During April, we will be supporting the #PeatFreeApril Campaign. You might recall that we had this planned for last April, but something else got in the way! Peat Free April is a month of action to raise awareness around peat and its continued use in the garden.

Peat is important for three reasons; firstly, it plays a crucial role in that peat bogs are sinks for carbon, so by extracting it, this rereleases that carbon back into the atmosphere; secondly, peatland habitats are environmentally sensitive and are home to a unique population of plants and animals; and thirdly, with flooding a hot issue at the moment (and for many years to come for that matter) peatlands slow the flow of water off the moors, helping to reduce flooding downstream.

We are committed to supporting this campaign throughout April and far beyond. To kick things off, we’ll be talking about potting composts. For soil improvement or mulching or planting compost, there are lots of excellent peat free options – in fact, we haven’t had peat in any of these products for years.

We will be promoting four or five high quality peat free potting composts and they’ll be on multi buy offers making them competitively priced, which will help. We’ll have demonstrations, advice sheets and some samples for gardeners to look at too.

Having trialed various alternatives in previous years, we are now successfully peat free in our own nursery and a number of our growers are already growing for us in peat free composts.

So look out for peat free compost and see it as a positive, ask for our help and guidance, continue to keep your own patch looking good and at the same time do an extra little bit for the environment as a whole.

Mike