Wildlife Gardening
The bare necessity
Earth - it’s just the most fundamental element on
our planet. At best rich, dark and full of nutrients, at worst dust dry
or claggy and unworkable. Globally it makes the difference between health
and starvation, prosperity and poverty.
But what of the earth in your garden? In the Western Daily Press area
there are many different soil types - most of us will find that our gardens
are clay soil based - a legacy of tidal inundation - or free draining
and loamy if you live along the bottom of the Mendip ridges, or dry and
stony on the top. Whatever the natural soil type of your area, if you’re
planning on gardening with it you will need to feed it. Growing plants
and vegetables uses up soil’s natural nutrients so these need to
be replaced regularly if the earth is to remain fertile. The concept is
not new to us, but how we address it does need to be looked at. A majority
of gardeners in the UK are regulars at their local garden centre, buying
compost and fertilizer products. STOP. These are not needed, and for the
wildlife garden are certainly not desirable.
We’ve covered the ‘ideal’ of creating a natural balance
in the garden before, and the issue of earth nutrition is a key part of
this balance. Up to 50% of the household rubbish that goes into landfill
is organic and could be composted. That’s half of all the thousands
of tonnes of waste being dumped at the expense of our natural habitats
and wildlife - it doesn’t need to be. It could be gently rotted
down and used in the gardens of the people who created it, enriching their
soil naturally.
Fifty years ago just about every household in the UK had a compost bin,
but for a variety of reasons composting fell out of fashion. Today however,
as our awareness of waste levels and environmental issues increases, it
is happily making a come back … to the benefit of people and wildlife
everywhere.
In reality composting is cheap and easy. If you want a plastic compost
bin you can probably get one for as little as £5.00 from the local
council. Then all you need to do is put in your organic kitchen and garden
waste, give it a little time and - voila - rich, fertile compost
ideal for improving soil structure and providing essential nutrients for
plants. It’s safe for wildlife, as opposed to many chemical fertilizers,
and compost bins themselves also make a great habitat for woodlice, ants,
millipedes, slow worms and hibernating toads.
Making your own compost bin
Choose a sheltered spot in the garden and clear a patch of bare soil.
Use any old large container, eg. pallets tied into a box shape or large
tyres tied together. Mount on bricks or pavers, or broken branches to
allow air to circulate. Start to fill with organic waste - ideally
one part kitchen waste to four parts garden waste for effective decomposition.
The more you put in at once, the quicker it composts - it may even
heat up! Add compost activators such as chicken manure or grass cuttings
to get it going. Don’t put in meat or fish scraps, animal mess,
coal ash, or roots of persistent weeds. Keep your compost warm and moist
by laying an old carpet on top and watering it if it is dry. If your heap
is soggy or smelly add more tough, dry stuff. If your bin allows turn
it regularly to allow air to circulate, as this will speed up the process.
Your compost is ready to use when it is well rotted down and looks like
soil - allow about eight weeks in the summer and up to four months in
the winter. Dig it into the soil during spring. Ideally make two bins
so that fresher waste goes into one while older waste is left to ripen
in the other.
Recycling other household waste
- Make seed trays from plastic food boxes - perforate
the base for drainage
- Polystyrene packaging is ideal for growing seedlings
as it insulates the roots
- Use yoghurt pots for potting on seedlings
- Surface garden paths with bark chippings
- Don’t burn branches, leaves or logs. Create a ‘mini beast’ hotel instead - great hide outs for ground beetles, slow worms, hedgehogs, toads and frogs
Contact your local council to find out if they sell subsidised compost
bins or have community composting schemes.
For more information about composting and waste minimisation contact
Friends of the Earth - www.foe.co.uk,
Henry Doubleday Research Association - www.henrydoubleday.org
or Wastewatch - www.wastewatch.org.uk
 |
dark, rich and mythical... |
| West
Garden Survey Help us find out about the region's wildlife by watching your garden over the summer months. We've teamed up with the Western Daily Press to organise this survey see their website for details |
| Articles in this series |
| Making
room for wildlife A year in the wildlife garden |
| The
wildflower garden Go chemical free! |
| The
water garden Help us eradicate pond pests |
| The
night garden Midsummer magic |
| Weeds
of mass domination American connections |
| Love
your creepy-crawlies Home sweet home |
| Childs
play Treasure trove |
| Eternal
sunshine of the wildlife garden Devils darning needles |
| The
bare necessity For peats sake |
Dark, rich and almost mythical in it’s heat and life giving properties,
peat is under threat … or rather the peat bogs it comes from, which
are amongst the most important and valuable wildlife habitats in the UK.
Peat bogs are home to many important species of birds, thousands of rare
insects and a wealth of unusual plants. But 94% of the UK’s natural
peat bogs has been destroyed, with gardeners responsible for 70% of this
destruction - not directly, but in buying peat-based products for
their gardens.
What’s special about peat is that it grows in a living bog with
plants on the surface, such as sphagnum mosses, bog cotton and heathers.
When these die they don’t rot away because the ground is waterlogged,
instead they form peat. However to extract this rich, precious substance
a bog is drained and the surface stripped of vegetation, a process which
kills the bog. And once destroyed, they are gone forever.
But it is easy to go peat-free in the garden - famous gardens such
as Highgrove and the Natural History Museum garden do not use any peat
or chemicals. A wide range of peat-free composts are on sale for use in
garden centres and many stores have taken the positive step of refusing
to sell composts made from peat, or plants grown in it.
But this does not go far enough and there is much you can do to help save
our precious peat bogs and the wildlife that depends on them. Buy peat-free
compost or, even better, make your own. Ask your local garden centre for
a copy of its peat policy and ask specifically for plants grown in peat-free
compost.
Supporting your local Wildlife Trust will also help, as the Wildlife Trusts
have been involved in campaigning for peatland conservation since 1990,
and have been managing and protecting peatland sites for much longer.
Fourteen wildlife trusts have lowland raised bogs in their areas, including
Somerset. A copy of 'For Peat's Sake, where to buy peat-free products'
, which tells you about peat-free products and how you can make a difference
for peatland conservation can be downloaded from the Wildlife Trust’s
website at www.wildlifetrusts.org
