Return of The Native

Horticulture is a very traditional profession in the UK and the gardening industry is huge.

The industry operates within a much wider market that, in particular, sees plants coming in from all over Europe. You can see ‘British grown’ labels on plants at your local garden centre but there will also be plenty of plants grown overseas, especially in France, Spain and Italy.

Our appetite for new plants is so great that this is no bad thing and many UK businesses benefit by exporting to the Euro zone. However, we’re all interested in supporting our local community and businesses more than ever, these days, to help them get through difficult times. This new emphasis on stocking local and British grown plants has also led to an increased use of local and native varieties.

Only a few years ago there was a craze for planting tree ferns from New Zealand and designing gardens with Californian panache, but planting and design has gone full circle and we’re increasingly interested in planting native plants. In the USA they have over 20,000 native species and localism is a driving force that makes sense, especially when you also have so many distinct climates. In the UK we have no more than 1100 native species. With so few natives in our moderate climate (and an historic empire that was obsessed with plant hunting and trophy growing of non-natives) it is no wonder that the exotic is embedded in our culture.

More significantly - from a design viewpoint - in the UK our planting would be quite miserable and drab without the use of exotic and colourful non-natives. Colour is key to people’s enjoyment of gardens and even those with visual disability often have some peripheral vision where the brightest colours of red and orange are the last to fail them. Our modern perennials also add a lot of value to biodiversity and the environment but ultimately people have to accept a good-looking landscape into their neighbourhoods.

We are notably losing the character of a traditional English garden. Nowhere is this more so than in the changes to lawns and grassed areas. Ornamental lawns are being replaced with other materials, including low maintenance artificial lawns and gravels and also perennial plantings. It’s a trend that has been led by climate change and maintenance trends but it’s not bad. It means we’re still doing a lot for our local environment and if we use native varieties grown by local growers we’ll still be ticking a lot of community boxes.

There is also a place for using those exotic plants that we’ve used for centuries, not just for colour and interest but also because the climate has changed. Many of the flowers we are so used to were once exotic imports so we’ll keep using them but embrace our native plants as well. And, if champagne houses are buying up Kent farmland because it has the climate of the Champagne region 25 years ago, then why not plant vines, peppers, blueberries and Koji berries?! There’s a place for all these plants in our gardens but let’s not forget about the role that our traditional wildflowers and native trees can play.

Visit www.fishertomlin.com or call for a chat about your garden project on 020 8542 0683