How to create gardens that support wild things
With Dr Catherine Heatherington FSGD, Phd
Date: 11 March 2024 & 12 March 2024
Time: 9:30 to 12:15 both days
Venue: Via Zoom
During this two session CPD event, Catherine will demonstrate that habitat creation does not have to involve mess, artefacts or dependence on native plants through the use of concepts such as ‘Cues to Care’, the ‘as found’ and the maze, along with sound design and ecological principles.
She will also discuss whether the term ‘rewilding’, which has become commonplace when referring to any piece of land that supports wildlife, can be applied to gardens and what the alternatives are.
She will go into depth in terms of what a garden needs to provide in order to support biodiversity - from meeting the needs of plants and lower animals to balancing the planting design for the seasons: for food, water and shelter. She will show how the imaginative choice of non-living and inert substrates used within a garden can contribute to specialised shelter and will discuss recycling and repurposing with reference to designing habitats.
With reference to gardens, large and small, including some exciting new plantings on mineral substrates, Catherine will explore ways to capitalise on what’s existing and will discuss the corridors, layers and transitional spaces which humans and wildlife rely on.
Target Audience: Designers wanting to learn more about ecological principles and their application in gardens
Please note this event will not be recorded; however, course material will be distributed to participants after the course.
About the speaker:
Dr. Catherine Heatherington has built a reputation over the last 25 years for creating innovative and inspiring gardens that are contemporary in their essence and yet retain an understanding and appreciation of traditional designs and techniques. Together with Alex Johnson, she is a co-founder of DesignWild Associates, a design practice that integrates design with ecology to create exciting gardens that encourage wildlife into even the smallest of urban spaces. Her creative and often contemporary designs demonstrate how gardens for wildlife need not be messy and informal. She believes that all gardens can be designed as wildlife habitats while also appealing to their human owners and visitors.
Now retired, Catherine is a former Fellow and Vice Chair of the Society of Garden Designers. She was awarded her PhD (Landscape) from the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on people’s responses to landscape change and continuity in derelict and developed brownfield sites with particular emphasis on the implications for practice. She is the author of Revealing change in cultural landscapes: Material, spatial and ecological considerations (2020), Reimagining industrial sites: Changing histories and landscapes (2018), and co-author of A New Naturalism (2005). Her latest book, co-authored with Alex, entitled Habitat Creation in Garden Design: A guide to designing places for people and wildlife is published by Crowood Press. You can hear her discussing this book on the gardening podcast, Roots and All.
"A bramble thicket may be a wildlife habitat, but so is a garden, and potentially a very good one. Indeed if you were able to ask them, you would find that your bees, spiders and worms don't know they are in a garden." Ken Thompson, reviewing Habitat Creation in Garden Design for the Professional Gardeners' Guild.