A Rewilding Britain Landscape

A Rewilding Britain Landscape

The garden shows a rewilding beaver habitat in the south west of England. A brook flows beneath a west-country crafted dry-stone wall, under a woodland edge of hawthorn, elder, viburnum, hazel and field maple. Beavers have entered the landscape and built a lodge and a dam which has altered the water course and created the first large pool in the garden.

The lodge, built around a white willow (salix alba) is the beavers’ family home and within it are several chambers and even a swimming pool for their young kits to learn to swim before they leave the lodge for the first time.

Below the dam, made entirely of beaver-gnawed sticks, there is evidence of the beavers’ activities: a beaver feeding station with “chop-sticks” that have had all their bark nibbled off; felled trunks, that are either decaying or regenerating; beaver “chips”, left where they have chewed away the wood in the felling process; a muddy canal made by the mammals as they pull logs and materials to and from different dams; and beaver footprints in the muddy banks of the stream.

 

Awarded RHS Best Show Garden 2022

 

 

Photos by Jason Ingram

Film by Vovi Studio

Links

Team

Urquhart & Hunt, urquharthunt.com @urquhart_hunt
Rewilding Britain, rewildingbritain.org.uk @rewildingb
Landscape Associate, landscapeassociates.co.uk @lalandscapes
Water Artisans, waterartisans.com @waterartisans
Leaf Creative Plant Centre, leafcreative.co.uk @leafcreativeuk
Wetland Plants, wetland-plants.co.uk

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