How to Design Your LettsSafari Garden
A blueprint for garden rewilding - creating your very own LettsSafari garden
Safari gardens are the future. A future that embraces rewilding and wildlife gardening - creating places that restore our depleted biodiversity. Spaces that remove carbon and clean the air. Havens for wildlife and nature. Here’s a simple blueprint for designing your very own LettsSafari garden.
How we got here
Gardens have increasingly been designed for us to enjoy ‘outdoor living’. Expanding our homes through our garden spaces. With barbecues, terraces, drives, sheds, home offices, ponds and flower beds. In between, we have areas of grass that we mow to within an inch of its life ‘because that’s what they do at Wimbledon’!
Up until recently, for all we knew, that was ok. But now we have learned that all the mowing, terracing, tree clearing, plant cloning and chemicals have ended up killing the nature that used to surround us. The birds are silent, the butterflies increasingly distant and who can remember the last time we saw a bee buzzing around.
And mammals, what mammals?
This process of nature depletion has been mirrored throughout the world. Research shows that only 3% of our planet is ecologically intact - i.e. tracts of land with a full, natural abundance of nature and wildlife. It was over 15% just a couple of decades ago!
The problem is that we need nature. It removes the vast majority of our carbon - more than any other device or invention. It cleans our air and water, it provides food and medicines and it gives us a vital source of health and wellbeing from its carbon sinks, creatures, aromas, colours and fresh air.
Scientists have, by now, resoundingly concluded that we need to rewild 30% of our planet to restore biodiversity and begin to solve the climate crisis. This has to start in our garden. If each of us were to rewild 30% of our backyards, creating a mini LettsSafari in the process, we could make the climate difference. After all, we estimate that there are over 1 billion private gardens worldwide, millions of public gardens, parks, small holdings, public spaces and more.
We classify safari gardens as green spaces smaller than 10 acres (4 hectares). They can be as small as you want - you just shrink everything down - space, size of trees, shrubs, plants, grassland and pond. We’ll show you how. We have even created mini terraced safari gardens - using pots, troughs and trays.
Did you know that we classify safari parks as larger than 10 acres?
So, carve out a third of your garden and turn it into a mini LettsSafari. You will be amazed by the difference it will make to your life. Safari means ‘journey’ in Swahili. And we can guarantee that you will enjoy this journey as much as any. It might even beat going on an African safari! You might not see gorilla’s and tigers in your safari garden but you will experience an abundance of smaller wildlife while regenerating all kinds of natural plants, wild shrubs and trees.
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