J ohn Little is the creator of The Grass Roof Company and one of the most patient experimenters in British habitat-led gardening. We spent a day at Hilldrop, his garden in Essex, after his talk at the Beth Chatto Symposium — a slow look at what thirty years of trial-and-error with construction waste, road sand and crushed ceramics has actually built.
During the first week of September the Filbert team attended the second installment of the Beth Chatto Symposium. This year’s series of talks and panel discussions was titled Rewilding the Mind — two days of immersive discussion about biodiversity, gardens, public space and, of course, rewilding.
Enthused by John’s talk on brownfield sites, habitat creation, and the idea of planting into crushed ceramics — old sinks and toilets — we took a visit to his home, garden and workshop in Essex to see for ourselves what he is getting up to.
By far the best single thing you could do to increase the biodiversity in your own garden is not to own a domestic cat.
— John Little
John is the founder of The Grass Roof Company. Since starting, he has designed and built over three hundred small green-roof buildings. After eighteen years caring for the greenspace on the Clapton Park estate in Hackney, he produced a sustainable grounds-maintenance contract that puts people first. The central part of his trial garden has been made using sands from the local A13 road widening.
How long have you been experimenting in the garden at Hilldrop?Around thirty years.
What are you doing to support and boost the biodiversity of your garden?We are looking at the areas of the garden lowest in biodiversity and redesigning them to create a very complex landscape by varying the topography and soils and adding structure. Most of this work uses construction waste and local sands.
How did you get started on your experiments, and what made you interested in brownfield sites and habitat creation?Guess I started with plants — I’m a gardener that got interested in everything else that good landscapes deliver. I love the contrast of man-made structure and materials with the natural world. This not only delivers a great aesthetic but provides the chaotic mix of structure vital for rich biodiversity. It’s the speed with which abandoned sites become so good for wildlife that really is so important. There is a brownfield site not far from me at Canvey Wick that has more species per square metre than any other site in the UK — that happened within fifty years of the site being abandoned. We can’t easily replicate ancient meadows or woodland, but we can design new landscapes to mimic the best brownfield sites. What an exciting prospect for our future landscapes.
At Beth Chatto you discussed the importance of Structural Complexity within the landscape — what does it mean?I think structure is the forgotten tool in boosting biodiversity. There is such an emphasis on plants within conservation and horticulture that I think we’ve missed the importance of the physical spaces and niches that wildlife depends on. Brownfield and post-industrial sites usually deliver this — that’s why they are so important for biodiversity. We have lost the natural structure once driven by large herbivores, and that, combined with our obsession with tidiness, has left a void that man-made waste can fill. A good example is where ships are sunk specifically to provide the best habitat for divers to admire the most diverse aquatic life.
What materials are you using in your experiments, and where are these waste materials coming from?Sands from local road widening on the A13, construction wastes from our local recycling centre, and some industrial waste — including chalk from sugar production.
What are the benefits of growing in sand or other waste materials such as crushed ceramics?Growing in sands and waste material enables us to direct-seed sow — the most sustainable landscape-creation technique — because these materials are pretty much weed-free. You can sow straight into them without ‘cleaning’ the soils with herbicides. By choosing substrates that are low in nutrients you have more chance of establishing a diverse plant community and lower the future maintenance. Combine these materials with a varied topography and you provide breeding space for a good range of invertebrates, especially ground-nesting bees and wasps.
When did you first notice the Ivy bees nesting in the sand?Three months after we dumped a pile of suitable sand.
What other interesting species have you noticed?We have increased the bee and wasp species by thirty per cent since introducing local sands. Other species have come in on the back of the new plant mix driven by the new substrates. Viper’s-bugloss arrived soon after we introduced the crushed construction waste, and a few years after that the viper’s-bugloss moth appeared — a new record for Essex.
How can we add to the complexity of our public and private green spaces?Keep garden waste on site, celebrate compost bins and dead hedges, and bring them front and centre of your garden design. Use gabions to create complex structure and allow you to use waste materials within the garden and the wider landscape.
How do you feel about the future of public green spaces and how they are managed?If we could rethink the way public space is maintained by investing in the people that look after it, that would be a game changer. Small investments in extra people to give them the time to get creative, talk to communities and tailor the space to the people that use it would be by far the best value for money. If we could shift the emphasis of funders away from glamorous infrastructure projects and into the pockets of gardeners, we could change the world.
Finally — one thing we can all go and add to our own gardens to help boost biodiversity?By far the best single thing you could do to increase the biodiversity in your own garden is not to own a domestic cat.
Follow John at @grassroofco or visit grassroofcompany.co.uk. Photographs by Izzy de Wattripont, taken at Hilldrop.
