As well as being an award-winning family day out, Slimbridge Wetland Centre is a vital habitat for wild birds, insects and native plants, set within the Severn Estuary Site of Special Scientific Interest.
Grounds manager, Chris Rixton, sits down with SoGlos to explain how Slimbridge's landscape is designed to educate through emotion and provide a sense of connection to the natural world, to ensure we protect it for generations to come.
Chris, tell us a bit about your background and your connection to Slimbridge.
I've been coming to Slimbridge since I was about four or five. I came pond dipping with my school; I brought my own children as I got older; so that connection was definitely there from a young age.
By trade, I'm a garden designer. I had a garden design and landscaping business for about 15 years, so good grounding on transforming spaces and having a vision around horticulture particularly.
When I ended that part of my life, I wanted to come somewhere I could be in love with and really leave an impact.
Can you describe a typical day for you as Slimbridge's grounds manager?
My job is split between the office and outside – and that time varies depending on whether we're in the middle of a project, like we are now.
We have a brief team meeting at 8am to talk through our plans for the day and what we're trying to achieve.
The first part of the day includes duties like path cleaning across the site, making sure our wet play areas are ready to go and getting the site ready for opening.
We have our volunteers join us around 10am. We might all work as one big team on a project or an area of the grounds that we’re maintaining, or we might split into two or three teams. Depending on the time of year, we could work on growing and bulb planting; cutting grass or hedges; tree clearance work; or building really cool things like bug hotels.
It’s very varied – there’s no ‘typical’ day!
What project are you working on currently?
The area we’re building at the moment is called Alder Walk and it is due to be launched in spring.
It's a native alder tree woodland which is quite wild, in a very beautiful part of the grounds that was never accessible for visitors before.
It’s going to be hugely impactful – we've used predominantly recycled materials and we’re creating this really cool pollinator hotel in the form of a fence.
We’re doing all of the work ourselves, so there’s a real sense of attention to detail and mindfulness in that space.
You and your team also built the Estuary Shoreline landscape – can you tell us about that project?
Last year we launched the Estuary Shoreline landscape, which was a big project for the trust. We wanted to create an area in front of the restaurant to inspire and educate, while also extending our outdoor dining space.
Before we created the Estuary Shoreline, one of our most beautiful parts of the site was only accessible via a narrow pathway that a lot of visitors weren’t even aware existed, so we wanted to really draw people in with how it’s styled, the textures and palettes we used.
Things like the stepping stones which we put in, which are giant lily pads impressed with wetland plants, are a great way to inspire young children.
But the wetland planting is the real star of the show in this landscape. We’re just starting to see the bulbs coming through now, but fast forward a month when the wildflower meadows will spring into action and that space is just dreamy.
Being able to sit there and be around the water, the birds and the insects, it really pulls on the emotions as well as the senses.
We designed and built it with my team. A lot of them had very good practical skills already, but we got people trained up on using different types of machinery, which enabled us to build the landscape almost entirely in-house.
By taking on the design and build as a whole, the attention to detail and the impact for our visitors was really strong.
Because it’s very front of house, we needed to make sure that what we delivered was fantastic. It really had to win everybody over – and it’s done that in spades!
You've also designed and installed insect habitats and bug hotels around the site – tell us a bit about those.
We started with pollinator benches; then took that a bit further with the Estuary Shoreline project with pollinator benches on a bigger scale; and we've taken it a bit further again with Alder Walk, putting pollinator habitats onto six-foot fence panels – and they look amazing!
They're a good little take home message for people, too, because they can see they're quite simple to build – they’d look really cool in a garden – and they provide a valuable habitat for different insects.
Slimbridge has a diverse variety of landscapes and wildlife habitats – how do you manage those throughout the year?
Slimbridge has got two sides. We've got the wild side, which is home to winter migratory birds that come in. Then we’ve got the captive bird side, with exhibits like Mission Possible.
We have a schedule of works and a maintenance plan for all those areas – and we work in conjunction with our living collection colleagues to make sure we’re working around what the birds need.
On the wild side, there’s less to worry about, but we do need to be aware of things like nesting seasons, as we don’t want to be doing any clearance works when the birds are setting up their nests for the season.
Then we have some bigger projects that we slot into gaps in the year when the birds aren’t breeding – and obviously we’ve got the Great British weather to work with as well!
As a wetland site, there are times where the water table is too high to get machinery on, so we’re mindful of that.
It’s all got to be quite fluid, while still having a strong plan for what we want to get done in the year.
What makes the landscape at Slimbridge so special?
There’s a huge amount of history here. Slimbridge is coming up for its 80th anniversary, so generationally, this place means a lot to a lot of people.
Many would have seen Peter Scott on TV when they were kids. For some people, visiting here would have been the first time they’d seen ducks or geese. That's a big responsibility, so we have to ensure that what we do connects with people, as well as inspiring the next generation.
As a grounds team, we're trying to inspire people through the landscape and horticulture, educating people about plants and insects – and linking those to the wider site and other attractions, like Mission Possible.
We do that through waterscapes and planting, but also through unique installations like the Moon Gate – this is one of the iconic things people remember about their visit to Slimbridge.
The beauty of our space is that our landscape changes hugely all the way through the year.
In winter, when nothing is in leaf, it's quite architectural, with the trees forming the main parts of the landscape. Around the swan lake, there are these big willows that look like flames rising from the ground.
Snowdrops are just starting to poke their heads up now, signalling that spring is on its way. My team did a huge bulb plant before Christmas, where we planted about a quarter of a million bulbs across the site, so when spring comes, it's going to be absolutely magnificent.
We have amazing wildflower meadows from March to around September. We're opening up a seasonal walkway this year so visitors can walk through the meadows and sit amongst the flowers and the songbirds, creating quiet, tranquil spaces to show people how important nature can be.
Immersion in a landscape is the best way to get people to connect to it, because it directly affects how they feel. It might be a playground for their kids; a beautiful space where they can hear water, smell wildflowers and see wildlife; somewhere they can take two minutes away from their busy day when they're having a lot of stress in their life.
What we try to do here is connect people with nature, to immerse them in the landscape, so we can present the story of the reserve and why the Severn Estuary is so important.
Why is the Severn Estuary so important?
For one, it's beautiful! We want lots of people to see it. And it’s an SSSI, so environmentally, it’s crucial to the area.
It's home to thousands upon thousands of birds throughout the year, from migratory birds that come in the winter, to native birds that are here all season – and it provides a habitat for lots of different fish and insects.
Peter Scott opened Slimbridge in the post-war era, transforming this area into a place to show and explain to people why wildlife is important – and we need to continue having those conversations about conservation today.
We aim to provide a good place to go for a family day out, where people can learn about this landscape and its wildlife in a really engaging way.
What do you want visitors to experience from the landscape at Slimbridge?
Slow down, take stock, sit with your mum or your partner or your kids, appreciate what's around you and how that makes you feel.
We spend our lives running around, but it's really important for us all mentally and physically to take a moment to enjoy and appreciate what's around us.
The spaces at Slimbridge allow us to do that in a really funky way.
