Country mouse - Mark Hedges

Slugs are combatted wonderfully using natural predators at Highgrove, discovers Mark, although there is one threat not even these talented people have managed to avoid...

Country mouse, Country Life magazine
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Slugs and gardeners mix like oil and water. Both seriously compromise each other's welfare. At night, if you slip outside with a torch, you'll be astonished and possibly horrified by the army of slugs and snails oozing and munching its way across your garden. However, if a slug likes eating anything, it's hostas. Many gardeners have tired of trying to grow them due to the relentless attack. Others use a variety of methods, from pellets to beer traps, to try to repel the mollusc horde.

At Highgrove, The Prince of Wales has a National Collection of hostas yet his gardeners use nothing to protect them. There are hundreds of varieties, and, as I walked round last week, not a single plant had the tell-tale hole of a slug attack.

The secret, I learnt, was that the prince has allowed the natural predators to flourish. The whole garden is aflutter with wild birds and the famous stumpery garden plays host to other slug gourmands such as toads and grass snakes. The slugs are totally under natural control.

This beautiful garden has the perfect solution to one of gardening's greatest problems. However, even Highgrove isn't quite perfect it's got ground elder like the rest of us and, as yet, no natural way of controlling it.

Country Life

Country Life is unlike any other magazine: the only glossy weekly on the newsstand and the only magazine that has been guest-edited by HRH The King not once, but twice. It is a celebration of modern rural life and all its diverse joys and pleasures — that was first published in Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee year. Our eclectic mixture of witty and informative content — from the most up-to-date property news and commentary and a coveted glimpse inside some of the UK's best houses and gardens, to gardening, the arts and interior design, written by experts in their field — still cannot be found in print or online, anywhere else.