Having a wild garden doesn't have to be hard work!
It can be of course, if you're suffering from Protestant work ethic😊, but it doesn't have to be.
It takes a bit of planning to get the wildness so that it doesn't encroach on your time too much. Everything is about balance, you know, in the old ways. When we’re balanced we will exchange, and gardens are no different to that.
You do not have to be a slave to your garden, in fact, is not a good idea. It's not really good for the garden, and it's not good for you at all, in fact, you really don't want to be a slave to anything or anyone. Wild gardening is often seen as being … it's going to look awful; it's going to be full of nettles; there'll be nothing pretty in it; it's going to be really hard work; I'll never be able to keep on top of it, and I have to go to work all day, and I've got the kids, and what am I going to do?
Well, what you're going to do is plan. Plan what you want. Do you want to sit in your garden? Do you want a garden full of flowers? Do you want a woodland garden? Do you want permaculture? Do you want to grow fruit and vegetables as well as flowers, and have some grass, and be able to sit there, and a pond, and some trees … You can have all of those I do.
And it doesn't mean spending a fortune. Nor spending every spare hour that you're not actually working out in the garden, in floodlights LOL, just to make sure that you get everything done. It means really feeling into what you want. And guess what? actually feeling into what your garden would like to be.
You know, people don't realise this. They are starting to realise that animals, insects, plants and trees are all actually conscious and sentient. Now we have get everyone on board with places being sentient too.
It really is true. I live with the spirit of place, here in my garden, for five years now. When I came, it was just a mess, just grass, nettles and weeds that had been mowed. Yes, the people before me kept it short, but no flowers. No variety for the birds and insects and little mammals. And here, where the pond I'm sitting by right now is, was this horrible ring of concrete blocks full of charred wood, old cans, beer cans, tin foil, and rubbish that’s dangerous to wild animals.