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A gallery of past scythe courses Just a few pictures from training courses I've ran over the years. From National Trust properties & Wildlife Trust reserves across the country to local community groups and garden associations. A formidable collection. Learning to peen the blades. Peening workshop. A rack of scythes. Gentlemen testing scythes. Scything in Slaidburn. Competitions at the Scottish scythe festival. New scythers mowing in Yorkshire.

Wildlife Ponds These are just a few of the many wildlife friendly garden ponds I have created, improved or managed over the years. I believe ponds are one of the best wildlife friendly features you can have in a garden. ​ You can buy a selection of native pond plants as plugs or seeds from our store ​ Click on any of the images or text to find out more about each topic.. Learn how to build a natural looking wildlife friendly pond in your garden. Learn how to use native plants in your wildlife friendly pond. Learn how to disguise pond liner using stone, cobbles or plants. Learn how to maintain the plants around your pond. Check out the pond videos on my YouTube channel. For Pond safety information check the FAQ's page below

​ Cr eatin g and maintaining wildlife friendly ponds. ​ Creating and managing wildflower lawns and meadows using only native UK wildflower seeds and plants. ​ Regional trainer for the Scything Association of Britain & Ireland (SABI ) ​ Let Wilderness Tamed create a space for you to enjoy. Designing low maintenance, relaxing gardens for people and wildlife. ​ ​ Phone now to arrange your consultation. Phone Putting nature before neat. Mail Email now to arrange your consultation. John Robson Grundy ​ The first step in planning a garden is to understand what you the customer want to get from the garden. Once that has been established then the planning can begin. It's then my job to look at how to take your ideas and make them wildlife friendly. An obvious way is to introduce native plants. The aim is to replicate a little section of a natural eco system, with a full food web. ​ The image opposite shows a fully stocked border which hosts a wide range of native plants amongst the exotic stuff. I transformed this garden from having a few dominant perennials and an odd mix of shrubs, into a stunning, colourful, year long garden of interest for the client as well as offering plenty of habitat and foraging opportunities for wildlife. ​ ​ A classic garden mistake I see is the butterfly border. Planted up with buddliea, and all kinds of exotic plants. Fine if all you want to do is get the local insects addicted to a high nectar source. But, none of our native butterflies or moths will use any of these plants to lay their eggs on. ​ They have adapted to spending their larval stage (caterpillars) on very specific food plants. So if you want to see plenty of butterflies, you really need to think about plenty of native goodies for their offspring to nibble on. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Ponds are without doubt the best feature a garden can have. They attract masses of wildlife. Offer fascinating, educational opportunities for children. ​ Provide cooling, tranquil places to relax. ​ Allow for creating a completely different habitat in your garden with a wide array of plants you often can't grow elsewhere. ​ Wilderness Tamed don't do formal ponds with crazy paving around the edges, gnomes on toadstools, fountains and fish. We create natural looking ponds with gently sloping, planted edges. Balanced populations of aquatic plants, invertebrates and amphibians. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ What can I do for you?

Wildflower lawns verses formal lawns How easy are they? As a landscape gardener it often puzzles me when people ask for low maintenance gardens, in which they want huge expanses of grass with few beds and borders. It can take some convincing to make them think that actually the reverse would be much less work for them. Or me come to that. Lets think seriously about how much time is spent on keeping a formal lawn looking good. Then think about how much time is spent on a wild flower lawn. ​ On a formal lawn the grass will require mowing at least once a week during the summer months. What about extra lawn care tasks during the Spring and Autumn? Aerating Scarifying Top dressing and seasonal Weed and feed routines. This all adds up to many hours of your life spent looking after a formal lawn. And what do you get in return? ​ Stripes, an endless battle with moss, broadleaved weeds and pests, an ever increasing burden on your wallet and unnatural levels of fertiliser in the soil. Take a deep breath So lets look at the amount of work required to maintain a wild flower lawn or meadow. ​ How often will it require mowing for example? Usually only once or twice a year. This involves a cut, followed by removal of the cut material. This can be done a day or two after mowing to allow seeds to drop back into the soil. ​ What seasonal management does it need? See above. ​ No pest or weed control. No additional chemical or granular fertilisers. No aerating. No scarifying. No top dressing. This adds up to a lot less of your time and money being spent on managing the same area of your garden. ​ And what do you get in return? ​ A long season of colour. Interest from the variety of flowers. An increase in insect life and other wildlife coming to visit the garden. Less stress. More time to relax. A fatter wallet. Fewer machines cluttering the shed. A more natural healthy soil. Less pollution in the atmosphere. An overwhelming sense of wellbeing and superiority when you sit in your garden listening to the neighbours wrestling with their mowers and strimmers.

Wild Flower Lawns & Meadows Creating and managing a wild flower lawn or meadow can add a massive amount of interest to your garden. ​ Attract pollinating insects like butterflies and bees. ​ Decrease your workload in the garden. Wild flowers only require mowing once in a year. ​ Spend more time relaxing and enjoying the garden. ​ Choose your seeds from a wide range of individual wild flower species or meadow mixes to suit all soil types, in the store. We also sell plug plants. ​ The benefits of wildflower lawns & meadows in your garden Preparing the soil in your garden for wildflower turf or seed. Wildflower lawns verses formal lawns. How easy are they? Making life easy. Management of your wildflower garden.

Location Covering both Northumberland and Durham Being based at the top end of County Durham, close to Gateshead and Newcastle I am well situated for access to the A1 which allows for easy travel into Northumberland & the coast. ​ More local roads lead into Weardale & Teesdale. Working in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural beauty is part of what makes the job so appealing. ​ Over the hills I can get to the Tyne Valley for Prudhoe, Corbridge, Riding Mill, Hexham and surrounding villages. ​ Qualifications I studied horticulture at Houghall College in Durham from 1988 to 1989. gaining extensive experience in plant knowledge. With skills in propagation, cultivation and identification. After passing with distinction I went on to work in a variety of practical garden situations. ​ From 2007 to 2012 I worked for the National Trust at Gibside. The final three years of this were spent on the Careership Training programme in conservation management. Experience After studying horticulture I worked at several leading North East garden centres including Peter Barratt's, Cowell's and The Beamish Clematis Nursery. ​ I have worked in horticulture since 1989 in various fields and then moved into conservation for the National Trust. The first three years at Gibside was spent coordinating the Grass Snake Habitat Enrichment Project. Then during the Careership Programme learning a variety of conservation skills. ​ I was the Revealing Reptiles Project Officer for Durham wildlife Trust from 2016 to 2018. This involved recruiting and training volunteers to help me survey the whole of County Durham for reptiles. I also gave talks to many local groups. Services Installation and maintenance of ponds Installation and maintenance of wild flower lawns and meadows. Regular maintenance of existing gardens. I offer an online consultation service as well as garden designs provided by a network of professional designers across the UK. ​ Training in scythe use for meadow management, both for individuals and conservation groups. ​ A range of talks on various wildlife friendly garden subjects. ​ Training in reptile and amphibian survey techniques as well as ecology and habitat management.

Preparing the soil for wild flowers This might come as a surprise, but you might have been spending the last few years preparing the soil for wild flowers. ​ If you watch some of my videos about lawns and grass cutting you will hear me mention how 'cut and remove' is the perfect way to manage a wild flower lawn or meadow. ​ Cut and remove? I hear you ask...Thats what most people do when they mow their lawns with a grass box. All the nutrient the grass has taken from the soil in order to grow, is collected in the grass box and dumped in a compost bin. Or worse still a local authority garden waste bin. ​ This constant depletion of nutrients in the soil is just what wild flowers want. It's the opposite of what a lush grass lawn wants. Yet this is how people have been conditioned to mow their lawns. Then they wonder why the grass is struggling to compete with moss and broad leaved weeds. Either that or they combat the nutrient loss from their mowing regime by introducing chemical or granular fertilisers. More cost! ​ This video below shows me sowing seeds in my own small front garden. The ground was previously planted with a mix of perennials and shrubs. ​ If you have a lawn that you are considering removing or changing the simplest way to get it ready for wild flowers is to remove the turf. Hire a turf lifter for this, it makes the job so much quicker. While you're on, hire a cultivator. You'll want to use this to turn the soil. It doesn't have to be deep. Rake the area level once it has been dug over. Firm the soil with a roller. Also easy to hire. Then either follow the video above or lay your rolls of wildflower turf. Make sure you get a full plant list for the seed mix and the turf. Insist that a native species mix is included. None native plants serve no purpose other than colour and some pollen. When should you do all this? Ideally in Spring between March and April but the best time is Autumn between September and November. Whether seeding or turfing, it's a good idea to plant some native bulbs in the soil first. These will provide an extension to the season of interest. Snakehead fritillary, snowdrops, bluebells and old English narcissus are great for adding a splash of colour early in the year.

How to disguise pond liner Nobody likes VPL! Visible Pond Liner. The common idea of pond construction is to use flat 'crazy paving' slabs on the top edge of the pond. You've seen them, with their slightly overlapping edges, desperately trying to hide any signs of liner. Fail! ​ There are several easy and effective ways to disguise an ugly pond liner. Either using rock and cobbles or plants and even upturned turf. ​ This series of videos will show you how. Creating a series of stepped shelves within the pond allows you to layer stone work up and out of the water. ​ If you start from deep enough in the pond, any uncovered liner will be almost unnoticeable at depth. ​ You can of course cover the entire bottom of the pond with gravel, cobbles and stone. If that's the sort of effect you are trying to achieve. I think of this type of pond as more a stream bed or quarry pond. In a garden situation this style of pond can work well. It is a rare thing to find a natural pond that is rock lined. If you think about it, most ponds are the result of poorly drained land and are therefore not much more than depressions in a saturated soil. ​ As shown in the How to build a wildlife pond page, returning soil into the pond and adding plants at all depths within the substrate will disguise the liner more than adequately. As well as that it looks much more natural than a paved or rock surrounded pond. This style of natural planted pond edge allows you to blend the margins of the pond seamlessly with surrounding borders and lawns.

CUSTOMER CARE We hope that you will be fully satisfied with the seeds that we supply. If for any reason you have a problem with our products please do contact us and let us know at the earliest opportunity so that we can seek to resolve the issue. We offer a 30 day guarantee on all our native wildlflower seeds. ​ If we have made a mistake or our seeds are defective we will of course replace or refund the items concerned without delay. Depending on the nature of the complaint we may ask for the return of the goods in question. If you are returning an item because of an error on our part or because it is damaged or defective, we will refund the delivery charges incurred in sending the item to you and arrange collection or refund the cost of returning it to us. ​ Before returning seed or other products to us please first contact us to notify us so we can advise you on the best course of action. PRIVACY & SAFETY We receive, collect and store any information you enter on our website or provide us in any other way. In addition, we collect the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the Internet; login; e-mail address; password. We also collect personally identifiable information (including name, email, password, communications); payment details (including credit card information), comments, feedback, product reviews, recommendations, and personal profile. When you conduct a transaction on our website, as part of the process, we collect personal information you give us such as your name, address and email address. Your personal information will be used for the specific reasons stated above only. We collect such Non-personal and Personal Information for the following purposes: To provide and operate the Services; To provide our Users with ongoing customer assistance and technical support; To be able to contact our Visitors and Users with general or personalized service-related notices and promotional messages; To comply with any applicable laws and regulations. Our company is hosted on the Wix.com platform. Wix.com provides us with the online platform that allows us to sell our products and services to you. Your data may be stored through Wix.com’s data storage, databases and the general Wix.com applications. They store your data on secure servers behind a firewall. All direct payment gateways offered by Wix.com and used by our company adhere to the standards set by PCI-DSS as managed by the PCI Security Standards Council, which is a joint effort of brands like Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover. PCI-DSS requirements help ensure the secure handling of credit card information by our store and its service providers. If you don’t want us to process your data anymore, please contact us at contact@wildernesstamed.com We reserve the right to modify this privacy policy at any time, so please review it frequently. Changes and clarifications will take effect immediately upon their posting on the website. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here that it has been updated, so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we use and/or disclose it. If you would like to: access, correct, amend or delete any personal information we have about you, you are invited to contact us at contact@wildernesstamed.com . PAYMENT METHODS - Credit / Debit Cards - PAYPAL - Offline Payments Payment Methods Privacy Policy Customer Care

The North East Cereal Killers Scythe Group Are all scythers from around Northumberland and Durham who have trained with John R Grundy of Wilderness Tamed. A volunteer group set up to encourage mowers with scythes to help each other out as a community. Some of our members have large gardens or areas they help manage in a traditional way. They can call on the rest of the group to help out with mowing in exchange for refreshments. This helps mowers practice on different vegetation types, meet each other and enjoy a pleasant day in good company and surroundings. Scything was traditionally a group effort. Whether harvesting crops or managing the lawns and verges of stately homes and local byways or common ground. ​ Join the North East Cereal Killers mailing list Now ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Available to help with mowing and management of wild flower meadows, lawns and control of invasive plants. If you would like any help with vegetation you want managing please get in contact ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Find out how to mow with an Austrian scythe here We also do ingrowing toenails and soul removal. ​ ​ ​ ​

How to use native plants in your pond It should be obvious why you need to use native plants in a wildlife friendly pond or garden. But I'll lay it out for you here in case you're under any doubt. ​ Exotic species offer very little in the way of benefit to native insects, other than a nectar source for adult insects. No butterfly or moth species are adapted to using exotic plants as food for their larvae. ie caterpillars. ​ Native plants act in several ways to improve a pond. ​ The roots will help stabilise the shore edge of a pond. They will also act as natural filtration by absorbing nutrients from the water. This reduces build up of excess nutrients which can pollute the water or build up as toxins and poison wildlife. ​ Oxygenate the water as they release oxygen from their roots and stems in tiny streams of bubbles. ​ Provide foraging and shelter for small invertebrates and amphibians. Did you know that frog and toad tadpoles start out as herbivores before becoming insectivores. They will eat the jelly of the spawn first, then move on to algae, dead plant matter and leaves of pond plants. ​ ​ This is one of my own ponds in early summer showing the wide variety of plants growing in and around the water. A wildlife pond, whether it be a naturally occurring pond in the countryside or a lined pond created in a garden, should not have plastic baskets filled with plants in it. ​ I strongly recommend planting young pond plants into a substrate on the pond bottom. You don't need special pond soil bought from a garden centre. ​ In my experience, over many years of creating ponds, not only in gardens but for conservation charities, I have never brought in pond soil or compost. In several ponds I've only used course grit or gravel to act as an anchoring substrate for plug plants. ​ The roots will establish in this and as the pond matures, enough plant matter and waste from pond animals will act as a source of nutrients, which the plants roots can absorb and filter out. Pond plants fall into several categories ​ Deep water. Those which root into the bottom of the pond. Some will send up leaves and flowers to the surface. Oxygenators. Rooting into the bottom of the pond, often growing in large clumps. Surface cover/free floating. Seasonal plants emerging to the surface during warmer weather to spread across the surface. Emergent. Growing in the deeper water around the margins and sending up leaves and stems above the water level. Marginal. Growing with their feet in the damp edges of the pond. Most will tolerate being submerged for long periods. ​ ​ Each type of plant plays an important part in the ecology of the pond. Like the layers of foliage in a forest they offer cover to one another. Provide forage for the animal life. Act as food for some invertebrates as well as the aforementioned early stages in a tadpoles life. Provide egg laying opportunities for various invertebrates. Not just within the pond but above the water as well. And emergent and marginal plants allow the larvae stage of dragon and damselflies to crawl from their aquatic home into the open air. From here they will transform and emerge as adults.

Managing your wildflowers As mentioned on the formal lawns verses wildflowers page, this is an easy process carried out no more than twice in a year. ​ As you will probably guess from other pages on this site my preferred method of mowing is with a scythe. Honestly, they're so much easier and eco friendly than people imagine. So simply mow the wildflower lawn and either immediately rake off the cuttings or leave for a few days to allow seeds to drop into the soil. That's it! It really is as easy as that. I could end this page here, but I like to waffle on a bit, so there'll be more. ​ You're wondering what to do with all the stuff you remove, aren't you? why not donate it to someone else who wants what you've got. They can spread it over a prepared area of their own garden. Allow the seeds to drop over a few days, then remove the vegetation. It's how many large scale meadows are created, with cuttings from an already established meadow. ​ Failing that, perhaps some locals would like it to feed their pet guinea pigs or rabbits. I know some folk bale their wildflowers and sell the bales for a few quid. ​ In other news, keeping the nutrient level low also means keeping the lawn free from too many Autumn leaves. Here's a quick video all about it.