Episode 254: an update on peat-free houseplants

Co-founder Katy Brown in the Geb & Green greenhouse.

Transcript

Episode 254

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Jane: So you like houseplants do you? I see. Well, you've come to the right place! This is On The Ledge podcast and I am Jane Perrone! In this week's show, I'm giving you an update on all things peat-free, including an interview with new, UK, peat-free houseplant provider, Geb & Green.

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Jane: If your name is Emily and you are a Patreon of On The Ledge and you did not receive your December mail-out card, despite being a signed up member and having given your address, you need to give me a shout! I know there's somebody called Emily whose card got returned to me, but there are literally loads of Emilys who are Patreons, so I need to check which Emily it is who hasn't got their card! So, Emily, have you got your card!? If not, please give me a shout and I will try to send you another one!

From that very specific shout-out to another, more general shout-out to everybody in the LGBTQIA community! I want to hear from you! If you heard last week's show, you'll know I'm doing a special episode at the end of February, asking people: "What do houseplants mean to you?" Thanks to everyone who's already submitted theirs, but please, please do record something, or tap out a few notes in an email to me, telling me what houseplants mean to you, to celebrate LGBTQIA+ history month. Thank you to Fiona who became a Crazy Plant Person this month - that most generous of people who just wants to throw down a dollar, or a pound, on their favourite podcast, for no return whatsoever! Thank you, Fiona! If you want to join her, details of Patreon and all the other ways of supporting On The Ledge are in the show notes.

It was back in July 2019 that I first talked about peat on On The Ledge - well, the first time I devoted a whole show to it. I'm sure I had mentioned it before that, but this was part of my sustainability series - but that was several years ago now, so it felt like time for an update on the subject of peat and houseplants: where are we, what's happening, is there good news? So, in today's show, I'm going to be bringing you two interviews. The first is with Sally Morgan, from the campaign called Peat-Free April. In the second interview, I talk to the co-founders of a new company selling peat-free houseplants. They're called Geb & Green. First up is Sally Morgan from Peat-Free April. Sally is a garden writer, a botanist and a no-dig gardener and an important part of the Peat-Free April campaign. So I wanted to start off by finding the current state of play with peat in the UK.

Sally: Hi, I'm Sally Morgan, I'm a garden writer, botanist, no-dig gardener, but I'm also a member of the Peat-Free April campaign and we've been in existence for three years, to try and educate gardeners to avoid using peat in their gardens.

Jane: Well, it's a great thing to be educating people about because we've moved forward a little bit in terms of legislation, but I'm not sure we're quite there yet. Can you fill us in on the latest, in terms of government legislation on peat and growing media?

Sally: It definitely goes back a long time. It was Jeff Hamilton back in the 90s who first raised awareness of this issue and it's been talked about ever since. So where we're at, at the moment, was that back in August of 2022, after a consultation where 95% of the consultees said they wanted a ban on the use of peat in horticulture, the government said that they were going to do something about it, having said something ten years previously and it was all voluntarily agreed and nothing happened. So, the latest situation is, as we understand it, is that they are hoping to stop the sale of retail peat, that's peat that's used in growing media and the like, "by 2024". There is some confusion over "by" i.e. the beginning of, or the end of. Then they would then start implementing a ban on commercial use of peat in horticulture, so that's stuff that is used to raise plants etc, by nurseries. That was probably 2030, but other people have said it's 2028. I've heard lots of conflict around this. At the moment, the government has said that they're not in position to do anything immediately. It's been pushed back, along with a lot of other legislation. So, a little bit in limbo at the moment but I think most people are agreed that the ban in 2024 will come about, but it's what happens to the commercial growers after that and whether they get exemptions. That's up for grabs.

Jane: Yes, that's a really key point, isn't it, and I think particularly for houseplant growers and buyers of houseplants? I'm wondering whether it's going to make a huge amount of difference, given how many houseplants get imported from Europe? And I presume that they are not going to be under any of the same restrictions, the eventual restrictions, that UK growers will be under?

Sally: Yes, quite right. And this is part of the industry's complaints about this legislation, should it come about, in that they are put at a disadvantage to all those imports from Holland, although I do understand that in the EU, they too are now beginning to look at peat because when we go into looking at carbon accounting and trying to get to a net-zero situation, the easiest way to achieve that is by stopping peat from being dug out of the ground. Yes, it's going to be an interesting situation, and when I talk to gardeners, they are completely oblivious, in many cases, of what medium the plants that they buy, what medium they've been raised in, and that applies to houseplants as well as just general nursery plants in garden centres. So it's a big unknown, which does need to be tackled.

Jane: There does seem to be a subset of gardeners who are very up to speed with all of this, but it does surprise me, when you meet people and talk to people, about how much lack of knowledge there is about peat-free. Even now, when you've got major institutions like the National Trust, and things, going peat-free, the message is slowly trickling through, but there's a lot of work to be done, I think, with informing people, and that's where, of course, Peat-Free April comes in. April's coming up. Have you got big plans for this year?

Sally: Oh, we hope so! We were really hopeful last year that we wouldn't actually have to do anything, that the legislation would be in place and we'd go "yippee!" But yes, we will be running normal campaigns and we'll be looking for well-known garden celebrities to do some introductory stuff for us, and videos that we can share, and to continue pushing the message. But you're quite right, when I go to garden talks and I talk to the audience, they're almost gobsmacked when I say, "This is why peat needs to stay in the ground. This is why you shouldn't use it, even if it isn't the most perfect alternative. There is absolutely no reason why you should be using peat. You're just emitting so much carbon dioxide" and they are genuinely unaware of what they are doing and how to find out. And obviously, we now have the guidance on the packs, when you can buy handbags of media and it will tell you about the sustainability of the materials that you are buying, but they're still not really aware of that, so there is still a lot of education to do. Particularly, I think, about what the plant has been grown in. I think more people are aware of labelling and looking for that big peat-free sign on the front of the bags because we always say to people, "If it doesn't say peat-free on the front, it probably isn't peat-free" and they're getting that message, I think, these keen younger gardeners. I feel there's a lot of resistance in the older gardener and I'm an older gardener myself. They've grown up with using it for 30 years and they can't see a reason to not use it. But increasingly, I think, as consumers, we need to question and ask the garden centres what are they doing, what are they buying, who are they buying from and what is the peat-free status of those wholesale nurseries that they are buying from?

Jane: I guess one of the things with houseplants is that you could fall into the trap of thinking, "Well, it's only a tiny pot with a very small amount of substrate in it. Surely me buying a couple of plants from the garden centre that are planted in peat, it's a very small amount of peat involved?" And while I do buy peat-free when I can, but my attitude to that is, when you scale that up across all of the houseplants sold across the UK, that's a lot of peat. I think it's easy to fool ourselves into thinking that somehow houseplants are some special exception and that it's okay. I don't know whether you grow any houseplants, but I've been probably peat-free, certainly of plants that I've been re-potting, and everything, I try to avoid buying plants in peat but it's not always possible. I found that there's no problem with growing them in a peat-free medium, you've just got to slightly adapt, but actually, it's not that hard. But I do think there are lots of those little bags of houseplant compost that you buy that are particularly unclear about what's actually in them, those little five-litre bags. It's not always very clear at all what you're getting and often it's in small writing somewhere, but you've got to really search for it.

Sally: Yes, absolutely. I do think every single bag matters because, as you say, it's multiplied out to become, well, in the UK we're looking at 2.5million cubic metres of peat being used every year, so every little tiny bit really does matter. A lot of the growers who are looking for exemptions say, "Oh, it's really tricky to raise houseplants, particularly tricky to raise our carnivorous plants, which I enjoy growing, my Sarracenias and the like" and they say, "Oh no, you can't possibly grow those without peat." But when you do talk to the guys who do grow it peat-free, they have absolutely no problems, so I think there's a little bit of myth being circulated about how tricky some of these plants are. When you talk to botanic gardens, and the Welsh Botanic Garden is particularly keen on being peat-free, they have lots of specialist plants and have absolutely no problems. It's a little bit of trial and error, and you may fail. I think this is the thing about peat-free, there may be adjustments you have to make, and you may have the odd failure, but that's par for the course and it's more important that peat is in the ground to benefit biodiversity and carbon retention than it is in a little pot, in your house. I have been talking to peat-free producers and they don't produce a houseplant one. I think their main issue is the demand for houseplant owners, and you may be able to advise on this, they like it sterilised and a lot of the peat-free guys say it's quite difficult to do that in economic terms, so they're not providing any alternative media. So, myself, my own plants have grown in my own, good old compost from the garden and I probably do get creepy crawlies crawling out of them, but at the end of the day my roots are far healthier for that.

Jane: I think that's a really common strand... There is a subset of houseplant growers who want their houseplants to be free of anything that might be alive other than a plant, which is obviously a very narrow idea of what's going on with houseplants. There's lots of life in soil and not all of it is something that's going to cause problems to your plants and in fact, most of it is going to help your houseplants. So that's an interesting one. I think it's, again, a cultural change that needs to happen. I know a lot of gardeners are moving away from soil-based media altogether and using other things, which, again, have their own carbon footprints, like expanded clay pebbles, and Pon, and things. If you're going to use a soil-based substrate... personally I've used Dalefoot, but I mainly use Melcourt SylvaGrow and it's great, there's no problems on that front. The only thing I find, is that you do get more fungus gnats, I would say, probably, than using, in the past, when I've used peat-based houseplant mixes. I think you probably have a few more fungus gnats, which people do have a rather overblown hate for, but that is pretty easily solved. It, again, just comes down to education, I think. Education all the way. So that's what we've got to all work on. Is there anything else about peat that we need to know, coming up? I mean, once this ban comes into place, do you think there's going to be some growers, even with all of this education, I think there's still some people who will be caught out by this ban on peat-based substrates.

Sally: Yes, and it's a tricky one for some growers. I was at the Oxford Real Farming Company a couple of weeks ago. There was a session on organic growers and the use of peat, for which there is a derogation. It's interesting. They can cope with nearly all of their growing in a peat-free medium but the one that causes them the greatest problem is actually the vegetable growers who use blocks, rather than modules. They've invested in blocks that basically compress the little square of compost, so it holds together when they seed it and they move the transplants around. Those which are peat-free have a tendency to crumble, whereas the peat ones hold their shape and that is a big issue because there's no research going on to help them make that jump from peat to peat-free, which they would dearly love to do, but, from a technical point of view, it's causing them issues. Other than that, I think it's a question of growers and gardeners being a little bit more experimental and getting used to pushing their finger into the media, to see what it's like, for watering. I think the trick is that all the different peat-free media have got different ingredients in it, from coir, to wood, to bracken and wool. They all have slightly different characteristics in terms of watering and nutrient retention. So I think growers will be desperate not to make any mistakes on a large scale. So, for them, if they switch their media and they have a failure, then that's actually quite a big commercial impact on their profitability. And it's not quite the same as a gardener just having a couple of trays of failed seedlings. It is this worry and they know how to work with peat. They've done it for 30-40 years. It works. They've got it down to a fine art and now you're asking them to put something completely different in and learn how to use that. Unfortunately, they haven't done anything for the last 20 years in preparation, and so now they really are on the back foot, trying to catch up.

Jane: I'll put all the links for Peat-Free April into the show notes at janeperrone.com. @peatfreeapril is where you are on Instagram, which is probably my listeners' favourite social media, but I'll put all the other links into the show notes and, hopefully, lots of people will follow through on that. So thank you so much for joining me, Sally!

Sally: Thank you!

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Jane: So, things are really starting to change, but if you're looking to buy houseplants that don't have peat in them, rather than just re-pot your existing houseplants into a peat-free mix, it's sometimes very difficult to tell, because lots of plants are coming from the Netherlands and other parts of Europe and they don't carry any indication of peat content. That is where companies like Harriet's Plants, who I've interviewed before on the show, and another new company called Geb & Green come in. Geb and Green have launched in the last few weeks here in the UK, selling houseplants that are peat-free and doing it on quite a large scale. So I was keen to find out what they're doing and why, so I headed over to meet the co-founders, Katy Brown and Will Clayton.

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Jane: Thank you so much for coming on to On The Ledge to talk about this, and it's a really interesting story because, as anyone who has listened to my show for a long time knows, this is something that is not being discussed enough in the world of houseplants: sustainability! So I want to know, first of all, how this all started! You're starting this new brand - who is it for and what's the kernel of the idea at the centre of your business?

Katy: Geb & Green has really stemmed from environmental concerns, and sustainability is at the heart of everything we're doing and we will be constantly striving to improve that as well. Our ultimate mission is to have a positive influence on the houseplant industry. Houseplants have seen a fantastic resurgence over the last few years, and obviously lockdown has helped that massively because people are wanting to bring nature inside their home and that's great. There's a wealth of benefits from health and wellness that that entails. The problem we've got, is these houseplants aren't as green as people think. So the vast majority of houseplants that are sold in the UK are imported as fully-mature plants from Holland and they are grown in peat. Now, you and your listeners know that peat is such a phenomenal natural resource, in terms of tackling climate change. Peatlands cover only 3% of the land's surface, yet they store 30% of the world's carbon, which is massive. It's actually twice as much as all the forests combined and that's why peatlands have often been referred to as this Cinderella habitat. They're often overlooked and undervalued and we want to change that. We want to raise voices, shout about peat and educate people across the globe. Peat is being extracted for horticultural reasons and the consequence of these damaged peatlands is that the carbon that is naturally stored within the peat is being released into the atmosphere. These damaged peatlands actually account for 6% of all global emissions. The crazy thing is, peat does not need to be dug up for horticultural purposes and that's where we come in. We are going to be using a recycled, peat-free growing medium to grow our houseplants right here in the UK. So the brand, the company, is for everyone. It's for everyone who is conscious of the impact that we are having on our environment and wants to make better, more informed choices. So by making this one, simple change and only buying houseplants that are grown in the UK, without using peat, customers can contribute positively to reducing our carbon emissions.

Jane: It's interesting. The government's got this peat ban coming in, but I'm presuming that that's still not going to mean that houseplants coming over from the Netherlands are going to be having the same rules applied to them? We're still going to be importing houseplants from the Netherlands grown in peat, is that right?

Katy: That's absolutely right.

Will: Yes, and the government has just rolled back on commercial growers as well, on peat. But just because the government's making a bad decision doesn't mean that we should.

Jane: Indeed. You often hear from the people who are rather sceptical about peat-free: "Oh it doesn't work. It's too hard." Obviously, you're hoping to prove that wrong. Can you tell me about how you're growing all these houseplants in peat-free? What's the system? How is it working? And have you had any problems, or things that you've had to work out along the way?

Will: Certainly. So, essentially people say that you can't grow houseplants effectively in peat because it's much cheaper to grow them commercially in peat and it's a nice, convenient bit of scaremongering to suggest that you can't. What we grow in is recycled-waste growing media. In our case, mostly coir, but it's mixed in with natural fibre from other plants and other crops that have been grown previously in that growing media. The only slight challenge we had was in the midst of summer, water retention wasn't quite what it was with peat, but the addition of a simple wetting agent has meant that we've now got very good shelf life while still having substantially better environmental credibility than peat.

Jane: This isn't a tiny 'mom-and-pop' greenhouse in the back garden set-up! Can you tell us a bit about your set-up?

Will: Sure! So we've got a 5,000 square-metre, state-of-the-art glasshouse, fully benched, fully pipe-heated, externally and down the rows, using LEDs. We heat using biomass on the government's RHI scheme and we collect all the rainwater from the roof for our own spring-fed reservoir. So our capacity for the year is approximately 750,000 normal-sized houseplants.

Katy: It has got the wow factor.

Jane: Wow, that's a lot! Having walked around it, I can attest it is huge and we're not used to seeing that kind of facility in the UK for houseplants. When you go to the Netherlands, you see these huge glasshouses with all these automated benches and things. Not so common in the UK! I haven't come across anyone else who's doing quite what you're trying to do in this particular space. How are you going to get this message across to consumers? It's always been my thought that houseplants, people have somehow managed to forget the sustainability side. When they're trying to get their organic veg box and would cut down on plastic, they're not really thinking about those houseplants and what might be going on, sustainability-wise, with them.

Will: I think ornamentals in general have always trended a little bit behind food. What you eat is going to perhaps be more at the forefront of people's minds. But it does follow, in environmental credentials, if you look at bedding, for instance, this year, one prominent supermarket went British-grown 95% peat-free. So you can see that the market is changing that way. The biggest factor that will cause people to move to a more sustainable approach is awareness. If nobody's growing in peat-free, then nobody's going to be advertising the benefits of peat-free. As we start to do that, we hope that awareness grows and that people start to think more about the choices they make when they're buying houseplants.

Jane: How is that going to feed into the rest of the industry? Do you think you're going to be disrupting something that's going on more widely in the houseplant business, of plants being brought over from the Netherlands and sold?

Katy: That's absolutely our aim. Will and I actually went to Ellesmere trade show - a month or so ago, was it? There are more than rumblings of sustainability and moving to peat-free, but at the moment there's not a lot of action. One thing that really, really shocked us, was some of the trade stands were evidently growing their houseplants in peat, but they were sprinkling coir on the top of their nursery pots.

Jane: That's interesting!

Katy: Greenwashing at its finest! I think we need to be able to break through that greenwashing. We need to be able to really tell the story of the importance of peat and get people sharing that message. We are going to be the instigators of getting this message out there, but we need people to spread the word for us and act as a catalyst for bigger, industry-level change. I think one other thing to add, Jane, on the greenwashing and potential customers looking out for the sustainable aspects, is there are a lot of houseplant competitors to us who are planting trees. So, for every order we plant five trees, or they do the 1% planet give-back. Actually, they don't need to be doing this if they just leave the peat in the peatlands in the first place.

Jane: Having been to the Dutch greenhouses and stuff, obviously they have plants coming in as small plugs, and things, from all over the world, and various processes going on. How are you actually choosing what plants you're growing? And is that affected by sustainability concerns in terms of what actually works in your set-up that you've got?

Will: Sure. So you've got to be led a little bit by the market; what consumers want. If nobody wants to buy a plant, then we can't keep growing it, essentially. But there are some types of houseplant which we just don't really want to grow because they're not so sustainable. So, Sansevierias for instance, you've got to really grow them over 30 degrees. In order to do that, you've got to put in so much heat that you start to really lose the environmental benefits that we're gaining through the rest of our production processes. Peace Lilies as well - we're not going to grow them because, again, to get into the stage which customers are used to, you've got to spray them with a hormone towards the latter stages of production in order to get the flowers to all come at once and we don't really want to introduce that into our glasshouse and it doesn't really fit with our ethos either.

Jane: I know you've got a very interesting, in a way, closed-system going on with your waste. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Will: Well, from our own production side, in theory, there is no waste because if a plant doesn't sell, or if it doesn't work out for whatever reason in the growing environment, it will be recycled with the growing media and then used to grow other plants, essentially. Waste on the consumer side is obviously something that's out of our control. But no, essentially, all of our plants that don't make it go back into the system in the form of more growing media.

Jane: Yes, which is as it should be, right?

Katy: Yes and just to add a bit of meat on the bones there, when we're talking about the recycled media, what it is, in essence, it's a large washing machine. That's how you described it, isn't it Will, to me, before? The medium that's been used to grow, in this case, historically, the glasshouses were used for the ornamental flowers. So the medium that was used goes into this great big washing machine, it's heated, it's steamed to 90 degrees for 90 minutes and it's recycled; it's reusable. So yes, we're using coir, well-aware that there are questionable elements to using coir out there, but we are not using anything virgin. We are using recycled coir, which I think just puts us a step above lots of other people out there as well.

Jane: So where is that coir coming from, that you're recycling?

Katy: Because the glasshouses were used for the ornamental flowers, obviously the way that they're harvested, the growing media stays in the glasshouse and we've still got a large amount of stock of that - about two years' worth, isn't it Will? - to get us through for the houseplants. Once that resource has been used up, we will be working with the soft fruit farmers, the strawberry farmers, for example. Traditionally what happens, is they will use coir for growing. At the end of their season, that will actually be dumped onto one of their fields. We want to take that, we want to utilise that in our sterilising facility and recycle it for houseplants.

Jane: It's that kind of joined up thinking that we need, isn't it? Just that idea of 'Here's that resource, let's move that over here and use it and, therefore, we don't have to get coir shipped over from the other side of the world'. It kind of makes sense, doesn't it?

Will: We've worked very closely with the Environment Agency over the last two years, to develop the protocols to allow us to sterilise other people's growing media, for use in multiple crops as well.

Jane: So are you hoping that you're going to be trailblazers in this regard? Given the fact that, with Brexit and the cost of living crisis, and what's going on in the Netherlands in terms of their own crisis with horticulture, that you're going to inspire other people to maybe start doing something similar? Maybe you're going to be sterilising their growing media for them?

Will: We've certainly got the capacity for it.

Jane: Yes, that's interesting. What's next for houseplants? How is this trade going to develop? Are you hoping that this is going to be the start of a new era for the houseplant trade in the UK? Surely there are so many factors coming in that means change is afoot?

Katy: Yes, change is necessary, absolutely necessary. I've touched on it earlier, but I think the biggest element that we have to work with is greenwashing. Greenwashing is happening on multiple different levels at the moment, from the language that's being used, "From our nursery to yours". Well, actually, that's 'From our warehouse to your doorstep because we've shipped in from the Dutch nurseries'. You've even got the packaging itself. So lots of the packaging that's being used is to look organic and authentic. So you might have something that looks like natural cardboard but it's got a plastic coating on because it's a care label, for example.

Jane: Yes, absolutely. I can attest to this because I've put things on my compost heap thinking, "Oh yes. That's going to break down" and then you go through your compost heap and go, "Actually, that's two years ago and it still looks exactly the same!" which is disappointing, isn't it? Because, as you say, it's easy to think, "Oh yes. That must be compostable" or whatever, and then it's just the appearance. What is the next thing in sustainability that you're looking at? Obviously you've done all this work with peat-free, obviously there are still, probably, challenges you're facing. Are there other sustainability issues that you're still crunching away at, to try to work out?

Will: I think the really big one for me is, currently, pretty much all micro-propagation is done in parts of the world which have very low labour costs. It's an expensive process. So then very small young plants are then brought over to the Netherlands, or the UK, and grown on from there. There are some noticeable exceptions in the UK, so it would be lovely to find a way to develop that within the United Kingdom as well.

Jane: Presumably that's not that easy though, given that your labour costs are going to be high, your set-up costs, but presumably then you've got control of it?

Will: Yes. So the real fact that would change that... So our plants are no more expensive than any other plants you would buy through similar channels. In order to bring that micro-propagation into the United Kingdom, really, you have to create a market, similar to chickens, where people are willing to accept that there's a premium for a free-range chicken over a battery chicken. If we can get to the point whereby people say "That's effectively a free-range houseplant" and they're willing to pay a premium, then you can really close the loop on the early stage of the plant's life.

Jane: That's a really interesting analogy because when I look at, going to supermarkets, and see moth orchids for £3.95, you just think, "How?". I know that there's whole orchid nurseries shutting down in the Netherlands because of the production costs issue, but that can't be right. That plant can't be working out financially that that plant costs £3.95. It's an interesting analogy with chickens and eggs because I go to the supermarket and I'm looking for my organic chicken and my organic eggs because I know that's better. But I don't think, as you say, in the moment, in the houseplant business, there's not as much of a recognition of that. How do you change people's perception? It's tough.

Will: You do see it in the supermarket. Twenty-five years ago, I'm not sure you would have seen free-range and non-free range / battery, whatever you want to call them, chickens displayed so prominently on the shelves. It would have just been a chicken. Eggs probably came first and then free-range eggs and then free-range chicken meats became much more prominent as well. Hopefully, over time, the ornamental market moves that way and then that will allow us to do a lot more in the UK, but until that happens, there's always going to be that slight challenge.

Katy: There's also the environmental lens that's been put on food more recently, so the reason more and more people are having a plant-based diet is because people are looking at food from an environmental impact as well.

Jane: Yes, that's absolutely true. Climate change, perhaps that's going to be the thing that's going to make people realise that we need to make some changes. So what would your advice be? I've got listeners all around the world, so some people who are listening are just not going to be able to be your customers because they're outside the UK, but for anyone listening who's looking at where they usually buy their houseplants, what kind of questions should they be asking? What kind of things can they look out for that are going to give them a hint as to how sustainable the houseplants they're buying actually are?

Katy: I think a lot of it is questioning the language, the language that's being used on the care labels. If it doesn't say peat-free, chances are it won't be peat-free because, like us, growers who are peat-free want to be shouting that from the rooftops! We are proud of what we're doing and we see it as a real benefit for the environment as well.

Jane: What about plastic? We've talked a little bit about that, but I'm thinking of Harriet's Plants who's obviously on a much smaller scale than you, but she's using coir. What are you doing with plastic pots?

Katy: We are using plastic pots which are curbside recyclable. At the moment, because of the structure of the coir pots and, obviously, the growing time from the glasshouse to shipping it out to customers, the only way we could do it would be to carry on growing in plastic. There would be a high manual resource to then move that over to a coir pot, but also, the feedback that we've had on coir pots isn't always that positive, so it feels like there's still a solution to be found there, to really make that as sustainable as possible.

Jane: You kind of hope that there's going to be some solution, like the one you found for your growing media, some kind of closed-loop system that sorts this problem out for us. But it's great that they're curbside recyclable and I just hope that more garden centres, and things, are going to start being aware of this issue. As I was coming here this morning, behind my bin, I've got a massive load of plastic trays. I reuse all the plastic pots but the plastic trays I'm like "I know that there's some garden centre, somewhere, that recycles these, but I've got to search it out, take it down there."

Katy: The one thing we will be doing in terms of plastic is the decorative pots that we're going to be selling are from Elho, so they are all made from recycled plastic and the energy put in to produce those is 100% wind turbine generated as well. At the end of the product's life cycle, it's 100% recyclable.

Jane: In a way, we sort of diss plastic, but actually, plastic does have a lot of great value, doesn't it? As long as you're using it, and as you say, it's recycled and recyclable, plastic's got some real pluses for growing, so we shouldn't dismiss it entirely, but it's just, as you say, trying to find those connections to make it actually something that works.

Katy: I think this is it. We touched on it in the beginning, sustainability is at the heart of everything we do, we're not perfect and we know that, but we like to consider ourselves considerably better than what's out there at the moment.

Will: I think if we try to be totally perfect, we couldn't produce anything.

Jane: No, you'd never start.

Will: It is about doing the very best, making a significant improvement to what's out there on the market as it currently stands, and continuing to work, as more technology becomes available, at even better solutions.

Jane: What kind of things are you selling? What do you think are going to be your top sellers? Is it still the classics? Is it the Spider Plants, the Monsteras, the S**yngoniums? Are those the kind of things that you're maxing out in your glasshouse right now?

Will: Yes, there's some really interesting Calatheas coming as well. There's been a huge wave of new types of Calathea being developed by young plant growers, so there's some exciting things to watch out for there as well.

Jane: It shocks me in a way that we're in the year 2022 and we're still struggling with these issues that we have been talking about for a long time. So I'm really glad that you're doing something about this, and it's amazing, really, that there aren't more people doing this. Maybe there are. Maybe we've just not heard of them. It's just amazing that there aren't more nurseries going down this route. Perhaps you've got that particular secret source of having your sterilisation system? Perhaps that's the key for you? I don't know.

Will: I think it is something that's unusual to have - your own sterilisation facility - certainly in the UK. You might see a few more of them in the Netherlands, but it's a risk, it's a big, big risk to break away from the industry norms. There are established ways of growing and if you want to go and do something differently, you're taking a risk. Horticulture's like agriculture; it works on very fine margins. I don't blame people for not taking that risk because it's their families, their incomes, their livelihoods and their facilities that they've got to look after. We're in a position whereby we want to take the risk. We think it's worth it and we think the issue is important enough, so we're going for it.

Jane: Do you think it's one of these things where everyone's going to be watching you, to see how successful you are?

Katy: People will be keeping a close eye on us and watching with interest to see where the industry follows.

Jane: Yeah, well watch this space! It's fascinating to see what you're doing and I'm going to be certainly checking out how it all goes in the coming year because it's fascinating to see that this is coming to fruition, so thank you very much Will and Kate!

Katy: Thank you!

Will: Thank you very much and for raising awareness of it as well, Jane!

[music]

Jane: Thanks so much to Will and Katy and maybe this episode's thrown up more questions for you about peat? I'd be happy to try to help, so please drop me a line if there's anything else you want to know about peat. If you haven't done so already, please do listen to the rest of the episodes in my sustainability series, including my first episode on peat, where I talk to a carnivorous plant grower about his own formulation for peat-free carnivorous plant compost -- yes, it's possible! In other episodes, I cover other issues within the sustainability realm, which are so important for us as houseplant lovers. If there's some other aspect of sustainability that you don't feel I've covered enough, or at all, again - let me know! I love to hear your comments and suggestions.

Also, finally, no Q&A this week, but I do have a Q&A special coming up, so please get some questions in! I've had some really fascinating questions of late, I'm saving them up for my Q&A special, so do get your queries relating to all things houseplants over to me at ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com

That's all for this week's show. Until next week then, you and your plants have a great week. Bye!

[music]

Jane: The music you heard in this episode was Roll Jordan Roll, by The Joy Drops, The Road We Used To Travel When We Were Kids, by Komiku and Oh Mallory, by Josh Woodward. All tracks are licensed under Creative Commons. Visit the show notes for details.

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I talk to the founders of Geb & Green, a new firm offering peat-free houseplants by mail order in the UK, and get an update on the campaign to end the use of peat in horticulture.

Check out the rest of my sustainability series of podcast episodes here. Patreon subscribers at the Ledge End and Superfan tier can hear an extended interview on peat-free with Sally Morgan in An Extra Leaf 106 - scroll down for details on how to become a Patreon subscriber.

Celebrating the LGBTQIA+ houseplant community

February is LGBT+ history month, so I’ll be devoting an episode on February 27 to celebrating the incredible houseplant community among LGBTQIA+ people - and I want to hear from you! Record a voice memo 30 seconds to 2 minutes long, taking up the theme ‘what houseplants mean to me’. Send your recording (or a written message if you don’t want to talk) to me at ontheledgepodcast@gmail.com by February 16.

This week’s guests

Katy Brown and Will Clayton are the co-founders of Geb & Green, a new business selling sustainable houseplants in the UK that’s based in Royston, Cambridgeshire. You can follow them on Insta as @gebandgreen.

Sally Morgan is a botanist, no-dig gardener and garden writer is one of the founding members of the Peat-Free April campaign. You can find out more about Sally, her writing and books on her website, livingononeacreorless.co.uk.

Check out the show notes below as you listen…

HOW TO SUPPORT ON THE LEDGE

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CREDITS

This week's show featured the tracks Roll Jordan Roll by the Joy Drops, The Road We Use To Travel When We Were Kids by Komiku and  Oh Mallory by Josh Woodward.

Jane Perronesustainability, peat-free1 Comment