Leave weeds, slugs and snails in your garden alone, experts say

2023-04-25

Leave weeds, slugs and snails in your garden alone and ‘let nature take its course’, Royal Horticultural Society experts say

Digging up soil disrupts delicate ecosystem of fungi and bacteria below surface
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It’s the time of the year when gardeners across the country start digging up their soil and pulling out weeds in preparation for a summer spent outdoors.

But now experts from the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) have advised its better to avoid these practices and instead ‘let nature take its course’.

They say that digging up soil disrupts the delicate ecosystem of fungi and bacteria below the surface, while ‘weeds are your friend’ as they show a garden is healthy.

The suggestions – likely to trigger furious debate – were made by a panel of experts discussing trends at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show.

RHS experts also advise slugs and snails should be celebrated rather than hunted down and destroyed, and that pesticides and weedkillers should be used as little as possible.

The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has advised to not dig up your soil and take out weeds

The RHS also said slugs and snails should be celebrated rather than hunted down and destroyed

Plants that have been chewed by creepy crawlies should also be displayed proudly in gardens as they show that the garden is an ‘ecosystem’, they said.

Weeds will feature prominently in several show gardens at this year’s Chelsea show while a new trend towards using demolition rubble has emerged among garden designers.

Sheila Das, Garden Manager at the society’s flagship garden at Wisley in Surrey, said that not digging soil helps it to ‘capture carbon’.

‘People can feel quite helpless at the moment with regard to what’s going on the planet,’ she said.

‘There’s one single thing that everybody can do to contribute to positive carbon capture and that is to care for the soil.’

She said undisturbed soil captures ’10 to 15 times more carbon than forests’.

‘So the less we disturb it, the more we allow that ecosystem below the ground to thrive and be healthy,’ she added.

Nikki Barker, senior horticultural advisor at the RHS, said: ‘We are changing the way we look at the soil. If soil is healthy, it’s part of an eco-system.

It is advised that pesticides and weedkillers should be used as little as possible

Plants that have been chewed by creepy crawlies should be displayed proudly in gardens as they show that the garden is an ‘ecosystem

‘It’s really important to add to it, mulch it, and disturb it as little as possible.’

Gardeners traditionally dig gardens to put compost into the soil, but ‘no-dig’ gardeners apply it to the surface and let worms, fungi and soil bacteria to break down the ‘mulch’ and drag it down into the soil. Undug soil is less likely to be washed away in downpours as well.

She said that slug-ravaged plants in a garden were fine as creatures like hedgehogs need to eat slugs.

Leave weeds, slugs and snails in your garden alone, experts say

Leave weeds, slugs and snails in your garden alone and ‘let nature take its course’, Royal Horticultural Society experts say

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