Alan Titchmarsh: ‘Rewilding is not the answer to making our country a green and pleasant land’

The gardening guru and broadcaster has mixed views about the rewilding trend, he tells Hannah Stephenson.

(Mark Harrison/PA)

Gardening legend Alan Titchmarsh has warned that the trend towards rewilding – letting nature take care of itself to encourage wildlife and biodiversity – should not displace traditional gardening.

“Rewilding does not mean letting it [the garden] lie fallow and doing nothing with it. There’s a misconception abroad that the only way to get more wildlife into your garden is to rewild.”

Titchmarsh, 73 – TV and radio presenter, chat show host, documentary-maker and bestselling author – reveals his sentiments in his latest book The Gardener’s Almanac, and is keen to elaborate today.

“One friend who has done a survey of his wildflower meadow and of his garden found more wildlife in the garden than in the wildflower meadow. It’s a case of balance – there’s room for both – but rewilding is not the answer to making our country a green and pleasant land.

“There are plenty of places where it is important – headlands and farms, the countryside in general, woodland and riverbanks, roadside verges. It should not and does not need to replace a well cultivated garden which has a wide range of species in it, which is equally as good and in many cases better for wildlife – and it’s beautiful too.”

Mental wellbeing

“One cannot go on, on one hand saying how important gardens are for mental wellbeing, and then knocking somebody for having stripes on their lawn, because it makes them feel good to have stripes on their lawn. Therefore it’s doing them good, and it’s also doing the blackbirds, the thrushes, the starlings good, who can get worms out of lawns but can’t get them out of long grass, and solitary bees, who can burrow into lawns.”

Balance is the key, he insists. “It’s when everybody goes wholesale into one thing, you know, it’s not quite like that.”

Pretty difficult

Rewilding and keeping things looking pretty is a very hard thing to do, he agrees.

“I have a wildflower meadow, which we cut in early September when the seeds have fallen, and taken all the hay and clods of grass off – you have to or it kills what’s underneath – and it won’t get cut again ’til next year. It was seeded as a wildflower meadow with a seed mix that’s good for chalk downlands, which we’re on,” says Titchmarsh.

“It’s beautiful. We have cowslips in March and it goes through to moon daisies in April and May, and then scabious and knapweed and one or two orchids coming through. But it’s a meadow, not a garden.

“I get loads of butterflies, moths, bees and birds in my garden as well as in my wildflower meadow. It [rewilding] has caught on in a way which I feel a bit sad about, if people aren’t being realistic.

“What saddens me more than anything else is that a well cultivated, well tended, well grown garden is getting disparaged – which is a nonsense.”

“But what saddens me more than anything else is that a well cultivated, well tended, well grown garden is getting disparaged – which is a nonsense. To learn your craft as a good grower of plants, to produce plants which look beautiful and are good for wildlife, is key for me. I’m not embarrassed about being a gardener.”

Can a plot be too manicured?

Titchmarsh adds that he “takes issue” with the word ‘manicured’. “Because it’s not necessarily manicured, it’s just controlled, it’s cultivated. It’s learning what plants need to grow well and giving them it,” he explains. “A well-managed border, which looks beautiful, will be awash with animal life, creatures, insects, invertebrates and birds – every bit as much as a bit of old weedy ground that you’ve just left, thinking you’re doing more good.”

Single flowers are key, he believes. “Double flowers lack the essential floral parts. They have much less nectar and far fewer stamens and pollen in them.

Titchmarsh, whose Hampshire garden incorporates a two-acre wildflower meadow filled with native species, adds: “I’ve been organic for 40 years, there are no sprays, I grow plants that are well suited to my soil, two enormous compost heaps that I pile back into the ground.”

What about non-native species?

Gardeners also shouldn’t feel guilty about planting non-native species, according to Titchmarsh.

“That’s why we call it gardening. We’ve had plant collectors going out and bringing plants back from foreign countries for centuries. It enriches our lives – and it enriches the lives of bees and butterflies. They don’t know what they’re taking nectar and pollen from. I don’t see why we should always feel so guilty now. There’s this huge tendency to beat ourselves up all the time.

“Yes – we need to be responsible. Yes – we need to have a sustainable piece of land. Yes – we need to look ahead and leave it in better state for our children than it is when we inherit it, but don’t imagine that you have no right to be here. You have a right to enjoy it as well.”

What does he think will happen to the face of our gardens if the trend continues?

“You can rewild your garden for a couple of years if you want, then you keep looking at it and think, ‘It’s really boring. There’s not much colour, I can’t see that many insects. What I can see is a lot of cola cans, which people have thrown over the wall, and dog mess bags because they thought it was just waste ground’.

“There is nothing more useful to life than a well-grown garden,” says Titchmarsh. “That little bit of total wilderness in front of your house in the suburbs will not be better for insects. A well grown garden with a diversity of plant material with greater biodiversity in it will be much more sustainable for wildlife.”

The Gardener’s Almanac by Alan Titchmarsh is published on October 27 by Hodder & Stoughton, priced £14.99.