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Creating a Mediterranean Garden for Britain's Hotter Summers

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  Creating a Mediterranean Garden for Britain's Hotter Summers Perhaps the answer to a brown summer garden isn't more water—but different plants. There is something slightly dispiriting about looking out across a British garden in the middle of a hot, dry summer. The lawn has turned from green to straw. Hanging baskets need watering almost every day. Plants that looked magnificent in May are drooping by the afternoon, and every trip around the garden seems to involve another watering can or hosepipe. The traditional response has been simple: add more water . But perhaps we need to ask a different question. What if we changed the garden instead? Not by trying to turn Hertfordshire, Kent, Yorkshire or anywhere else in Britain into Provence, but by borrowing some of the principles that make Mediterranean gardens work: drought-tolerant planting, shade, gravel, aromatic plants, less lawn, careful use of water and, above all, putting the right plant in the right place. That distincti...
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Tinder-Dry Britain: Why One BBQ Could Start a Major Fire

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  Tinder-Dry Britain: Why One BBQ Could Start a Major Fire That brown grass isn't just dead-looking — it may be fuel waiting for a spark. Across Britain, we have become very familiar with the sight of brown lawns, dusty verges and fields that have changed from lush green to something resembling straw. It is tempting to think of this simply as a gardening problem. The lawn looks terrible. The plants need watering. The countryside could do with some rain. But there is another consequence of prolonged hot, dry weather that deserves much more attention: fire. During summer 2026, prolonged warm and dry conditions have repeatedly increased wildfire risk across parts of Britain. The Met Office has highlighted the combination of dry ground, heat and wind as particularly significant because a fire that begins very small can spread surprisingly quickly. And this is one environmental problem where individual behaviour really does matter. A discarded cigarette. A disposable barbecue. A fire pi...
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DIY Composting: Why Are We Paying Someone Else to Do What Our Gardens Can Do for Free?

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  DIY Composting: Why Are We Paying Someone Else to Do What Our Gardens Can Do for Free? There was a time when composting was simply part of having a garden. Vegetable peelings, leaves, grass cuttings and dead plants did not automatically disappear into a council bin. Much of this material went onto a compost heap, into a compost bin or directly back into the soil. Somewhere along the way, many of us stopped doing it. Today it is perfectly normal to put garden waste into one bin and food waste into another, then have a lorry collect it so that somebody else can process it. Council recycling schemes have undoubtedly helped divert organic waste away from general rubbish, and that is a good thing. But there is an interesting question: Why send valuable organic material away from our homes, only to go out later and buy compost or fertiliser for the garden? Home composting can be remarkably simple. You do not need expensive equipment, complicated machinery or a large garden. At its simp...
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The Food Waste Recycling Paradox: Cutting Carbon Without Putting Plastic Into Our Soil

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  The Food Waste Recycling Paradox: Cutting Carbon Without Putting Plastic Into Our Soil Food waste seems like one of the easier environmental problems to solve. We buy food. We eat what we need. We avoid throwing food away. Anything genuinely unavoidable — vegetable peelings, bones, eggshells, tea and coffee waste — goes into a food-waste collection or composting system rather than the ordinary bin. Simple. Except, as is so often the case with environmental problems, the closer we look at the complete system, the more complicated it becomes. A new study published in Nature Food has examined what happens when food waste is diverted away from landfill and towards alternatives such as composting and anaerobic digestion. The headline finding is extremely encouraging. Modelling by researchers at the University of Vermont suggests that large-scale diversion of US food waste away from landfill could reduce the climate impact of food-waste management by 89–99% . Nitrogen pollution associ...
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