My Climate Change Garden

Welcome to myclimatechangegarden.com

I started writing this blog in 2008 when I began to notice how the plants in my garden are affected by increasingly unpredictable weather patters.

Since then, I have been sharing this personal experience with other gardeners all over the world to inspire interaction with climate change outside our back doors.

I have been stimulating debate and established a new horticultural project called Climate Gardens. This has involved writing over 850 blogs about how to adapt gardens to an uncertain climatic future but, more importantly, raising the issue of climate change in our everyday lives. Everybody needs to feel empowered to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

Research shows that if people think they can change things in their own back yard, they are more likely to think they can change the world. This new thinking on climate change communication is one of my inspirations for Climate Gardens and is explained here: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/bank-holiday-local-environmental-projects-fabian-society-report-climate-change

Now ranked by Google for climate change gardening, this blog records how a changing climate is affecting our gardens. It is creating an “internet legacy” for global gardeners to plan ahead for an uncertain future and reflect in the next 5, 10 or even 50 years on how much has changed.

Without doubt the climate is shifting and delivering weather that is challenging previously well-defined seasons. Seasons that for centuries enabled gardeners to know what to plant, at what time of the year, in order to produce the flowers and fresh produce that are the essence of any garden.

The effect of unpredictable weather and shifting seasons is impacting every corner of #OurPlanet:

The lengthening of the UK growing season over the past 10 years by 29 days is having a major impact on UK gardens and wildlife.http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/mar/23/plant-growing-season-uk-one-month-longer-1990-met-office
In the USA, extreme drought, heavy rains, monster floods are signs of a “new normal” of extreme U.S. weather events driven by climate change. Predictions are not optimistic for the next 50 to 100 years because of its extensive arid and semi-arid areas, high annual rainfall variability, and existing pressures on water supply. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/10/20/opinions/climate-change-solutions-experts-roundup

In 2021 Australia’s national mean temperature was 0.56 °C warmer than the 1961–1990 average, making 2021 the 19th-warmest year on record, and coolest since 2012

http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/annual/aus/

Further information about climate change can be found at http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence.

How is climate change affecting your garden and plants?

Please share your experiences of how a shifting climate is affecting your garden with global visitors to this blog via the comments section or complete the online survey at http://climategardens.co.uk/

This blog receives hits from all over the world and sharing techniques for coping with a shifting climate can help us all plan and plant our gardens for an uncertain future.

Why are gardens important for climate change?

Gardens are precious places that we need to preserve as a retreat from a busy and polluted world.

Gardens help us to monitor climate change and the effects of weird and extreme weather. They reveal on a daily basis outside our own back doors what is happening to our planet through the flowers, plants, bees, birds and variety of wildlife living in these green spaces. Most importantly the plants we choose – in particular trees – can play an important role in soaking up huge amounts of harmful carbon dioxide circulating in the atmosphere. This harmful gas is a direct result of burning fossil fuels for over 100 years.