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Designing Your Rewilded Garden: Bringing Nature Back to Your Garden


Rewilding isn't just a buzzword—it's a transformative approach to restoring natural habitats and processes right in your own backyard. At Rewild Garden Design, we specialise in rewilding garden projects of all sizes and expertly tailor landscapes from small suburban back gardens through to 2 acre country gardens and the occasional woodland. Our goal? To create self-sustaining ecosystems that boost biodiversity, reduce flooding, and provide a haven for local flora and fauna.


Rewilding can be defined as "the large-scale restoration of natural habitats and processes, with appropriate reintroduction of missing species to become self-sustaining, boost biodiversity, reduce flooding etc".


Success requires careful planning and an understanding of ecological processes, local flora, fauna, environmental conditions (climate, microclimate, topography, hydrology, soil etc) and human activities. It is not, as some prominent naysayers would have you believe, just doing nothing and leaving everything to nature. It must be based on sound ecological and environmental principles and knowledge.


Key Considerations for Your Rewilded Garden:


1. Analogues of Natural Habitats: A rewilded garden is more than just letting nature take its course—it's a carefully planned replication of natural habitats. We begin by thoroughly surveying your garden's existing features, environmental conditions, and ecological potential, ensuring that every aspect of the design is rooted in sound ecological principles.


2. Creating Habitat Diversity: Just like in undisturbed natural areas, diversity is key to a thriving rewilded garden. We strategically incorporate a variety of habitat patches, each tailored to the specific conditions of your garden, to create a mosaic of microhabitats that support a wide range of plant and animal species.


Rewilded back garden with first years growth showing diversity of planting and habitats

3. Designing for Connectivity: Ecotones—transition zones where different habitats meet—are hotspots of biodiversity in natural ecosystems. We carefully design your garden layout to include these transition zones, allowing habitats to merge seamlessly and creating opportunities for wildlife movement and interaction. An initial planting plan may look something like the image below.


Example basic planting plan around pond


4. Planting for Success: Native plants are the backbone of any rewilded garden, as they are best adapted to local environmental conditions. We prioritize the use of native species in our planting plans, selecting those that naturally occur in your area to ensure long-term success and resilience.


Complex native meadow with viper's bugloss, poppies and daisies

5. Structural and Age Diversity: To mimic the complexity of natural habitats, we incorporate a mix of ages and structures into your garden design. From mature trees to young saplings, and from shrubby thickets to open meadows, each element adds to the overall diversity and resilience of your rewilded landscape.


Rewilded garden at the end of the first years growth


With careful planning and thoughtful design, even the smallest of spaces can become thriving havens of biodiversity. At Rewild Garden Design, we're here to guide you through the process of rewilding your garden, creating a sustainable and beautiful outdoor space that nourishes both you and the planet. Let's bring the wild back into our gardens!

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