Planting Up This Autumn? Go peat free!

November 24, 2021

Are you potting up your Spring-flowering bulbs this Autumn? If so, please use peat-free compost. It’s an easy way you can join in the fight against the climate crisis, right in your garden.

It’s important because going peat free means less damage to our precious peatlands. Drained, dried out and damaged peatlands – including peat cut to mix into compost – account for about 5% of carbon emissions globally. That makes damaged peatland one of the worst human-caused (anthropogenic) sources of CO2 emissions (source: IUCN). On the other hand, healthy wet peatlands don’t release much carbon into the atmosphere. In fact, the Marches Mosses, right here in north Shropshire and northeast Wales, store two to three million tonnes of carbon. That’s a vast amount and more than the annual carbon emissions of the population of Shropshire.

So, when you’re visiting your local garden centre to buy your tulip, daffodil, crocus and other bulbs, choose peat-free compost to give them a healthy, environment-saving head start!