Hello Climate Gardeners
Wherever you are in the world, I hope you are experiencing joy and peace in your gardens during these challenging days, as we change to a new way of living in the this pandemic society.
As gardeners, we are blessed to connect with nature on a daily basis which lifts our spirits.
However, gardeners are also on the front line of climate change outside their back doors. We are the “canaries in the coal mine”, as extreme weather increases due to climate change.
In 2020 the UK experienced the wettest winter on record, followed by the hottest May, which has seriously challenged the plants in our gardens. Extreme weather conditions such as heavy monsoon rain and weeks without rain are the “new normal”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51713172
Our role as gardeners is to deal with whatever the weather throws at our gardens and, adapt what we grow and, how we care for our plants.
I am sure you have noticed this is a major challenge as the climate shifts into unpredictable patterns, wherever you live in the world.
For the past ten years, I have blogged about how climate change is happening outside our back doors. I created Climate Gardens to highlight how we can use our “back door experiences” to adapt our consumer life styles to be more low carbon and encourage reduced consumption by only buying products that protect and enhance our planet.
Masks, sadly, are now becoming THE fastest selling consumer product and risk being yet another blight on nature. However, they can tell an visual story of change that is more important than ever in our post pandemic society.
Delighted to share my recent acquisition of a mask with the iconic climate stripes.
Climate stripes define our warming world.
These iconic stripes are an effective way to show what is meant by global warming.
They organise all of the countries of the world by regions, time and temperature to show the unmistakable trend of a warming planet. On the right, you can see the rising global temperatures over past 20 years.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48678196
I am proudly wearing my climate stripes mask to communicate that we all need to think about climate change and prepare for this as our next global challenge.
Now is the perfect time to plant seeds for a low carbon future as we all come together wearing masks to become the canaries in our gardens responding to climate change.
If you can spare 3 minutes, please take a look at this short survey which might help you think further about how you garden in a changing climate http://climategardens.co.uk
Tue, May 11, 2021
Climate Change Gardening