9 minute read
Clippings: news for gardeners
C l i ppi n g s Our roundup of the month’s latest gardening news and views Wanted: ladybird detectives We don’t know enough about our ladybirds, a report has identified – and scientists want gardeners to help them find out more. The peat ban spotlight “We’re concerned because ladybirds perform such important functions in ecosystems and in switches to growers gardens,” says report co-author Professor Helen Roy, of the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology. ■ Report sightings at bit.ly/lb-rep
Grower Mr Fothergill’s plant trials programme has expanded to include tests of peat-free compost
Campaigners say the battle to remove peat substitutes such as wood fibre and composted from compost isn’t over yet, despite the bark is delaying the process: “The fundamental Government confirming it will be illegal to sell issue is that there just won’t be enough peatbagged compost that contains peat after 2024. free compost to supply the nation.”
While the Government has declared a ban Like many growers, Suffolk-based on peat for amateur gardeners, it dropped a Mr Fothergill’s is trialling peat-free composts proposed deadline of 2028 to remove peat from before taking the plunge. This year it grew professional horticulture, meaning growers can tomatoes and petunias in both peat-free still produce plants in peat-based compost. A and peat-based compost. Technical manager ban at some point is still on the table, and the David Fryer says those grown peat-free needed Government says it “continues to work closely more feeding, but it hasn’t put him off. with the horticulture “We know peat isn’t industry” to help them Growers use over a sustainable,” he says. make the switch. “We expect to be peat-
Nursery growers get million cubic metres of free within two years.” through over a million compost a year, of which Dr Anton Rosenfeld of cubic metres of Garden Organic says it’s compost a year – and just over half is peat too little, too late: “It’s like over half (51.7 per cent) doing your homework on is peat. Fewer than one in 10 of the UK’s 1,800 the bus.” He says gardeners can avoid buying garden centres and nurseries have taken the plants grown in peat-based compost by raising plunge and gone peat-free, but that doesn’t them from seedlings and cuttings at home mean they aren’t trying, says Horticultural instead, and looking out for peat-free nurseries. Trades Association president James Barnes. “There are pockets of encouragement – and He says, though growers are making progress more places are switching to peat-free all the towards becoming peat-free, a shortage of time,” he adds.
Plant a tree for Queen Elizabeth
The Queen’s Green Canopy tree planting initiative, originally celebrating Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee, will now run until March 2023, after King Charles said he wanted to give people the chance to plant trees in memory of his late mother.
Each memorial tree will join a million already planted, all recorded on an online map which stretches from Penzance in Cornwall to the Shetland Islands in Scotland.
“Planting trees for royalty goes back a long way,” says Tony Kirkham, former head of Kew’s arboretum. He says, where space allows, longlived trees like English oak make the most fitting tributes. ■ Record your own tree at queens greencanopy.org ■ Read Alan Titchmarsh’s tribute to Queen Elizabeth from p42
NT unveils ruin garden
Scheme turns old compost sacks into furniture
The Great Hall at Nymans, Sussex, is the theatrical backdrop for the new Garden in the Ruins, full of ferns, magnolias and eucryphias. The building was destroyed by fire in 1947, but has now been remade into an intimate, calming space for visitors. ■ nationaltrust.org.uk/nymans
Plants get through drought better if exposed to alcohol, researchers at the Riken Center for Sustainable Resource Science in Japan have found. Watering plants with diluted ethanol prompted them to close their breathing pores, so they lost less water through their leaves.
RHS Chief Horticulturist Guy Barter says more research is needed – plus, vodka is expensive: “It would be cheaper to buy more and bigger water butts,” he says.
While recent research suggests alcohol can help plants survive drought, it’s cheaper to buy more water butts
Recycling facilities for used compost sacks are to be rolled out in garden centres nationally. It’s hoped the scheme, set up by Miracle-Gro and Veolia in partnership with Dobbies Garden Centres, will turn about 40 million sacks into garden furniture, plastic film and new bags. bit.ly/recycle -sacks
Energy prices drive small growers online
Small, specialist nurseries faced with quadrupling energy bills and rising fuel costs are turning away from traditional sales benches and flower shows to sell online instead.
Steven Fletcher, of fern specialists Fernatix, says he no longer goes to flower shows because of fuel costs, and because it’s easier to sell online. “I rely on mail order,” he says.
Many nursery owners are simply taking retirement. Ursula Key-Davis and her sibling co-owners are retiring and closing pelargonium nursery Fibrex. “Everything’s stacking up so it’s the right time to go,” she says. She has rehomed the nursery’s two National Collections – but worries similar closures might mean rare plants become less available. “Where are people going to get these things once we’re gone?”
Meanwhile a new wave of small-scale growers is bypassing traditional selling altogether. Harriet Thompson, of Harriet’s Plants, relies solely on social media to market the peat-free house plants grown in her Staffordshire greenhouse. “I don’t have a shop front,” she says. “So I don’t have to pay rent, or high electricity costs. It’s great.”
My gardening world Pam Ayres
A regular on radio and TV, writer Pam Ayres is known for her warm, insightful poems about everyday life. She’s a keen wildlife gardener and
her latest book, Who Are You Calling Vermin?, defends grey squirrels, moles
and dung beetles. She lives in the Cotswolds with her husband, theatre producer Dudley Russell.
What’s your gardening style?
I grow wholesome food for us to eat, and I garden for wildlife. I try not to plant anything unless it produces nectar, or berries, or blossom. I’ve got lots of seats – there’s nothing I like more than just sitting quietly and seeing what’s around. I was sitting by one of the borders and saw what I thought was a Catherine wheel, all coiled up – then it uncoiled and travelled away and it was a tiny grass snake. If I hadn’t been sitting there quietly I wouldn’t have seen it.
What can gardeners do to attract wildlife into the garden?
I’ve got a huge pile of what most people would look upon as a bonfire – a great big pile of sticks and prunings. I’ve got it enclosed in hazel hurdles but I will never set fire to it because it’s full of insects, and the hedgehogs go in there, and little voles too – I call it a ‘non-fire’.
Where do you get your lifelong love of gardening from?
My dad. I was born in 1947 in a council house, one of six children. All the houses had a long garden, and every evening the dads were out
Pam Ayres is passionate about wildlife
there growing food – they weren’t doing it for pleasure, they had to feed their families. My dad was a marvellous gardener – you’d have a great patch of potatoes, rows of runner beans and a big block of broad beans.
Your new book isn’t afraid to tackle some thorny issues to do with our attitudes to the countryside. Would you say you’re a campaigner?
I’m not a tub-thumper, but the reason I feel so passionate about what’s happening in the countryside is that I have seen the decline. Just after the war, you took it for granted that the cuckoo would come in the spring, and swifts and swallows would come in their thousands, and there would be frogs and toads in the garden, and water voles in the brooks. And all this has just gone. So in a tiny way I’m trying to arrest the decline where I can. ■ Pam Ayres’ new book, Who Are You Calling Vermin? (£12.99, Ebury Spotlight) is now available to buy.
Ex-GW garden at risk
Barnsdale Gardens in Rutland, where presenter Geoff Hamilton filmed GW in the 1980s and 1990s, could close if plans to build a solar farm next door go ahead, Geoff’s son Nick Hamilton has warned. The 200-acre farm would power 14,400 homes. But Nick, who’s run Barnsdale since Geoff’s death in 1996, says the tall panels will dominate the garden. “It has great potential to close us down,” he says. ”We’re not anti-alternative energy – it’s the right thing, but in the wrong place.” Developer Econergy says it’s considering screening and moving panels further away from the garden’s boundary in response to Nick’s concerns. “It is our intention to minimise the impact on the community,” said a spokesperson.
Bus stops for bees, please
Apprentices from the Eden Project in Cornwall have turned bus shelters into feeding stations for pollinators. Each ‘Buzz Stop’ has troughs of wildflowers and vertical ‘moon gardens’ for moths. “They’re like transport cafés for insects,” says the Eden Project’s Community Programmes Manager, Juliet Rose. ■ For more on the Eden Project’s wildflower planting projects, visit bit.ly/eden-wild
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COASTAL PARK ‘FAVOURITE’ Penrhos Coastal Park in northwest Wales has been named the UK’s favourite park following a public vote. The spectacular 200-acre site near Holyhead features historic buildings and its own beach. kehoecountryside. com/penrhos-coastal-park
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GO RAMBLING FOR CHILDREN IN NEED Take a walk in the country or at your local park and raise money for the BBC Children in Need Appeal. Pick up your guide to this year’s BBC Countryfile Ramble at bbcchildreninneed.co.uk
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POISONOUS COLLECTION A gardener who fell in love with highly poisonous monkshoods (Aconitum) after a chance seedling sprang up in her Hertfordshire garden now has a new National Collection of 40 varieties, open to visitors by appointment. plantheritage.org
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FOOD FOR THE FUTURE Kew’s newly redeveloped sustainable kitchen garden has finished its first harvest. Book your visit and check out the Edible Science team blog at bit.ly/kg-kew
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ANT INVASION After counting for some time, scientists totted up how many ants there are on Earth: 20 quadrillion. Each one is a key player in ecosystems, say researchers. bit.ly/howmanyants
