I have quite enjoyed my pseudo wild garden. But I do think though that purely "letting nature take its course" might be a bit aesthetically challenging, to say the least, but I do think that it's a good point of inspiration to take.
What I've done over the past 6 years or so, is first of all set the architecture of the garden, where do i want "beds" where do I want "lawn", do I need to do any hard landscaping? Then I put some very stable perennials in, a phormium, some big grasses, a small crab apple tree, a garrya elliptica, honeysuckle. These plants are very boring and not particularly pollinator friendly, but they provided a background structure to try and work with.
Then over several years I've planted stuff over and over, trying to focus on pollinator friendly things and things which can naturalise or spread, which are the wildflowery natural appearing type things. It takes a lot of trial and error to work out what works, what you like, and what kind of maintenance you need to do, what seedlings are things you hate and will want to weed out, what are things you like and want to keep, what things are thugs and will crowd out other things, what things can be quite happy in a corner, etc.
My garden now is quite low maintenance, and mostly I do let nature do its thing, but that's AFTER I applied considerable effort (And I still do sometimes, but maybe only 1-3 days per year).
It sounds like you're in a good place overall though! Wish I had some hardwood logs in my garden to try and attract beetles. Have often thought about procuring some.
I have quite enjoyed my pseudo wild garden. But I do think though that purely "letting nature take its course" might be a bit aesthetically challenging, to say the least, but I do think that it's a good point of inspiration to take.
What I've done over the past 6 years or so, is first of all set the architecture of the garden, where do i want "beds" where do I want "lawn", do I need to do any hard landscaping? Then I put some very stable perennials in, a phormium, some big grasses, a small crab apple tree, a garrya elliptica, honeysuckle. These plants are very boring and not particularly pollinator friendly, but they provided a background structure to try and work with.
Then over several years I've planted stuff over and over, trying to focus on pollinator friendly things and things which can naturalise or spread, which are the wildflowery natural appearing type things. It takes a lot of trial and error to work out what works, what you like, and what kind of maintenance you need to do, what seedlings are things you hate and will want to weed out, what are things you like and want to keep, what things are thugs and will crowd out other things, what things can be quite happy in a corner, etc.
My garden now is quite low maintenance, and mostly I do let nature do its thing, but that's AFTER I applied considerable effort (And I still do sometimes, but maybe only 1-3 days per year).
It sounds like you're in a good place overall though! Wish I had some hardwood logs in my garden to try and attract beetles. Have often thought about procuring some.