Doing our bit..
The benefits of gardening are endless. Being self-sufficient for a few months of the year by growing our own fruit and vegetables is hugely satisfying. For us it provides an escape. It helps channel our creativity and focus our busy minds.
As well as the benefits to our wellbeing we garden for nature, building a sanctuary for wildlife, attracting as much biodiversity as possible.
The last tree count was more than 100, with many large established trees – sycamores; beech; birch; maples; a small orchard and a lovely old oak for our hens to forage and take shelter under. This year we’ve taken on a few garden projects – restoring existing native hedges, breaking up the garden with hundreds of new hedges with the aim of creating wildlife corridors, more nesting sites, and more food for wildlife.
A task which will evolve over time is creating a 70-metre dead hedge that forms a boundary to a neighbouring garden. Fallen branches, small logs are added over time – anything natural and dry. From here on, nothing from the garden needs to be burned or removed. The dead hedge provides a valuable habitat for insects and mammals.
Hundreds of daffodils greeted us upon moving in, as well as grass and lots of it! Thankfully when left unmown there’s white clover, buttercups, and daisies, all great for insects, however we are slowly carving it up replacing much of the grass with areas to attract wildlife in their droves. This year’s mammoth task was creating four large flower borders, planted up to provide nectar rich flowers for pollinators.
The most valuable addition to a garden is always a pond. We added a new wildlife pond to the back of the garden near the woodland. It’s amazing how quickly wildlife will find water. Within an hour of filling the pond skaters had moved in, the area is now teeming with dragonflies.
The landscape surrounding our garden has a pretty view of rolling pastures. However, the monocultured land is very much a wildlife dessert, with side margins of long grass, a token strip hopefully creating a path for pollinators to cross to bee-friendly spaces. There are some visitors to these patchwork fields. Buzzards can be seen swooping down to capture their prey. The head of a brave deer peering through the tops of wheat, and soon after harvest more field mice invariably end up in the garden, some fatalities, others seeking refuge in the cosy loft space under the thatch.
During the pandemic the garden was our haven to escape into. We were fortunate to have an outside space to walk, to sit and provide a distraction. The humming of traffic from a nearby road became quieter. It felt like the garden was teaming with wildlife, more than ever before. The hedgerows were brimming with cow parsley, and grass on roadsides was left to grow.
Each season here brings its own delights. In the depths of winter, when much of nature is hibernating, we can always depend on the robin, the most reliable gardeners’ friend to keep us company, waiting for an offering of worms.
That magical moment, the first sighting of a bee quietly feeding from snowdrops in the spring garden, and throughout those slow months of renewal and retreat the welcome glimpse of spring offers a fresh breath of air. The soft fluttering leaves of beech and hornbeam marking the new season and watching the hummingbird hawk moth and butterflies whizzing around red valerian.
Much of the remaining grass is left to grow long. There’s a subtle beauty and sense of calm that comes with the wild pyramidal orchids and swathes of oxeye daisies that pop up in the woodland area. The first time it was left to its own devices we discovered cranesbill, meadow grass, hop, red and white clover and buttercups throughout the long grass. All these delights brought the murmuring of bees, the rare sound of crickets, and grasshoppers.
On the balmiest of days hoverflies and bees swarm around self-sown poppies and borage whilst dragonflies and damselflies circle the pond.
A slightly messy approach is adopted here. We grow organically. No chemicals. Always looking for ways to take a more natural approach and rewild the garden, our aim is to improve biodiversity by allowing wildflowers to flourish. That sometimes includes “weeds” and patches of nettles. There can be beauty in disorder.
Autumn into winter and so much can happen in a matter of weeks, The seed-heads of echinacea and verbena bonariensis attracts dozens of goldfinches, and orchard windfall is an all-you-can-eat buffet for pheasants, crows, and blackbirds.
“Imagine a future in which our cities and towns are green, with every space filled with wildflowers, flowering and fruiting trees, green roofs and green walls; where children can grow up familiar with the chirp of grasshoppers, birdsong, the burr of passing bumblebees, the colourful flash of butterflies’ wings” *
The climate emergency and biodiversity loss has made us focus even more on the challenges we face. Within just a few years of being here we have seen the extremes - record breaking heatwaves and devastating storms. The 85 mph winds experienced last year battered the garden, sadly with some casualties – a grand blue cedar and a poplar crashed to the ground. This year’s heatwave is making us rethink plant choices. More drought tolerant planting. Important to note that we are merely custodians of the land, and the best we can do is to leave the garden in a better place than we found it. Here in the UK, gardens make up a lot of the landscape. We can all do our bit to create a little haven for wildlife and to help nature flourish.
*Extract from ‘Silent Earth – Averting the Insect Apocalypse’ Dave Goulson
About us
Photographer Stephen Comer, and designer Brett Shergold, both passionate gardeners moved from London to the Somerset countryside in 2019. Their 200-year-old thatched home and cottage garden sits above a village surrounded by farmland.
For more on our garden projects: @Instagram - garden
Things we make: @Instagram - store
So inspiring to read and stunning photos!💚
A dead hedge! A wonderful concept. I’ve just moved from Somerset to Loch Fyne in Argyll & Bute and to a blank half acre canvas of a garden. I need a boundary and a dead hedge it is! Thank you for this and for your update too.