Happy Earth Day

Now more than ever I believe as a society we are just beginning to understand how important it is to protect the natural environment. Many plant and animal species have come and gone due to poor environmental practices and from the lack of knowledge.

The unprecedented global destruction and rapid reduction of plant and wildlife populations are directly linked to causes driven by human activity: climate change, deforestation, habitat loss, trafficking and poaching, unsustainable agriculture, pollution and pesticides to name a few.

– EARTH DAY NETWORK

As dim as it might sound there are simple things that we can do everyday which can help take a step in the right direction. As gardeners, Horticulturists, one of our biggest concerns is the decline of the humble bee.

A honeybee can usually visit 50-1000 flowers in one trip; if bee takes ten trips a day, a colony with 25,000 forager bees can pollinate 250 million flowers in a day.

– EARTH DAY NETWORK

In Europe and the United States, beekeepers over the last ten years have been reporting an annual hive loss of 30%…. That is a very scary number. Especially considering that there are approximately ‘369,000 thousand flowering plants which 90% of them are dependent on insect pollination’ (Earth Day Network)…. What is more frightening is that one in four wild bee species in the United States is at risk of extinction…. These are all the warning bells that as a gardener am worried about.

What can be done?

There are simple things we can do each day to help contribute to help make a impact.
1 – Reduce the use of pesticides in your garden. | Use organic and natural sprays to treat unwanted pests.

2 – Composting food waste | Compost is gold for the garden. Plants thrive off it! It conditions the soil making for better soil health and micro-activity.

3 – Donating unused items.

4 – Use less plastic. I love using bees-wax wraps they work a treat for me in the kitchen. I know it is extremely hard to go plastic free and trust me I haven’t achieved it myself yet. But I do try make the effort to re-use plastic bags and other items.

5 – This is my favourite | Plant a tree this is one of the easiest and most important ways to fight climate change or to help make for more habitats for native pollinators in the garden.
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However Earth Day isn’t about being extreme and doing everything by the rule book. But as I mentioned above there are thing we can do to better our lifestyle and gradually add to our everyday routine. I, for example, am still trying to remember to compost all my food scraps each day. A simple task but one I have decided to work harder on.

But it can also be about gaining inspiration from other social media groups. For me I like to follow:
– @wildlifewarriorsworldwide who are a fantastic inspirational group of people.
– David Attenborough’s documentaries and publications.
– Save The Bees social media pages.

There are many great videos, books and blogs out there that can be a good way of learning how to help make a impact.

But I would love to hear what you like to do for earth day. It can be as simple as watching a documentary, donating old clothes or, like me, putting some food scraps into the compost bin. Or if you do nothing that is okay too but maybe you have planted a new tree in your garden or some flowers for the bees.

Let me know down below.

Until next time happy gardening! By Bonnie-Marie Hibbs ©BMHPhotographyTheGardener’sNotebook2019