Your Wildlife Garden. Jackie Bennett

       INTRODUCTION

      In the context of garden history as a whole, wildlife gardening is a relative newcomer. Like many new ideas, it has taken some time to become accepted by the gardening establishment and for its practitioners not to be considered as dangerous ‘alternatives’. My first brush with the idea of inviting wildlife into the garden (rather than trying to keep it out) was in the early 1980s, when I was helping to plan the opening of a new theatre complex in the city of Stoke-on-Trent. The theatre grounds were being converted into an urban nature reserve with ponds, meadows and woodland, providing a much-needed resource for local schoolchildren and theatregoers.

      Designed by landscape consultant Chris Baines, it was an incredibly brave and innovative concept at the time — and one which must have risked considerable professional ridicule. The essence of the plan was contained on just four sheets of paper with the headings: Meadow, Woodland Edge, Hedgerow and Water — not the usual terminology of architects who generally talk only of ‘hard landscaping’ and ‘stone-effect paving’. It was nevertheless a very simple but effective way of mentally dividing up a plot of land, be it a domestic garden or a potential building site.

      Those four sheets of paper have travelled with me ever since. The basic good sense of the idea of creating landscapes for wildlife, as well as for people, had converted me to wildlife gardening long before I ever had a garden. Nowadays, wildlife gardening is quite a respectable activity and we can all play a part in the revolution that Chris Baines and the conservationists started. But, as with all revolutions, we need a handbook in order to make those ideas work in our own particular situation. This book is therefore first and foremost a practical gardening book — for all those people who are swept away by the spirit of wildlife gardening, but have never quite got round to converting that enthusiasm into reality.