Mower is less when it comes to making your garden bloom

Osowska’s plea is not for gardens to be left to run wild, but for those of us with a bit of lawn to set aside an area to sprout, untouched by the mower. In these corners, weeds and wildflowers, and the insects, birds and other creatures that live off them will flourish.

But her vision is for wilderness or wildness to be embraced more broadly than by devotees of the Beechgrove Garden. If redesigned, urban areas, which contain swathes of parkland as well as private gardens, could also help rewild the country. If parks were kept less like Centre Court at Wimbledon and more like a stretch of meadow or marsh you might find in the heart of the countryside, towns and cities could soon be alive with the sound of birdsong and bees.

Osowska’s ambition is to spark a radical shift – you might call it a renaissance – in the way we see parks and gardens. Changing our perspective, she hopes, will not only help wildlife but significantly benefit humankind too. She believes the Covid 19 crisis, for instance, can be directly linked to the shrinking acreage allowed for nature. As she explains: “The increasing intensity of livestock farming, deforestation, crop monocultures, globalisation and large urban environments all make viral transference more likely and rapid once viruses enter human populations.” Give more room to the wild, she suggests, and as balance is restored, the risk of viruses crossing barriers from animal to human, as in the recent case of Danish mink farms, will be reduced.

Whatever the science of pandemics, and the validity of Osowska’s conclusions, for most of us the idea of letting things run amok at the bottom of the garden already makes sense. We don’t need the carrot or stick incentive of warding against another global pandemic to commit to a bit of scrubland. In fact, the wilding memo has been in circulation among gardeners for decades. Many were fighting a rearguard action against climate change and loss of biodiversity long before it became fashionable. This silent army, in fleeces and wellington boots, has been largely unsung, but the rewards have been rich. The abundance of flora and fauna that populated their gardens turned them into a communal space in the widest sense.

Reshaping our ideas of civic parks might be a bigger challenge. I’ve always found immaculate flowerbeds and bowling green grass faintly depressing, a pale imitation of the countryside and its teeming fields and woods. A pale imitation, indeed, of my own garden, where unkemptness has been elevated to an art form. Yet for some, the word park is synonymous with symmetry and order, with every begonia in its place, like an immaculate table setting, and the lawns to be admired but not trodden.

Even so, I’d say Osowska is pressing on an open door. Formality, in almost every sphere of life, is becoming a thing of the past. The days of parkies yelling at those who stepped off the path now seem almost comical. Most of us, I am sure, would prefer a more casual landscape, less geometrical, more random. How much more relaxing to take a stroll in a place where grasses and bushes sway in the wind, shrubberies are tangled and dense, and the sound of birdsong and of children running through the long grass drowns out the strimmer or chainsaw.

It’s amazing how swiftly new ideas about outdoor space take hold. A century ago, most people’s gardens were more like allotments, primarily for growing fruit and veg, with flowers and shrubs a decorative indulgence. Lawn for leisure or aesthetic pleasure was a luxury. When the mood changed, and gardens became an outdoor room, the lettuce bed and potato drills were banished. Now, as the pendulum swings back to a point somewhere between the two, awareness about giving nature more space is catching on. But if the prospect of untamed grass and weeds dismays you, there are countless other ways of nurturing nature.

When it comes to green spaces, the climate emergency has opened people’s eyes to the importance of creative mess, of not sweeping and tidying every inch as if it were our kitchen, but allowing it to breathe. Something as simple as a heap of undisturbed leaves, a bundle of sticks or wall of logs, allows hedgehogs and other mammals to survive the winter. Rotting foliage and flowers run to seed are a breakfast buffet for birds and insects, who in turn are prey for other hungry wildlife. In spring and summer, there’s nothing richer for flying insects than nettles which, being so quick to replenish themselves, are also good for soup. Or so neighbours tell me.

But in case you are about to throw away the key to the garden shed, this is not an excuse for letting nature take over. Some husbandry is essential, to ensure plants and trees thrive to the best of their abilities, and are not overpowered by the thugs of the undergrowth.

So the lawnmower is by no means the greatest threat to our future. It’s not something I can get rid of, since we don’t own one. But if we did not have the grass trimmed throughout the summer by a roving gardener whose machine is tough enough to cut a path through heather, it would be thigh-high by the start of June. Green-fingered friends who regularly trim their grass use the cuttings for compost, thereby improving the soil. In other words, all grass is good. And no matter how you let yours grow, whether it is buzzcut or left to its own devices, it is infinitely better than covering the ground in concrete or stone. Soon we will look back on gardens turned into car parks with disbelief. How could we suffocate the land like this? In the meantime, long may your weeds and wallflowers grow (which, trust me, they will).