Carol Klein gives her top tips on how to make your patch more sustainable
Here's some handy hints and tips on how you can make your patch more sustainable
Here at Glebe Cottage we do whatever we can to make our garden sustainable. Much of its life revolves around our compost heap and our leaf mould heap, both built from material straight from the garden. Improving your soil and providing mulching material cuts down on watering and labour.
Perhaps the biggest part of making any garden sustainable is to grow your own plants. If you raise your own plants from seeds, cuttings or by dividing plants already in the garden, not only are they costing little or nothing, but there are also none of the energy-using resources involved in commercial plant production: transport costs, heating and energy bills, land and manpower.
So how can we make our own gardens more sustainable? Cut down on water by mulching and initially choosing plants that need less water. Beth Chatto’s gravel garden is the best example of a water-saving garden – they just don’t use any, and have chosen plants that survive even in drought conditions. Collecting rainwater is hugely important, too. A water butt and guttering and drainpipes that can harvest all the water that falls on your roof is ideal. Sometimes when we know we’re going to have heavy rain, we put out every bowl and bucket available to collect as much rainwater as possible. After a deluge we don’t need this on the garden but we can use it in the greenhouse and polytunnel.
Plastic pots can – and should be – reused wherever possible. We’ve probably got more of them than most people since we used to run a nursery, but most of them have been used over and over again; the same goes for our module trays.
We use newspaper rolls for starting sweet peas or peas themselves, or toilet roll middles.
And you can make a module tray by simply dividing a cardboard box, a cut-down shoebox or a shallow cardboard tray from the supermarket. Divide it up with interlaced strips of cardboard and fill with compost. If you prick out individual seedlings while in these compartments, they’ll have little or no root disturbance when you move them on when you come to potting them up. And when you’ve finished with the cardboard, put it on the compost heap.
If you must buy new pots try to ensure they’re recyclable plastic or made from biodegradable material. Clay pots are the best recyclable pots; they can be used repeatedly. Some of the pots we use here must be at least 100 years old. Clay pots have other advantages too; cuttings always seem to make root faster in a clay pot – after all, they’re made from earth.
Save your own seed wherever you can and swap seed with neighbours or friends and family. Plant at least one tree or a hedge to release oxygen and store carbon. Cut out fossil fuels and the machinery that uses them wherever you can. Grow
organically and cut out chemicals. Artificial fertilisers use vast amounts of natural resources and contribute nothing to soil health. In agriculture, thanks to massive over-use of chemicals, our soil is less and less fertile and productive.
None of these measures taken individually will make much difference, but if all of us try our best to make our gardens as self-sustaining as possible we can improve matters. There are around 27 million of us who partake in gardening to a greater or lesser extent and what we do – and how we garden – matters.
'Plastic pots should be reused wherever possible... most of ours have been used over and over again'