Deirdre Black advises on how to untame your mini-Versailles
I recently spent a warm moonlit evening around a campfire in a woodland glade in Meath. Sounds lovely. Sounds like I was nestled in nature, getting back to a little wilderness, keeping it real. One of our company was a woman from Kenya, a PhD student living here for a while. Midway through some conversation about the perfection of this sylvan night, out of the darkness beyond our little fire came a rustle of undergrowth. In extreme fright, the Kenyan woman almost lepped over the flames, unknowingly engaging in one of the ancient Lughnasa rituals our little gang was trying to recreate.
We tried to convince her that at worst it could be a badger, but more likely a rabbit or a bird or some other completely harmless wild animal. Despite our exhortations that the most dangerous Irish animal is probably the bee, she spent the rest of the evening looking fearfully behind her into the darkness and scarpered back to civilisation as soon as she could. Of course where she grew up, you don't take rustles in the forest lightly, and quite sensibly too if you are likely to encounter a lion or snake rather than a rampaging bloodthirsty hedgehog.
What's that got to do with my garden, you ask. The whole essence of a garden, you see, is that it is holding wild nature back, and for most of our history, wilderness was not something you wanted on your doorstep. The history of garden design, and indeed the history of mankind's relationship with the landscape since agriculture began, has been about controlling nature and manipulating its predictabilities to suit our changing tastes.
In gardens, the nature of this control has been determined by aesthetics - by what is considered beautiful at any particular time. Of course it has also been determined by how much a particular society felt the need to display its mastery over nature. A pinnacle of this mastery is illustrated in Versailles, where gardens (and therefore the reigning king's power) stretch seemingly to infinity. Most gardens still draw on this approach, where the good garden is the clipped, obedient, subservient garden. The bad garden dares to grow beyond its determined limits, or sprouts native wildflowers (weeds) that laugh in the face of your grand plans.
There is a different kind of aesthetic, let's call it a wilderness aesthetic, where the controlling hand of humankind is a little less obvious. This aesthetic has been around for a while now, since about the 18th century. Before that, the wilderness was somewhere you spent time battling with the devil or waiting for enlightenment, and you would only climb a mountain to collect commandments or as some great penance.
The wilderness was considered a dangerous place, and it certainly was, with wolves still on the loose and all manner of bog holes, bogey men and bandits hiding around every corner. It was around the 18th century that apparently the first mountain was climbed purely for pleasure. Various new philosophies had inspired this inaugural backpacking experience, and the wilderness began to be perceived as "beautiful". Landscape painting took off, and the whole 3,000-year process has resulted in our current aesthetic attitudes to nature which inspire people to take cruises round Alaska and four wheel drives through Iceland to experience the "real beauty" of the wild.
What's that got to do with my garden, you ask again. You may have noticed that at this time of year the garden's growth is at its peak, the ripe abundance of nature is climaxing before its inevitable death. If we see the depths of midwinter as midnight, it is now 5 p.m., the working and growing day almost done, time to put the feet up and reap what we've sown. Which is all well and good, but perhaps for some of you the garden is looking a little overgrown, dare I say, a little wild? Is the Sun King within beginning to worry that nature is winning back its claim on your mini-Versailles?
A simple solution is to hold your hands up and surrender - nature is bigger than you, and it's always going to win the fight. I'm not saying you have to hand your plot totally over to the forces of Pan, but let him have a little, it will make your life much easier. Follow the tips below and redress the balance between the obsessive clipper and the eco-warrior, who battle daily for your gardening soul.
• Just as a percentage of a person's wage used to be given to the church as a tithe, you could give over part of your garden to nature. In a larger garden, this might have happened anyway. It's that bit you don't mow, don't fertilise, don't care about. Leave it so, leave it to the bramble, the ivy and the nettles, important plants for wildlife. That doesn't mean you can pile up all the grass clippings there, though; wilderness does not equal dump.
• Decaying material is important in a wild garden, so don't throw out all old wood and dead leaves. Many species live off such areas, and hedgehogs may even be tempted to nest. These spiky ones will assist you in your battle with hungry slugs in the garden - a hedgehog can consume up to 500 slugs in a single night, yum.
• A native hedge might have a place in your garden, with all its spring flowers and autumn berries. A good mixture is three quarters hawthorn with the rest made up of perhaps blackthorn, holly, ash, gorse, fuchsia and hazel, depending on where you are in the country, planted about 12 inches apart in staggered rows. Add in some climbers for extra cuteness; wild rose (Rosa canina) and honeysuckle, making sure to plant them about nine inches in front of the main hedge plants, stems angled into the hedge. Be protective of your native hedgerow, don't let anyone call it a ditch.
• A native hedge that has become overgrown can easily be brought back into shape with appropriate trimming and coppicing. The ideal hedge for wildlife is about two metres wide at the base, about one-and-a-half to two metres in height, and tapered into a rounded A shape.
• Exotic garden plants from the garden centre, remember, are just wild plants in posh frocks. Recent research has shown that a traditional garden of mixed exotic shrubs, trees and other plants can be as attractive to wildlife as a specifically created "wild garden". If you're a bit iffy about the full-on wild garden approach, simply lay off the chemicals and the wildlife should be happy enough to visit your patch.
Although human ingenuity makes various inventions, corresponding by various machines to the same end, it will never discover any inventions more beautiful, more appropriate or more direct than nature, because in her inventions, nothing is lacking and nothing is superfluous - Leonardo da Vinci.
• Jane Powers is on holidays
• For further information on wild gardening contact any of the following organisations: • ENFO, www.enfo.ie • An Taisce, www.antaisce.ie • Irish Wildlife Trust, www.iwt.ie • Birdwatch Ireland, www.birdwatch.ie • Native woodland trust, www.nativewoodland.ie • Crann, www.crann.ie