Bogged Down by Red Tape
UK's Love of Gardening and Turning a Blind Eye to Peat Bog Depletion
The Soil Web - Shilbottle is my substack patch (Subpatch?) where I talk about my modest obsession with soil.
I don’t know if I’m trying to convince you the reader, as much as I’m just encouraging myself that I’m actually doing a worthwhile thing.
Soil really has such a low status in our culture that sometimes you just got to keep going despite nobody else giving a flying squirrel.
Bogged Down - One Example of Human Madness
Despite not many people caring about soil, as soon as we find a use for it we can’t get enough.
it is estimated that gardeners in the UK use around 2.2 million cubic meters of peat per year.
Peat is amongst the most nutrient-dense soils and its use by UK gardeners has caused 31 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) to be released into the atmosphere since 1990.
That’s a lot of destruction by a cohort of people ostensibly caring for green spaces.
Governments do move on these issues (eventually); peat will no longer be sold to amateur gardeners by 2024, and there have been some voluntary shifts by the gardening industry to remove peat from their products, but we all know it’s too little too late.
We Care A Lot
I have a sense that by taking care of our own soil spaces -the soil in our backyard and the soil around our community- we help preserve the soils in wild spaces so that they can continue to do their thing (storing carbon may just be the most obvious).
There may also be a tending to our own internal soils in this process if the alchemists have anything to say on this matter.
If that sounds too esoteric then just consider how soothed you feel in the process of holding and cuddling a child.
Tenderness is a two-way street; we have to soften our bellies and open our hearts in order to care for an other.
In the practice of tending to the earth, we’re actually tending to ourselves.
The squirrel 🐿️😆