Julia Hailes MBE

Sustainability Pioneer

Leave your leaves (oct25)

Do you love a tidy garden? Your wildlife doesn’t. 🍂 Do you sweep up your leaves or blow them away? Why not leave them instead? They’re perfect for sheltering insects that feed robins, blackbirds and wrens, and they keep soil life humming. Hedgehogs, frogs and toads love them too. Of course, you may need to […]

Peat in compost is environmental vandalism (Mar21)

That’s what Monty Don says and I agree. But it’s incredibly common. UK gardeners are responsible for destroying our ‘rainforests’. It has to stop and we can make it happen. OK, so why is this such a big deal? First and perhaps most importantly, peatlands are essential in our fight against climate change.  Whilst they […]

I’ve learnt to love moles (Feb21)

My mother was very keen on mole traps, following a tradition that apparently started in Roman times. I remember having them firmly planted in the soft earth mounds that would regularly appear on our lawn.  When I moved to Dorset, I’m embarrassed to say that I employed a mole catcher, who set the traps. Never […]

Going wild in Dorset (Sep19)

I’m tremendously excited about our new landscaping project… The central idea is wilding and I’m learning about what this means in practice. One concept I found rather appealing was to look at nettles and docks, which love fertile, agriculture land, as the bully boys. And we’re going to replace them with a myriad of other […]