Garden Wildlife in Suburbs and City
It is estimated that one quarter of the area of the average British city, including London, consists of private back gardens. So gardens are potentially very important in supporting the natural biodiversity of urban and suburban areas. This fact has not yet fully penetrated the world of horticulture, where 'wildlife gardening' is still often seen as something very specialised, not part of the mainstream of garden design and management. On the other hand, the world of ecology and conservation for many years concentrated on countryside, or land that was perceived to be 'wild', underestimating the importance of gardens as habitat and gardeners as custodians of biodiversity. In fact, in Britain, people and wildlife have lived in each other's pockets for thousands of years. The future success of our wildlife will lie not just in nature reserves, but in an overall shift towards making the whole environment, including towns and cities, more wildlife-friendly. Gardens are an obvious place to start that shift: biodiversity begins at home.
 Wildlife Gardens can be Beautiful Gardens
We hope to show by our example that wildlife gardens can be interesting, stylish and demonstrate a high degree of plantsmanship yet still have maximum value to wildlife. That is an exciting challenge to meet. We hope you will visit us and judge for yourself.
Our Local Area
 We live in a part of suburban south London known as Penge. It was developed from the 1850s onwards when the Crystal Palace Exhibition was moved to nearby Sydenham. Most of the local terraced and semi-detached Victorian houses have back gardens, many with mature trees, large shrubs and areas of benign neglect which are just perfect for garden wildlife.
The North Wood
Penge and Crystal Palace were built on an area of ancient woodland known as the North Wood, which originally stretched in an arc along the range of hills from Selhurst to Greenwich. The name survives in many South London place names (e.g. Norwood, Woodside, Forest Hill), indeed the name Penge itself is thought to be derived from pencoed, meaning “top of the wood” in the ancient British language (the ancestor of Welsh) which was spoken in this area until the Anglo-Saxon period.
Penge Common
 Our street was built in 1865, on land which had for 900 years been 'Penge Common', an area of 'wood pasture'. This would have been a piece of open woodland, with oaks dominant, where at certain times of the year people would graze livestock. Typically these would have been pigs which would have foraged on acorns in the autumn. Wood pasture is an ancient system of habitat management and it is now thought that the mosaic of large trees, open glades, grazed areas and scrub which it would have contained resembles the ancient 'wildwood'. No trace now remains of Penge Common, but some of the wild fauna it would have supported, particularly the birds and insects, clings on here and there wherever suitable habitats are available, which mainly means beside railways and in gardens.
Our Garden
 We have lived here since 1989. We have always been organic gardeners. In recent years, intrigued by the various kinds of birds and insects which seemed to find our garden a desirable place to set up home, we have gradually changed the way we manage the garden and some of the plants we grow to maximise (we hope!) the garden's value to wildlife. Such management changes did not mean letting the garden turn into an uncontrolled wilderness, or planting a sea of Buddleias, nettles and invasive Goldenrod which unfortunately is some people's stereotype of a “wildlife garden”.
 Trying out Plants for Wildlife
We are keen plants-people and like to try out all sorts of plants, but nowadays we don't plant anything new unless we think it will be of some value to birds, or to the insect life upon which many birds depend. We are currently trying out many “bee plants” which we have not grown before, simply to try them out and see what sort of insects they actually attract. One of the reasons we open our garden to the public is to show, by example, what can be done and to swap ideas with visiting gardeners who are also interested in supporting wildlife.
 What's so Special about Suburban and City Gardens?
Well, if sprayed with chemicals or over-tidied the answer will be “nothing!” But if looked after in a gentler way with some regard to the many wild creatures which seek to make a home there, suburban gardens can be the closest thing to a country hedgerow or woodland glade that you will find in a built-up environment. This has been borne out by our own experience - in 2003 we recorded the bird and butterfly species we saw in the garden. There were 16 kinds of bird and 14 kinds of butterfly. Most of them were woodland or hedgerow species rather than species of grassland, meadows and open country. We firmly believe that many styles and types of garden can be planned and managed to make them friendly to wildlife.
- Marc Carlton and Nigel Lees
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©2006 Marc Carlton.
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