Small steps to big changes

Gardening more sustainably, however tiny our plots, can add up to huge progress. Monty outlines some key changes we can all make to green up our footprints

Fourteen years ago, almost to the day, I sat at my computer to write an article for this magazine about sustainability in the garden. I confess I had not looked at it, or even remembered I had written it, until preparing for this piece. But the topic of sustainability in our gardens could not be hotter. So, I looked back and re-read it to see what had changed in the past decade and a half. The depressing truth is that the answer is - not much. A lot of talk, some minor action and we are still gardening as though our resources are limitless.

Fourteen years ago, my tone was slightly defensive about climate change, knowing that perhaps 20 per cent of the readership either did not believe such a thing existed or regarded it as a climatic blip. That at least has changed completely. Only the hardwired deniers still challenge man-made climate change and only the foolish refuse to engage with it. It is the single biggest challenge that mankind has ever faced and we can either go into our gardens to escape it - which is doomed to failure because all our gardens are right on the front line of climate change-or accept that all of us who garden can do more than most to make a real difference.

Oil still dominates the whole issue. All of us who garden take it for granted that our plants are delivered by vehicles to garden centres, grown with heat, potted in plastic, labelled with plastic - I could go on. Our green gardens are built on a lake of black oil.

But a real change for the better in the past 14 years has been the rise and availability of good battery-powered garden machinery with a corresponding decrease in petrol usage and noise. At Longmeadow, we now use battery-operated hedge cutters, strimmers, mowers, chainsaws, blowers and drills as a matter of course. We have petrol long grass cutters and rotavators but these are 20 years old and used less and less.