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BBC News
5 days ago
- Science
- BBC News
Nepalese gardeners' compost praised for quality in Reading study
Gardeners from a town's Nepalese community have been taking part in a study into the quality of their homemade from the University of Reading, in Berkshire, found that mustard plants grown in composts, created from kitchen and garden waste, grew better than those in shop-bought Deepti Angra, from the university's department of crop science, said it showed that homemade composts can be a better medium to "supercharge plant growth".The researchers plan to analyse the nutritional content of the mature plants to determine whether the use of homemade compost has any effect on health when eaten. The research project involved the Integrated Research Development Centre (IRDC), which works with underrepresented communities in Reading, with a particular focus on the Nepalese initial trial saw mustard leaves - commonly grown and eaten by the Nepalese community - grown both in glasshouses and found that plants grown in the homemade composts developed more rapidly, produced larger flowers and leaves, and exhibited stronger root Angra said the study confirmed "what many gardeners have long suspected"."The nutrient composition analysis showed our community-made compost was at least comparable, if not better than store-bought options, as it exhibits higher concentrations of micronutrients," she said."This ensures soil enrichment, which better supports the growing plants."Through the project, community members learned to create two types of compost - one from wooden chips and garden waste, the other from kitchen waste, with both showing "excellent growing capabilities".Krishna Neupane, IRDC chair said: "This research has empowered our Nepalese community group to be personally involved in their own waste management and food production."The scientific evidence supporting our homemade compost practices gives confidence to households wanting to make more sustainable, more affordable choices." You can follow BBC Berkshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
Irish Times
28-06-2025
- Climate
- Irish Times
How to make the best of light and shade in your garden
Barely a week on from the summer solstice and we're already painfully past the annual peak of daylight length, a time of year that always causes me to catch my breath. Listen hard enough and you can almost hear the far-off grinding of gears, as nature switches its energies from vegetative growth to flowering, seed setting, and survival of the species. That decline in day length, initially barely perceptible, accelerates as the months pass. It continues until the darkest days of the winter solstice, shrinking the number of daylight hours from 17 to just seven and a half, at which point it upends itself and the complex process is reversed. But it's not just the seasonal waxing and waning of natural light levels that has such a dramatic effect on plant growth and health. As gardeners, we learn that important differences in the intensity and quality of light can also be influenced by a myriad of modifiers other than the dance of stars and planets. It could, for example, be the removal of a nearby tree that once cast shade for a part of the day, or perhaps the shadow of a new building changing a once-bright garden's habitat, or even just a sustained period of cloudy weather, all things it took me decades to fully appreciate. READ MORE Plant shade-loving ferns, for example, into a bright, open, south-facing spot, and they will almost inevitably struggle to perform, perhaps even die. But plant them into a deep, loamy, humus-rich soil in a south-facing spot overshadowed for the hottest, brightest part of the day by a deciduous tree and they are likely to flourish. Ferns, in the right soil, are likely to flourish in a south-facing spot that's in shade for the brightest part of the day. Photograph: Matt Kavanagh Equally, plant a light-loving species – for example, pelargoniums – in a shady spot and they will unsurprisingly almost certainly give up the ghost. But crucially, those same light-loving species can still struggle in a sunny, south- or west-facing location when weather conditions result in a sun-starved, cloudier-than-average Irish summer. Pelargoniums will almost certainly give up the ghost in a shady spot. Photograph: Alamy/PA Understanding these subtle, ever fluctuating differences in the type of shade, or conversely lack of shade, is a challenge. It's one made more difficult by that popular gardening term 'shade loving', an umbrella description that suggests there's a one-size-fits-all solution when that's simply not the case. [ The best ferns for Irish gardens: Chelsea gold medallist Billy Alexander's best picks Opens in new window ] Many woodland species of plant, for example, have evolved to thrive in dappled shade along the edge of wooded areas. These kinds of plants typically flourish in the seasonal partial shade cast by deciduous and herbaceous species that aren't in leaf all year round, and also require the sort of damp, fertile, humus-rich soils associated with such woodlands where decades of leaf litter have enriched the soil. Give them the sort of deep, unyielding, year-round dry shade found along the north-facing foot of a high wall or building, and they're going to be unhappy. Instead that role falls to a handful of ultra-resilient shade and drought-tolerant species (examples include Saxifraga stolonifera; Geranium macrorrhizum; Epimedium x rubrum; and Mahonia 'Charity'). Similarly, most gardeners know that east and north-facing aspects are classed as cool and shady, while south- and west-facing parts are typically classed as warm and bright. But it's also important to bear in mind that light levels in a garden can and do change dramatically over a single day, as well as over years and decades. [ Six easy tips for making your garden planters last all summer in Ireland Opens in new window ] As trees, shrubs and hedging grow and mature, for example, they will inevitably transform what were once bright, open spaces into areas where light levels fluctuate hugely. This has consequences for any light-loving species planted in a garden's youth, which can subsequently find themselves in what have become shady conditions not to their liking. Consider the changing nature of shade cast by an evergreen hedge, both as it matures and as the sun traverses the sky. In early morning, that shade – a shadow cast by the angle and position of the sun, and which also lengthens and stretches as the hedge itself grows and matures – lies to the west of the hedge. By noon, to the north. But by evening it's to the east. The taller the hedge, the greater the extent of that same shadow, which is also at its most extended in early morning just after the sun rises, and then again in late evening as the sun starts to set. The nature of shade cast by an evergreen hedge changes both as the hedge grows and as the sun traverses the sky In a world where a plethora of gardening advice is freely available to us all on the internet, key regional variations in the quality of light can also be easily overlooked. Full sun in a cool Irish garden is in no way equivalent, for example, to full sun in a Texan garden, or even one in the drier, sunny corners of southwest England. Such is the very different quality and intensity of that sunlight that plants that might quickly shrivel to a crisp in those hotter, brighter climes will grow quite happily in a sunny spot here in Ireland, just so long as the soil remains cool and damp. [ How to keep your garden blooming all summer long Opens in new window ] Conversely, there are light-loving species – for example, zinnia or celosia – that can be grown easily in otherparts of Europe and the US, but struggle to flourish in an Irish garden, even when given the brightest, sunniest spot. Heat aside, we just can't reliably give them the consistent levels of intense sunlight they relish. Some light-loving species that can be grown easily in other parts of Europe and the US struggle to flourish in an Irish garden. Photograph: Alamy/PA The same goes for certain kinds of fruit and vegetables, including some slow-to-ripen varieties of beefsteak tomatoes; aubergine; peppers; kiwi; and melon. It's not only heat that these need to truly flourish, but also plenty of long, bright, sunny summer days, never guaranteed here in this northwesterly corner of Europe On the plus side are those many species that thrive in our temperate, maritime Irish climate, from shade-tolerant ornamentals such as hosta, primula, fatsia, foxgloves, aquilegia, tellima, hydrangea, and narcissus, to many kinds of edibles including rhubarb, lettuce, beetroot, salad leaves, brassicas, peas, currants and apple trees. Hosta, one of the many species that thrive in our temperate, maritime Irish climate. Photograph: Alamy/PA The lesson to be learned? Just like an artist or a photographer, becoming intimately acquainted with the ever-shifting quality, intensity and direction of light is key to the art of good gardening and part of the secret to unlocking the potential magic of our outdoor spaces. This week in the garden The larvae of certain species (examples include box caterpillar, carrot fly, gooseberry sawfly and cabbage white butterfly) can quickly cause a lot of damage to plants at this time of year, weakening or even killing them. A combination of measures such as netting and handpicking is the most planet-friendly approach but isn't always feasible. In the case of bad infestations, biological controls such as the naturally occurring Bacillus thuringiensis or nematodes such as Nemasys Natural Fruit and Veg Protection can be very effective (stockists include and ) Offer late summer-flowering perennials and tall-growing vegetables some sort of sturdy support to protect them against wind damage, bearing in mind the eventual size of the plants when mature. Dates for your diary Delgany and District Horticultural Society Rose Show - Saturday, June 28th, St Patrick's National School, Greystones, Co Wicklow. All entries very welcome. To submit an entry, please email by Thursday June 25th. Specialist Plant Fair Weekend, Mount Stewart Gardens, Co Down - Saturday June 27th and Sunday June 28th (10am-6pm).
The Guardian
21-06-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Gardening in a climate crisis: how to be a green thumb when old rules no longer apply
The sun shone on Melbourne's gardens in May – and kept shining. Warm-weather plants that had begun to die back in expectation of winter got a second wind. Basil started sprouting leaves again and roses shot new buds. The state's second-warmest May on record also confounded cold-weather plants starting to make their way out of the ground. Was it time to bloom or sink back underground? Meanwhile, in the state's south-west, dry earth became even drier, and raised the risk of unseasonal fire. At the same time, in coastal parts of New South Wales and Queensland, it didn't just rain but it poured. So as the seasons become more erratic and the climate crisis results in observable changes to our gardens, how should green thumbs respond? How do we know what is going to grow well – and how can we plan for our future gardens when it feels like the old rules no longer apply? There isn't 'a clean, crisp answer' to this question, says Prof Angela Moles, a biologist who heads up the Big Ecology Lab at the University of New South Wales. The lab's mission is to find out how Australian plants are responding to the climate crisis and quantify the factors influencing those changes. 'Different parts of Australia are changing in different ways. Often the dry parts are getting drier and the wet parts are getting wetter, and different species are responding to things very differently,' Moles says. Primarily, they're responding by shifting their distribution. Often that happens in counterintuitive ways, with more than a third of plants moving 'backwards', such as towards the warmer areas where they might be thought to prefer cooler ones. 'We're seeing a lot of reassembly starting to happen, and the speeds at which species are shifting are quite frightening,' Moles says. Globally, plants are altering their range at a rate of about 800 metres per year, mirroring what we know about plant behaviour from the previous ice age. 'Everything's in this wild state of flux.' Sign up to get climate and environment editor Adam Morton's Clear Air column as a free newsletter Around Australia, plants are also changing the way they grow, such as when they flower, when their leaves come out, when they germinate or come up from the ground. That poses particular challenges for horticulture and conservation. 'There are cases where species start flowering earlier, but their pollinators [such as insects and birds] aren't around yet, or their pollinators are coming out even earlier. Pollinators are changing more quickly than the flowers, and that's causing some mismatches,' Moles says. Some of them, too, are going extinct. All this underscores the need to alter gardening and landscaping choices to take into account changing plant behaviour in response to the climate, but it also makes planning for that unpredictable behaviour very difficult. Clare Hart, the director of horticulture at Melbourne's Royal Botanic Gardens, says her team has been working on precisely this problem since 2016, assessing species for climate risk and developing a succession strategy for the gardens' future. 'We're working towards [a projected climate of] 3C warmer, and also [we're] going to have less rainfall … So the plants that we need to grow are from warmer, drier climates,' Hart says. 'We focus on adaptation because mitigation just isn't happening fast enough. And anything we do in an adaptation space will also assist with any mitigation when it does happen – and it needs to happen.' In 2018, the gardens held an international climate change summit, out of which sprung the international Climate Change Alliance of Botanic Gardens. One practical tool developed by that alliance to help with planning, especially for trees, was the climate assessment tool. Available to the public, the tool models the likely suitability of different tree species for a specified location against projected climate scenarios. A new feature of the gardens, the Australian Drylands is 'essentially a great experiment' to assess which native plants might grow well in a warmer, drier Melbourne. Horticulturalists looked north, from the top of NSW across to Western Australia, and collaborated with traditional owners, parks workers and other botanical gardens to understand which plants might suit the coming new normal further south. Hart names kangaroo grass, flame trees, spear lilies, gymea lilies and cycads as just some of the more well-known varieties already showing their versatility and resilience. Look local: what's thriving around you? Moles and Hart recommend walking around your neighbourhood and taking note of the plants that are flourishing, especially if they're native, and where in the garden they are placed. Planting out your nature strip can be a great way to help local ecosystems become more climate resilient, says Moles, as it helps mitigate urban heat pockets, provides habitat and assists in migration routes for plants, birds, animals and insects. Sign up to Clear Air Australia Adam Morton brings you incisive analysis about the politics and impact of the climate crisis after newsletter promotion Consider your microclimate Regardless of where in Australia you live, it helps to learn a bit more about the specific needs of plants, and what you are currently providing them with. 'Understand your soil conditions, understand water, where it comes from, and if you have the opportunity to put in a water tank – things like that really will help you to future proof,' says Hart. Recognise also that 'your microclimate can change quite dramatically, even from neighbour to neighbour,' Hart says. If your garden space is a balcony with a lot of afternoon sun, that may be better suited to growing plants more commonly found hundreds of kilometres further north than those thriving in next door's shady back yard. Consult local experts Hart recommends smaller, local nurseries and Indigenous plant nurseries as good sources of knowledge about plants that will do well in local conditions. Local councils will also often have local plant lists and resources for home gardeners who want to build local habitat. Connecting with community groups can be a useful way to learn about what's doing well in nearby bushland areas. Give plants extra protection when they're young Plants are most vulnerable during their early establishment phase, so try planting them in a context that allows you to give them a bit more care and attention while they're starting out, says Moles. 'Once they're established, they'll be a little bit more robust.' Use free tools and resources The Climate Change Alliance of Botanic Gardens' climate assessment tool can help you find out if the tree you want to plant is likely to thrive or struggle under future climate conditions. Which Plant Where has a database searchable by location and plant type, and allows you to filter results for different types of gardens and plant needs for estimates of climatic suitability in 2030, 2050 and 2070. The Atlas of Living Australia pulls together Australian biodiversity data from multiple sources. Explore your local area and find out to show what plants are growing around you (and which animals have been seen locally, too). The Bureau of Meteorology provides general forecasts for rainfall and temperature up to four months in advance, giving you a rough idea of what conditions are likely for the season ahead. School of Thumb is a horticulture industry-funded video series aimed at less-experienced gardeners, to help them think about their circumstances and the plants that might suit.
Times
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Only singing can save Clapham Common from the apocalypse
Imagine, if you will, a near future in which the wildfires are 'raging outside of Milton Keynes'. Unless it was protected inside the lush 'biodomes' dotted around the country, the remaining greenery has withered and died amid extreme weather and scorching temperatures. Like the rest of the 16-year-olds in this world, Akaego is awaiting the big day — Augmentation Day — when her unique talents will be 'surgically enhanced to ensure the survival of society'. She is one of the few people who have the power to accelerate the growth of plants — a precious talent in a climate apocalypse that is killing off the source of so many foods and medicines. As Augmentation Day approaches, she receives a mysterious note. 'Whatever happens,' it warns, 'don't get Augmented.' Why not? What does the rebel group of 'Freestakers' know that she doesn't? What secrets are her parents keeping? And what really happened at that 'aerogel manufacturing plant in Croydon 13 years ago'? The author Kenechi Udogu was highly commended in the Fab Prize, the Faber competition aimed at spotting new talent, and Augmented has first-novel energy. The premise is strong. Akaego can use her voice to grow plants; she just needs to fine-tune her frequency: 'The first note came out louder than I'd expected. […] The second also felt off. Like it was catching in my throat, reluctant to escape into the world. My head tilted backwards with the next note. This one had more of a melody to it, and I latched on to it. Unlike the others, it felt light, like it wanted to roam free, like it wanted to be more than just air trapped within my body.' A musical mission to save the planet? I'm here for it. I was looking forward to our heroine bringing plants to life like Spielberg's ET resurrecting that dead chrysanthemum. • Eight books to get your child excited about reading However, no sooner has Akaego's superpower been introduced, her Midas touch is all but forgotten and her story is left to wither in favour of a much less interesting one involving the internal wranglings between some rather dull rebels and the mayor's office. (Something about only certain classes of people being allowed licences to grow their own. As the story goes on, there's less about planet-saving soundwaves and more secondary characters turning up to say things like, 'It still doesn't give them the right to stop people from trying to create equally sustainable societies which can function outside of theirs.') So the concept is promising, but the writing is clunky. As she considers the desolate landscape that was once Clapham Common, Akaego imagines 'what spaces like this would be like if I could help rejuvenate them. If the ability everyone believed I had would be able to provide more enclosed green leisure spaces for people to enjoy.' • Read more book reviews and interviews — and see what's top of the Sunday Times Bestsellers List Thankfully, there's a sweet and gentle romance, and enough interesting ideas to keep things thrumming, if eco-sci-fi is your thing. Augmented (12+) by Kenechi Udogu (Faber £8.99 pp391). To order a copy go to Free UK standard P&P on online orders over £25. Special discount available for Times+ members
