Campaigning to change actions and attitudes has been one of the central roles of Green Gardeners. Our approach is to work with a wide range of other organisations for greater effect.
Peat Campaign
Peat extraction for horticultural composts destroys fragile habitats, archeological remains and releases large quantities of CO2 greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.Peat bogs are amongst the UK’s rarest habitats and 94 per cent of them have already been lost.
Green Gardeners was the group that started the peat campaign in order to highlight the problems. It has become one of the most talked about environmental issues of the past 25 years but it has yet to achieve its aims of ensuring the extraction of peat for garden compost is considerably reduced. Industry is also now fighting back against government proposals to limit its use in propagation.
Patio Heaters
The absurdity of heating the outdoor air inefficiently and adding to global warming was the inspiration for a campaign against commercial and garden patio heaters. The campaign was highly successful and was picked up by other environmental groups. Several retailers and garden centre chains quickly stopped stocking the
heaters
Limestone Pavements
We were concerned that the gardening trade was damaging some of the most beautiful areas of the British countryside. Natural rock pavements - home to many uncommon and endangered plant and animal communities was being quarried to supply stone to garden landscapers. The trade was considerably curtailed by campaigners’ efforts. A similar campaign raised awareness of the problems - such as habitat disturbance and wave erosion protection - caused by taking pebbles from the beach to sell onto gardeners for landscaping
Garden Pesticides
Many organisations over the years have campaigned against the use of chemical insecticides, fungicides and weed killers used in our gardens and on farms. The result is that today, fewer pesticides are available to the gardener; those remaining have become safer on the environment; there are stronger legal controls on the use of chemicals on our food and toxic residues from early products (such as arsenic and DDT) are slowly disappearing from our environment.
However, we can’t sit back and consider the issue has gone away. Labelling laws means that we don’t know what the ingredients are in the ‘safer’ chemicals now on sale; not all chemical substitutes turn out to be safe ( e.g. pyrethrins, derived from pyrethrum) and we have yet to evaluate on a long term basis the safety of new products (such as the methiocarb and metaldehyde slug pellet substitutes. Despite all this campaigning, British gardeners still have an insatiable appetite for chemicals: sales of Bayer garden weedkiller increased 5 fold last year
The Edible City
This campaign promoted the growing of food crops in cities and showed that even the smallest growing area, such as raised beds, balconies and vertical surfaces could become highly productive. It also encouraged growers to recycle household wastes such as food scraps and other kitchen waste
CAMPAIGN TIMELINE
Earlier campaigns were started by GG pioneers and then adopted by the group.
1971 - Pesticides 1988 - Climate Change 1995-1997 Pavements 2008 - Miles
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1986 - Peat 1992-1995 Edible City 2001 - 2008 Heaters