WE’VE ALL GONE WILD!

I was a half- hearted organic gardener 25 years ago. By this I mean that I was enthusiastically organic when it suited me and was easy, but occasionally resorted to glyphosate weedkillers and slug pellets when I felt overwhelmed or wanted a quick-fix solution. But around 1997 I became completely and non- negotiably organic and have remained so ever since – and my garden has never been healthier. Slugs and snails barely cause any problem at all, weeds are manageable and we have a large population of birds, insects, amphibians and mammals that greedily predate on most of our potential ‘ pests’.

I have not used any form of peat for even longer, as I feel that being part of the destruction of peat bogs is unacceptable and find that coir, bark composts and leaf mould make a more than adequate replacement.

But all this has depended upon an attitude and certain growing techniques that were once considered either hippyish or plain bad horticulture. Trade and the establishment proclaimed that it was impossible to grow good plants without peat, and an enthusiastic use of chemicals was seen as part of a good gardener’s skills. Nowadays the RHS and

National Trust do not use peat at all, and the need to do everything we can to encourage wildlife and a natural, self-sustaining balance to our gardens is generally accepted as the intelligent way to go.

To this end, we now encourage long grass, patches of stinging nettles, wildlife ponds with good marginal cover, piles of wood and leaves tucked away for winter habitats, bug houses for insects and leaving as many seed heads and stems as possible over winter – all for the benefit of our garden’s wildlife. Sales of bird

food have gone up hugely compared to a quarter of a century ago and I know from my own experience that huge pleasure is to be had from watching birds come to a winter table to feed.

This has been the easy part of our growing environmental awareness and the role gardeners have to play. Rather harder is the question of climate change. Gardeners are in the front line of this, as relatively small changes have a real and demonstrable effect on every back garden. Blossom is appearing earlier – sometimes to our delight but also when pollinating insects are not so abundant. Summers are getting drier, winters wetter. Extreme weather ‘events’ such as wind, rain, flood and drought are becoming more frequent. None of these issues are going to go away and almost certainly all will get more pronounced and affect our gardens more directly over the next 25 years.

Gardeners are now encouraged to make their plots wildlife friendly