Let Your Garden Go Free: The Case for a Wilder Garden

Wildflowers will bring color and joy—and likely some joyful visitors—to your garden. (Lorenza Marzocchi/Shutterstock)

As a general rule, people like things to be organized. Order is comforting. Routines make life easier to understand. We get up at a regular time, drink our coffee in our particular way, have the same job for year on year. We also like things that are neat and tidy: an organized desk, pencils in a holder all sharpened and sticking upwards (or is that just me?), smart clothes, and styled locks. (The very thought of being seen in public with bed hair!)

Like a sleek bob or hipster’s beard, our gardens are all too often quaffed and pruned to within an inch of their lives, each plant seemingly having been given a short-back-and-sides, chopped into order (or submission, depending on how you look at it). When I walk down the little road I live on, I am struck by how many front “gardens” are simply an overly neat square of lawn (if a lawn is even present) and a concrete, brick, or gravel driveway. When did we start making room for multiple cars but none for nature?

The High Cost of Low Maintenance

Of course, people are busy. We all have pressures from work and life in general. Little time is left for pottering in the garden at the end of the workday; hence, having an outside space that requires little or no maintenance is seen as a boon.

The low-maintenance gardens now found so commonly are some of the worst for biodiversity. Wildlife needs food, water, and shelter, and without it, we are putting it at risk. Gardens can produce “stepping stones,” allowing species across different communities to connect, stopping along the way to replenish their energy with sweet nectar or seeds. They can also provide shelter from the elements as well as predators for insects, birds, and mammals. Leaving even a small area to go wild is beneficial, and moreover, gives us the opportunity to interact with the species that are attracted to it.

Currently, we are walking into a global catastrophe in terms of biodiversity loss. Habitat loss is one of the biggest threats. Countless plant and animal species are threatened, some already have become extinct. Furthermore, our native species, never having learned how to cope with invasive ones, are often out-competed for food and shelter when the “new kids on the block” move in.

We must, therefore, provide for nature as it provides for us, making space available for it to thrive, even if that space is small. I must admit, while walking past my neighbors’ houses, I have at times been tempted to partake in a bit of “Guerrilla gardening”—throwing wildflower seeds down their front gardens and letting nature do its thing. Imagine how the bees would enjoy the blooms that would pop up through those barren gravel driveways and manicured lawns!

Make your garden a haven for local birds and other wildlife. (Danita Delimont/Shutterstock)

Creating a Wildlife Haven

Since moving in three years ago, our front garden has been converted into a rainbow of insect- and bird-friendly plants surrounding a small lawn. It’s literally the only cottage-style garden on our street, and although neighbors have expressed their appreciation of the color and seasonal variation that it brings, none have followed suit with their own plots.

In the summer, it bursts with lavender, foxgloves, verbena, scabious, evening primroses, stocks, nicotiana, salvia, and cornflowers (the list goes on, but I won’t bore you). Swathes of blooms fill the borders in a display that perhaps even the great plants-woman Gertrude Jekyll would have approved of. Bees, wasps, hoverflies, moths, and butterflies are constant visitors, as are a plethora of songbirds. Goldfinches (one of our more colorful bird species here in the UK) descend in clouds of flashing colors to pluck the seeds from the scabious flowers, their light-as-air bodies barely bending the stems of the flowers they feed from.

Last year, I was overjoyed to find a large hedgehog making a comically poor attempt to hide behind the front doorstep, face tucked under but very ample backside sticking out. My joy was partly due to the aforementioned farcical concealment, but also that a highly valued, vulnerable species (in the UK) had sought out our garden.

I’m not saying to let your gardens become completely unruly, with weeds taller than the average basketball player and unpruned tree branches striking people in the face as they walk down the sidewalk. No, it should not be the cause of neighborly riffs and snotty letters being posted through your door for “letting the side down.”

Just consider this, however: How could you convert part of your garden into a wild space? Leave a patch of lawn un-mowed; throw some wildflower seeds around and grow a mini meadow! Make a little pond out of an old farmhouse sink. Hang window boxes. Let some of your vegetables flower and go to seed. You’ll be surprised at what a huge difference a little bit of change can make.