PEAT

This month Becky Searle explains why peat and its preservation are so important and offers advice on peat-free composts

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It's happening; the peat-free train has left the station, and most of us are on board. But I still read comments online about stockpiling peat for personal use and ridiculing peat-free composts. This makes me sad, and I think it's high time we talked more about why peat is being banned rather than what we're going to do about it.

For centuries, we have blissfully drained the planet's resources without a second thought.

The idea of a resource truly running out or humanity causing irreversible damage to the planet seemed to be just beyond the scope of our consciousness. But in recent decades, we have begun to wake up to the very real fact that we have taken too much. Change is underway to try and reverse the damage we have caused and we have begun to quantify the importance of natural resources.

It would be tempting to think that the impact on the planet made by the horticultural industry would be relatively insignificant. Indeed, most of us gardeners prefer to believe that we are positively impacting the world around us. We are filling it with flowers, bees, butterflies and growing our own food. Unfortunately, though, the horticultural industry has had an enormous effect on the environment - albeit inadvertently at first through its use of peat.

It's difficult to fathom how this could have such a profound effect without first knowing a little bit about what peat does for us in terms of ecosystem services.

Ecosystem services is the technical term for an ecosystem's direct and indirect contributions to human health and wellbeing. For example, a woodland provides us with timber, carbon storage, shade and a nice place to walk, among other things.