Ditch your spade, forget fertiliser, listen to the weeds: Alys Fowler’s guide to laid-back gardening17/5/2023 The Guardian, Alys Fowler. Wed 10 May 2023 Itching to whip your flowerbeds or veg patch into shape now spring has finally arrived? Not so fast! Life’s much easier when yAou work with nature rather than against it
fter almost 30 years of gardening, several of those at fine institutions such as the Royal Horticultural Society and Kew Gardens, I’ve realised that much of what I was taught is, if not wrong, not exactly on the mark either. All that laboured effort – the weeding, the fertilising, the digging, the tending and pruning, the selecting and conforming – it’s not working. Not for the plants, the soil or the community around them, which includes you and me. Indigenous cultures everywhere have based their practices on observing and honouring the ecology, while we in the “developed world” wrote down our rules. Our attempt to control nature has perpetuated poor relations with all the beings in the garden, turning everything into some sort of battle, or endless regimes whether that’s mowing, hoeing, watering or attacking some critter. It is a lot of work and these days way more than I am prepared to put in. Now spring is finally unfurling, this growing season, perhaps rather than going to work in our gardens, we could all relax a little, spend more time looking and listening, waiting rather than reacting, being in the garden as much as actively gardening. Here is how it’s done. Throw out your spade If you are even faintly interested in gardening you will have heard of “no dig”, in which you eschew your spade and take up a hoe instead. Rather than turning the soil, a structure that has been hundreds of millions of years in the making and thus has thought long and hard about which way up it should be, you lightly hoe or “tickle” the soil to remove any unwanted weeds and leave its multitudes of microbes, fungi and insects intact, exactly where they want to be. Happy microbes make for happy plant roots, better able to take up nutrients, fight off pests and diseases and withstand drought. As you keep doing it, there will be fewer weeds to remove. Every soil has its weed seed bank: the adage goes one year’s seed is seven years of weed, but actually it’s more like decades for several of them. They are there not to annoy you, but to act as a lifejacket to the soil. Exposed, weed-free soil is very easily damaged or eroded by the weather: the sun bakes it, the wind harries, the rain pelts it, either compacting it or if a deluge comes, causing run-off. Again, those several million years of evolution weren’t a system sitting still, but advancing to a point of self-resilience. The vast majority of weed seeds need light to germinate. The more you disturb the soil, forking it over, digging things up, the more light you let in and the more the soil has to rush to protect itself. It flushes its weed-seed bank as a protective coat to hold the system together. Ease off weeding ‘Every weed in your garden is trying to tell you something very important.’ Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian Talking of weeds, it’s time we ditched the word altogether. Even the Chelsea flower show is rebranding weeds as “hero plants”. Perhaps we can talk of them as common folk or elders (they’ve been around a lot longer than us), because every weed in your garden is trying to tell you something very important. The more one type dominates, the louder the sermon is. Dandelions are saying your soil is a little compact, low on surface nutrients, particularly calcium and potassium; nettles tell you there is too much surface nitrogen (not as good as it sounds). A flurry of annual weeds – bittercress, chickweed and mouse weeds – say your soil is dominated by bacteria, while thistles, docks, green alkanets and comfrey are another sign that the surface is a little low on nutrients and only those with long tap roots to mine the sub-soil layer can thrive. Brambles tend to proliferate where there is excessive nitrogen, but the land has been left alone so they can take better hold. There is some evidence, though, that they have a potential role in the natural regeneration of tree seedlings: deer won’t browse in the middle of a bramble thicket and in a woodland this means the tree seedlings won’t get nibbled, while the mycorrhizal fungi will tap into the woodland network to boost the seedlings with enough growth to make it up and out of the thicket. Once you start looking into the ecology of anything that we flippantly call a weed, you will discover that it is key in recycling nutrients, providing food in the form of nectar and pollen for all manner of insects, in all manner of weather. And not just for pollinators, but also for things such as leaf miners that turn into micro-moths, and flies that turn into food for hungry mouths reaching out of the nest, which turn into food for raptors flying high above. “I know,” I hear you cry. Of course you do, but I bet you still go out weeding when you don’t have to. Many of these common folk arrive to help the soil out. If you ease back on the weeding (you will still have to intervene sometimes), and instead pay attention to the soil, many of the common folk will quite quickly become occasional folk instead. Annual ones are a sign that the soil has become bacterially dominated, having evolved from alluvial flood plains to meadows to fields, and thriving in the company of bacteria. They do not thrive in the fungally dominated soils of woodlands. Fungi thrive in soil rich in carbon because that is what they eat. If you have too many annual weeds, add more carbon to your soil in the form of bulky homemade compost, cardboard (could be shredded, could be laid down as a sheet, could be added to your home composting), or brown leaves (you don’t even have to make leaf mould). You don’t have to dig it in – the worms will incorporate it all into the soil. That is, if you gave up your spade because one of the biggest threats to earthworms is our habit of ploughing and digging, partly because if you are chopped in half, you don’t regrow, and because worm tunnels have their own beautiful architecture that supports the soil, but not if they have collapsed. Embrace rot and death So, we have thrown away the spade, considerably loosened up on weeding; now it is time to relinquish tidying up. We all do it, remove a yellowing or nibbled leaf, sweep up the spent leaves and pick up sticks, prune out the dead and dying. In part because the idea was that all this material would harbour slugs, other pests and diseases. It might, but one soul’s pest is another’s supper. It is true slugs rather love a pile of damp, slightly rotting leaves, but so do the beetles that hunt them. This story is played out over and over again: if one thing proliferates in a natural system something else, sometimes many things, will come to dine on this opportunity, to restore the balance. A garden allowed to find this balance doesn’t have pest or disease problems – it has beings, who are living and dying, sometimes thriving, but rarely at the cost of the whole system. This balancing act takes time, several years or more, but I promise you this: even the slugs settle down. Rotting, disease, pests are just the Earth’s recycling system. It is not a great leap of faith to trust time. Plants have been around far longer than we have been gardening, with plenty of time to work on the nuances of reciprocity. Stop chasing fast growth Ever since the second world war we have been falsely worshipping nitrogen and phosphorus as kings in the fertiliser game. Synthetic fertilisers, a very bad hangover from bomb manufacturing, led us to believe we could rig the system. Using them meant farmers could turn every bit of soil into a field, for a while at least, and it trickled down into how we gardened. There is a much wider debate about excessive fertiliser use, in particular nitrogen, in farming, but that’s largely out of our hands. The garden isn’t. There is no need for manufactured chemicals of any kind here. First, all soils differ but synthetic fertilisers, particularly the kind sold to gardeners, take a one-size-fits-all approach. Regardless of where you are, you apply the same amount of plant food. These synthetic fertilisers don’t stay in situ; they run off. And there is evidence that over time, they can deplete soils of stored carbon, reducing fertility, even if organic matter is still added. In short, if you buy fertilisers you are paying for short-term gains. Homemade compost is free and it will build your soil, helping store carbon and feeding your plants. Even if you make it really badly. Compost in situ No more heavy lifting ... let your soil do the hard work. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian If you want an even more carefree approach, you can do most of your composting without heaving stuff around. Don’t clear away your spent crops, leave the pumpkin stems and leaves, take down the old tomato and bean plants and let everything lie on the soil. You can cover it to speed things up – market gardeners tend to use black plastic for convenience, but cardboard is plentiful, free and easy enough for a small garden. Covered or not, this allows the crop residues to go straight back to where they came from. If you want to plant straight back into the space you just harvested or cleared, try mowing, strimming, shredding or chopping up by hand the spent crops and planting straight into that. It’s quicker, avoids hauling stuff to the compost heap and back and again and makes for wonderful, friable soil. That whole notion about hoeing and raking the soil to make a fine tilth to grow in? Turns out it’s better done by the soil system than your sweat. I’m not suggesting we should give up compost. It is still the best way to deal with household organic matter, be that food waste, paper and cardboard, pet hair, etc. You just don’t need to bring in extra compost or manures especially for your soil, when in- and on-ground methods might get you to a richer soil with less effort and less cost. And if you do bring in compost, never, ever use peat. It is destroying precious peatland habitats that we need for carbon storage, clean water and flood management. Those that live on peat bogs don’t want to live anywhere else, so let us not destroy their home for the idiocies of gardening. Encourage plant promiscuity Finally, let us embrace the diverse, the slightly different, the variable in our flowers and foods. For millennia, we have been selecting and breeding plants so that they benefit us – this is our origin story. But for the longest time this was a laid-back process of letting the pollinators go to work, saving seed, growing on and noticing what worked best for the conditions where you were. It is known, technically, as creating a landrace, an ancient cultivar that is variable, often containing many alleles (forms of genes) that are not present in modern highly bred cultivars. Landrace gardening is the opposite: akin to a plant orgy, you let all your carrot varieties, or whatever it is you are growing, cross-pollinate with each other to create a diverse breeding population. It is a survival strategy that diversifies the gene pool, making it better future-proofed than something highly bred. The result is a beetroot or a bean or flower that is not uniform; as the different alleles play out their expression, so a landrace varies in colour, size, texture and even flavour. Anyone can become a landrace gardener. It’s a fun, five-year-plus experiment that takes very little effort and will reward you with vegetables and flowers that work entirely for your system of growing and your soil. Don’t want to spend all summer watering excessively (can I remind you how hot last summer was)? Breed a leafy green that doesn’t need it. Got poor soil? Breed a potato that loves it. Want a tomato that tastes of something but doesn’t mind a late frost? It’s all possible. Sow all the named varieties that have the characteristics you want, grow them and, with the help of bees promote promiscuity and let them cross- pollinate. Select and save seed from only the ones that do well in your soil. Start again next spring, sowing your saved seed. Up to half of it might not survive, but you’ll have oodles of seed, so it doesn’t matter. Let the pollinators at the new plants, select seeds from the ones that are working and keep going. In a couple of seasons, you can have garlic that is entirely adapted to your soil – it might take a few more years to find that perfect pumpkin or tomato. We don’t know where we are heading as far as our future on this planet is concerned, but we might as well go there prepared with a wide gene pool, in relation with our common folk plants and their communities, in awe of our insects, fascinated by our fungal friends, with our soils and our energy replenished. And like any friendship group, that is best done by hanging out, kicking back and enjoying each other’s company. In all of this I am not advocating giving up on gardening, but shifting the perspective on what needs doing. If the dandelion, dock or bramble isn’t in the way, leave it. If the plant goes down in an orgy of aphids, leave it for some other garden being to clear up. Let plants die in place, learn to watch and observe before you make a move. You’ll see that nature is way more willing to help than cause trouble.
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Woodland cover in Buckinghamshire could increase by 99% if councils and the Government worked together to boost tree planting, environmental campaigners have claimed.
By Thomas Bamford Friday, 4th December 2020, 9:32 am Friends of the Earth is calling on the Government to mark National Tree Week this week by setting ambitious tree growing targets. Friends of the Earth is calling on the Government to mark National Tree Week this week by setting ambitious tree growing targets. The organisation and mapping consultancy Terra Sulis, funded by People’s Postcode Lottery, mapped existing and potential woodland in England. Their research shows that there are 19,390 hectares of land in Buckinghamshire which could be used for planting trees, without encroaching on high-value arable farmland, priority habitats, peat bogs or protected nature sites. This would increase the amount of woodland in the area by 99%, not including trees in urban areas such as parks and public gardens. According to the government’s National Forest Inventory, only 13% of Buckinghamshire’s 156,495 hectares of land are covered in woodland, and there is a potential for 12% more to be added, according to Friends of the Earth. The organisation says much of it is low grade pasture and the Government should support farmers to grow trees on this sort of land. But the National Farmers Union said it was important that tree planting for farmers was voluntary, to avoid negative impacts on their businesses. Nationally, Friends of the Earth claims there is potential to double woodland cover in England, from its current level of 10%. Danny Gross, tree campaigner at Friends of the Earth, said: “We're calling on Forestry Minister Zac Goldsmith to mark National Tree Week by setting an ambitious target to boost tree cover in England. “Growing more trees would help us fight climate breakdown while enabling more people to access nature in their local area. “We need more councils to step up and grow more trees, but it’s time that ministers in Westminster offer more funding for climate action at a local level.” Stuart Roberts, the NFU’s deputy president said: “Maintaining and managing existing trees and hedges, growing bigger hedgerows and planting new ones will play an important part in increasing the carbon stored on farms. “It’s also important to note that farming’s contribution to net zero goes beyond planting trees. “Improving productivity is top of the list when it comes to tackling our own emissions, and the third pillar of our aspiration is boosting renewable energy production and the bioeconomy.” A spokesman for Defra said: “Tree planting remains at the heart of our ambitious environmental programme which is why we have committed to increase tree planting across the UK to 30,000 hectares per year by 2025. “We have already consulted on our England Tree Strategy and announced a £640 million Nature for Climate Fund – which will be vital tools in ensuring we work closely with communities and landowners to accelerate tree planting and meet this ambitious target.” Written by The Guardian, Wed 14 Oct 2020
Autoimmune diseases are rising fast but first experimental study shows nature could help Damian Carrington Environment editor Children whose outdoor play areas were transformed from gravel yards to mini-forests showed improved immune systems within a month, research has shown. The scientists believe this is because the children had developed significantly more diverse microbes on their skin and in their guts than the children whose playgrounds were not upgraded. Across the western world, rates of autoimmune diseases, where the body mistakenly attacks itself, are rising. The diseases include asthma, eczema, type 1 diabetes, inflammatory bowel disease and multiple sclerosis. A leading possible explanation for this trend, called the hygiene hypothesis, is that children are being exposed to far fewer microbes than in the past. This means their immune systems are less challenged and more prone to making mistakes. Previous studies have shown statistical associations between exposure to microbial diversity and the development of a well-functioning immune system. But this is the first study to deliberately change the children’s environment and therefore indicate a causal link. The researchers said their experiment shows it may be possible to improve the development of the immune system with relatively simple changes to the living environments of urban children. The study involved 75 children in two cities in Finland, a relatively small number for a trial. “But when we saw the results, we were very surprised because they were so strong,” said Aki Sinkkonen, at Natural Resources Institute Finland, who led the work. “Our study can pave the way for new preventive practices to cut the global epidemic of immune-mediated diseases.” Sinkkonen said there are similar experimental studies currently taking place elsewhere but their results have not yet been published. His team has now started research to see if giving babies a boost in microbe diversity then goes on to reduce levels of autoimmune disease. “It is wonderful forward-looking work.” said Prof Graham Rook, at University College London. “Many of the disorders that are increasing in western urbanised populations are due to failure of the mechanisms that supervise the immune system. This study shows that exposing children to a biodiverse natural environment boosts several biomarkers of the essential control mechanisms. These Finnish research groups have been leading the way in applying this understanding in a practical way.” The research is published in the journal Science Advances and was conducted by a large team including experts in medicine, ecology and urban planning. The children were between three and five years old and spread between 10 similar daycare centres. In four centres, turf from natural forest floors, complete with dwarf shrubs, blueberries, crowberry, and mosses, were installed in previously bare play areas. The children spent an average of 90 minutes a day outside and were encouraged to play with the plants and soil. “It was easy because [the green area] was the most exciting place in the yard,” said Sinkkonen. The cost for each green yard was around €5,000, less than the annual maintenance budgets for the yards. Tests after 28 days showed the diversity of microbes on the children’s skin was a third higher than for those still playing in gravel yards and was significantly increased in the gut. Blood samples showed beneficial changes to a range of proteins and cells related to the immune system, including anti-inflammatory cytokine and regulatory T cells. The researchers gave all the children the same meals each day and excluded the small number who had been given probiotic supplements by their parents. The scientists could not control the home environment but said the fact that a significant effect was seen despite variable home conditions shows the effect of the forest intervention was strong. Living with a dog cuts child's risk of asthma by 15%, study showsThe researchers are also investigating whether sand pits can be inoculated with diverse microbes to boost the immune system of children in places where forest soil and plants are not available. Prof Glenn Gibson, at the University of Reading, in the UK, and a board member of the International Scientific Association for Probiotics and Prebiotics, said: “This is an interesting study and potentially important but I do not agree that diversity is the key marker for gut health. High functionality can occur with low diversity. For instance, look at a virus that sweeps the world. Having said that, the researchers have assessed certain health biomarkers and not relied solely upon diversity as an indicator, so it is good study.” A report in 2019 by the UK’s Royal Society for Public Health concluded that grubbing around outside is important for building a robust immune system, but that cleanliness is still vital when people are preparing and eating food. How Denmark develops their children to nurture trust, learning, team works and how to deal with risk. If a person simply visits a natural area and walks in a relaxed way there are calming, rejuvenating and restorative benefits to be achieved Shinrin-yoku is a term that means "taking in the forest atmosphere" or "forest bathing." It was developed in Japan during the 1980s and has become a cornerstone of preventive health care and healing in Japanese medicine. Researchers primarily in Japan and South Korea have established a robust body of scientific literature on the health benefits of spending time under the canopy of a living forest. Now their research is helping to establish shinrin-yoku and forest therapy throughout the world.
The idea is simple: if a person simply visits a natural area and walks in a relaxed way there are calming, rejuvenating and restorative benefits to be achieved. We have always known this intuitively. But in the past several decades there have been many scientific studies that are demonstrating the mechanisms behind the healing effects of simply being in wild and natural areas. The scientifically-proven benefits of Shinrin-yoku include:
How do we shake off the effects of our mechanized, systemised fast-past world? How do we strip away the burdens of daily life to re-discover our true selves? The Unplugged weekend offers the chance to relax in the peaceful surroundings of the historic Dartington estate and immerse yourself in calm of the natural world. This is an even in Devon that Sarah is probably going to. I put it up here in-case someone might like to go along.
East Devon Forest Garden The Stables Kerswell Collumpton, EX15 2EN Open days - Forest garden 'Tour and tea' - 1pm to 4pm (Either May 13th / July 1st or 25 August)Join Sagara’s Forest Garden Tour (approx. 2 hours) including refreshements and the option to swim in the natural swimming pond! suggested donation £7 pay on the day. and stay around for the evening /or come along to: Forest Garden Meal 'Hearts by the Hearth' 6pm till 9pm (Either May 13th / July 1st or 25th August)Enjoy an evening of foraged Forest Garden delights and entertainment. Share with us your favorite poem/ song/ story/ talents alongside other entertainment. Suggested donation £15 pay on the day https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/east-devon-forest-garden-open-day-forest-garden-gathering-and-fundraising-tickets-33902871401?aff=efbnreg  We just got awarded £800 from the Aylesbury Vale Community Chest! Ingrid spotted an article in the local paper awhile ago, saying that AVDC will be discontinuing funding, and that this was the last chance to submit applications. Anyway, Ingrid filled out the forms, and called up a few times to get it right. And she spent quite some time to get everythign right. And now, a few weeks later, we were informed that we have been awarded £800! We plan to spend this on funding a training course for one of our volunteers, buying plants, and paying for plants in 2017. This is money that is initially paid in by us, so we are reusing our tax.  We also asked Waitrose to use the community fund they have at the tilles, with the green tokens. Well, they have just given us £219!
So we are really able to do a little more now, as this will pay for our insurance for 2017 - always a problem of where to get the money from. Thanks Waitrose!  Forest and Folk is Open! Come party with us!
We really hope to see you this Friday 26th August for our opening party! Drop in any time from 6pm for a glass of punch and a tour of the new medicine garden, browse the studio shop and see our workshop. We're located at the fabulous Milton Keynes Arts Centre in Great Linford, just off the V8 (see here for directions). We'll be launching our Autumn membership shares during the evening too. Each season we will have a number of membership shares available - this Autumn there will be just 20 exclusive shares up for grabs. Shares will cost £60 and you’ll be able to collect your products at our Winter celebration in December, just in time for Christmas. Share members will also receive 5% off at the till on all shop products! We will have an example share available to see in the shop on the night, but here's what you are likely to get in the December share: Fire Cider - a naturally antibiotic brew, drink neat or use in salads and soups Winter warming tea - a general tonic tea, reminiscent of summer with a hint of spice Great Green Healers balm - containing comfrey from the garden here Elderberry cough syrup - containing rose and hyssop from the garden here Meadowsweet muscle and joint rub - our popular remedy for aches and pains Your support, in buying a share upfront, will help keep us open, enable us to develop the medicine garden, buy quality ingredients and give us time to nurture, gather, and prepare healing medicine for you. In the future, the majority of the plants we use will be grown in the garden. Where we can’t grow something or it doesn’t make sense to, we always use sustainable wild gathering practices. We go to great lengths to use organic, fair trade, packaging free, and small scale produced ingredients in Forest and Folk products. We want to help create sustainable supply chains and give you a really special product! Don't worry if you'd like to sign up for a share but can't make the opening, we will be open from 1st September, Monday to Saturday so please pop in and we'll be happy to sign you up. We will also make shares available to sign up for through our online shop from Saturday 27th August, these will cost £65 to cover merchant fees. Signs ups will end on 1st October. Thank you in advance for supporting us! If you have any questions about membership shares, or anything else - please email us. We look forward to welcoming you to the Forest and Folk community!  LAST EVER WESTONBIRT ARBORETUM TREEFEST 2016 !!! 27/28/29th august
Just to let you know this year will be the last ever TreeFest to take place. |
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