Xanthe Gladstone - Optimising Garden Wildlife

Xanthe Gladstone on optimising garden wildlife

For those of us who are lucky enough to have a vegetable garden, it’s really important to utilise this opportunity not only to our own advantage - through our ability to produce incredible food for ourselves - but also to do our part to benefit the local environment. One of the areas that we can give back in is our opportunity to help the local wildlife. Heavy chemical use in industrial farming has led to a massive depletion in wildlife on the majority of farms across the UK. Pesticides and herbicides kill off these wonderful bugs and insects that help to pollinate our plants and in turn produce the food that we eat. We need these creatures and so we must do our small part to protect them in whatever way we can. 

There is so much we can do in our gardens to help. One of my favourite things to grow is edible flowers because they tick so many boxes. I love the look of flowers in a garden but I equally like everything in my garden to be edible so this is why I enjoy growing these flowers so much. Of course, they provide a fantastic home for bees and other insects to collect pollen which is the main benefit of growing them. They also bring an amazing level of colour to our gardens aside from the usual green that takes over in the summer months. In the summer, I add these colourful flowers to all of my salads. I go on about lettuce being my favourite thing to grow because the deliciousness is like no other and this lettuce topped with edible flowers is just unbeatable. Edible flowers are also an amazingly simple thing to grow and give you so much abundance for quite minimal effort. My favourite to grow are: tagetes, cosmos, and nasturtium (the leaves of the nasturtium are also edible) but there are many more too. If you have a balcony and not a full garden, these would also be a great thing to grow as you only need a big pot for them to grow in and something to water them with. You need good quality potting soil, seeds, and the pot and you’re good to go. Just wait to watch the wonderful array of bees and insects come into your space, it’s a beautiful thing to support.

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