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Recent Posts
- How to Make Seed-filled Bombs That Bloom Into Flowers for Bees, Insects and Other Wildlife
- It’s Time For Gardeners to Break Their Silence on Climate Breakdown. What we Do in Our Gardens and Allotments Does Affect the World Around us
- Add Water, Add Life: How to Make a Simple DIY Wildlife-attracting Pond in Your Garden, Allotment, Greenhouse or Polytunnel Using Free and Found Materials
- Make Your Own Easy, Cost-free Biodiversity-Boosting ‘Insect Hotels’ For Your Garden or Allotment and Encourage Wild Solitary Bees and Pest-eating Wasps to Live and Nest There
- Here’s Some Real Gardening News: Peat-free Composts – Fertile Fibre and SylvaGrow – Bag Two Out of Three Which? Gardening Best Buy 2017 Awards for Container Growing
Recent Comments
- hairtypes????? on How Free and Plentiful Woodchips can Help Your Organic, Earth-friendly – and Peat-free – Garden Grow
- Brian Bennett on Peat-free Compost on Trial: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
- Julieta Soun on Climate Changes Everything
- John Walker on Here’s Some Real Gardening News: Peat-free Composts – Fertile Fibre and SylvaGrow – Bag Two Out of Three Which? Gardening Best Buy 2017 Awards for Container Growing
- Cooker on Check That Your Mousetraps Are ‘Bird-friendly’ This Spring
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Author Archives: John Walker
Stay Home and Keep Gardening
A sun-soaked holiday taking in some of the world’s most beautiful gardens is a wonderful idea, given the growing year we’ve had – but only until you join up your thinking. By John Walker. Published on the Hartley Botanic website, … Continue reading
Posted in carbon emissions, carbon footprint, climate change & global warming, climate- & earth-friendly gardening, ecological footprints, ecological sustainability, energy use, environment, ethics, fossil fuels, gardening footprint, green gardening, media, nature & the natural world, overconsumption, peak oil, pollution, published articles, tv gardening & celebrities
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Crowd Cultivation
What do you get when you cross crowd funding with plant breeding? At the Sárvári Research Trust, it’s the chance for ordinary gardeners to have a stake in the future. By John Walker. Published on the Hartley Botanic website, 20th … Continue reading
Posted in allotments, blight-resistant 'sárpo' potatoes, carbon emissions, carbon footprint, climate change & global warming, climate- & earth-friendly gardening, energy use, environment, ethics, food & kitchen gardening, food miles, fossil fuels, gardening footprint, genetically modified (GM) crops, green gardening, media, organic gardening, published articles, renewable gardening
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Weedkiller’s Winning Ways: My Article on Clopyralid Compost Pollution Bags Garden Media Guild Environmental Award 2012
Last week I was chuffed and humbled to win – for the third time – the British Garden Media Guild’s Environmental Award for my article ‘Gardening’s own goal’, which was published by Hartley Botanic in August 2012. This is a real … Continue reading
Choosing Delusion
We’re told that whether or not to use garden chemicals is a personal choice. That may be so, but it needs to be an informed choice – and we’re not being told the whole story. By John Walker. Published on … Continue reading
Posted in carbon footprint, climate- & earth-friendly gardening, eco gardening, energy use, environment, ethics, garden centres & gardening industry, gardening footprint, green gardening, greenwash, media, nature & the natural world, organic gardening, packaging, pesticides in the garden, politics, pollution, published articles, renewable gardening
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WIN a Signed Copy of How to Create an Eco Garden: The Practical Guide to Greener, Planet-friendly Gardening
* Shortlisted for the Garden Media Guild Practical Book of the Year * This competition is now closed. My new book on greener, more planet-friendly gardening has received favourable reviews both online and in the gardening press. In November 2012 … Continue reading
Grow Organic With Manchester’s Bud Garden Centre
One of the most engaging ‘twitterships’ that I’ve struck up in the flourishing world of gardening social media is my occasional exchanges with Brenda Smith, co-founder of Bud Garden Centre, in Burnage, Manchester (@BudGardenCentre). We share plenty in common, both … Continue reading
Resistance is Fertile: How Gardeners Can Help Wave Goodbye to Potato Blight
This summer’s record outbreak of late blight in potatoes has helped shine a light on a quiet but powerful revolution in potato breeding, which aims to banish the disease from our gardens. This is a resistance movement which all gardeners … Continue reading
Posted in allotments, blight-resistant 'sárpo' potatoes, carbon footprint, climate- & earth-friendly gardening, ecological sustainability, energy use, environment, ethics, food & kitchen gardening, food miles, good life, green gardening, organic gardening, pesticides in the garden, published articles, resilience
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Reporting on Garden Weedkiller Pollution is as Damaging as the Pollution Itself
Recent reporting on the threat of pollution by the weedkiller clopyralid leaves gardeners without the full facts about both peat-based and peat-free composts. By John Walker. Published on the Guardian‘s website, 27th September 2012 Twisted, buckled and puckered leaves, bulging … Continue reading
Climate Changes Everything
At the end of an abysmal growing year, only one thing is for sure: the familiar rhythms of gardening are gone for good. By John Walker. Published on the Hartley Botanic website, 18th September 2012 I’ll let you into a … Continue reading
Gardening’s Own Goal
Found in some lawn weedkillers, the chemical clopyralid is a ticking time bomb – but we could defuse it right now if we learnt from past mistakes. By John Walker. Published on the Hartley Botanic website, 28th August 2012. Winner … Continue reading
