Rewild your garden - ideas from Great Dixter, an inspiring semi-wild garden

Join me for a wander around the beautiful garden at Great Dixter, with the best rewilded 'lawns' I've seen. Could your lawn look like this!? (mine doesn't, but I'm working on it).

[@mitchl5220]

beautiful wildflower meadows are such a big flex compared to boring traditional lawns

[@albert2395]

I totally agree with you about the stately homes, with their boring lawns! Hay Meadows are the way! The true path to enlightenment!❤😊

[@hobbitlady7568]

The birdsong there is so admirable and gorgeous.

[@bloggalot4718]

Love the sound of the birds in the background.

[@marilynsmith8054]

My favourite garden ever!

[@dorisjansen]

We are on the right way with our garden. But unfortunately it is very small. Greetings from Germany.

[@razisamimi9287]

Beautiful! Putting tree cuttings in the ground will also attract diverse wildlife once the trees grow. We need to share our planet with wildlife. After all, without them we can't survive.

[@xshockwaveamg4451]

Its glorious

[@lynhunt2395]

We visited Gt Dixter 4 years ago and came home inspired. Now we have meadow instead of lawns and so many bees. Lyn in Dorset

[@MarciasCottagebytheSea]

Thank you so much for sharing this beautiful garden♥️

[@Helen-mh8mq]

So beautiful!!All that life is awesome!!

[@danmarcroberts]

We have two micro-meadows in the garden and, apart from some inherited roses the borders are all pollinator-friendly. This year it has come into its own, with an extraordinary number of bees of different types in evidence. Wonderful.

[@joansmith3492]

That meadow is fabulous because it is "edged" by that magnificent hedge, IMO.

[@MSMS-ug3zu]

An incredible range of insects and they all look happy. The last time I visited Great Dixter is over ten years ago, and the film made me so nostalgic. The state of the planet is much more precarious than ever -- I just want to do my bit not to harm our planet any further.

[@maryjones5710]

The most wonderful wildlife scene was of black bears alongside a road to Alaska, they were gobbling Dandelions as fast as they could, the verge was thick with them.

[@taiweannoona1204]

What an incredibly peaceful place 🥰

[@BeautifulNaturalDramatic]

Very beautiful and inspiring video 😊

[@lizzyagatha]

stunningly beautiful

[@idaniamorales6058]

Beautiful

[@gbltheolechurch5acrehomestead]

Visiting your channel from Gander Newfoundland and Labrador Canada and The Ole Church 5 Acre Homestead….GRAND Tour!….just love the wild flowers!

[@nordlys3432]

Inspiring! I'm on the way. Hello from very Northern Germany.

[@maryodonnell5760]

Good idea to put the commentary in writing so we could spend time enjoying the meadow and sounds!

[@juliawitts7270]

That was glorious, thank you. 😊

[@tedchoi243]

Love it!

[@railiedouglas3018]

Visited Great Dixter in September 2017. Beautiful garden. Thanks for the tour.

[@sotterjoy6030]

Thank you so much friend nice sharing

[@serenakoleno9338]

Lovely to see, and hear. So lucky I grew up in a village that still had open areas of meadows to play and walk in. Even in a suburb of Detroit! Sad that most children don't have that experience anymore. Even in the small city lot where I rent my home, letting a few small areas 'rewild' with milkweed, queen Ann's lace and the like has shown a big difference in bees and butterflies. So much so that the old burn barrel I planted a tomato plant in is home to some type of bee colony in a hole near the base! The only time I got stung is when I poured smelly liquid fertilizer I made from comfrey on tomato plant. I forgot that they were there! Won't do that again, LOL. Last year it was wasps under the front porch. Again only stung when I picked basil and didn't realize a wasp was on it when I grabbed it. Agree it would be lovely to see more stately homes adopting this type of landscape. TFS

[@grendel_nz]

GD is great. Those big compost piles grow pumpkins etc on the top. Imagine the heat they generate. My pals front lawn is now the front paddock or meadow. Only about 4x5m :) just mow a strip around edge to define it. The frogs love the long grass. I should make a small pond some day.

[@petergregorypottery5476]

It was such a pleasure to "stumble" across this lovely glimpse of Great Dixter. I really appreciated the "insect friendly" view of the wild meadow garden. Really so very beautiful seeing the combination of flowers, grasses, shrubs and other plants and the insects and birds finding such a home! Thank you for posting this. My wife has recently enjoyed reading one of your lovely books too.

[@richardmuskett931]

Yes , I did enjoy the video.....and its put a few ideas into my head . If you had held the captions up on the screen for a second or two longer , I wouldn't have minded at all.......good for the sloooooow readers . Thank you .

[@dip_emb_mexuk]

Oh I’d very much love to visit Great Dixter. If only I lived closer 🥲 The gardens and meadows are utterly stunning. Thank you for the tour Prof Dave. I truly enjoyed it.

[@tys7794]

Seeing places like this gets me so excited to go out into my own garden, though it is quite small, I'll be asking the landlord if I can extend it! Cheers from Canada!

[@AmirsAllotment]

This is so inspiring thank you 😊

[@helenhawkins4054]

Loved it.🤗

[@IzzyMatko]

Really beautiful and inspiring garden ❤️

[@kevinpowell7948]

Really inspiring, thanks for sharing 🍀🐝🦗🕷️🐞🦟🍀🌻🌼🌺🍀

[@Etheldreda-]

Dreamlike 🐝

[@sophiajan6642]

Thank you so much for this video! I was looking for one taken by someone who will appreciate the amazing diversity that can be found in a 'wild garden', if people don't stick to loans and random non-native plants... What an amazing example this is!! Absolutely fantastic, so soothing to watch, I am ever so grateful to you for taking the time to record this

[@valeriekelly315]

Loved that. It's inspired me to try and grow more bee and butterfly loving plants in my little cottage garden. Magical x

[@Happy-tc2jt]

Your books look amazing 😍

[@dizzycherriepie]

That was lovely - thank you. And you answered a question to which I was looking for an answer by identifying the rather odd-looking but beautiful Turkish sage, a plant only recently on my radar, following a recent walk in Hurstpierpoint. I'm trying to convert my suburban Brighton garden into a productive food forest along permaculture lines, and we're about to line our natural swimming (plunge) pond, which was my husband's hand-dug lockdown project. This will hopefully, when finished and planted, attract even more wildlife to our plot. Planning a Great Dixter trip once I've recovered from Covid!

[@nathanpm]

Thank you for this video.

[@seankeane9078]

Inspiring stuff ❤️ so much yellow rattle

[@seankeane9078]

And common spotteds 😍

[@daniadejonghe4980]

LOVELY

[@mytherapygarden3909]

I love this idea. Wanna be friends

[@tonyp3398]

Brilliant place. Visited last year in June. All the orchids were out so similar time? A couple of the meadows had lots on one of the Oenanthe Species. Probably Corky Fruited Water Dropwort. Couldn't see any on this nice film though.

[@petras8385]

What a beautiful place

[@ValeriaVincentSancisi]

There is Campanula too .. one of my fav perennials .. I hope they make use of the compost as I don't see any grazers completing the fertilizing/ rambunctious species/"tilling" cycle....

[@helenyoung8012]

Did you take home any ideas for your garden? Went to Wildside to-day, Gardener Keith Wiley’s garden near Tavistock, Devon. A completely different garden accommodating plants that are allowed to self seed, hybridise and friendly to wildlife. All you could see and hear were insects. A little short on butterflies but it has not been a good year here in Devon. Thank you for the tour.

[@davegoulson6831]

Mainly that I must try harder with my overgrown lawn - not anywhere near enough flowers yet!

[@MHahn-bg7cu]

One for the algorithm.

[@jillyglesias6448]

Beautiful, bountiful inspiring garden! ( especially when the humans were quiet!) Btw Dave I’ve got some rat- tailed maggots in my hoverfly lagoon ( made after watching your video ) & am thrilled!!

[@davegoulson6831]

Wonderful! Hurray :)

[@daniellacarolinagiordano]

💚🌱

[@clematophile2263]

Thank you for this beautiful video. Dave, are you sure that’s an angelica? It looks more like some fennel to me, but I’m not an expert. Thanks again!

[@davegoulson6831]

Hmmm, you may have a point! Next time I am there I will look more closely!

[@albert2395]

I'd like to add, like other people said about the bird song. I'm in London, and I can't hear any black birds singing and it's April! There used to be loads in the recent past.

[@davegoulson6831]

Sad to hear 😔

[@jenniferburgess4294]

This garden is beautiful, Can you tell us how long it has taken and are the seeds regularly replenished?

[@henrifischer1119]

what I hear on my end of this dinky wire is a loud Song thrush.

[@davegoulson6831]

Agreed, the shotgun mike didn't pick up the noisy starlings as they were behind it.

[@henrifischer1119]

@@davegoulson6831 may I ask a question? we can record bird song and generate a spectogram which allows us to identify the bird. Does that work with bees and the sounds they produce as well? (apart from the practical side of recording 1 or more bees).

[@gungadin900]

Great Dixter use Peat in their compost mix!

[@davegoulson6831]

Boo, I didn't see that on their website

[@okantichrist]

That’s a blackbird,not a starling 😂

[@davegoulson6831]

The mic didn't pick them up well, but there were a lot of starlings.