Observations on the environment
Behind the glamour of the Chelsea Flower Show lies a grim new set of statistics - particularly alarming to lovers of traditional English lawns.
Official figures for pesticide use in UK gardens released this month reveal an upsurge from £25.9m in 1999 to £46.6m in 2001. Nearly half the expenditure went on herbicides - that is weedkillers for lawns and paths.
Alas, much magnificent turf owes its perfection to chemicals. Explanations for the British obsession with weed-free and manicured lawns range from desiring to impose order on a chaotic world to likening the lawnmower to a phallic symbol. After all, mowing is always considered a manly thing to do in the garden. For whatever reason, these uncluttered expanses are pleasing to the eye. Indeed, after viewing garden after fussily over-designed garden at Chelsea this year, any expanse of green lawn was a welcome sight.
According to Barbara Dinham of the Pesticide Action Network-UK, we are dousing our gardens with "over 800 tonnes of herbicides a year. These chemicals are designed to be toxic and should be avoided. Weedkillers can affect good bugs, plant diversity and wildlife." Research in California, she explains, has shown that minute quantities of one popular lawn chemical disrupt sexual development in tadpoles, producing frogs with testes and ovaries.
If gardeners followed the organic practices of Prince Charles at Highgrove, no herbicides would be sold at all. Apart from mowing, little is done to his lawn - weeds turn into flowers and some areas are left to grow into meadows of long grass which attract butterflies and moths.
Apart from well-known environmental hazards such as excessive water consumption, pesticides and fertilisers, another, seldom mentioned, problem afflicts lawns. Repeated mowing removes vital nutrients, which gardeners then try to replace with fertilisers, which could eventually get into water supplies. Cutting also checks the root development of a plant, which, combined with the lack of mulch or compost on the surface, can mean that water percolates too quickly through the ground and dissolves lime from the soil.
Earthworms help to replenish the lime and the phosphate. And although commercial wormkilling products are now banned in Britain, the application of weedkiller can sometimes indirectly harm them.
Despite Alan Titchmarsh advising his audiences to leave the mower-box in the shed and let the cuttings stay on the grass, our obsession with perfect lawns means that potential compost is taken away. The Toro mower - which minces cuttings into the size of tea leaves and spikes them back into the surface - is proving popular for those who want a green lawn without inorganic fertilisers.
Dame Miriam Rothschild, one of the pioneers of the organic movement, said: "The different treatment of lawns has much to do with age. Now everything must be done in a hurry - youthful speed. Everyone wants labour-saving gardens and lawns. But spraying decreases the food for wildlife; people will long in vain to see robins digging for worms. Robins and birds such as thrushes and other species, which used to be common in gardens, have dropped dramatically, while slugs and snails are having a picnic."
However, the Crop Protection Association has recorded a fall of 72 per cent in export sales of insecticides in the past year. The local pesticide market also decreased. Total figures for agriculture, horticulture, industry, forestry, gardens and households for the UK were £426.2m in 2000, a 10.5 per cent drop from 1999. In 2001 they dropped to £416m. But the association says that this latest statistic does not yet reflect the influence of the organic movement, only the impact of the weather and the serious problems in farming today.
Jill, Duchess of Hamilton, runs the Flora for Fauna website: www.nhm.ac.uk/jubileetrees
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