The Romance of Rubble: Why People Are Talking About Gardening With Impoverished Soil – Gardenista

What are open mosaic habitats?

• Found on post-industrial sites, which might include railway sidings, quarries, slag heaps or brick pits.
• A lack of nutrients keeps vegetation open, without the arrival of shrubs and trees that result from natural succession.
• Different kinds of usage and varied disturbance create divergent topographies, moisture, and soil content all within close proximity, on one site.
• Patches of bare soil within an open mosaic habitat create warm microclimates, for basking invertebrates (or mud-bathing birds). They are used by ground nesters and are hunting ground for predators.
• Stress-tolerant plants, including annuals rich in nectar, thrive in lean landscapes.
• Lack of management creates homes for overwintering insects.

When landscape consultant and garden writer Jo McKerr moved to Somerset, the property that she and her family took on was located on a well-drained, limestone escarpment in a rural area that had seen quarries, railways, coal, and slag heaps—some of which were in her garden. The soil was toxic, with a disused railway running through, plus a former canal tunnel (see above), and a lot of concrete. The property was also home to very rare species of bats, beetles, and bees. Besides not wanting to disturb what she found, Jo has a passion for wild flowers, and from the beginning she has responded and adapted her design process “to what is indigenous to the site.”

Jo has nurtured the extant open mosaic habitats, which gardeners are in a unique position to do. “It’s not just about one habitat but a mosaic of them in close proximity to one another,” she explains. “Rewilding has taught us that it’s disturbance, followed by abandonment, when the natural processes occur,” she continues. Her current practice is “an informed disturbance.”

Jo is very gradually changing the nature of the soil by following its natural tendencies around the garden. She is incorporating wetlands, gravel areas, woodland, and layered canopy. The transition zones interest her: “I’m building habitats and possibilities.”

Jo sows everything from seed, only buying in trees and shrubs as young whips. When she has used 9-inch pots, she has shaken off every bit of soil from the plants’ roots: “You have to make sure the nutrient is lean.” The point of lean soil, as her friend John Little would concur, is that plants grow strong, their roots searching right down for moisture, and this gives them resilience in extreme weather. “I don’t water and I’ve never lost a thing.”

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