‘I spent a career killing moles and mice and I’m never doing it again,’ says Josh Sparkes, the former head gardener at Forde Abbey, Somerset whose growing methods at Birch Farm in Devon are causing a stir. He advocates ‘natural farming’, in which netting and fleece are unnecessary, because there are no pigeons or cabbage white butterflies. He doesn’t hoe, as weeds are useful, and he doesn’t make or use compost, because it separates the soil from life above ground. In natural farming, the aim is to cooperate with Nature, growing food in a frictionless way. Moles are fine because no one minds if the ground is bumpy and mice are kept in check by their many predators.
The courses that Sparkes and his small team have been leading at the farm in Woolfardisworthy (known as Woolsery) are a hot ticket and the quality of food at these events is persuasive. The 17 acres of former dairy pasture he manages on the edge of the Atlantic (with all the wind and rain that entails) are bursting with vitality. It has taken five years to reach a level of equilibrium in which ‘pests’ are balanced by predators and are, indeed, welcomed. Sparkes is keen to disseminate the knowledge that he picked up in North America and Japan, where he went on study fellowships to find alternatives to the gardener’s endless round of whack-a-mole. ‘It’s not Nature being a pain,’ he says. ‘All of the problems we have with pests and diseases are because of us.’
Looking down on Birch Farm, Devon, from above, one can spot the earthen banks that draw beetles into the heart of the crop-growing areas where they help control slugs.
When the mammals, insects and birds come for your crops, it’s indicative of an imbalance, explains Sparkes. This is clearly illustrated in the lifestyle of slugs: get rid of them and they come back. Continual removal means that their predators go elsewhere and are not so quick to return, leaving slugs and snails to do their worst. At Birch Farm, animals are encouraged to hunt and nest right in the middle (‘I want hedgehogs in my cabbages,’ he says). Hedgerows and herbal leys are known for supporting biodiversity, but their benefits are limited to the edges. ‘We allow abundance everywhere,’ explains Sparkes. ‘The birds don’t feel the need to eat everything… if a blackbird eats a strawberry, he will get the slug next to it as well.’
Wildlife began to return within a year or two of Sparkes’s arrival, when he was given the opportunity to experiment (with full cooperation from the farm’s owners, tech entrepreneurs Michael and Xochi Birch). ‘Since we’ve had lots of mice and voles, we’ve got lots of predatory birds,’ says Sparkes. ‘We don’t worry about pigeons any more because there’s always a hawk or a buzzard flying around.’ Simplicity is one aim of natural farming: when you know that slugs and beetles share the same habitat, it makes sense to create earthen beetle banks among the crops to facilitate the food chain. ‘I’m thinking about what’s best for the birds and the beetles and the bugs and then basing a system around that,’ he says.
It has taken five years to achieve a happy balance between ‘pests’ and predators, helped by the close and varied planting.
Sparkes looks to the ideas of Masanobu Fukuoka, author of The One-Straw Revolution and proponent of a do-nothing approach to farming. It’s not quite doing nothing, but Fukuoka maintains that natural farming should be ‘pleasant’; there is no enjoyment to be had from tampering. Sparkes learned in Japan that it is more useful to observe and react in a measured way, in other words, to relax. Harvested areas are not immediately cleared because they provide excellent hunting grounds. ‘We don’t prepare a bed until we need it,’ notes Sparkes. ‘Blackbirds love an old kale bed; they run through the stems and use them as cover; beetles and snakes also love it. Leaving that bed standing builds up huge amounts of habitat.’
The permaculture technique, chop and drop, in which plant material is cut (not hoed) and left in situ to decompose, is another way of providing habitat for gastropods and arthropods. Pernicious weeds are dug out once a year, but, generally, weeds are cut with a sickle if they need to be cleared. Sparkes has found that because weeds and wildflowers automatically cover exposed ground, they are a carbon-free, effort-free (and simply ‘free’) equivalent of groundcover that is sold as a fertiliser and is often imported. Seeds are introduced as little as possible; the ambition is that vegetables (there are fifth-generation kales here), as well as trees, will come from the farm, which includes a pocket of ancient forest.
Based on techniques from America and Japan, each bed is planned as a polyculture with five vegetable families and five to 15 weed species. New seeds are introduced rarely.
Produce beds are grown as polycultures, each consisting of five vegetable families, with five to 15 weed species on top of that. The diversity of plants increases biodiversity above and below the soil (including microbes) thus building soil fertility. One bed might consist of the contents of a salad bag, efficient to harvest, with rocket, beetroot, pea shoots, beans and spring onion. Every bed has an aromatic herb, which is not harvested. ‘The herb and its fragrance are healing, for us and the plants.’
Bumpy is better: how to keep beetles happy
Nurturing beetles is as important as nurturing crops; they eat slugs and feed the birds. To which end, keep domesticated chickens and ducks away, as they eat both slugs and beetles. Grass tussocks provide habitat for beetles, as well as solitary bees and spiders. Bumpy is better; instead of getting irritated by a rabbit or mole hole, think of it as creating habitat for beetles and other invertebrates. Beetles love hay and straw spread on the ground; they like to hide under plant material resulting from the chop and drop technique. ‘If you give them cover, they hide in it,’ says Josh Sparkes.
Don’t clear up for tidiness or to deter slugs, as that also deters beetles. Create beetle habitat in the middle of a growing area, as well as leaving edges shaggy. Beetles will range over 300sq ft a night; at Birch Farm, there are three agroforestry rows in the middle of the produce field, set 40ft apart. These provide shelter during the day, so that beetles don’t waste energy getting to and from field edges before dawn. Treat birds in a similar manner by providing them with places to rest.
Most of the farm is cultivated as a food forest. Based on the idea of a Japanese micro forest, a broad range of tree saplings and shrubs is closely planted, mimicking the natural world. Willow and poplar woodland pioneers are valuable for their foliage, maximising photo-synthesis, drawing carbon into the soil and accelerating growth among the others. ‘All of our agroforestry is based on the idea of quick forest succession,’ says Sparkes. ‘It seems to work absolute wonders.’ He compares the results to a rainforest; in this closely packed growing environment, nothing needs staking or protection from mice and voles (with no predators around, deer are fenced out entirely).
Sparkes was in the RAF before training as a gardener and there is a sense of military precision in the way he creates order out of potential chaos. Wouter van Eck is another thinker who interests him, a syntropic farmer who develops the concept of food forests as profitable agricultural systems. Ten acres of agroforestry at Birch Farm are based on syntropic agriculture and make an ‘efficient pick’, but Sparkes also values what he calls the smaller ‘romantic food forest’, which makes for an inefficient pick, but is closer to the medieval idea of the Garden of Eden. Agro-forestry, he maintains, is not dissimilar to an old-fashioned orchard. He doesn’t mind admit-ting that looks are an important part of the enjoyment; he is a former gardener after all.
Clearly, shade is an important commodity in a changing climate and there is a strong need to move away from unsustainable farm practices. Sparkes would love to flip the field-forest ratio in the British landscape and, more immediately, tip the balance away from high-input annual production towards perennials. He has been introducing unfamiliar flavours into the kitchen at The Farmers Arms in Woolsery and perennial salad bags sell out at the village shop (pub and shop are both owned by the Birches and part of the Woolsery Collective).
Of the perennial salad plant, salt bush, he says: ‘It’s one of the most nutritional things you can eat.’ Indeed, it is one of many plants that we could be eating now and which increasingly interest chefs. Sparkes is busy spreading the word that perennial growing is the future. ‘It’s going to be huge,’ he says. ‘You can already feel it.’
This feature originally appeared in the March 25, 2026 issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe. Find out more at the Woolsery website.