7 lessons from Great Dixter, a garden that supports wildlife and looks gorgeous

Do you want to support wildlife in your garden – but you don’t want a ‘wild’ looking garden? You’d like beautiful borders and gorgeous pots? Even, perhaps, a short neat lawn?

The gardening world is getting more polarised between the re-wilders and those who want their outdoor space to look like traditional gardens.

But at Great Dixter, one of the most influential gardens in the world, head gardener Fergus Garrett believes that we can support wildlife by having lots of different sorts of gardens. There doesn’t need to be an ‘either/or’ situation.

Great Dixter has a famous Long Border planted up with a wide range of herbaceous perennials. There are both long and short lawns plus topiary, hedging, paths, buildings, terraces and ponds.

Like all gardens, it has its working areas and neglected areas, too.

It stands in countryside, framed in the rolling countryside of the Sussex Weald, surrounded by woodland and meadows.

What is a biodiversity audit?

A biodiversity audit is a scientific study which counts and measures the wildlife and the ecology of an area.

Great Dixter has been running biodiversity audits for several years. They cover the gardens plus the surrounding fields, meadows and woodlands. The audits also include the little things that we may not notice – the lichens, funghi, algae and mosses.

Fergus originally thought that the meadows and woodland would be the most wildlife-friendly and biodiverse part of the estate.

So he was surprised to discover that the two highly managed areas with the most garden flowers – the Barn Garden and the Long Border – had the highest number of species.

However, he points out that this doesn’t mean they’re ‘better’ than the meadows and the woodland. That’s because each area feeds into others. The