We all want a better environment, we want a better world, better society, better education but most of all, we want a better lifestyle, better home and better garden. There are many good reasons why we should want this as after all, our home environments are the bits of this planet that affect us most and which we control.
In this garden the railway sleepers are recycled (although not without concerns about creosote), the logs are coppiced chestnut, a sustainable source, the rock is local Purbeck (minimum transportation), gravel is extracted at sea (marine wildlife damage) and cement is still cement.
The flip side of this it that it can lead to a fortress mentality, where we don't think or care about the environments that lie beyond our everyday experiences. We spend large parts of our hard earned cash to give us the beauty and hopefully, the calm we so crave. We want to impress ourselves, our friends, our work colleagues and have only the best.
There is, however, a simple mantra, I think we should all observe. “I won't improve my environment at the expense of another.” What does that mean? To me it means being thoughtful about where we source our materials and products from.
Straight away that raises problems: tropical timbers are used in outdoor furniture and decking and are beautiful and hardwearing; but they come at a huge environmental cost of rainforest destruction and huge transportation costs. Production of cement is responsible of 10 - 11% of the world's CO2 pollution - all forms of concrete are therefore huge energy polluters. Gravel and rocks get extracted from areas that may be damaged ecologically. Paint and timber preservatives are polluting in their manufacture and often toxic in their residue.
There are no easy answers to these problems but in this section of the website, I want to look at these issues and see just what we can do. I'm not condemning nor condoning; many of my own garden creations have used unsustainable or polluting materials and it is sometimes hard to reconcile that fact with the places of beauty that have been created. But it can only be good for us all to be aware of the issues and collectively, to seek for better solutions.
Please use the side menu to read more articles on this topic.