UK gardeners unite! How we can help save the planet

Caroline caused quite a stir last week with her take on the RHS State of Gardening Report which showed ‘collectively our gardens are a nationally important habitat that we need to recognise’.

To encourage us to get curious about how our gardens contribute so much, Francis Tophill will be designing an RHS Chelsea Flower Garden with the Kings Foundation supported by two of the King’s gardening pals, Alan Titchmarsh and Sir David Beckham (steady everyone…!)

Ahead of this we have some garden tweaks we can all do to help (and not one of them involves fields of nettles, or creating acres of native woodland…)

I think the point is that we do NOT have to go all let-it-all-hang-out scruffy in our gardens in order to support our precious wildlife. 

Enabling biodiversity

The key to the whole Looking After the Planet she-bang is the importance of nurturing biodiversity. In simple terms, all the big organisms need all the little organisms, and all the little organisms need the tiny organisms, and so on. Human beings have been depressingly adept at messing up that balance, and it’s up to everyone to find it again.

Here’s a boggling fact – One teaspoonful of healthy soil holds between 100 million and 1 billion microorganisms (fungi, bacteria, protozoa, miles of fungal filaments etc.). Now that’s biodiversity! And all those critters in the soil support all other landlife on the planet, so it follows that we must look after it, doesn’t it?

Could you compost green kitchen waste a bit more, use organic mulch; use recycling bins more often, consider no-dig ideas, or use ‘chop-n-drop’ (cutting up old stems of plants and then dropping them back on the border surface to rot and provide organic matter to other plants)?   

A varied palette of annuals, perennials, climbers, shrubs and trees is the most likely environment to support the biodiversity we’re seeking.

Native plants will have evolved unique relationships with local fauna over millennia but there are lots of non-native plants rich in nectar and pollen that can extend the feeding season for pollinators – think of fuschias, hebes, single-flowered dahlias, sedums……..

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All very jolly from Elaine but I advocate taking a much more scientific approach (love that she’s looking for bacteria in the soil with a hand magnifying glass – bless! )

Discover and nurture what you have

The RHS Report has elevated us from being dotty old gardeners to nationally important habitat managers so we need to take a more structured approach. Take birdlife for example, the first thing to do is to create a baseline of what you have already got, so download the free Merlin birdsong App and take a walk around your garden at dawn and dusk (peak times of the day for singing) for a week. I guarantee you’ll have a pleasant surprise; many birds are secretive and you may not be visually aware of their presence in the undergrowth of your garden habitat.

Once you have a list, research the diet of each bird species and carry out an audit of your garden to ensure you’re providing this. Holly, hawthorn and ivy for the berry-eaters (blackbirds, thrushes, fieldfares and redwings) . Teasels, sunflower heads, spent herbaceous and annual flowers for the seed-eaters (blue tits, great tits, goldfinches) and lots of rotting wood for the insectivores (wrens, robins and tree creepers)

And also think ahead to spring when your birds’ dietary needs are going to escalate through the need to feed their young a high protein diet. For many birds this will come in the form of caterpillars, particularly those of moths.

So make sure your garden has plenty of evening-scented plants. An inspection of the sarcococca in flower at the moment revealed a plethora of winter moths. These are the ones that lay their eggs in the bark of trees, ready for their caterpillars to emerge with the young tree leaves and feed all those young chicks.

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I note my sisters’ tone of amazement in the intro, that many of you found my post interesting (albeit only because of the topic 🙄). It has, however, goaded them into writing some quite interesting stuff themselves.

Leaving things alone

During our lifetime so many harmful habits and products have been introduced and proved popular but are now virtually banned such as glyphosate or peat-based compost, (plus sun-beds and cigarettes, sigh). Everything is changing.

Like scrap metal and country music, caterpillars and larvae have catapulted up the list of things on which we now place real value. Basically, no creepy crawlies, no food chain, no pollination, no human race.

So when you see cabbage white butterfly caterpillars chomping on your end-of-season nasturtium leaves, or sawfly larvae on your Solomon’s seal, it might actually be a moment to invite your friends round to marvel at the spectacle. Leave a rotting tree stump in the ground and you’ll be amazed at how many small creatures will love it, such as the fab stag beetle in our feature pic.

Any kind of water, piles of stones, bird boxes, bat boxes, bee hotels, or just a patch of longer grass – they will all lure the bugs in.

On the subject of habitat, let’s toughen up about wasp nests. They don’t actively go for you unless you attack them, so if you don’t have an allergy to stings, why not let them be?  They have an important role in the garden (however the BBC’s claim they can be trained to detect explosives and drugs, stretches the imagination. See link at the end).

Let’s all be more curious about what a garden can do for wildlife – and don’t forget to get the children and grandchildren involved too.

Let’s use this RHS State of Gardening report to galvanise our own choices and support the future of gardens in our society. Who knows, alongside our re-adoption of paper packaging, we might see a revival of Joanna Lumley’s garden bridge proposal in London, and maybe ask Sir David Beckham to open it. Wouldn’t that be ab fab!

This is the link to the wasp force!

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Pretty and useful, Louise recommends letting this little hardy annual seed itself about in damp, shady places to reduce your grocery bills and boost your vitamin intake. This is why it’s her Great Plant this Month.

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If you missed it, here is the link to Caroline’s summary last week of the RHS Report on the State of Gardening.

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To hear more about Laura’s recommended germ-busting Finches Friend bird feeders read her blog post about it here.