Left to its own devices, Sphagnum fallax, together with a large number of close relatives, will form dense mats of plants on wet ground and become deep peat bogs. These bogs create a habitat for a vast number of creatures, the most prominent of which are dragonflies and frogs but there are literally thousands of others, mostly microscopic.
The peat bogs that sphagnum mosses dominate have imaginatively been described as Britain’s equivalent of the Amazon rainforest. Sphagnums are at least as important as trees in storing carbon because when the plants die they sink and become the familiar black peat, locking up carbon for hundreds, often thousands of years.
The mosses hold up to eight times their own weight in water, curtailing floods. They also work to filter water as it enters streams helping aquatic life such as salmon and trout thrive.
So it is ironic that it is the British love of gardening that is destroying these mosses by growers using peat as soil to grow our favourite plants. A voluntary code by nurseries and gardeners to phase out peat is not working.
By continuing to use peat in vast quantities, the horticulture industry is helping to alter the climate and kill the gardens their customers are trying to create.
