What’s In Your Garden?

How often do you actually go out into your garden or find yourself compelled to look at it from the window? And if you do go out in it is there anything to keep your interest?

 

Gardens can be very one dimensional and therefore fail to engage you with them. A creatively designed garden can offer a compelling escape from it all or a constantly changing theatre to be viewed from the house or garden retreat.

 If you are looking to relax in your garden, create a covered area or room in which to sit, read and eat and possibly sleep and then surround yourself with fruit, vegetables and wildlife and you will find you have a garden that you are constantly drawn to.

Wildlife gardens once established are low maintenance and can be left far more to do their own thing than the formal alternative. Convert formal lawn and borders into a micro meadow with pond and ‘natural’ planting and you have less work to do and all the wildlife to watch.

Since graduating in 1989 as a Landscape Architect, Phil Brown has been designing and project managing a diverse range of prestigious garden and landscape projects throughout the UK. His inspirational and sometimes unusual designs have won international acclaim for the way they use light, colour and space to create living and engaging places.

Phil is currently offering free consultation visits within Somerset for people that would like to look at making part or their entire garden more interesting for them and wildlife.

 

Micro Meadows

If you have bits of lawn that are difficult to cut or just fed up with mowing so much grass then create a micro meadow!

Garden meadows are relatively new and you might question whether they are of value to wildlife on this scale. But when you consider the total number of gardens in the country and understand that the variety of flowering plants and cover gardens provide is already very valuable to our wildlife, then the answer is definitely yes

   

Long grass itself is surprisingly attractive to wildlife. If you then add the flowers and later the seed into the equation you will have provided a home, cover or food to a surprising number of bird's insects, mammals and amphibians. At the same time you will only have to cut it maybe twice a year!

Phil is currently offering free consultation visits within Somerset for people who are looking to create a meadow as part of a new garden design or in part of an existing garden

 

 

Contemporary Wildlife

The interest in bringing wildlife into the garden seems to be at an all time high and it is fantastic that the value gardens play increasingly as wildlife habitat has been widely recognised.

In terms of garden design it seems that with the interest in wildlife we have become very nostalgic in terms of the overall design. Wildlife gardens have become cottage gardens or the complete informal - verging on wilderness.

This style and the gardens themselves are beautiful and I certainly enjoy designing them. It May also be that the informality is compatible with the need for a panacea to modern living - But you do have a choice you don't have to have an informal garden to attract wildlife - in fact the design can be highly contemporary

                                                                                   

Contemporary Butterfly Garden: Phil Brown Design                                

It is true to say that 'wildlife' does not benefit from the clinical sterility that is often associated with contemporary design but with thought I feel there is an interesting design combination to be found.

Some of the best interior design works on the basis of a tension created between the high tech and an old architecture - gardens can be the same

Old rural crafts such as hedge laying and dry-stone walling help create good habitat yet they can be highly stylistic and dry-stone walls and wood piles sculptural - Meadow areas can be linear design features and native plants grown more formally and even clipped at the right moment. Coppice trees grown in lovely grids under-planted within blocks of butterfly attracting perennials, the options are endless 

Contemporary Pond/France: Phil Brown Design

The point is that those people that enjoy geometry and straight lines can also have wildlife gardens,we don't need to look back to enjoy wildlife we can be positive and bold about gardens and enjoy finding new ideas and styles that benefit wildlife while looking after the wider environment with the use of sustainably sourced materials.

 

Phil is interested in finding potential clients that are looking to explore ideas for a contemporary wildlife garden and is offering 10 free consultation visits to the first 10 enquiries received. For more information please visit his website www.philbrowndesign.com

 

Getting the Best Out of Lakes & Ponds

If you are going to create or improve a large pond or lake for wildlife the answer is to look at the wider picture.

Many ponds and lakes are in a way left as islands surrounded mainly by lawn or the meadow into which they were excavated. To reach their full potential in attracting wildlife they need to be an integrated part of the surrounding habitats or landscape.  

 

Try and site the lake or pond in a situation where it can be 'connected' to existing hedges, planting borders dry-stone walls or woodland. This can simply be through areas of rough grass, or new tree and shrub planting these links will greatly improve its appeal both through creating a physical corridor and by creating transitional habitats.

If the area is already wet this can be interesting and valuable to wildlife and plants as it is- try and keep this area or some part of it or create a new wet area of ground next to the pond or lake by letting it overflow into a depression. This may support anything from irises and reed to sedges and many other damp loving species over time. It is another habitat - a transitional area and will greatly increase its overall value to wildlife and its interest to you.

 

Try to vary the profile of the banks to the pond or lake every water level profile will encourage the development of different plant communities - very shallow banks were the level can fluctuate creates interesting plant colonies and warm shallow water for young fish and tadpoles etc to develop in. Plant communities will form in a seamless manner in shallow water from fully aquatic to damp loving emergent's and into the meadow grasses beyond.

Place large rocks or piles of wood in and around the margins these are fantastic cover for amphibians and encourage fungi and specialist plants while creating basking places for butterflies and dragonflies.

And finally it is nice to have somewhere to sit down - set just a little way back and watch it all happening.

Phil Brown is a Garden and Landscape Designer based in Somerset and designing gardens and landscapes across the South West. He specialises in wildlife habitat and gardens including the design and construction of ponds and lakes