I have to say I do get irritated by the do-gooders who who preach to the rest that we must all do something to help save the planet.
For sure, good housekeeping - or garden keeping, in this case - is worthwhile, if not just for personal pleasure.
But please, letting a few square metres grow wild with nettles, or putting up a bee hotel, isn't going to save the planet. Even if a few hundred thousand people do it, these tiny actions are not going to save the planet.
(my bee hotel -pictured - is more for ornamental purposes than helping to save our planet)
I've found over the years that gardening is more about marketing trends than personal choice. Big brands pushing the latest fad in front of our noses in the hope we are going to buy their products.
Luckily the new social trends are becoming stronger that the previously mechanical marketing trends.
A crap product soon gets short shrift when it's exposed on social media; Equally a good product, or idea, is soon catapulted into everyone's imagination by the same method.
Don't get me wrong, I like overgrown areas. I love to see wildlife thrive and want to encourage as many species of insects, birds and mammals to get up close and personal. But I will do it because it pleases me.
Ironically I get as many, if not more, insects and wildlife, per square metre, in my small areas of more formal tended garden as I do in a square metre in the naturalised land I have a few feet away.
Articles like this - I’m doing my bit to stop the sixth mass extinction – letting my garden go wild - on the Guardian this morning merely trivialise the subject.
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