How has rewilding become such a prickly issue?

Readers respond to a piece by Isabella Tree which advocates abandoning perfection

To add to Isabella Tree’s article (Don’t be scared of rewilding, Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh: it’s a garden revelation, 24 July), may I refer Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh to the 1985 book by Chris Baines, How to Make a Wildlife Garden? They will learn from this, and from Tree’s article, what a wild gardener really is.

We concentrate on improving habitats for wildlife, so we nurture everything from piles of leaves to swift boxes, ponds to hedges, climbing plants to dry walls. We may leave fruit on our bushes, stands of nettle by our ponds, ivy on our shrubs and trees. We will be as busy as conventional gardeners in autumn, cutting back, taking cuttings, clearing paths. But we will pile up our leaves, or use them as mulch.

Our plants will go to seed and fruit. Seeds and fruits from our plants will be available all year round for birds and insects, not just nectar in summer. We tend to use hand tools, not strimmers or leaf blowers. We tend to make compost, and don’t use peat or pesticides. Our gardens are beautiful and well-maintained. We often get involved with other land managers, such as churches and farmers, to try to promote wild spaces and reduce pesticides.

Our village now has an annual prize for the best wild garden, and we have noted an increase in the sightings of hedgehogs, slowworms, frogs, toads and bats. Wild gardeners are a tolerant lot. It is a distressing sign of the times that the multimillion gardening industry feels the need for its attack dogs to savage us.Carol KuhlmannSt Dogmaels Wild Gardeners Group

Isabella Tree’s article makes valid points about what rewilding is, not least the importance of using exotic plants, recognising that our arguably impoverished native flora and plant succession without intervention leads to reduced biodiversity. But was the obvious hostility to Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh necessary? The former is constantly promoting and innovating new ways to support wildlife diversity and mitigate the impact of climate change.

What both Don and Titchmarsh would recognise is the individuality of our gardens, whether back gardens, balconies, allotments or other community garden spaces. They provide essential wellbeing places for us and wildlife to enjoy.

We have been developing our own small wildflower meadow for 10 years from an ordinary lawn outside our 1930s semi-detached house. An advocacy and approach is needed that engages with us all in all our different garden spaces and their uses, not setting up a needless adversarial contest. Lloyd Snellgrove and Julie WestfoldSheffield

It’s interesting how the term rewilding elicits such passionate objection by some horticulturists. I’ve been establishing and maintaining rewilded gardens for more than 40 years – mostly small to medium suburban gardens. Back in the 1980s, the buzz phrase was “habitat creation”. In the 90s and 00s, “permaculture” was the new thing. It focused on garden food production and support for wildlife in a more natural, woodland‑edge‑style landscape. At the risk of upsetting the permaculture purists, this used to be called “cottage gardening”.

Now that we have the term rewilding, I have new ways to explain to customers that the seasonal mowing and scything I need to do to keep an area as meadow mimics the work of grazers (cattle etc) and that the pruning I do to give space to each shrub or tree is the work of browsers (deer etc). And when I need to fork out some invasive species, it is mimicking the work of rooting pigs.

I agree with Isabella Tree that the monoculture lawn is one of the greatest insults to nature. Surely plastic grass, the widespread use of weed‑suppressing membranes and hard surfacing have to come a close second. Given that in the UK we have approx 4,330 sq km of private gardens, how we as individuals choose to support biodiversity really does make a difference.Kathleen AskewHayling Island, Hampshire

Isabella Tree’s article highlights the need for the adoption of a more accurate term for the intensive land management that is needed to generate and sustain complex ecologies. “Farming and gardening for wildlife” might not have the same appeal as “rewilding”, but it does emphasise that both are processes that require much more than sitting back and letting nature take its, often limited, course.James DriverChiddingfold, Surrey

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