Nature writer Richard Mabey on The Accidental Garden

In a career spanning 50 years, writer Richard Mabey has educated, entertained and delighted readers with his knowledge and experience of the wonders of the natural world. Now 83, and less active and mobile than he once was, his passion and enthusiasm for the environment remain unabated, and he’s drawn on his home in Norfolk to inspire his latest study of the creativity and ingenuity of plants, insects, birds and animals.

‘I can’t walk great distances anymore,’ he says. So he’ll step outside his 16th century thatched cottage each afternoon to wander around his garden, walking stick in hand. ‘The stick’s useful for holding back undergrowth and taking a closer look at something of interest,’ he says, and it is also a good prop as he pauses and ponders on all the activity around him.

‘We regard gardens as our personal dominions,’ he says, ‘where we can create whatever worlds we desire. But they are also occupied by myriads of other organisms, all with their own lives to lead.’ The conflict between the two power bases is indicative of what is happening in the larger world, and it’s this he’s explored in his new book.

Purple Loosestrife and mint plants by the pond in Richard Mabey's rewilded garden at his south Norfolk home. (Image: Denise Bradley) Called The Accidental Garden this beautiful, concise collection of thoughts, anecdotes, fascinating facts and musings, urges us to become a partner with nature rather than its controller.

‘The garden is a classic example of where people say they are reconnecting with nature,’ he says. ‘But what they’re doing is re-establishing control. Even with wildlife gardens they say we’ll put the pollinator friendly flowers there and we’ll build a place for insects there. So it’s still us in control. Something quite different emerges when you say, I’ll step back.

‘It’s like parents struggling to allow their children to leave home,’ he continues. ‘We are the same way with plants. We feel we are responsible for them in some ways. This is a delusion. We’ve got a visitor in our garden, a guest. Let’s be hospitable towards it but let’s see what it wants to do. I think we’ll get very surprising results.

Nature writer Richard Mabey enjoying his rewilded garden at his south Norfolk home. (Image: Denise Bradley)

‘I wanted to write about nature being allowed to decide its own agenda,’ he says of approaching the book. ‘But I knew that writing about it in a purely theoretical way would be indigestible and I wasn’t in a position any longer to go on vast research trips.’

He was further inhibited by the pandemic, of course, but taking his regular exercise at home heightened his appreciation of all there was to see on his doorstep, strolling through the grasses and saplings, pausing beside the ancient pond and mature trees, and watching the ants carry seeds, and the birds in their nests.

‘What set the tone for the book,’ he says, ‘was the 2022 heatwave. I remember the night when we had a record temperature of nearly 40 degrees. After keeping all the doors and windows shut all day to try to keep cool, it felt claustrophobic and at midnight I opened the door to let the night in. I heard this astonishing sound of the dark-bush cricket singing in the hollyhocks. It seemed such a symbol both of the resistance of the natural world against everything that was being thrown at it, and also a lovely tale of hope to begin the book.’

Cistus Cretica plant from Crete in Richard Mabey's rewilded garden at his south Norfolk home (Image: Denise Bradley) Having moved to this house, just outside Diss, in 2002, Richard and his partner came to an understanding on what they should do with the land surrounding the cottage. She wanted to cultivate it for flowers and food, he wanted it to be left wild. As a compromise, they constructed a walled garden for Polly to grow vegetables and fruit, and roses and Mediterranean plants were in beds near the back door. Beyond those areas Richard would let the garden do what it wanted.

‘When we came here, there was a lawn, mown every weekend. And there were a few trees. But what we’ve managed to tease into existence is flowery grassland which I have cut once a year. There are all kinds of drastic ways of getting flowery meadows which involve weed killer and scraping off the top six inches of soil - but I just let it go. Now there are 75 species of birds and 25 species of butterflies in the garden and I’ve got a plant list of 80 species growing there. In May it’s completely covered with cowslips.’

He’s also delighted by the trees that have grown here, pointing out a colony of elm clones. ‘I’ve been allowing natural regeneration. Though of course the idea of the accidental garden also means that I don’t have to do very much work!’

Wild carrot plant in Richard Mabey's rewilded garden at his south Norfolk home. (Image: Denise Bradley) Visiting Richard at home, the garden does look at though it’s been abandoned but touring it with his expert eye, and a ponderous step, there are all sorts of features to spot and stories to hear, many of which he has written about in The Accidental Garden.

‘The book isn’t an instruction manual,’ he says. ‘This is just my own story. And it’s full of contradictions and me changing my mind. It’s not an ideaology, just an investigation of what happens.’

He has been writing about his journey exploring our relationship with nature since first being published in 1974. Among more than 30 books are seminal works – Food for Free, Flora Britannica, biographies of Gilbert White and Flora Thompson, and Nature Cure, his memoir of his battle with depression and his liberating move to East Anglia.

Everlasting Pea plant in Richard Mabey's rewilded garden at his south Norfolk home. (Image: Denise Bradley) And still he says he is ‘completely dumbstruck by curiosity’. There is something extraordinary happening all around us he says and recalls an essay he wrote about discovering an entire ecosystem in a tiny diseased leaf of a cherry tree.

‘I think curiosity, attentiveness and respect are key. I don’t sign up for nature being restorative and calming. I think the opposite - if you switch your attention away from yourself and really attend.’

He urges us to learn different identities of birds and recognise individual species and how they live. ‘Blanket words like biodiversity can lead to great problems. If you don’t consider that it’s made up of millions upon millions of extraordinary creatures and organisms you’ll lose perspective on how it is all connected.

Nature writer Richard Mabey in the Mediterranean part of his rewilded garden at his south Norfolk home, with a plant from Crete, Cistus Cretica. (Image: Denise Bradley) ‘I would like anyone who reads my book to be filled with a certain degree of hopefulness that nature is not a feeble victim, as it’s frequently portrayed. It’s in trouble. But it’s got a great deal of independence and vigour of its own. I’m trying to say that when it’s left alone, exciting things happen.’