicides in our fields and gardens, have, together with habitat loss, decimated once common species.
As regenerative farming becomes more accepted and hopefully more widespread, let’s embrace regenerative gardening too. The habitats we can restore individually, can together form wildlife corridors through which species can travel, between our gardens and on to larger areas of woodland, meadows and wetlands.
Leaving our lawns to grow long and the ‘weeds’ within them to flower, provides nectar and pollen to a wide range of insects which pollinate our fruit and vegetables and then themselves become food for birds. We save time, effort and carbon by not mowing and the grass roots probe deeper into the soil, creating better drainage and sequestering more carbon. We know trees are essential in our fight against climate change, so too are hedges and how much more they offer us than a boring fence.
The wildlife with which I share my garden gives me just as much pleasure as the plants themselves, and while many of these are quietly waiting out the winter below ground, some are at their beautiful best. Evergreen Mahonia with its lily of the valley scented flowers is the best source of nectar for any queen bumble bee brought out of hibernation by a mild spell. Hamamelis and Sarcococca have thin spidery flowers but they are surprisingly scented too. Viburnum tinus may be very ordinary most of the year, but is a mass of flower through the darkest days and as for Helleborus, there are few flowers more beautiful in any season.
The photographs decorating my diary show me what will be in flower each month of the coming year and by them I will write a note to myself, to reciprocate, say thank you and give back to nature in any way I can.
