PUTNEY, SOUTH WEST LONDON · BIODIVERSITY-LED GARDEN

A Garden That Gives Back to Nature

A biodiversity-led garden, designed around plants and wildlife

THE BRIEF

Biodiversity wasn’t an addition. It was the starting point.

This garden began as a collaboration with our friend and excellent garden designer Miriam Harris.

Miriam created the initial concept for the clients before inviting Gold & Wild to develop the design and bring our own planting, ecological and construction experience to the finished garden.

The clients had a strong commitment to the environment and wanted that reflected in the way their garden was designed and built.

What had been a fairly traditional garden of lawn surrounded by narrow borders was to become something much more immersive, with planting taking centre stage. Biodiversity and wildlife habitat weren’t additions to the design. They were fundamental to it.

OUR APPROACH

We wanted every part of the garden to contribute.

At the front of the house, paddle slate chippings create a practical, permeable surface for parking, with a simple path leading to the entrance.

Around it, grasses and wildlife-friendly planting replace the conventional front lawn and borders, creating an immersive planted landscape right up to the house.

A simple steel water bowl introduces water into the front garden, providing another habitat and resource for wildlife without needing a conventional pond.

From there, the planting wraps around the house and continues into the back garden.

Permeable slate front path lined with grasses and hydrangeas beside the house

PLANTING FIRST

Planting isn’t decoration here. It is the garden.

The back garden was designed around layers of loose, prairie-like planting, with small pathways allowing you to move through rather than simply around it.

Grasses and flowering plants provide food and habitat for insects and other wildlife while giving the garden movement, texture and seasonal change.

At its centre, a species-rich lawn creates a quieter clearing within the planting. It’s somewhere for the clients to sit, relax and enjoy being surrounded by the garden rather than looking at it from the edges.

Slate chipping path curving between ornamental grasses
Layered naturalistic planting with white and pink flowers around a slate path
Close-up of pink astrantia flowers

MAKING SPACE FOR WILDLIFE

A garden designed with stag beetles in mind.

The clients had one particularly lovely ambition: they wanted to encourage stag beetles into the garden.

We incorporated deadwood habitat throughout the design, including cut logs arranged as sculptural features and upright timber driven partly into the ground to provide the decaying wood stag beetle larvae need.

A naturalistic pond introduced another habitat, alongside the steel water bowl at the front of the house and the diversity of planting throughout.

And then something rather special happened.

Within the first few months, while we were back working in the garden, stag beetles were flying around us.

For a garden designed around creating habitat, it was difficult to imagine a better sign that it was beginning to work.

Cut logs set among planting as deadwood habitat for stag beetles

THE OUTCOME

A landscape built around plants and wildlife.

What had been a conventional lawn-and-border garden is now a landscape built around plants and wildlife.

The front garden remains practical but is filled with grasses and flowers. The back garden has become somewhere to wander through planting, sit amongst it and watch the wildlife that has begun making its home there.

The pond, deadwood, species-rich lawn, water bowl and different layers of planting each provide something slightly different.

Together, they’ve created a garden that works for its owners while giving considerably more back to nature.

And perhaps our favourite outcome is also the simplest: the clients wanted stag beetles. The stag beetles came.

GALLERY

Moments from the project.

Slate path winding through prairie-style planting towards mature trees in a Putney garden Ornamental grasses and hydrangeas in front of the rear of the house Bench in a species-rich lawn clearing surrounded by grasses Permeable slate front path lined with grasses and hydrangeas beside the house Slate path to the front door with a steel water bowl among the planting Steel water bowl set among irises and wildlife-friendly planting Cut logs set among planting as deadwood habitat for stag beetles Deadwood log feature among grasses and perennials near the house Slate chipping path curving between ornamental grasses Layered naturalistic planting with white and pink flowers around a slate path Close-up of pink astrantia flowers Slate path edged with grasses and pink hydrangea at the side of the house Grasses and perennials planted right up to the front of the house Geraniums and grasses around slate chippings in the front garden Path through layered planting towards the back of the house Ferns and grasses in the back garden with the house beyond White hydrangea among grasses and perennials beside a path Slate path through late-summer planting with purple geraniums Fennel among naturalistic planting Blue geraniums beneath tall flowering persicaria Rear of the house framed by grasses and late-summer flowers Pink astrantia and white flowers in mixed naturalistic planting

We wanted a garden that felt alive and genuinely supported wildlife, rather than simply looking green. Seeing stag beetles in the garden within the first few months was incredibly special. It feels like we’ve created a little ecosystem of our own.

Private Client Putney
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