Gardening

Co. Landscapers of

G A R D E N D E S I G N S T U D I O

Castle Gardens, New Road, Sherborne, Dorset DT9 5NR

www.thegardensgroup.co.uk thegardensgroup

Spring into action

As the seasons change, the longer and brighter days provide an increasing range of gardening tasks. Now is the time to plant shrubs, herbaceous plants, soft fruit and vegetables, as well as sowing seeds for summer bedding plants and potting up plants for tubs and hanging baskets. Keep those little visitors in mind to create a wildlife friendly haven along the way and make sure to put some time aside to give your lawn some love. With our social distancing measures in place, you can pick up your trees, shrubs, seeds and pots any day of the week, during our new opening hours: Monday to Saturday: 9am – 6pm Sunday: 10am – 4:30pm For those still stuck at home, you can place your orders by telephone or via our brand-new Online Store and we’ll deliver free within 25 miles.

01935 814633

store.thegardensgroup.co.uk

Mike Burks, Managing Director, The Gardens Group

During April, we will be supporting the #PeatFreeApril Campaign. You might recall that we had this planned for last April, but something else got in the way! Peat Free April is a month of action to raise awareness around peat and its continued use in the garden.

Peat is important for three reasons; firstly, it plays a crucial role in that peat bogs are sinks for carbon, so by extracting it, this rereleases the carbon back into the atmosphere; secondly, peatland habitats are environmentally sensitive and are home to a unique population of plants and animals, and thirdly, with flooding a hot issue at the moment (and for many years to come for that matter), peatlands slow the flow of water off the moors, helping to reduce flooding downstream.

Most gardeners are interested in the environment and many are committed to actively promoting the environmental benefits of gardening. Some, though, won’t be aware that they are using peat and others will want to stop using it, but have been brought up on it. There are good alternatives out there, but they require some different skills and techniques.

Peat has been used for soil improvement and for mulching, but this shouldn’t stop us going peat-free as there are many useful alternatives that are just as effective, or even more so, such as Bloomin’ Amazing, Composted Bark, Happy Soil Improver and the like, plus, of course, the well-rotted material from your own compost bin.

Peat usage in gardens is a relatively new phenomena, arriving in a big way since the Second World War. Gardening has changed though and many of us now garden in pots and containers, as we don’t have the luxury of a large outdoor space. Modern housing density means that gardens are much smaller than they used to be and so growing in containers - and therefore the potting compost we use - is much more important than it was.

But we’ve done this all before; I’m of a vintage where I remember customers saying that they couldn’t bear peat-based composts and found that the John Innes composts (loam or soil-based) that they had been brought up on were so much easier to use. There aren’t many of those gardeners left and they eventually did learn to use peat-based compost. So, I am confident that we’ll all be able to get to the brave new world of peat-free, but we may need a little bit of help.

We are committed to supporting this campaign throughout April and far beyond. To kick things off, we’ll be talking about potting composts. As I said earlier, for soil improvement or mulching or planting compost, there are lots of excellent peat-free options – in fact, we haven’t had peat in any of these products for years.

Having trialled various alternatives in previous years, we are now successfully peat-free in our own nursery and a number of our growers are already growing for us in peat-free composts.

So, look out for peat-free compost and see it as a positive, ask for our help and guidance, continue to keep your own patch looking good and, at the same time, do an extra little bit for the environment as a whole.

Gardening is great for your physical and mental health and it also can be really good for the environment around you.

WILDLIFE-FRIENDLY GARDENS

Bev Jones, Garden Designer, Co. of Landscapers

Having a garden that is welcoming to wildlife does not necessarily mean that you can down tools, abandon the lawn mower and any thoughts of weeding, and allow your garden to run wild and unkempt - however tempting that would be just to sit back and do nothing! Instead, if we all did more to encourage wildlife, we could individually contribute to the wider well-being of all creatures and eco-systems. Re-establishing your garden’s eco-system will also pay dividends in reducing, or eliminating, the need to reach for pesticides or slug pellets. Even the smallest space can nurture nature in some form. There are three key elements essential to creating a more wildlife-friendly garden: ensuring diverse habitats; giving somewhere safe to breed and shelter; and providing a variety of places for the different animals to forage and feed from.

One of the simplest things to do is to allow an area of grass to grow longer. Lawns provide a surprisingly rich source of food for a wide range of animals. Foxes, badgers, birds and hedgehogs appreciate shorter grass to forage for grubs and worms, whilst longer areas of grass will provide invaluable cover for invertebrates and slow worms who, in turn, will feed on slugs. You might be surprised what else pops up in your wilder edges of lawn – I was thrilled a couple of years ago to find a pyramidal orchid appearing in the strip of long grass down the side of my garden. As there were cowslips in this area of the garden when we moved here 11 years ago, I encouraged their spread by treating it as a wildflower meadow and only cutting in August once they set seed. I’m still hoping for some oxeye daisies and field scabious one day! If you can bear it, it is well worth leaving dandelion seed heads in these areas too as the birds love them, particularly finches. I have

Fewerton/Shutterstock

been fortunate in the past to find a nesting pair of bullfinches helping themselves.

Filling your garden with nectar-rich flowering plants and shrubs will provide food for bees, butterflies and moths, as well as all sorts of other insects and beetles. Try and have something in flower every month – even in winter. Almost anything you plant that flowers between September and March will be particularly valuable to bees. Shrubs such as Mahonia ‘Charity’, Virburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ and Lonicera fragrantissima (winter honeysuckle), which flower in the depths of winter, will also fill your garden with the loveliest scent. The winter-flowering Clematis cirrhosa ‘Jingle Bells’ is not only a useful evergreen climber but also has a lemony fragrance and flowers from Christmas through to March. It is best planted in a sheltered spot near a path or gateway where you can enjoy the fragrance. Hellebores, grape hyacinths, winter aconites and crocuses also provide essential nectar and pollen when not much else is in flower in late winter/early spring.

If you have a boundary to define, ask yourself if you really need to put up that fence. Instead, it’s much better to plant hedges to provide shelter, habitat and nesting sites for birds, plus cover for small mammals and wildlife corridors. If there is a wire fence in addition to a hedge, don’t forget to ensure that you make gaps to enable wildlife to move around and link habitats. Planting climbers can also provide nesting sites for smaller birds like wrens and robins high up away from predators. Small trees like Arbutus unedo (strawberry tree) or crab apple Malus ‘Evereste’ will give you wonderful all year-round interest as well as being great for bees, and blackbirds will appreciate the little fruits in autumn and through winter.

A compost bin, no matter how small, is essential as it is environmentally friendly, turning your garden waste into compost to mulch and enrich your garden soil, as well as providing a habitat for a wide range of insects, invertebrates and slowworms. Last summer, bumblebees were nesting in my compost bin and I seem to have a permanent colony of slowworms living in there. Ensure that you are not too hasty in tidying and clearing your garden in autumn and, instead, leave dried leaves for insects – and maybe even hedgehogs – to overwinter in until late spring. Making bug hotels, buying readymade ones to put up on a south-facing wall for masonry bees or leaving a pile of sticks somewhere are also small ways to help in any size of garden. Leaving seed heads over winter also helps small birds like goldfinches – they love the seeds of Verbena bonariensis!

If you can find the space, a pond is invaluable for wildlife and it is amazing how quickly a new pond is colonised by pond skaters, newts, frogs, dragonfly and damselfly larvae. It doesn’t have to be huge, and waterlilies can help prevent it from becoming stagnant. It is a good idea to include a shallower shelf for marginal plants and make sure you include stones, branches or a small wooden ramp so wildlife can get in and out.

Go on, make your garden more wildlife-friendly and challenge yourself not to use any pesticides or slug pellets ever again. Hold your nerve and let nature do the work!