At Beth Chatto’s Gardens

A photographer’s paradise! We went to visit Beth Chatto’s gardens near Colchester, in search of ideas for the dry part of our garden. (Our area is classed as semi-arid by geographers!) The planting was superb and we came back full of ideas, but were impressed as well by the peaceful and caring atmosphere – good teas, good staff, good loos, fair prices. And – the best of weather plus the best of plants meant that I could hardly put my camera down. I’ll post a full album on Flickr soon, but here are ten of the best for starters.

Filed under: Gardening, Travel

Peat Free

We’ve just watched Toby Buckland’s Gardener’s World Special on Peat-Free Compost. What  a great programme! No drama, fair presentation, practical, loads of facts simply put, and it didn’t keep on repeating itself but actually built up an argument. Conclusion: we’ll be reading the labels and cutting out the peat wherever we can. For some reason the BBC doesn’t seem to let us look at the programme on-line, but this is the page in case they change their mind. And here’s a quote from Toby Buckland when he was interviewed on taking on the GW job:

The Government has set targets of being 90 per cent peat-free by 2010, so gardening in a peat-free world is something that we will all have to learn. I will be showing viewers how to use alternatives: coir, wood fibre and green compost. All behave differently to peat but can, if you have the know-how, outperform peat. That said, even the gardeners at Kew, who have been peat-free for years, say some plants need a little peat in their potting mixes – citrus trees, for example. So if we talk about growing lemons, we’ll recommend peat as one of the ingredients. We won’t ignore the issue – we’ll be honest to help viewers.

Filed under: Environment, Gardening, Media Matters , Gardeners' World, Peat free