Gardening in a changing climate
The RHS standpoint
How does a gardening charity such as the RHS understand and then respond to the vagaries of a changing climate? Inga Grimsey, the Director General, gives an open appraisal of the Society’s changes to date, as well as the evolving road ahead.
The media bombards us daily with reports of the latest initiatives to reduce our carbon footprint and advice on myriad ways to go ‘green’. Turn off your tap while brushing your teeth, turn down the thermostat; reduce, reuse, recycle. But in this rising tide of these green issues, the role that gardening plays in creating a healthy, sustainable society is too often overlooked.
For many gardeners, the message is hardly news. After all, storing rainwater, turning organic waste into compost and using plastic bottles as cloches have been common practices for years - although the true motivation may have been thrift rather than environmental evangelism. There has been an easy assumption that being green-fingered equates to being ‘green’.
Now we are told that composting produces methane, that one gardener’s drainage can produce a neighbouring gardener’s flood, or that beans flown in from Kenya might have a smaller carbon footprint than UK-grown ones. (For the latter, our answer is to grow it yourself, as can be seen in our continuing Grow your own VEG campaign (LINK).)
Measuring the pros and cons of our attempts to tread more lightly on the environment proves to be a complex business. In the clamour fuelled by the urgent need to address the realities of climate change, gardeners in particular find it difficult to source clear and unambiguous advice. Clearly everyone, including the RHS, is now striving to better understand the many implications of climate change, and in so doing, then guide gardeners.
Taking a view
As co-sponsor of the Gardening in the Global Greenhouse report in 2002, the RHS has been in the vanguard in seeking to interpret the meaning of climate change. We have been working quietly - perhaps a little too quietly - to improve our environmental performance and practice, particularly in our gardens where we have now cut substantially the use of materials with the biggest impact such as herbicides, pesticides and peat.
RHS scientists are researching the response of plants, pests and diseases to changing conditions, and their findings are informing new approaches in our gardens and far beyond. At our shows, environmental policies have been introduced, which encourage exhibitors and the supply chains behind them to raise their environmental standards and, in so doing, to raise consumer awareness of environmental issues.
In the public arena, the RHS has been instrumental in flagging up the flood-prone perils of paving over our front gardens, and promoting the ecological value of garden space particularly within urban settings. Sustainability and environmental considerations are now key themes of the national RHS Britain in Bloom campaign, which encourages thousands of communities to ‘green-up’ and clean-up their neighbourhoods.
With regard to climate change, the one certainty is that the effects will be unpredictable. The RHS does not have all the answers, nor even yet all the questions. Climate change poses the same challenges and opportunities for RHS gardens as for private gardens, but with the added complication of reconciling responsible practices with the demands of catering for the needs and interests of hundreds of thousands of visitors. You won’t find us adding to the tide of ‘greenwash’; we will take stock of both our own and of others’ experience, research and trials in order to develop authoritative guidance.
Through its gardens, databases and archives, the RHS has accumulated a tremendous wealth of old and new knowledge. Much of it can be brought to bear on the climate change challenge. Before the advent of electricity and mains water, gardeners managed to grow an astonishing range of plants by squeezing the best out of microclimates in their gardens. In the post-industrial, post-consumer era, we might do well to revisit the past for clues to the future.
Looking to a broader audience
We also need to look to the future and engage the generation who will inherit the results of our efforts. Children and young people now are keenly aware of environmental issues, yet all too frequently many have scant understanding of how plants grow or play a part in almost every facet of our lives. The RHS Campaign for School Gardening (LINK) launched in September 2007, the Clore Learning Centre and Teaching Garden within The Glasshouse (LINK) complex
at Wisley, and our Garden Explorers scheme for families(LINK), are just some of the ways in which we are working to help encourage the next generation to become involved.
It goes without saying that we intend to develop our activity to transform our own environmental performance and provide a lead on sustainable gardening. However, starting with this special issue of The Garden we are determined to do more to help share our knowledge and experience, to stimulate fresh thinking, and to include and lead gardeners on these important issues.
We very much want to engage RHS members and supporters of the Society in this process, as the issues of most concern to you will help to inform our future programmes. Crucially, your support will enable us to do more for a broader constituency. Gardens and gardening serve as powerful reminders of our connection with the natural world, and the impact we have on it - for good and bad - whether or not we take up fork and trowel personally.
One of the best things we can do to combat climate change is to spread the word about the personal, social and environmental benefits of gardening.
Further reading
Gardening in the Global Greenhouse: The Impacts of Climate Change on Gardens in the UK, by Richard Bisgrove and Professor Paul Hadley from the University of Reading, was commissioned in 2002.
View a full report plus a summary