Category Archives: nature & the natural world

Greening Up Your Gardening

Rethinking the way you tend your garden will reap great environmental benefits and help to strengthen your relationship with the natural world. By John Walker. Published in Kew magazine, Summer 2012. When it comes to more eco-friendly living, insulating your … Continue reading

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Austerity Gardening

Make do and mend, learn to do without, pull your socks up and get stuck in: it’s time to cultivate some old-fashioned values in the garden. By John Walker. Published on the Hartley Botanic website, 15th May 2012. Have you … Continue reading

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Check That Your Mousetraps are ‘Bird-friendly’ This Spring

Mousetraps are a humane tool used with reluctance but out of necessity in my greenhouse, especially during winter and spring. A recent unintended ‘catch’ is a melancholy tribute to the determination of our wild birds when the going gets tough. … Continue reading

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Modified New World

Letting the GM genie out of its biotech bottle hasn’t just changed day-to-day life on our allotments, it’s itching to take over control of life itself. By John Walker. Published on the Hartley Botanic website, 15th February 2012. They’ll be … Continue reading

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Considerate Cultivation: Running Your Garden on Truly Renewable Fuels

Going peat-free is all-important in an earth-friendly garden, but there’s more: the compost you use needs to be a truly renewable fuel. By John Walker. Published on the Hartley Botanic website, 21st October 2011. Coaxing a steep, bracken-riddled bank of acidic, nutrient-poor … Continue reading

Posted in climate change & global warming, climate- & earth-friendly gardening, ecological sustainability, environment, garden compost & composting, gardening footprint, green gardening, greenwash, nature & the natural world, organic gardening, peat & peat-free compost, published articles, renewable gardening | 2 Comments

Bring Me Sunshine: The Power Behind Renewable Gardening

Using a greenhouse to grow your own food will make your garden greener and help trim your ‘ecological footprint’ – but only if you tap into the right kind of sunshine. By John Walker. Published on the Hartley Botanic website, 23rd September … Continue reading

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The Peat ‘Debate’ Does Us All Harm

The belief that by using peat compost we can benefit nature keeps us disconnected from the natural world. By John Walker. Published in Garden News, 14th June 2011. Of all the harebrained excuses I’ve seen bandied around for the continued … Continue reading

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Compost Crisis

Climate-friendly peat-free composts aren’t taking their place at the heart of more eco-savvy gardening because we’re not yet paying enough for them. By John Walker. Published in Kitchen Garden, November 2010. When well-known gardening pundits start proclaiming just how ‘awful’ … Continue reading

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Kicking the Habit

Oil spills and their impact on our planet’s ecology might seem faraway and remote, but one way of helping prevent them lies closer than you might think. By John Walker. Published in Kitchen Garden, August 2010. Winner of the Garden … Continue reading

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Gardening on the Road

Our growing mania for having ‘one click’ gardens delivered in boxes is adding to the mounting pressures on the increasingly fragile world around us. By John Walker. Published in Kitchen Garden, July 2010. There’s quite a singalong going on outside … Continue reading

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