As the seasons turn, our inner-gardeners are keen to get outside; it’s time to prepare for the growing season. Many of us try to incorporate wildlife-friendly elements to our gardens – plants for pollinators, log piles, wildlife ponds and more – but as we buy our compost, are we just creating a problem somewhere else?

The UK’s peatlands store around 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon and peat bogs are home to all sorts of plants and insects as well offering undisturbed breeding grounds for birds like golden plover and meadow pipit. Peat takes thousands of years to form as dead plant material builds up and decays. Sadly, more than 94 per cent of the UK’s lowland peat bogs have been destroyed or damaged; just think of the habitat and wildlife that we’ve lost not to mention the amount of carbon that’s been released into the atmosphere.

The very nature of the decaying matter in peat has meant that it’s been a major ingredient of compost used in gardens for many years. Unfortunately, this means that our wild places have been dug up and sold, both here in the UK and overseas.

We only use peat-free compost in our wildlife garden at Lower Smite Farm and we make sure that any new plants we buy have been grown in peat-free compost. Plants grown in peat-free can be a little harder to find but Worcestershire is lucky to have a few local peat-free (and often organic) nurseries and stockists in our area. Most garden centres stock bags of peat-free compost or you can make your own from garden and kitchen waste.

Why not ask your local garden centre for peat-free? If you help wildlife in your garden, help us to turn Worcestershire wild worcswildilfetrust.co.uk/pledgeapatch

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