The Full Monty
War, financial recession and increasing energy prices are never welcome but perhaps there is a bright side for gardeners, says Monty
This world is changing so fast that magazine lead times make fools of us all. Last week’s events are history and this morning’s news is old hat. Yet for all that fluster there are slow trends that will not easily shift or alter. Some, like the rhythm and roll of the seasons, are increasingly essential to our wellbeing and even sanity, but others are less profound and less good for us. I fear that the slow pulse of financial recession and hardship is one of these.
Energy costs have doubled and will not come down in a hurry. This affects every corner of our lives and spills outside into the garden. I heat two greenhouses with electricity, along with two heated propagating benches, light two with electricity and heat the big greenhouse with gas. Other sheds where I overwinter bigger plants such as bananas are heated and lit too. Deliveries bring goods all the time and although we propagate as much as possible, nevertheless we still buy lots of plants every year. In short, Longmeadow is run on oil in some form or other.
Every aspect of commercial plant production, from plastic pots, the costs of nurserymen and women going to work, and the delivery of plants now costs more. Inevitably this has to be passed onto customers if people are not to go out of business – and some, probably old, longstanding, wonderfully idiosyncratic and knowledgeable family firms, are bound to do just that. The long and short of it to you and me is that plants in every form, from a packet of seeds to a large architectural plant and all points between, are becoming significantly more expensive.
How will that change our gardens? At this time of year, as we approach midsummer, not a huge amount. Many of us will have done most of our plant shopping for the season and those of us with greenhouses have either raised most of our own plants or do not need extra heat to do so. But these extra costs are not going to go away in a hurry and I, for one, would struggle to keep many key garden plants alive without heating over winter. I would also have to radically change the way that I raise plants in spring without heat for germination and heating to protect young seedlings. We had temperatures down to -5° this April and climate change or not, -10° is very possible, if increasingly rare in winter.
Sixty years ago most perennial plants were raised outside and sold bare root, ordered and delivered by post. It would use a lot less energy but I wonder if we could happily go back to that. Perhaps we have to regard most bananas, tender salvias, cannas, citrus, olives and other tender plants as a luxury that we literally cannot afford, not because we cannot buy them but because for half the year it will cost an increasing fortune just to keep them alive. I suspect that cheaper annuals that cheer us up will still sell but more expensive plants that take more time and protection with corresponding use of energy will price themselves out of gardeners’ pockets.
But no clouds are without silver linings. All change, good and bad, leads to adaption and perhaps the increase in oil prices will hasten the development of sustainability and to changes such as the demise of plastic in our gardens, and speed up the development of viable alternatives. Climate change has been the cloud building on the horizon for decades now and the more local horrors such as Ukraine merely add to the urgency of doing something about it.
I have often paid lip service to the virtues of outdoor seedbeds but, other than occasional half-hearted forays, have not really raised much this way for decades. Perhaps it is time to do what was completely normal in my parents’ garden and raise all hardy annuals, all brassicas, alliums and most biennials outside in a seedbed. It would save on much pricking out and potting on, potting compost, plastic seed trays, greenhouse and cold-frame space and energy, and have the underestimated virtue of the plants establishing a strong symbiotic connection with the ecosystem of the soil from the outset.
Life is going to get tougher. Forced change can feel like loss, but the garden might just hold a model for how we can use that to adapt and change the way we do things rather than what we do, to make ourselves more resilient.
Perhaps the increase in oil prices will hasten the development of sustainability