TAMING THE WILD

See how Andrew Oldham and his family have transformed an overgrown and unproductive patch of land into a vegetable haven

- Andrew Oldham

The lawn had to go. When I wrote‘lawn’ I should have written ‘couchgrass’. Lots of couch grass. This grassy area at the top of our quarter-acre hillside garden is the last place we have tackled. It’s taken us a decade to get here.

As a disabled gardener, I found it impossible to mow this uneven space. It was left to go wild. It did not become the wild habitat I dreamed of but became the home of horseflies; I have the scars to prove it. This is largely down to the fact that this area drains poorly. I turned to professional gardeners who came to see our ‘lawn’ – most of them laughed, all of them quoted thousands to turn it into an immaculate bowling green (something I have never wanted). It simply wouldn’t work on a hillside battered by the elements.

I have for a decade yearned for an area of wildflowers and grasses that sequestered an intimate walled kitchen garden, bursting with flowers and vegetables. I am a great advocate of creating habitats for all manners of bugs and beasts but I had a problem. Unlike the rest of the garden, this space lacked bugs and beasts. We had midges, leather jackets, and horseflies; even the frogs and toads moved out a few years ago, finding solace in the rest of the garden. My garden is awash with life, the soil is like chocolate cake. Here it was compacted.

NOTHING WASTED