https://www.rhs.org.uk/garden-inspiration/wildlife/mullet-gardening
Why ‘mullet gardening’ is the trend you need to try Olivia Drake July 2025
Business at the front, (wildlife) party at the back. Is this a gardening style that’ll stick around for longer than the hairstyle?
Love them or hate them, mullets are back. But it’s an up-and-coming sustainable gardening trend, inspired by the famous cut, that we’re really excited about.
Meet mullet gardening: tidy at the front, wild at the back.
This approach to the management of borders, lawns and even entire gardens puts wildlife at the forefront while saving you effort – here’s how it works and why you should try it in your garden.
What is mullet gardening?
“It’s that idea of keeping things tidy at the front for presentation, while letting them grow a bit wild at the back,” explains Garden Manager Mark Tuson, a pioneer of mullet gardening at RHS Wisley. “It’s a way of gardening for wildlife, by providing habitat and food, while making it visually cared for.
“Hairstyles come in and out and the mullet has come back; the same happens in gardens. But gardening for wildlife is always key.”
Mullet gardening can be practiced in a variety of ways and at different scales – within a border, across a lawn, or even at the level of front versus back gardens.How to do mullet gardening in a border
A wide border is the perfect place to practice the graduated level of manicuredness that is central to mullet gardening: a neat edge, tidy front and dense planting can hide a real wildlife party zone behind.Alex Paines, horticulturist at RHS Rosemoor, says:
“I blow leaves to the back of the bed rather than removing them all, to mulch & create habitat. Mulch is a layer of material, at least 5cm (2in) thick, applied to the soil surface in late autumn to late winter (Nov-Feb). It is used to provide frost protection, improve plant growth by adding nutrients or increasing organic matter content, reducing water loss from the soil, for decorative purposes and suppressing weeds. Examples include well-rotted garden compost and manure, chipped bark, gravel, grit and slate chippings. The soil has improved in the two years I’ve been doing this. I save prunings and trimmings to create brush piles for habitat in nearby but less visible areas.”
CHOP & DROP is a great technique to incorporate. When herbaceous perennials. Perennials are plants that live for multiple years. They come in all shapes and sizes and fill our gardens with colourful flowers and ornamental foliage. Many are hardy and can survive outdoors all year round, while less hardy types need protection over winter. The term herbaceous perennial is used to describe long-lived plants without a permanent woody structure (they die back to ground level each autumn), distinguishing them from trees, shrubs and sub-shrubs. When perennials are cut back, instead of removing and composting the trimmings, they’re simply cut up into small pieces and left in place, forming a layer that covers the soil around the plants and decomposes in situ.
Sarah Wilson-Frost, horticulturist at RHS Hyde Hall, was one of the first RHS horticulturists to adopt the technique, which is now widely practiced across most of the Gardens.
“At RHS Hyde Hall we use chop and drop for ornamental grasses and most herbaceous perennials,” she says. “In the past we’d avoided leaving ‘hedgehogs’ of cut stems, cutting right back to the ground instead to keep it neat, but those short, upright hollow stems are actually really great for biodiversity, so we leave those too.”
So how do you chop and drop the mullet way? “If you leave the front two feet of the border as bare soil after cutting back, then chop and drop beyond, that makes it look intentional,” says Sarah. “A neat edge gives the impression of neatness.”
How to mullet a lawn
Many of the grass areas in more informal areas of RHS Wisley, such as the Pinetum, are managed as meadows – something that can be easily emanated in a small garden by allowing grass to grow long.
“We mow a strip around the outside to give an element of care, and then it’s wild beyond,” says Mark. “This makes it feel well-presented and ensures it’s not flopping over pathways while encouraging different types of wildlife.
“Alongside long grass, shorter grass provides different opportunities for wildlife – short flowering plants such as clover for bees; worms accessible for birds.”
How to have a whole-garden mullet
You can apply the mullet gardening style at a whole-garden level – a tidier front garden facing the street, and a wilder back garden, where nature rules the roost.
“You can even apply the mullet concept to seasons, where the garden is wilder at the back end of the year,” says Mark. “You can leave herbaceous stems standing tall over winter for solitary insects.
“I’ve done it a lot at home – last winter I left all my ornamental grass stems standing as dead stems. New ones have grown through so you can’t see the old ones. Nature works in yearly cycles, so I’m keen to see what effect that has a year later.
“Just because a stem is dead, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have life in it. It might take a year to emerge, and when you cut it down early you lose that.”How to start mullet gardening at home
Mark has some advice for anyone keen to try this sustainable, wildlife-friendly approach at home – whatever size your garden.
“Figure out how you use your garden,” he says. “Is there a back of a bed where you don’t go where you can put a pile of sticks or let plants grow that you might consider weeds elsewhere? You can do it on any scale."
“Sometimes being a tidy gardener isn’t beneficial for others using your garden. Allowing a bit to go more wild will benefit other wildlife in your garden, starting with insects, which will then fuel all the other life that follows.”
Providing for wildlife, enriching your soil and reducing effort for the gardener, this approach could just be the all-round win we all need in our gardens.
Time to embrace your inner mullet / or not???
