 Digging for (climate) victory
Our gardens can play a big role in fighting climate change. As well as benefiting wildlife and giving you the chance to grow your own fruit and vegetables, soil, plants and trees all soak up excess carbon dioxide.
Jenny Scholfield, the Woodland Trust's regional director for the South East, tells us that trees in particular can make a difference. She says: "In the face of the global climate crisis, we urgently need trees to capture CO2 emissions and help make our towns and landscapes more resilient to the impacts of a changing climate.
"Protecting existing woodland, and planting new woods for the future, are more important than ever."
But what can you do in your own garden? In this edition we will be exploring:
- What to plant, and where
- Caring for your plants
- Creating a haven for visitors
- Composting at home
- Recycling garden waste
 What to plant - and where?
Different types of plants can have different benefits on the environment like providing insulation and reducing exhaust fumes.
Insulation
Plants can act as insulation for your house, keeping it cool in summer and keeping the heat in during colder months.
Green roofs and walls can not only absorb CO2 but help with energy savings, with plants like jasmine, English ivy and viburnum able to cool a building by between 7 and 14ºC.
Cleaning the air
Plants in general capture and store CO2, but strategically placed planting can also help to block and filter pollution. For example, a hedge in a front garden can capture exhaust fumes from cars and lorries.
Grow your own
Growing your own fruit, vegetables and herbs is hugely satisfying and also reduces other emissions related to buying from a shop.
Home grown means no packaging and no carbon footprint in getting it from ground to plate. You can also use seeds and pips from fruit and vegetables to grow new plants, as well regrowing vegetables from their scraps, such as onions, cabbage and lettuce
 Caring for your plants
Now the planting is complete, you'll be looking for ways to care for your garden in an eco-friendly way.
Water, water everywhere
Water is a precious resource and a requirement for keeping a garden healthy. A water butt is a great way to store rainwater for watering your garden and has the added bonus of reducing pressure on drains during stormy periods.
You can also reuse water from inside the house, such as bathwater, washing-up water and washing machine run-off, collectively known as grey water. This isn't a long-term solution but it can help for a few weeks during a drought.
If you want to spend a bit more, modern irrigation systems offer different smart options. These include solar-powered systems that detect weather conditions to know when more watering is needed, or underground sensors that recognise when your soil is drying out and jump into action.
Chemicals
You should avoid using chemicals in your garden unnecessarily as there is often a more natural and less harmful substitute.
You can find a recipe online for almost everything you might need to keep your garden healthy, using cheap and easily available ingredients like vinegar, salt and boiling water.
To get you started, Gardeners World has tested four of the most popular home-made weedkillers, while the Warwickshire Wildlife Trust has tips to introduce insects and minibeasts - or repel them if they're pests!.
If all else fails and you want to buy ready-made, make sure you choose organic fertilisers.
Power tools
Where possible, try using manual tools rather than those powered by gas, electric or petrol. Use a rake or broom instead of a leaf blower, or use a manual lawn mower on smaller lawns.
 A haven for visitors
Wildlife, such as insects or small animals like hedgehogs, is vital to the ecosystems of our gardens so finding ways of encouraging them to visit is really important.
Some of the ways they can help include:
- Pollinating plants
- Breaking down and decomposing organic matter
- Providing other animals, and us, with food
- A natural deterrent to garden pests
We'd encourage you to join the nationwide BLUE campaign by allocating parts of your gardens for re-wilding, encouraging biodiversity and natural homes for wildlife. To find out more, visit the BLUE campaign website.
We'd also love to see your re-wilded patches marked with a blue heart, so please send photos to cem@wokingham.gov.uk and we might feature your garden in a social media gallery.
 Composting at home
You may decide that you'd like to have a go at making your own compost, allowing you to buy some extra plants and flowers with the money you would have used buying shop-bought.
As well as garden waste, many other things can be added to your compost bin. Here are 15 things you can add to your compost heap.
- Egg shells
- Fruit and vegetable food scraps (coffee grounds, lettuce, potato peels, banana peels, avocado skins)
- Human and pet hair and nail clippings
- Teabags
- Shredded paper
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Animal manure (strictly from vegetarian pets only!)
- Fruit and vegetable peelings
- Toilet roll tubes
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Stale wine and beer
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Balsa wood boxes, such as the ones commonly sold with Camembert cheeses
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Used masking tape
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Feathers
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Lint from the tumble dryer filter
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Ashes from the barbecue
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Used tissues
Visit Greenredeem for more tips and ideas for composting, and earn points that you can redeem against prizes, goods and donations at the same time.
 Recycling garden waste
Across the borough, more than 24,000 green-fingered residents are already signed up for our garden waste collection service.
The garden waste collection scheme takes away garden clippings, grass cuttings, leaves and weeds fortnightly from the kerbside in a 240-litre brown wheeled bin. Using the service means residents can have 6,240 tonnes of green material collected from the kerbside each year – more than one large skip.
New subscribers
If you are interested in having your garden waste collected, you are now able to sign up via the council’s website.
The annual cost of the service is £70 between 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2023. If you opt in later in the year the cost will be reduced from:
- £60 from 1 June to 30 September
- £35 from 1 October to 31 December
Existing subscribers
By now, anyone already using the council’s garden waste collection service should have received an email or letter asking them to renew their subscription for the new financial year.
For existing subscribers, the renewal period will start 1 June because the council extended the service this year for 2021-22 subscribers due to Covid-19 related disruptions to the garden waste collection services.
For those already using the service, we are reducing the term this year from 12 months to 10 months. the cost of the service is £60 for the period 1 June 2022 to 31 March 2023.
Ad-hoc collections
If you would like to have your garden waste collected, but don't want to subscribe for a full year, consider buying some of our brown sacks. They cost £1.15 each, are fully compostable and hold up to 75 litres.
Sacks can be ordered online and collected from more than 10 locations across the borough. On first purchase, you'll be registered with the service so that the collection team know to keep an eye out on their route.
Did you know?
Each year across the re3 partnership area (covering Reading, Bracknell Forest and Wokingham borough) about 24,000 tonnes of garden waste is composted? That's around the same weight as the Statue of Liberty!
What happens to my garden waste?
All green garden waste collected kerbside, as well as that from re3 recycling centres, is taken to composting sites. The green waste is composted in long heaps and turned so it breaks down evenly.
The finished product is resold as "re3grow", a high-quality, peat-free compost that's available during spring and summer months at re3's recycling centres at £4 per 40-litre bag or as a multi-deal offer of three bags for £11.
This perfectly illustrates the idea of a "circular economy", showing how your waste can be a resource which is recycled into something useful.
I want to know the science!
The compost conforms to BSI PAS 100 (a widely-recognised industry standard) and the Compost Quality Protocol. Before being bagged, it undergoes a 12-week composting process using long lines known as open windrows.
During this period, garden waste is screened, shredded and matured. One of the stages is sanitisation, when a high temperature between 65 and 80ºC is maintained for a minimum of seven consecutive days to kill off weed, seeds and germs.
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