Green Gardening

It can often seem tricky to strike a sensible balance between the likes of the gardener and the needs of nature. Yet there’s no need for this to be the case. The garden is a shared space. A great number of living creatures, from invisible bacteria up to the gardener himself, occupy an average English garden. Should you care to follow two simple rules – being gentle and in tune with nature’s rhythms, achieving this balance is easily within your grasp.

Winter is the perfect time for structural maintenance. What maintenance, you ask, when everything is bare and lifeless? Ah, it’s the perfect time to feed the master of the soil – the earthworm. This creature is responsible for clearing autumn ground litter and turning it into perfect food for plants for the next season. Not only that, it also delivers it directly to the roots! A nuisance on the patio, these litter conversion factories are a welcome treat in the garden. If you find them on any paved surfaces just scoop them up gently and move them onto your flower beds. Your plants will reward you with abundance next year. The same goes for any dead leaves, branches and pulled out weeds that you haven’t removed yet. It all makes perfect food for the worm.

The second great task for winter is pruning. Yes, don’t wait for sunny Easter days. Birds will settle in their nests and you will be disturbing busy parents. Right now leaf-shedding trees and shrubs are in deep winter sleep and their metabolism is slowed down. It works like an anaesthetic during surgery – they won’t feel much while you can take your time getting on with the job. So get your secateurs out on a dry day and get on with pruning.

Before you start it’s wise to assess what needs to be done in advance, so you don’t butcher your plants unnecessarily. The rate of recovery depends on where and how you cut off the branches. The simple and best way to prune is under an angle over the branch collar in order to let the tree heal the wound with a healthy protection zone. Leave your power tools in the shed and pick up a hand saw. These instruments are better designed to insure a healthy and correct way of pruning, at the branch’s smallest point where the branch meets the branch collar. If you think that it doesn’t matter and the plant will re-grow anyway, you are wrong. It may re-grow, but it will never be healthy. Flush cuts and cuts that leave stubs are major starting points for many tree problems: decayed wood, cavities, resin pockets, cracks, wet-wood, cankers, insect infestation and so on. The end result is a dead tree. Sadly, I’ve got two in my newly acquired garden that need to be taken down. Luckily, I have a superb professional shredder – a worthwhile investment at the Hampton Court show. While dying trees are no good for the garden, their shredded mulch will make nutritious food for earthworms and a nurturing cover for the bare soil, so next spring I expect healthier growth from the plants I choose to plant in this reconditioned soil. Smart green gardening requires small effort and returns great rewards.

The weight of earthworms on pasture land may be greater than the weight of live stock grazing upon it. The first person to draw the attention of science to earthworms was Charles Darwin, who also observed the signs of rudimentary intelligence in these creatures. The earth without worms would soon become cold, hard-bound, void of fermentation and consequently sterile.