Coppices, Alcoholic Hedges, and Thoughts on Ecological Gardening

Where is the sweet spot that gardening meets the natural world…so that gardening is ecological? Our guest today explains that ecological gardening is all about balance.

Matt Rees-Warren says, “Your garden is a pocket of wild; it will never be purely wild, because it’s an interaction between ourselves and nature. But it can be much more regenerative.”

Rees-Warren is a professional gardener and garden designer who’s passionate about the difference that  individual gardeners can make to strengthen biodiversity and lessen environmental degradation.

He says gardening is one way individuals can make a tangible difference to the environment. Don’t wait for governments to act, he says. Start making changes now, in your own garden.

Rees-Warren is the author of The Ecological Gardener: How to Create Beauty and Biodiversity From the Soil Up.

Ecological Gardening

“If we design our gardens to be regenerative, the result will be functional, beautiful spaces full of life and vigour, robust enough to face the challenges of the future and elegant enough to beguile all those who walk among them,” says Rees-Warren.

But ecological gardening is more than a philosophy. There are many practical things we can do in the garden.

Here are some of the ideas discussed:

• Coppicing. Talking about renewable materials for the garden, Rees-Warren explains the process of coppicing, where trees are repeatedly cut back to the ground to give a harvest of sticks that can be used in the garden.
• Scythe. He describes this as “the most immersive” of tools. “It’s the only tool for wildflower meadows,” he says.
• Hedgrows. Rees-Warren says hedgerows can also be food reservoirs, using plants such as blackberry, sloe berry, hops, raspberry, and hazelnuts. On the mention of sloe gin, he adds that sometimes these are called, “alcoholic hedges.”
• Pleachers. “Laying a hedgerow” and the technique of using “pleachers” is one way to create attractive hedgerows that are like a living fence. Young trees are cut leaving just a thread of bark connecting them to the stem, and then folded down horizontally. “It looks fabulous,” says Rees-Warren.