March - our garden
Written for and originally published by Homes & Gardens
It’s a strange thing to start a renovation with the garden, but that’s exactly what we did when we moved to our Victorian terraced house in Margate. Most architects or builders would recommend leaving the garden to the end so you have a space for knocking up mortar, washing out plaster buckets, or storing materials during the build. Practical things, suggested by sensible people. But where’s the fun in leaving the part that takes the longest to mature, until the end?
When we bought the house, I immediately made friends with the neighbours by hiring a breaker and smashing up the six inch thick concrete that suffocated every square foot of outdoor space on our plot. The soil front and back had been buried under one continuously poured ecological tombstone. Brogan hid indoors while I tore into it, avoiding window contact with locals.
Once the concrete was broken and removed, I forked the compacted earth underneath for the first time in decades, and raked it level. In three days or raking and forking by hand I didn’t encounter a single worm. What right do humans have to sterilise land like this?
The soil was reassuringly poor, perfect for wildflowers. As the rake was hung up in the shed, my pallets of Meadowmat wildflower turf arrived. By the afternoon, I’d rolled out the new lawn, and the neighbours began to warm to us again. We opted for ‘species rich’ turf - containing slow growing native grasses with wonderful names like ‘sheeps fescue’ and ‘small leaved Timothy’, mixed with wildflowers which can survive in a lawn, like selfheal, yarrow, sorrel and birdsfoot trefoil. Being well past flowering season, the only indications of floral diversity are in the array of different delicate leaves. Now spring is here, I’m waiting to see what pops up first with huge excitement, and will be not cutting it until July. I have made a point of refusing family offers of hand-me-down lawnmowers, explaining I’ll scythe it twice a year and take great pleasure in doing so. Pollinators will thank for me letting the taller flowers actually reach their height and complete their flowering cycle. These species may be present in any lawn - but rarely is the lawn let grow to find out.
During the winter I planted a half pint hedge containing terrace-friendly shrubs like dogwood, hazel, hawthorn and crab apple, and set hops and climbers next to, ready to colonise the fence and connect the hedge. This cover will be essential to garden birds trying to avoid the dozen cats on our street.
In a sunny spot I’ve made raised beds, soon to be planted out with veg for the kitchen. Strangely, even though our garden is a small 18’x25’, this is the only designated area that’s directly for us, save for access paths and some log storage. Our toddler and baby may well trample through the long grass and wildflowers, but we have no need for a billiard lawn, so we’ll let insects use that space while we look on.
Owning a garden, however small, is a privilege, pleasure and a responsibility. Not a responsibility to grow prize veg, although growing your own food is immeasurably rewarding, but a responsibility to not lay that land useless to other species. An astonishing 87% of households in the UK have a garden, totalling 400,000ha of land, an area double the size of the Lake District. If that land is patio, astro turf, hard driveway, decking or even fertilised and weekly-mown lawn, or heaven forbid all of the above, it’s hostile to wildlife already hard pressed by our intensively farmed countryside. If, however, that space is seen as shared between man and nature, or even spared by man for nature, then we could create a connected national nature reserve spanning the whole country. I couldn’t think of anything better than being a part of that, and I hope our scruffy and teeming patch will encourage our neighbours to join up too.