Negotiating the well-heeled streets of Sandbanks involves weaving around many builders’ vans. In this redevelopment hotspot near Poole, Dorset, many old houses with mature gardens are being ripped out and replaced with ultra-modern homes skirted by artificial grass and gravel. But Pam Woodall has rebelled by creating a garden that’s packed with wildlife – and is anything but low maintenance.
Her garden is divided into two sections: an immaculate terrace spreads out from the back of the house, leading to a well-tended lawn ended by the full stop of a hugely tall, fat-trunked maritime pine, Pinus pinaster. So far, so lovely – but there’s a surprise beyond that pine. The plot plunges down into a lush dell garden that acts as an unofficial extension to the Luscombe Valley nature reserve that lies behind it. “We call it the jungle, but it is like a secret garden,” Woodall says.
After a career working as an economic journalist and living in flats in London, New York and Hong Kong, this was her first real garden. It’s been a huge success, winning the BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine garden of the year 2016 award for best wildlife garden. When Woodall, now retired, bought the house with her husband Dave in 2013, the lower garden was impenetrable: thick with brambles and rhododendrons, and littered with old furniture and plastic rubbish. Given the scale of the task, she was tempted to leave it alone and concentrate on the garden nearer the house. So what persuaded her otherwise? Her sister offered encouragement, but Woodall thinks it’s also partly a reaction to what’s happening in her neighbourhood. “I hate the way these mature gardens, which are great for wildlife, are being destroyed,” she explains. “It’s my slightly rebellious side wanting to stand up against that.”
Two years of clearance followed, revealing the remains of a long-neglected woodland garden. Woodall painstakingly dug out four ponds to give the boggy ground somewhere to drain, and to attract aquatic life. She used logs and twigs from the clearance to build paths between the ponds and mark out tiers and steps. Aside from the obvious environmental considerations, the garden’s steep slope was a strong motivator to recycle as much waste within the garden as possible, rather than hauling it away. While this may seem like a gargantuan task to most, Woodall took it in her stride: “I like the creation of the garden, the work. And gardening is the best workout you can get. I don’t need a gym membership.”
She begged plants from friends and family to begin filling the slopes with moisture-loving, insect-attracting, colourful flowers that don’t need deadheading and thrive in the dappled shade; astilbes with their pink or white, feathery, plume-like flowers, dark purple Salvia ‘Amistad’, orange crocosmias and deep-ink schizostylis, the crimson flag lily. While the flowers are the beautiful face of the garden, dead and decaying wood is just as important in attracting wildlife, such as the most spectacular member of the invertebrate world, the stag beetle. Ivy-swagged tree stumps remain in situ as homes for bats, birds and insects, and the copious pine cones and fallen branches were piled into dead hedges and crafted into more fancy insect residences.
The upper garden, though far more formal, is also wildlife-rich, thanks to another pond that’s home to newts, deep borders full of shrubs and flowers, and, of course, that huge pine tree. But attracting wildlife is not without its challenges: a family of badgers dug up huge chunks of the lawn last winter in search of grubs, and it’s unwise to visit the back of the garden without insect repellent in the evening due to clouds of mosquitoes. Working under the pine tree risks a clonk on the head, because the squirrels like to drop the huge cones to the ground once they’ve had a nibble. And Woodall had to erect netting to stop the deer that swim over from Brownsea Island from entering the upper garden to munch away at the borders. “You go from saying, ‘Oh, how cute, how exciting – we’ve got a deer in the garden’ to, ‘You bastards!’” In the lower section of the garden, though, she lets them, and has deer-resistant plants to minimise damage.
This is certainly no low-maintenance garden. Woodall spends many hours a week gardening, making sure the balance between a usable, beautiful garden and a wilderness is maintained, because she knows “the sad truth is, if I decided to stop gardening, the brambles would move in”.
And what does the rest of Sandbanks make of it? “Most people here have gardeners, so when they see me working in my scruffy clothes, I think they think I am the gardener,” Woodall notes wryly. “Our neighbours think the garden is wonderful, but they’re a bit puzzled.”
Attractive ways to bring wildlife to your garden
Don’t cut back in autumn Leave seedheads and other plant material over winter (remove in spring), providing food for birds and shelter for invertebrates.
Accept that a wildlife garden will have messy areas Woodall recommends making “untidy” areas look attractive by putting architectural plants such as Chilean rhubarb (Gunnera manicata) and tree ferns in front of them to draw the eye.
Water is essential, providing homes for insects and amphibians and a water hole for birds and mammals. Make sure there are plenty of platforms and different levels, so hedgehogs and birds have a place to drink, and amphibians have a spot to bask.
Plant shrubs that offer year-round food supplies, such as cotoneaster and ivy berries. Deep borders also offer cover for birds who may be reluctant to fly into an exposed garden to feed.
Compost heaps aren’t just great places to recycle garden waste: they are home to wildlife, too. Woodall’s six heaps host slow worms and grass snakes.
