Carol Klein encourages us all to do our bit in the garden to help fight climate change
Together, our gardens can play their part in the climate change fight
The festive season has never been more appreciated than this year. Our thoughts during 2020 have been overwhelmed by Covid-19. For many of us who are lucky enough to have a garden – about 87 per cent of all households – gardening has been a solace. You can lose yourself gardening, get to a place where it’s just you and the plants and the earth. For many of us 2020 has been a surreal year, but gardening puts us in touch with reality.
As we moved into the year we’re just about to leave, climate change had become a hot topic, hot being the operative word. It has been pushed into second place by the virus and so, too, have all its ramifications: homelessness, poverty, unemployment, loneliness and our ailing health care system. But in some ways it’s made us more aware of the fragility of our planet. In fact, the earth is strong – it’s just our relationship with it that’s in question and our existence on it in the future. We don’t know yet whether we’re going to be able to do what needs doing, not to save the planet – the world will go on turning – but to save our place here.
These are weighty questions but far from feeling powerless we can all do our bit in our own small way and, taken together, our gardens can play their part. Far from being irksome, helping your garden make a positive contribution is highly pleasurable and rewarding. Taken together, our gardens span an enormous area covering more than 10 million acres.
Our gardens can be a huge plus. Not only can they be wildlifefriendly but they can help mitigate the loss of habitat that mechanised agriculture has caused. We don’t all have to turn our plots into ‘wild gardens’ either. Just respecting the soil and gardening organically without chemicals makes a huge difference.
Glebe Cottage was our first real garden. It didn’t take long for the garden to establish its own balance. As I wrote the other week, our soil is all important and looking after it is the number one priority. We’re all aware of how important cutting emissions to counter the effects of global warming is. We know that trees and other plants absorb carbon dioxide and pump out oxygen, but the soil in which they grow is also a carbon sump. Soil plays at least as big a part as air, yet our soil is disappearing and becoming impoverished. Without soil, none of our food could be produced. It’s precious stuff. A quarter of all animal species on earth live underground and it’s just as vital to look after them as the wildlife we can see.
Our gardens give us such pleasure so it’s time to celebrate the wonder of soil and all it gives us. Happy Christmas everyone and here’s to an optimistic New Year in our gardens!
MONDAY All our tender salvias are under cover now and have had any flowers removed.
Since most of the flowers are at the end of stems, cu ing them off induces lateral growth, and in late January these li le shoots will have more vigour and plants can be raided for cu ings.
TUESDAY Time for some apple pruning. Cu ing back as much of the new growth that can be reached to two or three buds. It may take some time and we’ll get the ladder out to see whether or not I can do the job thoroughly.
WEDNESDAY Emptying the copper bath by the back door, I’m astonished to see how the dahlias have made the most of their salubrious surroundings. The size of their tubers has doubled, or even trebled, in a few short months.
THURSDAY We’re having a ‘mulch-athon’. Gradually tall grasses and perennials in shades of biscuit from pale Rich Tea to deepest Digestive are being cut back and giving way to the rich dark chocolate of leaf mould and compost.
FRIDAY Although the last of the beetroot would probably survive in the ground, we’re lifting them, twisting off their leaves so they don’t bleed, and plunging them in sand in buckets. Meanwhile I’m sowing more in modules.
SATURDAY Our native hedge has grown prodigiously this year since Dean laid it last winter. Consequently its leaves, last to drop, have made a thick carpet below its branches but rather than pick up the leaves, we’re leaving them to mulch themselves. Plants that grow along the hedgerow, sweet rocket and foxgloves, can fend for themselves.
SUNDAY We might bring the hydrangeas still growing in big pots into the tunnel. In the ground they’re as tough as can be, but any plant is more prone to frost damage in a container. We’ll pot them on in spring and hopefully a few will go to our daughter Alice’s new garden in London.