Wysing rain garden-biodiverse landscape design
‘A Greener more Accessible Wysing’ - Landscape Design October 2026
by Emily Haysom
I recently had the opportunity to work with Wysing Arts Centre on a landscape strategy and to design a rain garden and ornamental planting as part of ‘A Greener more Accessible Wysing’, to support accessibility and sustainability. OEB Architects chose a simple palette to the hard landscaping and infrastructure, with careful reuse of existing features, using warm toned gravel as a finish. The rain garden takes the runoff from the roof and courtyard, and biodiverse ornamental planting edges the buildings and surfaces, and leads visitors through the space.
The planting was implemented earlier this year by Zion Landscapes and has been subjected in its short existence to prolonged extremes of torrential rain and drought. Rain gardens are designed with plants that tolerate a wide range of conditions. Swales and basins can be full of water or completely dry. Nonetheless 2026 has been unprecedented. With slight apprehension, I visited Wysing on a bright October afternoon to see how the planting was faring; my first visit after the drought. Six months after planting, I am relieved and delighted to see so much life. The planting is establishing well, still full of colour and seasonal interest as we go into Autumn.
I am often reticent about photographing my landscape projects. How to grasp the intangible qualities: of dancing sunlight and shadow, the feel of sunshine or falling rain on faces, the susurration of the wind in trees and grasses, the chatter of people, the paths of animals, the busy comings and goings of birds and insects? Landscapes are alive and experiential.
On arrival I was distracted by the dappled light falling across the planting beds from the trees higher up the bank; a few people sat at a picnic bench in the courtyard having a meeting, bathed in sunshine; piles of scythings from the wildflower rich banks had been left to shed their seeds before being spread to other locations on the site. I enjoy noticing knapweed and scarlet pimpernel moving into the excess gravel beyond the rain garden, a negotiated margin between the wildflower sward and ornamental planting, the gravel providing contrasting conditions for migrants from the damper wildflower banks.
The ornamental planting in the various beds is flourishing, albeit with a few casualties to the drought, and establishing well into intertwining communities of plants; a comely haze of elegantly fading orange heads of Helenium among shrubs, geraniums and grasses.
Brendan Cavaciuti, Site and Environmental Futures Manager, shares my interest in living, ecological systems and has a keen sensitivity to managing the site with landscapers and volunteers. His aesthetic eye and hands-on approach helped shape the rocky refuges in the rain garden with reclaimed rocks selected from elsewhere on site, creating the effect of a gravelly riverbed leading to a small pond. The pond was a late element in the design and is still settling. It has silted slightly with the surrounding clay, and the water level is low in what is another very dry spell, but the water is beautifully clear. Together we discuss a slow approach, a watchfulness. Will the rain change the profiles of its base yet again, or should it be dug further in places to attract different species of wildlife? Should more plants be added, or will appropriate plants move in? Time is a quality we often forget in designing and managing landscapes. The team at Wysing are full of plans for further ecological ventures. They hold in balance the pressures of delivering impactful results within funding timeframes and this quality of careful observation that respects the longterm ecology of the site and the community of artists that use it.
I’m looking forward to the Spring and seeing what flowers will be on their best show in the beds, how much the honeysuckle and ivy will have clambered across the rear screens. Hopefully a swathe of fritillaries will edge the wildflower sward among the scurried paths and holes of the ‘vole banks’. I look forward the different quality of light and shade in the courtyard and the shifting profile of the pond and how it has settled over the winter.
Landscape architect: Emily Haysom
Architect: OEB Architects
Landscape contractor: Zion Landscapes.
Images and text by Emily Haysom
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