Category Archives: media

Crowd Cultivation

Posted on December 30, 2012 by John Walker

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 | 1 Comment

Choosing Delusion

Posted on November 23, 2012 by John Walker

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 | 2 Comments

Reporting on Garden Weedkiller Pollution is as Damaging as the Pollution Itself

Posted on October 30, 2012 by John Walker

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 →

Posted in environment, ethics, garden centres & gardening industry, garden compost & composting, greenwash, media, organic gardening, peat & peat-free compost, pesticides in the garden, politics, pollution, published articles, soil, weedkiller residues | Leave a comment

It’s Time To Have Your Peat-Free Say On ‘Towards Sustainable Growing Media’

Posted on July 19, 2012 by John Walker

The chair of the government’s Sustainable Growing Media Task Force (SGMTF), Dr Alan Knight, has now published his chair’s report and draft ‘road map’, Towards Sustainable Growing Media. You might well be wondering why we actually need a map, when a … Continue reading →

Posted in blog, climate- & earth-friendly gardening, ecological sustainability, environment, ethics, garden centres & gardening industry, garden compost & composting, media, nature & the natural world, organic gardening, peat & peat-free compost, renewable gardening | 2 Comments

Flogging Faith in Nature

Posted on June 21, 2012 by John Walker

There’s no need to buy solutions to pest problems that nature can solve for us. The only real problem is how to sell this idea. By John Walker. Published on the Hartley Botanic website, 21st June 2012 Minuscule spiders a … Continue reading →

Posted in ecological sustainability, energy use, environment, fossil fuels, garden centres & gardening industry, green gardening, media, nature & the natural world, organic gardening, pesticides in the garden, pollution, published articles, renewable gardening, tv gardening & celebrities | Leave a comment

Austerity Gardening

Posted on May 15, 2012 by John Walker

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 →

Posted in carbon emissions, carbon footprint, climate change & global warming, climate- & earth-friendly gardening, ecological footprints, energy use, environment, food & kitchen gardening, fossil fuels, garden centres & gardening industry, gardening footprint, glyphosate, mail order, media, nature & the natural world, organic gardening, overconsumption, packaging, published articles, renewable gardening, resilience | Leave a comment

Time to Turn Off The Tap

Posted on April 16, 2012 by John Walker

With hosepipe bans now in place in many areas, gardeners everywhere need to start tapping into a more joined-up kind of gardening. By John Walker. Published on the Hartley Botanic website, 16th April 2012. Greenhouse gardeners are especially adept at … Continue reading →

Posted in carbon footprint, climate change & global warming, climate- & earth-friendly gardening, container gardening, energy use, environment, garden centres & gardening industry, greenwash, media, politics, published articles, rainwater harvesting, renewable gardening, water & 'water footprints' | Leave a comment

Modified New World

Posted on February 15, 2012 by John Walker

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 →

Posted in allotments, eco gardening, environment, ethics, food & kitchen gardening, genetically modified (GM) crops, glyphosate, green gardening, greenwash, media, nature & the natural world, organic gardening, pesticides in the garden, published articles | Leave a comment

Compost Crisis

Posted on November 15, 2010 by John Walker

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 →

Posted in carbon emissions, carbon footprint, climate change & global warming, climate- & earth-friendly gardening, eco gardening, ecological sustainability, food & kitchen gardening, fossil fuels, garden centres & gardening industry, greenwash, media, nature & the natural world, organic gardening, peat & peat-free compost, published articles | 1 Comment

Strange Bedfellows

Posted on March 15, 2010 by John Walker

Garden Organic’s plans to be co-opted by big business threaten to undermine the ecologically desirable tenets of thrift, frugality and prudence that organic gardening actually epitomizes. By John Walker. Published in Kitchen Garden, March 2010. Without knowing quite where it’s … Continue reading →

Posted in carbon emissions, climate change & global warming, climate- & earth-friendly gardening, eco gardening, ecological sustainability, garden centres & gardening industry, greenwash, media, organic gardening, overconsumption, published articles, retail monoculture | Leave a comment