COP 26 - Blog 2: Peat - Cathryn Fergie

I’m a keen gardener, and I’ve been aware for some time about the need to avoid using composts containing peat in the garden. I knew that this is because peat acts as a carbon sink, locking in large amounts of carbon, so they are a vital part of our fight against climate change. I knew too that peatlands are an invaluable habitat for flora and fauna, some found nowhere else. Created very slowly as layers of vegetation build up at 1-2mm per year, they can be destroyed in a very short time by being drained and harvested just so that I can put some compost on my garden.

So I’ve been avoiding using it as much as possible for at least the last 10 years. Thankfully that’s now a lot easier than it used to be! I confess, though, that I did this more out of a sense of duty, that it was “the right thing to do.” After all, peatlands? What picture does that conjure up in your mind? Somewhere flat, squelchy, boggy, surely not very interesting?!

That was certainly my mental picture until June this year when I visited RSPB Forsinard Flows nature reserve in the Flow Country, an area of around 1,500 square miles of peatland and wetland in Caithness and Sutherland. I was captivated by the wild, stark beauty of it and also its fragility, with notices not to step off the raised walkway in case some of its precious and rare flora and fauna was damaged by careless feet. I was stunned to discover that the Flow Country’s blanket peat bogs on their own store over 3 times the amount of carbon found in all of Britain’s woodlands put together!

Something shifted inside me as I stood there looking out at this beautiful and oh, so fragile wilderness, which could be so easily and thoughtlessly destroyed - and it's an experience that has haunted me ever since. It’s still a choice I need to make each time I buy compost or new plants for the garden. But my motivation has changed from feeling I “should” to a real desire to do whatever I can to make sure this and other peatlands are protected. Because now I have a picture in my mind of one of the beautiful places I’m trying to protect…..

https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/peat

https://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves-and-events/reserves-a-z/forsinard-flows/