Gardening

It Starts With A Pot

This is a campaign launched in the summer of 2014 in the UK called “It Starts With A Pot” which encouraged residents to start growing their own veg, herbs and encouraging wildlife into their garden. It was an important campaign that had a strong message, all of these amazing things can be achieved with just one plant pot. Did you know that an 85p bag of lettuce seeds could produce the equivalent of 16 bags of salad? Did you also know that one in every three runner beans consumed in England are self-grown, alongside 7% of potatoes?

The UK have started to, over the last few years, embrace the goodness of home grown foods. 6% of all tomatoes consumed in the UK, for example, are home grown as well as 10% of strawberries. There are so many things you can grow at home, here are just a few: beetroot, broad beans, carrots, peas, potatoes, radishes, runner beans, chillies, peppers, salad leaves, onions, turnips and tomatoes. It’s a fun activity that you can enjoy with little ones too, it teaches them how to not only look after something but also how to cook once it’s fully grown.

turnips

But it’s not just fruit and veg that you can grown in the garden, you can also grow many herbs. Did you know that the menthol found in peppermint tea acts as a muscle relaxant and can help you to sleep? Herbs don’t just make food taste better, they can really help with your overall well being. The healing properties of lavender, for example, was dated all the way back to the early 1900’s! You can use lavender to treat sunburn too, all you need to do is buy some strong lavender tea and spray some lavender oil onto the affected area. Herbs that you can grow in the garden include lavender, aloe vera, peppermint, ginseng, St Johns wort, rosemary, echinecea, thyme, tea tree, lemon balm, comfrey, chamomile and sage.

sage

The last point to be made about this campaign is that more people need to have more potted plants that specifically help the local wildlife. Bees might seem like an insignificant creature, but they actually contribute £400 million every year to the UK economy through their pollination. We have lost, sadly, around 97% of our flower rich grassland where bees naturally thrive, so it’s important to make sure you have a plant or two in your garden to help keep them going. Without bees we would not have as much fruit or veg, citrus fruits and carrots (for example) would cease to grow naturally without the presence of bees.

You can easily save the bee just by having a couple of pollinating plants, plants you should be looking out for are: clematis, larksur, snap dragon, marigold, lavender, hellebore, corn flower, crocus, borage, forget-me-not, primrose, honeysuckle and sunflowers. There are of course so many ways in which we can help our environment, but it all has to start somewhere. Most of the time, it starts with a pot.

This article was created on behalf of http://www.perrywood.co.uk/

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