My Climate Change Garden

Rain and wet weather have always been part of the UKs weather patterns but in recent years, changes in our seasons and an unpredictable climate mean that torrential downpours and weeks of rain have become more frequent.

Last year was the second wettest recorded in the past hundred years. This winter, as in spring and early summer, the UK has  had heavy and persistent downpours. How has all this torrential rain affected our gardens?

“We will discover the answer in spring,” says Matthew Wilson, managing director of Clifton Nurseries, author of Nature’s Gardener: How to Garden in a Changing Climate and panellist on BBC Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time, where the subject of waterlogged gardens has cropped up frequently.

“The wetter the soil, the more rapidly it affects the soil’s capacity to hold water. When the ground is saturated, the soil becomes anaerobic, ie has no oxygen, so the roots drown and the plant dies. There are plants that are adapted to waterlogged soil, but most of our more popular garden shrubs and trees aren’t equipped to cope.”

http://www.homesandproperty.co.uk/your_home_and_garden/outdoors/wetweathergardeninginlondon.html

http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/profile.aspx?pid=235

http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/todo_now/flooding.php