Filbert Stories: Q&A with John Little
Habitat trials at Hilldrop,
John Little’s experimental playground
Photographs by Izzy de Wattripont taken at Hilldrop.
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 full of immersive discussions and talks about biodiversity, gardens, public space and of course rewilding.
Enthused by John Little’s talk on brownfield sites, habitat creation as well as discussions of planting into crushed ceramics such as old sinks and toilets, we took a visit to John's home, garden and workshop in Essex to see for our own eyes what he is getting up to.
John Little is the creator of The Grass Roof Company. Since starting John has designed and built over 300 small green roof buildings. After 18 years caring for the greenspace on Clapton Park estate, Hackney, he produced a sustainable grounds maintenance contract that puts people first. The central part of John's trial garden has been made using sands from the local A13 road widening.
Q: How long have you been experimenting in the garden at Hilldrop in Essex?
Around 30 years
Q: 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.
Q: 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 m2 than any other site in the UK! That’s happened within 50 years of the site being abandoned. We can’t replicate ancient meadows or woodland easily but we can design new landscapes to mimic the best brownfield sites, what an exciting prospect for our future landscapes.
Q: During your talk at the Beth Chatto Symposium you discussed the importance of Structural Complexity within the landscape, could you talk a little about this? 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, 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 driven by large herbivores and this combined with our obsession with tidiness has left us with 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.
Q: What materials are you using in your experiments and where are these waste materials coming from?
We use sands from local road widening work, on the A13, construction wastes from our local recycling centre and some industrial waste including chalk from sugar production.
Nesting Ivy mining bees.
Q: What are the benefits to 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, as these materials are pretty much weed free. This means you can sow straight into them without the need to ‘clean’ the soils using herbicides. By choosing substrates that are low in nutrients you have more chance of establishing a diverse plant community and lower the future maintenance. Another benefit is combining these materials with a varied topography you provide breeding space for a good range of invertebrates especially ground nesting bees and wasps.
Q: When did you first notice the Ivy bees nesting in the sand?
3 months after we dumped a pile of suitable sand.
Q: What other interesting species have you noticed?
We have increased the bee and wasp species by 30% 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.
Ivy mining bee (Colletes hederae)
Evidence of Leaf-cutter bees. They use the the circular cut outs to line the cells in their nests.
Q: How do you feel we can 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 wider landscape.
Q: 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 allow 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.
Q: 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.
