What on earth for?

To many, plants are just green things, that sit there, flower, change colour, or drop leaves all over the place. They do little else. So why on earth is there a need for advice and services?. Well, if your transmission is on the blink, water heater is broken, CD-ROM won't load, or bank just charged you again, then YES, plants are just those things that make the background look green. A cabbage is as about as much use as an angle grinder when a fuse has blown. But plants play a vital role in so many aspects of our lives, so fundamental they go unnoticed. Without them and their diversity our lives would be greatly impoverished, if not impossible.
  • Foods: vegetables, fruit, herbs, pulses, grains, and processed for beer, wine, bread etc...
  • Ecology: food & habitat for wild & domestic animals, and other life.
  • Practical: hold the soil in place, screening, shelter, shade.
  • Non-food: wood, paper, cloth, medicines, crude oil (after a very long time and lots of pressure).
  • Through animals: honey, milk, cheeses and other dairy goods, meats.
  • Environment: remove carbon dioxide, release oxygen, water oxygenation, nutrient cycles.
  • Aesthetic: flowers, garden plants, look good, smell good.
There are hundreds of thousands of plant species. Of these species, there can be hundreds of varieties (cultivars), which through time people have modified and bred to better suit our needs. Their uses are vital. The food we eat, the land we live on, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the animals around us, and many other uses, from the medicinal, ecological to the horticultural, of which many aspects are still to be discovered and understood.

For many of us, in our high tech world, we have never been so removed from the land. What does this mean?. If we are not aware of what plants are, and what they do, if we have lost touch, then we forget the things which rural communities and generations of people throughout our history took as fundamental: the natural processes of this world. All organisms, whether animal, plant, fungi or bacteria, are all interconnected. What one organism does is to the advantage or disadvantage of another. Each species is tailored to a range of environmental conditions within which it can survive.

The current state of affairs is that all over the world, we are changing the environment. This, in itself is NOT a bad thing, but the RATE and SCALE at which it is happening IS. Only a few species are able to adapt to this, the opportunitists & the generalists. The majority of species are more specialized, and geared to suit particular conditions of the millions of unique environmental sites that this varied and changing world provides. As a result the numbers of many plant and animal species and population sizes of those species, are decreasing. You may have heard this many times, but extinctions are real and increasingly likely for a rapidly increasing number of species. We provide services which address the wider roles of plants and their place in the garden, our food production, and the biodiversity of our moors, woods, seas and grasslands. Sustainability is required. Realizing this, is only the first step. Changing to a sustainable society is complex, and fraught with contradiction. This is a huge subject, and finding your way can be difficult. We are here to help.