Of Saints and Sinners

Mea culpa. We’ve committed a crime. We’ve bought the wrong sort of compost. Out of our comfort zone and bewildered by the choice of mud available, a queue started to form in the garden centre as we considered all the options, the compost section being on the main thoroughfare between Perennials and Shrubs. Not wanting to cause a disturbance or contribute to the spread of virus, we grabbed 3 bags of John Innes No. 2 and headed for the exit. Only on reaching home did we discover that John Innes No. 2 contains PEAT. Forgive us, for we are sinners.

Somewhat innocently and from an abundance of ignorance, we had assumed that a name as famous as John Innes would no longer be involved with peat.

What little we know.

It turns out that John Innes, along with George Davis and Bill Posters, is almost entirely innocent, since he died in 1904. A property developer and philanthropist, John Innes changed his will a week before he died - contested unsuccessfully by his family - and instructed that his fortune be used to establish an horticultural school. The John Innes Charity was formed and in 1910 the John Innes Horticultural Institution was founded, in Merton, South London, and became a place of serious scientific research. It started off by being the first place in Britain to study plant genetics and a hundred years later its successor organisation, the John Innes Centre, was ranked #1 in the world for academic citations in the field of plant and animal science.

In between, it has had a BIG impact in the world of apples. In 1951, together with the East Malling Research Station in Kent, John Innes released a series of wooly aphid-resistant rootstocks, the result of 30 years work. The rootstocks were referred to as the Malling - Merton series and were labelled MM101 to MM114. One of the most common rootstocks we use today is MM106 and we planted a lot of MM111 in Kent earlier this year, it being well suited to poorly drained soil. More recently, John Innes has conducted research into vernalisation - how and why plants (including fruit trees) wake up after winter hibernation.

And what of John Innes’ compost? Looking to find a better growing medium for all the plant trials they were conducting, the Institution experimented with soil sterilisation and proportions of N, P and K fertilisers, the result of which were the John Innes composts we know today. In 1938 they published the formulae, rather than patent them, and helped to publicise the benefits of their compost as part of the war effort to increase food production from gardens. They have never manufactured peat-based compost and have made no financial gain from “their” compost.

1938: other things on people’s minds

So, far from being the Sinners we thought at the outset, John Innes sits firmly in the Saints category. We think we can forgive them for their use of peat in 1938, when the world had other things on its mind and when the phrases “carbon sink” and “climate change” had yet to be uttered.

Today we know a lot more … but are no wiser.

More knowledge, less wisdom

Peatlands are immensely valuable. Occupying between 2 - 3% of the world’s surface, peatlands hold approximately 30% of the world’s terrestrial carbon pool, more than all the vegetation on the planet - and that includes the Amazon and Congo rain forests. Peatlands hold over 10% of the world’s freshwater and help to filter and purify it and, parochially, over 70% of the UK’s drinking water comes from upland peatlands. Peatlands are havens of biodiversity (even more so than traditional orchards, about which we wax lyrical); studies in Yorkshire have shown that peatlands are home to over 3,000 species of insect, 800 flowering plants and hundreds of mosses, liverworts, lichens and fungi.

Peatland

The image

Today we know the planet is warming and the overwhelming evidence is that anthropogenic carbon is either a major contributor or the predominant cause. We know that when we dig up peat we release the stored carbon back into the atmosphere. We know that when we dig up peat we destroy biodiversity. We know Peatlands “grow” at around 1 mm a year - and we typically remove 220 mm a year. We know that global carbon emissions are now over 36 billion tonnes a year and are too high (in the 1930s they were around 4 billion tonnes a year). We know all this, and yet …

Peatland

The image

In the UK alone, we mine 280,000 tonnes of peat a year and import a further 525,000 tonnes, mostly from Ireland but also from the Baltics and Scandinavia, emitting further greenhouse gases as we cart it over the seas. Only 6,000 hectares of peatland in the UK remain in pristine condition.

Despite growing awareness and availability of peat-free composts, despite the government calling for retailers to reduce peat use by 2020, nothing has happened; between 2011-2017 there was an increase in peat-based products in the plant-growing industry and in 2017, 56% of growing material on retailers’ shelves was still peat-based.

Peatland

The reality - Ireland

We’re all both sinners and addicts. We know it’s bad but we still use it, garden centres still sell it, manufacturers still make it and governments still allow it. And our dahlias are lovely.

Kiribati may cease to exist, drowned by a rising sea. Just a small little island with a few thousand inhabitants, so no matter. Our peonies look good.

The 13 million citizens of Lagos and the 13 million citizens of Metro Manila face an uncertain future as rising sea-levels erode coastlines, contaminate sources of potable water and flood entire suburbs. Our roses are particularly beautiful this year.

The 160 million citizens of Bangladesh face an uncertain future as rising sea-levels, combined with more frequent and more violent cyclones, erode coastlines, salinise farmland, displace thousands upon thousands of people and threaten the homes of millions. But the delphinium have never looked so good.

Peatland

The reality - Salford

Alternatives

Of course, none of this is deliberate. No one buys John Innes No. 2 to drown the people of the Philippines. Gardening is a quintessential British thing. We’re good at it, we like it, we’re famous for it, we take pride in our neat and colourful gardens, villages and towns, in our dahlias, peonies, roses and delphinium.

But whether the BBC's Gardener’s Question Time and Bunny Guinness like it or not, there are peat-free alternatives and other people shouldn’t have to suffer for our pleasure. For example, and perhaps benefitting from their proximity to the John Innes Centre (now relocated from Merton to Norwich), the Norfolk School of Gardening uses a combination of Sylvagrow, “which is producing excellent results and contains no peat at all” and Plantgrow, a 100% plant-based fertilising soil improver.

Peatland

The reality - Estonia

There are a lot of peat-free alternatives. Monty Don manages perfectly well. Alys Fowler (and others) get the message. It’s perfectly possible to live without peat-based compost.

Levington, Arthur J Bowers, Erin and others need to stop making it. Dobbies, Notcutts, Wyevale and others need to stop selling it. “Expert” gardeners need to stop promoting it. And we all need to stop buying it.

We've already put John Innes into the Saint box, but perhaps they could reach an even more elevated position if they could stop people using their illustrious name to mine and peddle peat products.