Around the country – around the world – the threat of climate change and the pressure on nature resulting from human activities has led to an appreciation of wilder spaces where flora and fauna can flourish with relatively little intervention.
Inspiration for the nature garden has come from garden designers, ecologists and environmentalists who’ve made beautiful and original green space in the most unlikely places.
John Little
Creator of the Grass Roof Company which specializes in planting in brown soil and aggregates that have been created from demolition/roadwork sites.
Nigel Dunnett /James Hitchmough
Currently running the Grey to Green project in Sheffield, transforming the city centre by planting into inert free draining aggregates, and the Barbican transformation. Created the Olympic Meadows for the London 2012 Olympics.
Nigel’s book, Naturalistic Planting Design: The Essential Guide is an authoritative guide on the subject.
Charlie Burrell
Conservationist and farmer at the Knepp Estate in Sussex, which has been the subject of an ambitious rewilding project chronicled in the book Wilding by Isabella Tree. This was itself inspired by a 50-year Dutch project to return the Oostvardersplassen, a huge area of reclaimed land, to nature.