Green Fingers - Sustainable Southwater
One of the more positive aspects of the lockdown has been the impact on our gardens. People everywhere with the smallest plot of garden, or, in some cases, a sunny windowsill or balcony, have been discovering the joys of growing things and the wonders of wildlife. When the cars and planes stopped, the dawn chorus could be heard. People had time on their hands and they put it to good use. Our gardens have never looked better.
Ironically, getting up close to nature and all our enthusiastic gardening in the modern world means there’s also a downside for the environment: Plastic. Pots, seed trays, black sheeting, watering cans, plant tags, netting, compost bags, bubble wrap, ties… According to the RHS website there are about 500 million plastic pots in circulation; only a third of rigid plastic is recycled; plastic can only be recycled 7-9 times before it becomes too weak to reuse; plastic plant pots take more than 450 years to break down. Phew!
There are things we can do to reduce this sea of plastic. Newbridge Nurseries have a collection point for recycling plastic pots (clean please!). Experiment with cardboard loo roll tubes or newspaper to make pots for seedlings. Line hanging baskets with jute or coconut matting (or try an old towel!). Use woollen ties. If you feed fat balls to the birds, buy them without netting (not only less plastic but birds can get tangled in them). For more tips and ideas, visit the RHS website and look for “How to go Plastic Free in Your Garden”.
Making your own compost is a great way to use up kitchen scraps and save money on plastic sacks of compost from the garden centre. An added bonus is knowing it’s free of peat, the harvesting of which is causing huge damage to the environment. Or consider a wormery: One of these will turn kitchen waste into a useful form of compost and also a highly nutritious, chemical free liquid fertiliser that can be used on your garden/pots/tubs. By making your own fertiliser you are saving on all the plastic spray bottles that commercially produced fertilisers would normally come in, and again you are saving money. Funnily enough, the best way to garden for wildlife and nature is to just stop gardening! “Rewilding” is now a thing and Knepp Estate in Shipley have been blazing a trail in letting nature run free.
The newly unkempt acres have recorded visits from turtle doves, peregrines and nightingales. And this spring, for the first time in hundreds of years, they have storks nesting there again. Not everyone has the space (or the inclination) to rewild their gardens. But there might be a corner somewhere, (behind the shed maybe?) where the weeds (ahem - wildflowers!!) can be left alone to see what happens. And check there’s a bit of space under the fence somewhere so that hedgehogs can get through and eat your slugs for you. You never know, the free time your new not-gardening approach leaves you can be spent just sitting and listening to the bees and the birdsong.