A guest blog written by “Nature’s Acre” author Ciarán De Buitléar
When we started in the Walled Garden, there was a question straight away: Was it for growing food or was it for wildlife?
It sounds reasonable, but if you want insects in your garden, you have to leave space for them to live. While that seems obvious, it isn’t how most gardens are designed.
One evening at the kitchen table, my father-in-law, Frank, had the whole garden drawn out on a sheet of A3. Beds, paths, compost bins: All neat, all planned.
We moved little bits of card around, trying to decide what this place was going to be. I said we needed space for pollinators, proper space, not just a token strip.
Frank looked at me and asked, “Is it for growing things or is it for wildlife?”
“Both! We can do both.” I said. That wasn’t just a nice idea; it was a decision.
About two-thirds of the garden we left alone with no beds, no structure. Just space for wild plants to come and go as they pleased. I liked it that way. Those areas became habitat. Not planned habitat. Just habitat; that’s where the insects were.
Yarrow came in where the soil had been disturbed. Bees and hoverflies were on it straight away. Borage flowered, and it hummed. Nettles, left in the right place, filled up with caterpillars. Ivy stayed on the wall, sharing it with kiwi fruit and rambling roses. It fed things when nothing else did. Yet, people kept asking me when I was going to remove the ivy. I replied that I wasn’t.
None of it looked tidy, and many people dislike that. That’s the sticking point.
Later on, in the community garden, I heard it again and again. “It looks messy. Why not plant it properly?” People want a wildflower meadow to behave like a flower bed. And a bug hotel ended up in a skip because there were too many insects in it!
But if you want insects, you have to leave space for them to live. Not just flowers: structure, cover, a bit of the right kind of neglect in the right places. If you leave that space, things arrive. Not because you planned it, but because they were already there, waiting for somewhere to land. A rough corner will often do more for biodiversity than a perfect bed.
That doesn’t mean doing nothing. There are beds to build, compost to turn, and crops to grow. But you don’t need to control all of it. You don’t need to strip a place back to make it productive.
In my experience, that’s when it stops working. We can grow food and make space for insects. It’s not a compromise. It’s how the system holds together.
It’s Nature’s Acre, and every acre is. We only borrow it for a time.
Author bio:
Ciarán De Buitléar is a writer and gardener based in Co. Meath, Ireland. He is the author of Nature’s Acre, a memoir about developing a walled garden as a working space for food production and biodiversity. He founded Gardening Well, an initiative focused on practical wildlife gardening and climate action.
A journey that truly started during the Covid lockdown ends in a community united. In his book, Ciarán shares his inspiring story from the first moments he stepped into a derelict walled garden, to a thriving community space. Dirty hands, smiles, laughter, learning and a space with a dual purpose; “for growing things and wildlife”; a community hub and a shared legacy to be proud of.
“A man can own a place, or share it…” and Nature’s Acre is mostly definitely a shared place.
Read more at: https://gardeningwell.ie