We’ve been campaigning for many years against the use of peat for gardening.
What is peat?
Peat – sometimes called peat moss – is partly decomposed plant matter that builds up slowly over thousands of years. Eventually it forms peat bogs, moors and fens in areas waterlogged with rainwater. These peatlands store very large amounts of carbon dioxide.
But peatlands across the world are disappearing fast. Many have been destroyed by being dug up for potting compost because it’s a very useful material. It’s light, sterile, and extremely cheap to dig and bag up for sale.
Our peat-free campaign
In spring 2022, some growers ran a high-profile PR campaign to say how difficult it is to grow plants in peat-free compost. A couple of celebrity gardeners were quoted as saying there’s nothing wrong with using peat, and that neither commercial growers nor amateur gardeners could get good results with peat-free compost.
So in response, in May 2022, we ran a stall to demonstrate that it’s perfectly possible for amateur gardeners to grow good plants in peat-free compost.
We grew various salad plants in workmen’s buckets, flower pots and other containers, all using peat-free compost bought from Selections on the High Street. We had posters explaining why we should all move away from using peat, and ran a quiz competition, with prizes of strong, healthy herbs from a commercial grower who’s been using peat-free compost for years.
Our impact
The stall was a great success, with over 50 competition entries, and many more people coming up to read the information. We had a lot of comments on how good (and tasty!) the home-grown plants were. We even had someone telling us how impossible it was to grow successfully in peat-free compost, and then admiring those very plants and saying how good they were. Clearly the industry’s misinformation had got through. But hopefully, the demonstrations will have begun to counter it.
Coincidentally, a couple of days before we ran the stall, Tesco announced that all their bedding plants would be grown in peat-free compost, by the UK’s largest commercial grower, which means most will have to follow suit. If they can do it, anyone can.
Why is peat a valuable natural habitat?
We don’t have lush rainforests in the UK and Ireland. Peatlands are our rainforests, and like rainforests, we’re busy destroying them.
Peatlands are internationally significant nature hotspots and vast carbon cupboards. Not all peatlands are the same. Peat forms in blanket bogs, lowland raised bogs, lowland fens and upland flushes, mosses, swamps and fens – very different landscapes and locations but all requiring damp conditions.
All peatlands are important natural habitats in their own right, and for the other wild species they support such as carnivorous sundew plants, uncommon insects such as large heath butterflies, four-spotted chaser dragonflies and picture-winged bog crane flies.
Peatlands are also a natural form of water purification and flood protection. They act as a huge sponge, soaking and retaining water in the landscape, and holding back potentially dangerous floodwaters.
When peatlands do release water, it’s cleaner because peat acts as a filter. Water companies are realising they need peat to continue doing this to help them avoid having to clean and purify water so much before they supply it to us.
Why does the government want to ban peat?
Digging up peat releases a lot of carbon dioxide, which we need to keep in the ground. The world needs to reduce its carbon emissions to keep the planet liveable, and not using peat is one of the easier ways of doing that. Ireland, Germany and Switzerland are already banning the use of peat in the horticultural industry, as they feel the benefits in terms of climate change, flood prevention, biodiversity and water purification outweigh the fact that it’s a cheap and profitable commodity when it’s drained and dug up.
The government has said it will ban the sale of peat-based growing media by 2027, and to ban its use by commercial growers by 2030.