Dear Alan,

I won’t lie to you – you aren’t my favourite all time presenter of Gardener’s World, that badge goes to Carol Klein ‘das Gritmeister’ (sorry Monty, pipped to the post), but you were at the helm during seven critical years when my gardening morphed from a weekend hobby to an all-consuming passion. I think you may be partly to blame and for that you have my admiration and respect both as a superb gardener and as a talented communicator.
I’ve loved all my gardens, but have always felt that the creation of pleasure in my small patch should not be at the expense of someone, or something else’s larger patch. If I thought that my choices had led to a worse outcome elsewhere, my pleasure in my own garden would be tainted. But like all decisions in modern life, it’s not always possible to figure out what is the best, or the least worst thing to do. It’s often just too complicated, or information is scant. Some choices however, do appear to a bit more clear cut and reducing peat extraction seems to be one of them. I won’t pretend to be an expert on peat sustainability. I understand that peat locks up carbon during its formation, as any fossil fuel does and that’s a good thing as it helps reduce atmospheric CO2. I understand that some peat habitats are unique and special and it would be desirable to leave them alone.
These things I understand to be true, but second hand, from information relayed to me by others. What I absolutely know, first hand, is that peat is not essential to good gardening. Large scale horticulture has adapted itself to take advantages of peat’s characteristics, to increase mechanisation and drive down costs. (It could adapt again, as needed). But for all amateur gardeners and most smaller nurseries it is more than possible, it is quite simply easy, to create a beautiful and productive garden and to produce plants commercially from seed and vegetative material without using peat at all.

I haven’t used peat for over 10 years. Until four years ago I was an amateur gardener, growing everything from leeks to Meconopsis in a sequence of increasingly large back gardens. In 2007 I took over a garden open to the public and a nursery producing 30,000 herbaceous perennials, shrubs, trees and annuals each year. I brought my gardening principles with me and the nursery has not used peat since I took over. We grow from seed, from cuttings, from divisions from the garden, from bare roots, plugs, liners, the works. Everything goes in commercially supplied peat free compost, sometimes with the addition of a little grit sand, or vermiculite for seeds. We grow salad and veg plants for our own little kitchen garden too. No special effort is required – in fact visitors comment daily on how healthy our plants look. They are currently flying out the door faster than I can restock.

As a private individual, I don’t much mind that you use peat now and again. I’m sure many of my own purchasing habits have equally dubious consequences (my dutch red pepper habit is probably high on the list). But I really mind very much that, as the nation’s Favourite Head Gardener, you have said publicly that, in effect, you can’t grow plants to your satisfaction without it. The amateur gardeners of the world listen to you, and the message is clear – if the great AT can’t grow without peat, then they surely can’t. And that, I’m sorry to say, is simply not true.

Along with many other contended peat-free growers who have been quietly getting on with it, letting visitors admire our produce first and telling them the provenance of our compost second, your message is a step back for the peat reduction cause. I wish wholeheartedly that you had used your huge influence to say something more positive about not using peat, or alternatively that you had said nothing at all. You probably feel that you are speaking up for the majority who still use peat, perhaps for lack an apparent good alternative, but mostly through lack of confidence.
I think your special status means you can and should lead from the front, help drive up demand for high quality peat-free composts, to thus drive up standards and give gardeners the confidence to follow your lead. That’s what I wish you’d said. I sincerely regret that you didn’t.
Yours affectionately, (but a little less so than two weeks ago)
Sue
PS -it will come as no surprise to say that all the seedlings and plants pictured above have spent all their lives in peat free compost. I took all these pics this week – they just happen to be what we have here now. And if we can do it, you can, and so can anyone else.
To read Alan’s pro-peat use piece in the Express, click here
April 20, 2011