My Climate Change Garden

I visited Hampton Court Flower Show last Sunday and was blown away by the sheer numbers of people attending – not to mention their endless enthusiasm and passion for plants plus the amount of money they seemed to have for acquiring plants and a range of paraphanalia, the majority of which seemed completely pointless to me. What happened to the days when a well made spade and fork were all you needed to make your garden beds look good?

When the sale of plants began at 4.30pm, there were suddenly hoards of women of a certain age pushing their trolleys around the Show, selecting plants and literally diving in to pay for them. Great to see so many beautiful plants finding such caring homes to live out their days. It reminds me of a statistic I found recently on the Horticultural Trades Association website which stated that UK plant sales are now a staggering  £1.8 billion, with 42% of this being spent in London and the South East.http://www.the-hta.org.uk/page.php?pageid=27

With gardening now officially the most popular hobby in the UK – it overtook fishing 2 years ago apparently – our green spaces are being totally  indulged with such a fantastic array of plants and unnecessary garden gadgets.

On the down side I am worried that this “garden mania” means the UK will have to seriously consider how it manages its future water supplies. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/8529305/Love-of-gardening-could-contribute-to-future-water-crisis.html

Lets hope our national gardening charity the RHS can continue with its work on greening our open spaces and making sure that, whever we garden and however we do it, we must remember that gardening should be the most environmental hobby of all – after all it is the closest many of us get to feeling the earth below our feet if we live in cities.

http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Sustainable-gardening

Good to see that some local Hampton Court residents are already greening their garden practices – took this shot of a barge moured alongside the Show’s entry ground – one of the most inspirational sights I saw all day!