Alternatives to wildflower meadows, supercharge your garden with leftovers, cultivating unusual crops
4/23/202633 min
To celebrate Earth Day, we’re looking at how we as gardeners can make small changes to benefit the world around us. Nick Turrell and Jenny Laville will be digging into the topic of food waste, exploring how composting and changing our habits can make a big difference to our ecological footprints. RHS horticultural advisor Jenny Bowden offers an alternative, biodiversity-friendly approach if you find a traditional wildflower meadow just doesn’t work for you. And RHS Garden Wisley’s Liz Mooney and Pavlina Kapsalis share some inspiration for the veg patch, with some unusual crop suggestions you definitely won’t find on the supermarket shelves. Host: Gareth Richards Contributors: Liz Mooney, Pavlina Kapsalis, Jenny Bowden, Jenny Laville, Nick Turrell Links: RHS Grow Your Own Veg Through the Year RHS advice on fruit and veg growing Gardening for the environment
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First 90 secondsGareth Richards· Host0:00
[birds chirping] Out of all the seasons, spring in particular serves as a true reminder of just how miraculous nature can be. [birds chirping] As buds burst, leaves unfurl, birds sing, and butterflies flutter past, the bleakness of winter is quickly forgotten. Recent photos from the Artemis II mission cast our world in a different light, revealing the delicate vulnerability of our small blue dot against the vastness of space. And the message from scientists across the globe has grown clearer, more urgent, and harder to ignore with every year that passes. We're over-extracting and we're over-consuming on a finite planet, and in doing so, we edge ever closer to damaging not only nature's beauty, but the very systems that sustain all life, including us, on this fragile Earth. [birds chirping] Yesterday marked Earth Day, a global movement engaging over a billion people, and it's a celebration of the amazing work that has and is being done to protect and preserve the planet for the benefit of all life. And as gardeners, we understand the deep connection between people and planet. The choices we make in our own green spaces, no matter how small, can ripple outwards and create real impact. One of the most direct and immediate ways we can act is in reducing our waste. Now, recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the UK produces around 10 million tons of food waste a year. That's an incredible