transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:03] Out of all the seasons, spring in particular serves as a true reminder of just how miraculous nature can be. As buds burst, leaves unfurl, birds sing and butterflies flutter past, the bleakness of winter is quickly forgotten. Recent photos from the Artemis 2 mission cast our world in a different light, revealing the delicate vulnerability of our small blue dot against the vastness of space. The message from scientists across the globe has grown clearer, more urgent and harder to ignore with every year that passes. We're over-extracting and we're over-consuming on a finite planet. And in doing so, we edge ever closer to damaging not only nature's beauty, but the very systems that sustain all life, including us, on this fragile Earth. Yesterday marked Earth Day, a global movement engaging over a billion people. And it's a celebration of the amazing work that has and is being done to protect and preserve the planet for the benefit of all life. And as gardeners, we understand the deep connection between people and planet. The choices we make in our own green spaces, no matter how small, can ripple outwards and create real impact. One of the most direct and immediate ways we can act in reducing our waste. Now, recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show that the UK produces around 10 million tonnes of food waste a year. That's an incredible 140 kilos a person. So in a bit, we're going to hear from Jenny Laville and Nick Turrell as they dig into composting and explore how shifting our habits can cut down the amount of food that we throw away. But before that, we're heading to where food begins, the veg patch. RHS Wisley's World Food Gardeners Liz Mooney and Pavlina Kapsalis share some of the more unusual crops that they've been growing and loving. And finally, RHS Gardening Advisor Jenny Bowden shows how you can transform a traditional lawn into a richer, more biodiverse space with no digging required. All this coming up on Gardening with the RHS with me, Gareth Richards. Over the past weeks and months, Liz Mooney has been sharing her growing guides on all your allotment staples, from potatoes to peas, carrots to cabbages, and everything in between. However, if you're feeling a bit more adventurous, growing your own offers the opportunity to grow things you'll never find on your local supermarket shelves. To glean some inspiration, we caught up with Liz and her World Food Garden colleague, Pavlina Kapsalis.

Speaker 2:
[02:37] I love growing some more unusual crops. Not only is it more exciting for you, it's really good in your diet because it gives you all of these different nutritional things. And I just enjoy experimenting and having fun and seeing what we can grow and going beyond the standard.

Speaker 3:
[02:53] Yeah, I think very similar to Liz. So for me, it's exciting to try new cultivars. It's so satisfying when it works. And the varieties and kind of plants, which look quite exotic, also you think, oh, we can actually grow it here. And then if they on the top give you some lovely fruit or something which you can eat, that kind of tops it up. And I try some on my allotment and I obviously grow quite a lot here. And it's just nice to put something different in your diet as there's nothing better than trying something with some beautiful variety of tomato, which you would never get in a supermarket or try achucha or chayote, which are crops which you might find in some ethnic markets, but not really in your normal shop. And it's quite nice to enrich your diet in that way. And it's good for us also.

Speaker 2:
[03:47] One crop which has been a real success here in our food garden has been amaranth. So there are a few different varieties of them. You may be familiar with bedding amaranth or love lies bleeding, but there are edible varieties of it which we've grown in the garden. We've grown amaranth, which is a plant from Lohschberg, which has got beautiful purple leaves and purple flowers. We've also grown one called hot biscuit, which has got its green leaves and more rusty coloured flowers. So amaranth is a traditional food crop from South Central America. It was a traditional food crop of the Aztecs, but as well as using it in their food, they also used it as part of their religious rituals, which meant that when the Spanish conquistadors arrived, they deliberately persecuted the growers of amaranth, and tried to wipe it out as part of their attempt to suppress the native culture. So this food crop was lost for those cultural reasons rather than because it's a bad food crop. And we have been growing it here at Wisley, and it grows really well for you. You can pick and eat the leaves, you can use them basically much like spinach, or you can grow it for the seeds, which are sort of a bit of a pseudo cereal. You can use them, you need to wash them several times between the sort of substance which is on them, but then you can use them much like quinoa, and that just grows really well, and it will sow seed for you, so it will keep coming up, and it's beautiful in the vegetable garden as well as being an edible crop.

Speaker 3:
[05:01] Also great cut flower. If you don't want to use them as a food crop, amaranth are really pretty as a cut flower, and they dry it really well, so you can use them as a dried flower, cut flower, and your food crop, so it's a very versatile crop to use, actually. I grow wonderberry, and that is very similar to physalis, whoever is familiar with this crop, it's again like South American plant from tomato family, and it produces a small, kind of a small tomato-like berries, almost like a cherry tomato covered with the little beautiful husks, and they, for me, are really tasty, really flavor some, yeah. Very similar to, you would grow tomato or aubergine, so you would have to take them out, kind of, after the last frost, but otherwise, I would say, they are less prone to any diseases. They might need a little bit of support, but otherwise, they are fairly straightforward. One thing with them, which is, they basically, when they're ready, they fall to the ground. That's the one thing, but they are then covered in these beautiful husks, so they usually stay kind of clean, but that's one thing. If you're picking them off the plant, you might need to leave them somewhere, maybe in a bowl to maybe ripen up a little more.

Speaker 2:
[06:13] If you want something with a memorable taste, you should try an electric daisy. Oh, yes. So, they're sort of relatively ground cover plants and they produce these little sort of pinball heads of yellow flowers. And opinions vary on whether it's a nice taste or not, but it has this effect, it has this numbing effect on your mouth.

Speaker 3:
[06:32] Yeah, it's also called a toothache plant, so that's how it was used, I think, in the past. But we had recently some visitors from China, and I think they are using it as a supplement to Szechuan pepper almost, or they used it as a supplement to Szechuan pepper. They were very surprised, it tastes very similar. So it was quite popular with them.

Speaker 2:
[06:55] Traditionally, for a shady spot when you're growing vegetables, I would generally recommend more leafy crops, as well as your brassicas. So in terms of brassicas, you could try maybe colettes. Colettes are a bit of a cross between kale and sprouts. What you basically end up getting is a fluffy brussels sprout. And they look really quite cool. And you can get some which are sort of, they're bi-coloured. So they're a bit green and red. So they're really attractive in the garden. And they're this unusual plant which tastes good. Oh, what's the broccoli, the mini broccoli? Huazontal?

Speaker 3:
[07:24] So huazontal, it's Chenopodaceae family. So it's a leafy vegetable.

Speaker 2:
[07:29] Huazontal is also known as Aztec broccoli. And it grows into quite a large plant. And again, you can pick and eat the leaves. So it produces these very little little, they look a bit like tiny little broccoli heads, the flower heads, which you can pick and eat.

Speaker 3:
[07:43] I would say maybe sorrel also. There are different types of sorrel, which you can use in different things. There are like a small leaf sorrel, which is French sorrel, which you can use a bit more maybe in a salad. And then you have got the traditional big leaf sorrel, which is really nice for making soups, or again, in a salad. And I think that is a crop which would do very well in a shade. Cress also, watercress and landcress a little bit more.

Speaker 2:
[08:09] They like moisture.

Speaker 3:
[08:11] Yeah, they like moisture and I think shady spot would be okay. And for deep shade, if anybody would like to try it, again, it's an unusual crop to grow in the UK. You need to expect specific conditions, but similar to watercress, also the wasabi can be grown here. It does need a little bit more moisture and it would do better as is recommended in the books to grow by the stream, you know, by running water. But we have grown it here now in the World Food Garden for three years and they are maybe smaller, but they're definitely starting to produce some rhizomes and you can also, the leaves are edible. So you can get that kind of little zinc from the leaves if you add them to salads and then definitely will do it quite deep shade. I could suggest a couple of tubers which are probably better in pots partially because they are a bit more contained. Also another thing that more easy to harvest in a pot. So for example, tiger nuts, that's one of the crops which used to be, I think, quite traditional grow in the UK. And then after the Second World War, the tiger nuts are like small tubers and they taste a little bit like almonds. And they were used as a sweet for kids basically. So that's really good one for the pot. One thing is it needs quite a bit of moisture. So they will need a little bit of watering. But with the pots, you need to water one way or another. Another one may be Chinese artichoke, which is one of those quite interesting little tubers again. They look like little Michelin man. They are quite interesting. It's white tuber, very crunchy, almost texture of the water chestnut, I would say. They are really good in the pots because if you put them in a garden, they might be a little bit too spready. So like keeping them contained, it's really good. But just recently watched on the Instagram and I actually tried it just to pickle them with a bit of beetroot. And they turned bright pink and they are really beautiful. So yeah, that's one of the props I would probably try.

Speaker 2:
[10:14] I have to say not to put you off trying those Chinese artichokes, but Little Mishley Men is the polite way of describing them. Little Maggots is an alternative. But don't let that put you off trying them because the flavour is unaffected.

Speaker 1:
[10:32] Huge thanks to Liz and Pavlina there. Now, if you've been inspired by this, I heartily recommend an RHS book called Grow Your Own Veg Through the Year. And it's 365 days of home-grown vegetables and herbs, and it includes loads of information on more unusual edibles, as well as all the usual stuff that you can grow at home. And it's a really great contemporary up-to-date guide, well worth a look. And of course, growing your own food is just one of the most rewarding ways to give something back to the planet, because it shortens that journey from soil to plate, gives you complete control over what goes into the ground and what doesn't. So you can avoid transport emissions, you can avoid synthetic sprays and pesticide, you can get really nutritious crops to nourish your body with minimal environmental impact. But abundance, as any gardener knows, brings its own challenges. A handful of courgette plants can quickly produce a torrent of fruit. Tomatoes ripen all at once, and suddenly the kitchen is overflowing. Or maybe you've just accidentally bought too much in the supermarket. These gluts can lead to an unexpected problem, which is waste. Food waste remains one of the most pressing environmental issues we face. It's something my co-hosts, Nick Turrell and Jenny Laville, took time to explore, digging into the small, practical shifts that can make a real difference. From rethinking the way we shop and plan our meals, to finding creative ways to use every last scrap. Even what can't be eaten needn't be wasted. Returning peelings and leftovers to the soil through composting closes the loop, turning yesterday's scraps into tomorrow's food.

Speaker 4:
[12:06] So I first started to look at my own food waste and what we do with it after I moved house one time. And I actually discovered that it didn't really matter that it was in the food bin, because absolutely everything was getting burned. It was getting collected and burned by the council. So although I was putting food waste into food bin and thinking I was doing a good thing.

Speaker 5:
[12:28] Oh, I see, so it wasn't actually then going to be recycled, it was just going to be burned.

Speaker 4:
[12:31] No, it was just going to be burned. Now, I mean, just to be fair and to clarify, this isn't all councils in the whole country. Some councils run fantastic schemes where they take away the food bin and they compost it and that's becoming increasingly so and there's legislation coming in to back that up. But it did make me think what is happening to that food and actually it makes you really examine, does it need to go in there at all?

Speaker 5:
[12:52] Well, it's a good point. Anything that finds its way into landfill means that it's being broken down anaerobic because it's buried basically. So it doesn't have the oxygen and when that happens, it releases methane gas and methane gas is something like 25 times more dangerous as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. So it's a big no-no to be putting any kind of food waste into landfill and we don't need to.

Speaker 4:
[13:20] This is it. I mean, we're talking about what's the best way to get rid of it. How about not producing it at all or massively cutting down on what you produce? About 4.4 million tons of edible food that is thrown away every year in the UK. That's a huge number. And a lot of that needn't be thrown away.

Speaker 5:
[13:38] Absolutely. And anything that has been living can break down, can be composted somehow. And it's just about us finding a way of being able to reduce that and break it down and make a use of it. There's this brilliant website called lovefoodhatewaste.com. Honestly, if you're listening, look it up. If you've not seen it before, Love Food Hate Waste. And the facts and the figures on there, there was one on there that said 3.5 million carrots are thrown away every day in the UK. Every day, 3.5 million carrots. What's that about?

Speaker 4:
[14:12] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[14:13] People just think, oh, well, it's gone a bit droopy.

Speaker 4:
[14:15] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5:
[14:16] But you can actually revive them. I've done that before. If you put it into a bowl of water, celery, carrots, broccoli, put into a bowl of cold water, it will rehydrate and then it's a bit more.

Speaker 4:
[14:28] I mean, I just juice mine, mate, but I'm more middle-class than you.

Speaker 5:
[14:31] There you go. Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[14:33] I think that is the first approach is, it doesn't need to go in the bin at all.

Speaker 5:
[14:36] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[14:37] All those stems, those cauliflower stems, they can all make fantastic soups, bases of stocks, loads of things you can do with that. That's one way of stopping it getting into the bin. Buying clever, that helps as well.

Speaker 5:
[14:50] Yeah, buying loose stuff rather than in the bags.

Speaker 4:
[14:52] Exactly.

Speaker 5:
[14:52] For one, there's not a plastic bag.

Speaker 4:
[14:53] Yeah, no plastic.

Speaker 5:
[14:55] That was one of the things on this website. Funnily enough, it said that if we didn't, no, that's right, if we bought apples, potatoes, and I can't remember what the other one was now. If we bought them loose, it would save us something like 60,000 tons of waste every year. But composting, even if you're not really much into gardening, still think about just composting these things because they've all got some kind of nutrient value.

Speaker 4:
[15:20] Absolutely.

Speaker 5:
[15:20] Which you can use that in your garden to enrich your soil, help with the biodiversity, help with all sorts of microorganisms in your garden. You don't even realize it, but actually you would be doing your bit for the planet rather than chucking them away.

Speaker 4:
[15:35] Absolutely. I know that quite often when we talk about composting, people automatically in their heads go to like a three bin system or a Dalek or something. A lot of people were saying, I don't have room for that or it's unsightly in my garden. I don't know where I'd even put it. The work that goes into maintaining. I found, because I have a really small garden and it is a courtyard garden. I've got very little actual soil, but I don't have any food waste now. I don't throw anything away because I've got so many different little composting systems. So I've got a compost bin, which I can put some stuff in, but I've also got a Bokashi bin and a Wormery.

Speaker 5:
[16:16] So is the Bokashi, is that like a sort of a hot composter type thing?

Speaker 4:
[16:18] No, it's a Bokashi is actually anaerobic.

Speaker 5:
[16:21] Okay.

Speaker 4:
[16:21] So it's bacteria. And so what you do is you get like a bin, a plastic bin. You can buy these sets or you could just muck this up at home and you put in all your food waste. And pretty much everything can go in it.

Speaker 5:
[16:32] All right. So including meat and fish and dairy.

Speaker 4:
[16:34] Chuck it in mate, chuck it in. Absolutely no problem. The only things I don't put in my Bokashi are large bones. That's the only thing I can think of that I don't put in. If it was once alive, it goes in there. Then you put every like now and then you put in a handful of this Bokashi brown, which contains this active stuff. And it sort of pickles it. It can smell very boozy. You know, it can smell kind of like like vinegary.

Speaker 5:
[17:00] And how long does it take for it to work?

Speaker 4:
[17:02] Well once you've filled up the bin and you're right at the top and then you put it aside for about two weeks.

Speaker 5:
[17:08] Okay, so not long.

Speaker 4:
[17:09] And in that time you're filling up the other bin, another bin. And it's breaking it down and you will get it almost looks again like pickled food, but it breaks it all down and that takes a couple of weeks. And it also produces, they call it Bokashi tea.

Speaker 5:
[17:22] Like a liquid.

Speaker 4:
[17:23] Exactly. And that's all this goodness from these foods that you were talking about. And you can dilute that quite a lot, but dilute it, feed your plants with it. Or you can pour it neat down the drains to help you clear your drains. So it's really useful. It's a pre-compost. So if you do have a garden, you can put it like dig a hole, put the Bokashi in, cover it up. And within a week or two after that, you can then plant directly on top and it's feeding the soil. I don't have that level of space. So I put it in my Dalek, in my regular composter, and it breaks down over a bit more time, the second phase. And then in autumn, I'm harvesting that compost.

Speaker 5:
[18:00] So in theory, we could all be having hardly any food waste being collected and sent off. In theory, we could massively reduce it, couldn't we?

Speaker 4:
[18:10] Yeah, if I can do it, literally anyone can. But it is really worth it. And you could do the Pocachy thing. Wormeries are great as well if you've got the space. And of course, traditional composting are brilliant. There's so many different ways to do this. So there's loads of different systems. And it's just a case, I think, of looking at your situation and deciding what works best for you. Like, I love the Pocachy, but I recognize a lot of people don't have the time to do it.

Speaker 5:
[18:34] So if they've not got one of those, then if they've just got like a regular garden compost, then pretty much anything that has been growing can go in there. And that's a great thing. But just to avoid things like meat, fish, dairy, because it'll attract rats and mice and stuff like what you don't want because that puts everybody off, doesn't it?

Speaker 4:
[18:52] The only thing I do, because I do have quite a small garden, is because I'm putting in so much food waste, I have to remember to keep my carbon up. So there's lots of putting paper in it, ripping up cardboard, really, really small. Egg boxes, cereal boxes. Which is great because then I'm not sending that off to be recycled, I'm making that into plant food. Then there's wormeries, vermiculture. That's good as well. Once you get running with those, that's for very much fresh food waste.

Speaker 5:
[19:18] Are these things that newbie gardeners can try?

Speaker 4:
[19:20] Definitely, wormeries, bakashes. I think composting is as well, actually. So I really feel like there's a situation for everybody. It's just a case of looking at it. But again, with food management, it's also about if you're gardening and maybe you've over sown.

Speaker 5:
[19:36] Yeah, and it's a classic, isn't it? When you just first started, because you're so enthusiastic, you think, right, let's sow the whole lot. All of a sudden, then you've got millions of tomatoes or millions of whatever else. Then inevitably, you think, what can I do with this lot?

Speaker 4:
[19:48] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[19:49] But just think, right, let's just sow what we think we're actually going to need.

Speaker 4:
[19:53] Yeah. If you do have a terrible feeling, there's always plug plants that you can get later on that make up for it. I always find it's good to get together with other gardeners for this. I used to, when we had a lot, we'd do seed swaps. So some people would sow one thing and somebody else would sow another, and then we'd swap. Then if you can avoid a glut, but if you can't, then.

Speaker 5:
[20:14] Then the number one aim is for it not to go to waste, as in not to go to landfill or that. So you can keep it in your garden effectively.

Speaker 4:
[20:23] Or donate it, give it to people.

Speaker 5:
[20:25] Yeah, yeah, food banks, share, share, yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 4:
[20:27] Have you done that thing this Christmas where I do this every year? Me and my family basically just swap homemade things from our glut. We get chilli jams or slo-jin, just passing it between us.

Speaker 5:
[20:39] Who gets the slo-jin? Sounds like a good option.

Speaker 4:
[20:42] There's enough slo-jin for everything.

Speaker 1:
[20:53] Thanks so much to Nick and Jenny there, there's lots of food for thought. Now, a lawn is one of the most ubiquitous features in domestic gardens around the UK. It's great for kids to run around on, play a game of football, or to practice your cartwheels, but depending on how you look after it, when it comes to biodiversity, supporting local wildlife, or even just visual interest, it can be quite a barren space. If you're looking for an alternative, there are lots of options out there, but each requires varying levels of intervention. One of the most commonly recommended is replacing your lawn with a wildflower meadow, which can support three times more species of plants, spiders and insects compared to a conventional lawn. They're a fantastic option in the right situation, especially if you've got the time and energy to properly prepare the site and the patience to maintain it year on year. But if it doesn't quite work for you, don't be disheartened.

Speaker 6:
[21:41] A wildflower meadow is really quite tricky because if you're sowing seed after you've got rid of the grass, what happens is the natural seed bank of grass competes out your seedlings because grass grows all year and the flowers that you've sown tend to stop in the winter. And so gradually the native grasses just take over and you're left with grasses and perhaps just a couple of wildflower varieties that are happy. So I've tried this and it didn't really go well. So I've done this sort of naturalizing bulbs into grass with some perennials and it really, it really, really looks lovely.

Speaker 1:
[22:28] That was RHS Horticultural Advisor Jenny Bowden and I think she makes a really interesting point. Wildflower meadows can be a really good solution for some people in some situations. The optimum one is if, say, you've got an established lawn and you take a look at your lawn and you can do this at this time of year is actually a brilliant time to do it. Look at your lawn. Is it full of yarrow and daisies and speedwell and lots of things that aren't grass that look like they're going to become wildflowers? If that is the case, then you've got a really great starting point for a wildflower meadow and this is exactly what I've got in my front garden. Back garden is a different story. The grass is really vigorous, the soil is richer and I think I would have a really hard job turning that into a wildflower meadow. But the front garden where the soil is really, really poor, actually the grass is quite weak, the wildflowers have got a perfect chance to get away. Actually, what I've done is I've already stopped mowing and I'm not going to mow until the middle of summer and it's going to be full of wildflowers. It's going to be wonderful. However, like I was saying, the back garden much more fertile, the wildflowers are not going to compete quite so well with the grass. So therefore, a different approach is going to be required if I want to make that more wildlife friendly and look good. So if you've been struggling to create a wildflower meadow, Jenny's got an interesting take that might just help you out.

Speaker 6:
[23:58] So what we're really talking about here is not a wild flower meadow, and it's not a lawn alternative in the sense of regularly mowing a flowering lawn, or even once every couple of weeks. What I'm talking about here is having a flowering area, which is perennials, bulbs, and sometimes even annuals, planted into an area which gets mown perhaps once a year. That would be my aim. And so your choices of plants are going to be geared around. They're given their best by the time it comes to mow in the autumn. And definitely good for wildlife. Plenty of bees, plenty of all sorts of pollinators. It also gives it the opportunity to plant things so that they start flowering very early in the season. So you can start the year with snowdrops, and then you can go on to iris reticulata. So we're really talking, well, potentially December, January, February. And then you're into your main tranche of bulbs, which take you potentially all the way through to November. So the real benefits of it are low maintenance, seriously low maintenance. You're looking to mainly plant perennials. And also they're going to be drought tolerant. So you don't have to water either. And they're not going to need mowing. So very, very low input, no fertilizers either. Bulbs are absolutely perfect for this because they don't need any water. So low input, low maintenance, and lots of color. A big bang for your buck. It's not the time against having lawns, but I have an area which used to have raspberries on it. It was really, really hard to keep the grasses from coming in and infiltrating the raspberries. So I got rid of those and I basically let the grass come. Then my process was to cut it really, really short in the autumn. Then I sowed bulbs. I sowed a lovely range of bulbs, including tulips, little dwarf tulips, the botanical tulips, which are perennial. So they'll come back year after year. And things like Narcissus, the little Narcissus Bulbacodium and the irises, like Iris reticulata and the Mascaris, which are out in flower now, which is the little great pyocytes, which I hope will spread. I'm sure they will. And Cilla Siberica, that's early in the year one. And snowdrops and a tulip called Shogun. So a really good way of making the bulb planting look natural is to throw them across. You can even mix them together and then just sort of chuck them onto the grass and plant them that way. And that looks very natural. When you plant perennials as well, like primroses, you can just plant some in a group and then have a few sort of randomly as well. So it's not too random, but it's like a little bit of weight there and a little, and a little scattering over there. And I think that's pretty much how it might work naturally. So it's not really too prescribed. It's pretty haphazard, which is my kind of gardening. So I planted those. And then after that, I ruffled up the soil. I just got a springy rake and roughed up the soil and sowed yellow rattle because the grasses were so vigorous. And yellow rattle is a parasitic annual. It grows along with the grasses as they come up and it actually kills some of them off. It knocks them back a bit, which means it allows other things to grow. And that's really been a saviour when it comes to competition. Each year it self-seeds. So already this year, I can see the shoots coming and it has beautiful yellow flowers in June. So you've got the added benefit of that as well, which the pollinators love. So I sowed all of those about three years ago. And most things have been fantastic. I added in primroses as well. You can also add perennials, very resilient perennials, like maybe Alka Miller Mollis, the lady's mantle or pink geranium, the one that you see in many gardens. You see it everywhere. They won't mind being mown over on a high setting in the autumn. The things that I never saw again were fritillaria and a gladiolus called Byzantinus, which I was inspired to plant from seeing it in Devon in people's gardens growing so freely. And I thought, oh, I definitely need that, but I never saw it again. I don't know what happened to it, but you just experiment and things come and they go. So I would say the most successful things so far has been the dwarf tulips. There's one called little beauty, which is a lovely purple. It's only about six inches tall. The iris reticulata, they're really early in the year and they're vivid, vivid blue and also tulip shogun has been absolutely gorgeous. A very strong orange and it looks rather good with the moscari. There was one year when I sort of trod on the grass during the winter, and it felt as though it had been ploughed from underneath. It was all soft, and I thought, oh, that's voles. And I just thought, oh, they've eaten all of my bulbs, I'm sure they have. So I didn't buy any more that year. I was really disheartened. It was the first year, and I thought, that's it. They've eaten everything. But plenty of things did come back, so don't be too discouraged. Really, it's experimentation. Previously, it was a raspberry bed, which wasn't really raspberrying very well, and it was surrounded by really rough grass. Now, because it's so close to the house, it's somewhere that I walk past all the time, and every single time, I'm just looking at it, I'm looking at the contrasts, and it looks like it's just studded with the most beautiful flowers and contrasts in flower color as well. And it's really lovely to see the bees bumbling around as well. It's just really satisfying. And at the moment, the grass is still quite short, so you can, it really sets the colors off beautifully. I love it.

Speaker 1:
[31:04] Thanks to Jenny there. That little kind of mini gardeny meadow sounds absolutely lovely. And of course, one thing that will happen if you let things grow in that way, is that you'll provide lots of larval food plants and lots of habitat. It's not just about pollinators, it's about the whole ecosystem, and having that kind of much less disturbed area in your garden will give wildlife a real boost. Now that's just about all we have time for today. So for me, Gareth Richards, goodbye, and thanks for listening.

Speaker 7:
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