Gardeners are set to come under more pressure to ditch a group of pesticides known as neonicotinoids, due to worries over bee colony death.
An investigation at Reading University, backed by Friends of the Earth, found it would cost £1.8billion a year to hand-pollinate UK crops if bees died out altogether.
In April, Amateur Gardening reported how French scientists had claimed that neonicotinoids …
Green groups have lashed out after an influential organic gardener demanded the right to use peat.
Writing in AG, Bob Flowerdew, the BBC Radio 4 Gardeners’ Question Time panellist, made the ultimate organic taboo: he confessed to using a small amount of peat in loam-based sowing compost.
Bob argued that peat was a renewable resource and suggested: “Why not let us have…
Conservationists say they are “stunned” after TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh admitted to using weedkiller and peat.
The former Gardeners’ World presenter, who claims to have resisted chemical pesticides for 10 years, confessed he’d “occasionally” used Roundup weedkiller as “his back is not as well oiled as it was for double digging”.
To the dismay of green groups, Alan, who is regarded as…
When Wyevale Garden Centres announced in 2007 that it was to stop selling patio heaters at its 120 UK stores, the move was widely applauded by environment campaigners.
But greens are again seeing red after learning that the company, now called
The Garden Centre Group, is renting patio heaters to customers online through an operation run by a business partner.
Environmentalists took to…
Peat-based composts are set to make a big comeback, in a move branded “irresponsible” and “shocking” by campaigners.
Suppliers are gearing up to launch a host of peat-based brands after Government targets for the UK to be 90 per cent peat-free by 2010 fell by the wayside.
Westland will introduce a multi-purpose compost called Jack’s Magic. It contains 90 per cent peat.…
