Climate change is obvious if you garden. Erratic weather that veers from extreme cold to blistering heat and plants flowering earlier – or later – all point to things being very different. As a result, many of us are having to adapt how and what we grow. In RHS Resilient Garden, Tom Massey takes the debate beyond how we can successfully garden in a changing climate to how our choices can make a difference. (I was given a book in return for a fair review.)
Using technology – there’s a QR code so you can take a virtual tour of his proposed garden – he shows how a typical surbuban plot can be transformed from a space devoid of life and interest into somewhere that’s not only beautiful but benefits the planet too. The book is also illustrated with computer generated images of the garden, which was created as a feature at the recent RHS Hampton Court show.
Tom’s drawn inspiration from his work with The Lemon Tree Trust, a charity working with people in refugee camps. He designed a garden at RHS Chelsea to promote their work and met refugees in a camp in Iraq near the Syrian border.
The people there were creating gardens using whatever was around – making planters from waste material and irrigating with grey water.
“They were resilient gardeners by necessity,” he says, adding that we are all going to have to become more “radical and flexible” in the face of climate change.
The steps we need to take can be small – extending the flowering season in our gardens so there’s something for pollinators no matter what the weather brings – to making informed decisions about how we build our gardens. Tom’s Hampton garden used recycled aggregate gravel as a mulch and had paving from terrazzo, rubble that’s set in cement and then polished.
“With creative thinking and careful processing, waste can be beautiful,” he observes.
Using before and after comparisons, RHS Resilient Garden shows how his example of an end-of-terrace site can be transformed. Using permeable surfaces helps to prevent flooding, plants will add a protection against road pollution and help to shade the house, while simple-to-make wildlife habitats will attract insects.
In the rear garden, he introduces a wildlife pond, replaces the lawn with a food forest (a mix of edible and ornamental in layers of planting), and creates a rewilded area.
As much an instruction manual as a call to action, RHS Resilient Garden has guides to making a biodiverse roof, a hugelkultur mound and mushroom logs, among other features, and an explanation of how to analyse our gardens. There’s also a list of plants used in the RHS Hampton garden as well as examples of others that would be suitable.
Underpinning it all are explantions of why we should think about things such as patios and hedges, along with interviews with resilient gardeners from around the world.
And if these actions seem tiny in the face of climate change, he reminds us that in the UK alone gardens are estimated to cover around 1,670 square miles.
“It’s not too late – we gardeners can do our bit, no matter how small it seems, to help save the planet,” he says. “If we can come together as a global gardening community, we are capable of enacting big change.”
RHS Resilient Garden by Tom Massey is published by DK with an RRP of £27 You can buy it here for £20.19. (If you buy via this link, I receive a small commission. The price you pay is not affected.) Alternatively, you may wish to buy from an independent bookseller here. All prices correct at time of publication of this post.
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