Saturday 22 April is the 53rd Earth Day, to encourage us to think about environmental protection.
While your garden may be green in colour, you may be surprised at how environmentally unfriendly some common gardening products and practices can be.
Here are four ways in which you might be able to make your outside space even greener.
Take care of bees (and wasps)
The UK is home to more than 270 species of bee. All are threatened by habitat loss and the use of pesticide sprays to control other garden problems. Take care of all the bees that might visit your garden by making the shift to organic gardening.
Avoid quick-fix solutions on the supermarket and garden centre shelves and choose brightly coloured flowers instead.
You can also leave patches of your garden untouched, and leave dead or dying plants in the garden to provide spaces for them to nest.
Wasps are important too. Some even eat aphids, helping keep your roses and tomato plants alive wihout needing pesticides.
Seed bedding plants
Flowering plants such as marigolds, sunflowers, begonias and geraniums will brighten up even the smallest pot or container.
While it can be tempting to buy ready-grown plants, consider growing your own summer flowers from seed. You’ll find seed packets are a similar price to fully grown plants but you’ll get 10 times the number. Hardy annuals and half hardy annuals have a good chance of self-seeding.
Switch to peat-free compost
Peat is a non renewable resource.
The environment peat is harvested from is a fragile ecosystem that has shrunk over time as tonnes of the material have been used for our gardening pleasure.
Dalefoot makes compost from recycled sheeps wool and bracken. Some of its profits are invested into restoring peat bogs.
Ditch plastic pots
Plant pots, labels and trays for transporting plants are often made of plastic that can’t be recycled.
If you’re ordering plants online, find out how plants will be packaged. Lots of smaller mail-order nurseries put plants in straw and cardboard to cut plastic use.
