It often seems that more and more gardens are being covered over by hard landscaping or artificial grass, leaving them as wildlife deserts. So laying a new lawn should be heralded as a wonderful act for nature. However, across our region areas of lowland peatland that have been drained and converted to agriculture are now being used to grow garden turf.
As soon as a peatland is drained, the carbon that is stored within the peat oxidises and is released into the atmosphere as CO2, exacerbating the climate emergency. When that peatland is then used to grow turf, not only is it releasing huge amounts of carbon, but we are also losing the peat itself even faster, as with each harvest of the turf a layer approximately 5cm deep of the peat is taken up too.