Review: The Cotswold Wildlife Park by Harriet Rycroft with Tim Miles

All gardens are shaped by outside influences and every head gardener I meet has their own particular set of things to consider. Few are as challenging as those faced by Tim Miles at The Cotswold Wildlife Park.

The park has to cope with visitors, thousands of them every year. It’s open year-round so has to have something of interest in every season. Then there’s the wildlife and not the usual slugs, deer and rabbits of most country gardeners. Tim and his team have to garden alongside meerkats and rhinos.

How they balance these wide-ranging considerations with experimental and exciting horticulture is explored in The Cotswold Wildlife Park, A Celebration of the Gardens, a collaboration between Tim and Harriet Rycroft, a member of the gardening team.

(I was given a free copy of the book in return for an unbiased review.)

Picture-heavy, it’s a behind-the-scenes look at one of the Cotswold’s most popular attractions, somewhere that draws gardeners just as much as it does animal-lovers. It was always a favourite with my family, my offspring eager to see the animals and ride on the train while I looked the plants.

And there are plenty of plants to see. Most are carefully chosen to mimic, if not entirely replicate, the natural surroundings of the animals. So, animals from Africa are found in ‘Little Africa’ where Cortaderia richardii gives the right atmosphere despite coming from New Zealand.

It’s the sort of ‘trickery’ that’s found throughout the park. Cut branches of evergreens are used to hide bare earth in containers until bulbs push through, while bromeliads seemingly growing happily outside are in fact in pots, cunningly hidden by foliage or hessian. The team talk of creating ‘theatre with plants’ and, like any good director they hide the artifice well.

Starting with an overview of the park’s history, the book takes us on a tour of the grounds, looking at everything from the magnificent trees to the teamwork needed to move mature bananas into winter shelter.

We learn about the huge propagation programme – cuttings from 200 varieties of tender plants alone. Much of this and the 120 seed-grown varieties are used in the bedding out in The Walled Garden, my favourite place at Cotswold Wildlife Park where the seasonal displays are exceptional.

Much of the fruit at the park is as exotic as the animals, including persimmon and avocado, and edibles, such as quince and pumpkins, are chosen to be “visually arresting. The idea is to start conversations naturally among visiting families”.

Indeed, visitors and their needs are a major consideration from allowing a beech hedge to grow taller thus providing shelter for the picnic area to not being too quick to clear fallen leaves: “we cannot deny visiting children the fun of kicking through autumn leaves”.

The park begins and ends with its animals, though, and the gardens and wildlife are closely entwined; there’s planting inside as well as around the enclosures. It does make for challenging growing: “Plants inside enclosures may not only be eaten but scratched, trampled and bounced on, depending on the inhabitants”.

The garden team work closely with animal keepers, consulting before using power tools near enclosures and providing prunings and weeds for food.

Like most gardening teams there’s a ‘shorthand’ of names for various areas but, unlike the usual top border or herbaceous bed, those at the park are unique: ‘Tortoise Terminus’ or the ‘Emu Border’. Fitting for a garden that is far from ordinary.

• The Cotswold Wildlife Park, A Celebration of the Gardens, by Harriet Rycroft, with Tim Miles, is published by The Cotswold Wildlife Park and Gardens, priced at £15. It is available at The Cotswold Wildlife Park shop, online (with £3 p&p), and from Burford Garden Centre and Mad Hatters bookshop in Burford.

Read more of my gardening book reviews here.