Natural Solutions

I am a turf grower and farmer – I grow grass for a living. Some of the grass is for lawns and various amenity uses, and some produces the finest grass-fed beef and lamb. I was also chairman of LEAF – Linking Environment and Farming – and so I have championed sustainable land management for a long time. 

Soil is our greatest asset, and we have a duty to look after it and improve it for the generations to come. The miracle of photosynthesis means that the grass plant absorbs sunlight and carbon dioxide to produce energy for the plant and oxygen. This is one of the most efficient ways of sequestering carbon – better than trees, as it is working all year round. Whether it is on a lawn or public space, or a pasture grazed by livestock, grass is improving the soil, locking up the carbon, and maintaining a thriving population of microbes. 

We grow grass in my business as naturally as possible, using organic fertilisers when we can, applying nutrients through the leaf which avoids leaching into watercourses, and applying irrigation during periods of water stress pumped using solar power. We do not use plastic as a turf reinforcement under any circumstances. Who, in this era of reducing pollution by plastics, would knowingly entertain the idea of placing plastic mesh in the ground? Biodegradability is often claimed, but what does it degrade into? Plastic micro-granules which find their way into watercourses, adding to the problems that David Attenborough so vividly highlighted. The message is, when buying turf, insist that it does not contain plastic mesh. 

Declining populations of pollinators have rightly attracted a lot of attention. Everybody can play their part in arresting these declines by planting areas of wildflowers in their garden or public space. This has become much easier to do with the development of growing wildflowers in a ready to lay mat. Sadly, many growers are producing this in a plastic mesh, which seems to me to be completely at odds with the concept of planting an environmental product. We have now pioneered the production of a wildflower mat which contains no plastic at all, and which is wholly biodegradable. 

So, my threefold message is quite simple – grow and manage grass to sequester carbon, plant wildflowers to help pollinators and biodiversity, and at all costs avoid putting plastic in our precious soils.