How does climate change effect my garden?
Added on 24 January 2023
In simple terms ecologists state that climate change is threatening the structure and services of habitat ecology both globally and on our door step, which includes our gardens. Structure tends to refer to the physical form of the planting which provides shelter, nesting materials etc, whilst it’s services, sometimes cited as function, can refer to a habitats ability is to drain flood water or provide shade from strong sun to other plants and wildlife. Services can also include pollinator, prey or other feeding or reproduction mechanisms.
The maritime climate of the UK means summers are generally warm with predominantly cooler wet winters. Being further north and at a higher altitude Scotland’s summers are shorter with colder winters. The effects of climate change overall are milder seasons with higher summer temperatures leading to periods of drought and wetter winter months leading to flooding. Our maritime influence protects us from the prolonged freezing winters associated with inland Europe.
In our gardens our climate and soil allows us to enjoy a wide range of near- native temperate ornamental plants from Europe, North America, Asia and exotics from Australasia. As mentioned earlier ecologically based planting does not mean we need to restrict ourselves to native and near native plants. Our wildlife enjoys the shelter, space to nest, forage for food and reproduce afforded by not only diverse natives and near- native plants but also exotics.
Globally both plant and animal geographic distribution and phenology is shifting. Phenology is the study of timing of cyclic seasonal events such as the arrival or leaving of migratory birds, the first sign of bee’s or the earliest emergence of tree leaves in spring and as of time of writing (autumn 2022) with the mild autumn , trees holding onto many of their leaves till towards the end of November. Such shifts are becoming increasingly noticeable aspects of larger unseen more complex biotic and abiotic factors disrupting all organism interactions within habitats. For example many ecologists fear that prolonged dry spells in summer will shorten the flowering period of bee friendly plants. This will have a knock on effect in the collection of honey, pollination, predation, mating and bee numbers.
As mentioned earlier for most of us our desire for ornamental plants in the garden is to achieve our aesthetic as well as our functional goals such as privacy; cost, our well-being and wildlife habitat being further considerations. Having a greater understanding of ecological concepts allows us to select regionally and soil appropriate plants with a greater resilience to climate influenced changes such as drought and flooding. Rather than trying to predict possible future temperature rises and planting plants from warmer climes which could fail in the long term which may be susceptible to phenological changes such as flooding or prolonged cold hard winters; some ecologists/horticulturists believe we should be looking at planting combinations which can act as a buffer against the unpredictable implications of climate change. An ecological approach is to install resilience into our plantings. Key concepts are planting resilience, functional redundancy, response diversity, plant plasticity and structural diversity. Explained in my next article.