tiny toxic scraps in the garden

You’d think stuff would be either suitable for composting or not. We know that organic material is biodegradable, and we know that metal and plastic things aren’t.  If only life were so simple … 

I used to be pretty laid back about what I chucked in the compost.  By trial and error I would find out what’s biodegradable.

Take those shopping bags we buy thinking we’re helping the planet by using them instead of plastic bags. After a few months I notice the worms are ignoring them and they look the same as they used to. I realize they are not biogradable.  Same for synthetic materials.  I never know for sure what synthetic looks like until I observe the absence of worms and the non-ragged pristine look.

I often find little scraps of white plastic in the compost and in the garden. Because they’re such small scraps I assumed they were in the process of biodegrading – therefore good for the garden.

The other day I was listening to a marine scientist talking about the plastic rubbish in the ocean.  Her research involved getting sea birds to regurgitate the plastic debris they had swallowed. That was good for the health of the sea birds and enabled a measurement of the damage we are doing to the environment.

What she said next was illuminating and shocking.  She said that plastic does not biodegrade in the sea. Instead it breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces. This is very dangerous to smaller sea creatures because the plastic ends up in their bodies and it contains poisonous toxins.

The penny dropped with a clang. That was what was happening in the compost and garden! The plastic wasn’t biodegrading, it was just breaking up into smaller and smaller pieces!

Plain cardboard and newspaper make worms, slaters, centipedes and tiny jumpy flea-like creatures happy, and provide a good medium for plants to grow. Unfortunately -  surprise, surprise - the commercial demand for shiny advertisements trumps the health of the environment.

I’m on a mission to pick up the tiny plastic scraps in the garden and compost, and put them where they belong - in the non- recyclable rubbish bin. 

34 sleeps to go

34 sleeps to go till the open garden weekend. Despite temptation I have managed to retain my gardening integrity by doing nothing different to what I usually do.

That means that I have continued to fill gaps either with transplants or by buying small plants.

It means that I have continued to arrange and re-arrange the garden whenever I needed to, using my Potential Future Vision.

It means that I haven’t bought large plants to achieve an instant effect.

It means that I haven’t used annuals to plug gaps.

Last weekend I was even brave enough to have a party here to celebrate J’s third birthday.  

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day - September 2011

Spring started soft and lovely, sap rising prolifically ...  then came a cold wet period. But I didn't mind because I'd finished spreading compost and knew the worms would appreciate the moisture.

hellebores

blue bluebells and blue grape hyacinths, orange wallflowers
 and in front greenish-yellow euphorbia martinii

buddleia silver anniversary

white banksia rose - look, no thorns!

camellia

correa dusky bells with forget me nots

love in the mist surrounded by forget me nots
a study in blue

Campanula poscharskyana or Serbian bellflower

Lasiopetalum macrophylum or velvet bush

Thryptomene saxicola alba

nasturtiums to add peppery taste and edible flowers to salad

blue bells

Gastrolobium melanopetalum

Philotheca myoporoides

Cistus x skanbergii

Lavatera maritima

... appreciation to Carol from May Dreams Gardens for hosting GBBD.

listen to this

Yesterday I went to a concert of 20th century English music played by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.  One of the pieces was The Lark Ascending, by Vaughan Williams.

I found it incredibly lovely.  It has been said of this work: 'By no other composer is the interdependence of man and nature more movingly expressed' (Wilfrid Mellers).

The English Pastoral movement aimed to promote and defend the landscape against the rise of industrialism. Writers who did this included Thomas Hardy, and Vaughan Williams did it with music.

The French composer Olivier Messiaen also had a passion for bird songs and incorporated them into his music.

grass or lawn? that is the question

‘One thing that never goes astray in a lawn maker is a measure of insanity, but the main thing is choosing the right grass species and strain or variety.’ (The Lawn: A Social History, by Peter McInnis)

I used to have a lawn. I never really thought about it  – it was just what you did.  It was for providing a contrast to the garden beds, space to lie on and for children to play on.  I loved the new experience of gardening but somehow never enjoyed maintaining the lawn. I had an aversion to the sound of the lawn mower. Weeding was a pleasure in the garden beds, but an impossible and never-ending task in the lawn.  And there were serious lawn hazards. You had to watch out for dog poo. When you went barefoot you had to be careful not to stand on a bee.

back garden 1980s

back garden about 1987

When I went trekking in the Indian Himalayas I encountered my first alpine meadow, natural grassland maintained by snow, ice, wind, sun, grazing goats and other animals.  It was soft, perfect and lovely, consisting of perennial grasses, sedges, wildflowers and low-lying shrubs. A far cry from the expensive, time consuming mono-cultural thing that is lawn.

Western Himalayan meadow (Wikipedia)

Lawn is a modern phenomenon. Until recently people didn’t have the time, energy, tools and space to make a lawn.  Modern technology, lawn mowers, fertilizers, etc. both provided the opportunity and fed the desire of people to tame and control their piece of land.  Grass has been seen as representing wildness, freedom and anarchism, and lawn representing stultifying tidiness and conformity.

Lawn hasn’t been all bad.  It enabled the rise of the game of croquet and, more recently, golf, tennis, football and other sports. But as the climate changes we realize increasingly that lawn is not environmentally friendly.  Lawn is sterile. It provides no food or shelter for wildlife. It requires lots of water.  I suspect that the growing demand for fake grass is already spawning lucrative business opportunities.

In the 1970s I had a lot of lawn. Over the years, gradually, relentlessly, I dug up the lawn and extended the planting area. Today there is no grass, not even on the nature strip in the street.