Re-introducing wild areas to Tatton Park
For the RHS Flower Show Tatton Park 2021, Michael John McGarr desiged a feature garden shaped by the landscape and ecology of the park itself. Here, he talks about it being a celebration of local plant communities
What did you want to achieve with this RHS and Tatton Park Rewilding Garden?
The idea was to celebrate the wider landscape of Tatton Park, to show the diversity and ecological interest thatWe actually sectioned off, in advance of the show, an area of the showground to rewild, letting the plants grow as they want to in an area bigger than 10 x 10m. As the plants grew and changed before the show, I responded with the design – so the design wasn’t finished until the show opened.
The garden included a structure for shelter; local stone walling in the style of the wider parkland; and water. As well as all the plants living in this plot of land, we introduced some to reinforce the essence of the landscape.
We had native plants such as field maple (Acer campestre), teasels (Dipsacus fullonum), hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) and knapweed (Centaurea nigra), as well as plants known to be loved by pollinators such as viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare) and bugle (Ajuga reptans), both displaying blue spikes of flowers.
Where did your idea for the garden feature come from?
I’ve been involved with the Flower Show for many years now; in fact, this was my fourth RHS Tatton Park garden and I love doing them. But my professional work is as a landscape designer and ecologist based in Wigan, working with commercial and domestic clients.Linking a garden to its landscape and the ecology of the site is crucial for me, and something I do working with other designers and practitioners up and down the country. In this instance, many people know of Tatton Park’s Japanese Garden or the fern collection, but you have this much bigger enormous Repton landscape of hundreds of acres that is in fact home to many natural plant communities and a host of wildlife.
An area of the parkland was allowed to ‘grow out’ and reveal itself ahead of the show
What do you hope people will enjoy about the garden?
The idea of really looking at the plants that grow in your area, focusing on the beauty and diversity of what is under our feet; it is something that I want to encourage people to do.I hope that show visitors will take two things from seeing this garden. Firstly, they will understand the wider Tatton landscape and its amazing range of flora; the second is that they can then think about the plant communities that live in their garden, and appreciate the importance of naturally growing plants no matter the location.
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Should this garden make us think differently about native plants in our landscape?
Over the years, I’ve worked on fantasy gardens (The Poisonous Garden in 2018, for example) but this was soThe more research we’ve done, the more we’ve learned about this site. It celebrates natural plant communities, so my job is to manipulate that as part of the design. ‘Rewilding’ and ‘nature’ aren’t just buzzwords – they are about being site specific, working with nature and listening to the site.