My Climate Change Garden

These are wise words from my favourite gardening guru, the inspirational Mr Alan Titchmarsh. Just put his suggestion to the test with a wonderful day in the rather windy fresh air, doing my best to tidy up the leaves and mess in the garden after the recent storms.

Winter months can be a challenging time for gardeners in the UK. Shorter days and miserable weather mean that digging, weeding and indulging in the delights of “getting dirty” can become a distant memory. Its a great time to drool over seed catalogues, explore inspirational gardening books or, in my case, drift into a dreamy haze about owning a tropical garden in some exotic location – where you don’t have to sweep the leaves up every Autumn!

The National Trust recently commissioned a fascinating report about the UK obsession with gardening called Space to Grow . It explored the valuable role that gardening plays in our everyday lives and provided some enlightening facts.

Apparently, 71% or 7 out of 10 people feel it is important to their quality of life to spend time in gardens. Just under half (48 per cent) of these, feel it is on balance the most enjoyable activity of the three – whilst 33 per cent say watching TV, and 14 per cent think shopping is more rewarding for some bizarre reason.

The biggest revelation for me is that 35% of men consider gardens romantic places which can give your love life a boost whereas only 29% of women agree with this statement .Great to know that somewhere in the UK there are romantic male gardeners picking floral delights for their loved ones – can’t say I have spotted too many round here.

The National Trust cares for over 200 gardens and landscape parks, more than any other organisation in the UK. The Trust gardens play an important role across different sectors, from their role helping children learn about growing food and the natural environment, to the contribution they make to improving the lives of many disadvantaged groups.Read more about Space to Grow at:

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-global/w-news/w-news-space_to__grow_gardens_report.htm

Gardening is great for de-stressing and switching your mind off from everyday issues.

Forget Xmas shopping – take a day in the garden to escape the festive madness!