Make your garden a wild haven

Mowing, raking, spraying and clipping were the order of the day in the traditional gardening background that I come from. In the past, there was little problem in having a garden full of exotic plants in a highly managed and tamed area around our homes. In those days, the countryside was full of wildflower meadows and unkempt hedges and wetlands and the world was alive with insects.

But the wild world is nowadays in full retreat and falling silent. With changing farming practices, pollution and development, much of our countryside is ecologically a shadow of what it once was.