Rewilding has become a trendy gardening topic in recent years, but many don’t know what it actually is.
Essentially, it’s the restoration of ecosystems so that biodiversity is encouraged, wildlife thrives and nature is allowed to take care of itself.
While it used to be a term applied to large areas of land allowed to return to nature, now households are also being encouraged to do their bit to rewild their own gardens too.
This does not necessarily mean allowing an entire outdoor space to go back to its natural state, but instead to leave some parts of it undisturbed and to manage the rest in a wildlife-friendly way.
However, Alan Titchmarsh told a House of Lords investigation that the craze for rewilding will make Britain’s gardens less biodiverse.
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He claimed that a two-acre area he had set aside as a wildflower meadow attracts fewer insects and birds than the rest of his Hampshire garden.
Previously urging Chelsea Flower Show judges to weed out wild gardens, Alan gave evidence to a peers’ horticultural sector committee inquiry.
Worth billions and supporting thousands of jobs, Britain’s horticultural industry is being looked at by the committee to consider the risks.
According to the Daily Mail, Alan told peers: “Domestic gardens and well-planted parks offer an opportunity to all forms of wildlife – be they birds seeking nesting sites in hedges, berried plants that provide winter food, or shrubs that offer shelter to mammals.
“Domestic gardens with their greater plant diversity offer sustenance and shelter to wildlife from March through to November. Nine months of nourishment.
“A rewilded garden will offer nothing but straw and hay from August to March. A four-month flowering season is the norm.”
While the expert acknowledged that it is vital to protect the countryside and its native trees, shrubs, plants and flowers, he urged householders should not be badgered into turning their gardens into a wilderness.
Alan added: “I find it worrying that misleading propaganda suggests only native plants are of any value to wildlife and the environment. This is at odds with my experience as the custodian of a two-acre wildflower meadow and garden.
“The garden is patently richer, and for longer, in the variety of insect and bird species it sustains. Domestic gardeners have a duty to ensure the survival of this unparalleled resource.
“Should a current fashionable and ill-considered trend deplete our gardens of their botanical riches then we have presided over a diminution in biodiversity of catastrophic proportions.”
In October 2022 at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, Alan claimed that rewilding was throwing hundreds of years of British gardening “out the window”.
He said: “I hate to see 100 years of British gardening thrown out the window because people think the only way forward is to leave it.”