Workshop: Gardening for Wildlife
This forward-thinking workshop is an opportunity to rethink our approaches to garden design, planting, and all traditional gardening practices. As gardeners and allotmenteers, we often forget we act as custodians not only of the land but also of its inhabitants. While traditional gardening encourages us to 'sanitise' our spaces by removing a range of ‘threats’, this works to alienate our wildlife and contribute to its decline.
This workshop explores what role gardeners can play in enhancing the miraculous relationship between the plants and animals in our spaces. During the session you will gain insight into simple, achievable actions that can help you to encourage wildlife in your garden and learn to adopt a more relaxed attitude to the way you manage your space. Alongside practical demonstrations of our own radical ‘nature-first’ approach, we aim to discuss current trends in sustainable gardening, with a critical approach to their impact. The session will leave you confident in moving beyond simply ‘organic’ or ‘chemical free’, into embracing the wild, without sacrificing what is most valuable to you in your space.
‘If something is not eating your plants, then your garden is not part of the ecosystem’: alternative approaches to pest and disease management
Creating habitats, forage, and water
Introduction to some projects for the wildlife gardener: ponds, bee banks, wildflower meadows
Holistic garden practices: dead-hedging, composting and mess!
Meet Sarah
Sarah’s foremost interest is in natural history, studying the plants and animals through observation in the field - a pastime that is open to everybody! Sarah enjoys learning how to identify species and develop an understanding of the relationships between organisms within an ecosystem. Sarah has a particular interest in moths and has undertaken close to 100 moth surveys in London and led the Moth Biodiversity project at Walworth Garden in 2022.
Most recently, Sarah has been working as a Warden on lowland heathland during the ground-nesting bird breeding season. Prior to this, she was a Garden and Plant Centre Supervisor at Walworth Garden.
You can find Sarah on Instagram at @creature_films
Price: £85
Note for Southwark residents: Looking to book a free place? Unfortunately, our limited quota of free places for the 2023-24 academic year have now been claimed. We will be releasing a refreshed number of free places, along with a new calendar of workshops, in Autumn 2024 so please check back then. Subscribe to our newsletter or follow us on social media, at the bottom of this page, to be notified.
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