Green-Gardeners

Changing the world, one site at a time…

12 Ways to Reduce Your Effect on Climate Change

1 Apply compost, rather than energy intensive artificial fertilizers to provide plant nutrients. Chemical fertilizers consume considerable amounts of energy when being made.

2 Use natural pest and disease management methods rather than petroleum based pesticides which consume large amounts of energy in their manufacture

3 Service and tune up your powered garden machinery so it works at maximum efficiency

4 Drive to the garden centre (and allotment) sparingly (and take a friend with you) to reduce CO2 vehicle emissions

5 Raise as much of your own food as you can. Many aspects of the commercial food chain (such as transportation to the supermarket from farms and refrigerating it) produces large amounts of greenhouse gases

6 Be a green consumer: buy local products and produce which doesn’t have to travel far, reduce consumer wastefulness and reject over-packaged goods at the garden centre

7 Plant perennials, especially trees and shrubs to soak up COP2

8 Add organic matter to fertilize your soil and to lock CO2 into the soil. Green waste sent to landfill rots down and releases methane

9 Only dig occasionally, so the natural CO2 reserves in the soil doesn’t escape into the atmosphere

10 Water sparingly. The pumping of water to the consumer is the second heaviest industrial user of electricity

11 Minimize the use of concrete in the garden (such as patio slabs). Its production releases massive amounts of CO2

12 Insulate your greenhouse (and conservatory and porch) to reduce the amount of heating lost.

Climate Change
and the gardener
climate-change

Possibly because of our sensitivity to the natural world, Green Gardeners were raising awareness of global warming several years before many other environmental bodies.

The campaign began the year NASA scientist James Hansen testified to the U.S. Senate Committee in 1988, saying that there was clear evidence that human caused climate change was underway.

THE ROLE OF THE CAMPAIGN IS TO

increase the awareness of climate change and the role we gardeners play in it
show how we can change our growing methods, choice of plants and our garden purchases to reduce our impact on climate change, and
adapt to its effects on our gardening and our general living
Some of the effects of climate change on gardeners and gardens

•warmer, drier summers, wetter, milder winters, more gales and sharp north-easterly winds in February and March; rising sea levels, less frost and snow, less vernalization of seeds and fruit tree buds, more variable rainfall but with heavy downpours

•strong, biting winds in spring may affect emerging seedlings and blow away soil

•water shortages will probably be the greatest limiting factor for gardening

•loss of frost means that deciduous woody and herbaceous perennials and tree fruit will lose winter dormancy. Apricots, peaches, nectarines and gages will replace apples and pears.

•Bulbs and deciduous woody species will continue to flower earlier, but may be more vulnerable to late, freezing weather. Warmer conditions could make more diseases such as brassica club-root worse, provide conditions for invaders such as diamond back moth to prosper. Aphids and caterpillars will grow and reproduce more quickly.

•More Mediterranean plants, especially bulbs and tubers will replace the traditional cottage plants. Citrus could be grown outdoors all year round in the south-west. Lawns will suffer.