Team Wilder story: Missenden Walled Garden

Missenden Walled Garden is a charity that provides day support for adults with disabilities or mental health issues. They've been improving their site for wildlife with wild flowers and nest boxes.

Imagine a wilder world on your doorstep, with more nature everywhere in urban and rural areas. Read about how a charity in Buckinghamshire is making this happen as part of Team Wilder.

Missenden Walled Garden is a charity that provides day support for adults with disabilities or mental health issues. The team at the Walled Garden help gardeners to grow and reach their potential at their own pace. The charity is based in the grounds of Missenden Abbey in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire.

BBOWT has been supporting work at the Walled Garden through the Rough Around the Edges project since spring 2019, with a plan to create wildflower margins on the site, training gardeners in techniques to look after this habitat, and to create habitat for wildilfe.

In early 2019, gardeners selected seed, which was purchased and sown during May 2019 along a section of the stream and a meadow area. Over the summer this flowered well and was cut in late summer. Gardeners and volunteers have been involved throughout with seed selection, sowing and mowing.

In spring and summer 2021, gardeners joined activities to build hedgehog and bird boxes to be placed around the site, and making seed bombs using local wildflower seed. Gardeners were free to choose whether to ‘plant’ the seed bombs on site or to take them home.

A number of the gardeners and volunteers now have a better understanding of how to look after a wildflower meadow, and this has added to how they look after their orchard space, for example.

Two people holding a bird nest box — A newly built bird nest box made by volunteers at Missenden Walled Garden. Photo by Katie Horgan

Making nest boxes for wildlife allowed gardeners to use woodworking skills and to talk about where to put the boxes and how to make nearby habitat better for wildlife. There is continued potential to work with local environment group, Prestwood Nature, on improving habitat for hedgehogs as part of their own Rough Around the Edges project.

As the Prestwood Nature hedgehog project progresses, hopefully gardeners at the Walled Garden can benefit from their knowledge of hedgehog surveying and in improving habitat for hedgehog throughout Great Missenden.

Find out more about Missenden Walled Garden