About

Do you garden?

And do you use plastic?

Thought so. I do too. So do most of the gardeners in the world.

Yet plastic is trashing our environment. It will take 400 years before the plastic pot you’ve just thrown away will fully biodegrade. Just to put that into perspective: 400 years ago, Shakespeare had only just got started and Elizabeth I was on the throne.

Gardeners are, generally speaking, friends to the planet. We are in tune with the seasons, sensitive to the rhythms of nature. But open the gate to any garden and you will find plastic pots, seed trays, netting, compost bags, insect-proof mesh, plant labels…. every last bit of it wince-inducingly ugly and likely to end up as albatross-murdering shreds cluttering up the Pacific Ocean for centuries.

I want no part of it. So I began a private campaign to eliminate the plastic from my own garden in 2017: it’s been a slow process, and I’m far from there yet, but the more I do this the more strongly I feel about it.

This website is my attempt to collect together all the stuff I’ve found out along the way. Here you will find my research into the different kinds of plastic we use in the garden, how you can (and can’t) recycle them, and the alternatives. I’ll also share with you the ways I’ve found to eliminate plastic from my garden.

I’m also starting to ask questions of the horticulture industry more widely, in an attempt to find out just why we’ve become so dependent on plastic. You’ll find news, views, interviews and directories of nurseries which care enough to try to change the way they do things.

This is a project under construction at the moment, so I would beg your patience while I slowly build and collect all the information together. But I do hope that you’ll find it useful, educational, and inspiring; and above all, that it will help you, too, to banish the plastic from our back yards and make them beautiful again.

Sally Nex
Garden writer
@sallynex
http://www.sallynex.com