News from the gardening world
Monty Don and charities demand government ends damaging peat extraction, writes Ian Hodgson
The continued harvesting of peat for use in potting composts is a form of ‘environmental vandalism’, says Monty Don. So much so, the Gardeners' World presenter and organic gardener has teamed with environmental, heritage and horticultural charities to demand the government legislates to stop the use of peat in growing media products in five years.
“There is no garden, however beautiful, that justifies the scale of environmental damage or contribution to climate change that peat use causes. The extraction of peat for horticultural use is an act of environmental vandalism,” said Monty. “Ten years ago, the government announced the intention to halt all retail peat by 2020 and all horticultural peat use by 2030.
A total ban
“The retail sector and horticultural trade have fallen grievously short of those modest targets. The time has come for government and Parliament to impose a total ban on all peat production and sales. It’s time for all the various elements of the horticultural trade to come together to provide and promote the existing alternative growing media for both amateur and professional use.”
Organisations involved in penning the open letter to Environment Secretary George Eustice include the National Trust, the Royal Horticultural Society, Garden Organic, Friends of the Earth, The Wildlife Trusts, Plantlife International, the RSPB, CPRE The Countryside Charity and the Wildlife & Countryside Link. The group call for a total ban on peat in compost – on its extraction within the UK, its import, export, and sale – in both the retail and professional sectors by 2025.
As reported in last week’s GN, the main stumbling block to the rollout of a national peat-free strategy is a sustainable and consistent supply of quality raw materials to make potting composts. These are variously produced from coir, which has to be imported, wood fibre and bark from forestry and composted green waste from trade and domestic sources.
Greater investment
The huge shortfall had already been highlighted by the Growing Media Association. Acknowledging the pivotal importance of the issue, lobbyists want greater government investment in the UK horticultural industry to fund research and development, particularly in processing household compostable waste and sustainably making peat alternatives more widely available. Industry currently competes for wood fibre with power industry companies, who receive a subsidy for the product.
The peat-free group would like to see a more equitable market for all players, with more trees specifically planted for wood fibre and investment in the agricultural use of suitable degraded wetland habitats to help generate fibre and other biomass materials.
“We eagerly await the publication of the government’s England Peat Strategy and hope it will contain mandatory measures, or a consultation on measures, to bring an end to the use of peat as a growing medium by 2025 at the very latest,” said the group.
of wild organisms, not just on their survival but on their evolution itself,” said Professor Martin Stevens of the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter, who carried out the study in partnership with the Kunming Institute of Botany (Chinese Academy of Sciences). “Many plants seem to use camouflage to hide from herbivores – but here we see camouflage evolving in response to human collectors.”