It is often wet here in autumn. I live near the Somerset Levels, which lie a good 20ft (6m) below sea level, in an area of the country which is among the first to catch the rain-laden westerly gales of autumn. So I’m used to a bit of damp.
But there is a limit.
Once again we are under water. The roads are impassable: there were no trains out yesterday either after the rails were flooded too. You’ve heard of being snowed in: well we’re rained in. And it’s the second time this autumn.
One of the effects of climate change we will see much more of as the years go by is extreme rainfall: not just heavy, but also prolonged. Warm air is expansive and able to carry far more moisture than cool air so rain clouds are heavier and, when they release their load, more monsoon-like with every fraction of a degree of rise in the average temperature of our climate.
At the same time, we’ve spent the last century or two eating away at the earth’s ability to absorb even normal amounts of rainwater by spreading a mantle of concrete over the soil, one housing estate/motorway/city suburb at a time.
It’s no wonder flooding has become a fact of life. I can remember rivers bursting their banks when I was a kid, of course: but nothing like as many, and as regularly, and as dramatically. The climate statistics speak for themselves: this year broke records for the wettest months ever in various parts of the country in March, July and October.
So even for Somerset, it’s been wet. I am beginning to understand, in quite some detail, how Fungus the Bogeyman must have felt.
There has not, of course, been much gardening. But although too much rain can be frustrating, and downright worrying if you are losing plants to rotten roots and sodden soil – there is a wider picture to see here.
Our gardens have a much more important role to play in tackling all this than we might think. They’re among the very last spaces where even in built-up cities the rain can soak into the earth, as it was meant to before we started concreting everything. In more rural areas too they can slow the flood of water pouring off over-grazed fields, absorbing the excess like chains of little sponges. The more gardens we have, the less likely it is your local storm drains will be overwhelmed or your nearest river will burst its banks.
We, as gardeners, can help here. Garden with a rainfall mindset and you can not only help your own garden cope better with too much water – you’ll help keep it off your local roads, and out of your neighbours’ houses, and away from your town centres too. It may seem like it’s just your little patch of green, and it doesn’t matter much to anyone else what you do in it – but your garden has a truly vital part to play in protecting the wider environment.
A recent visit to RHS Garden Harlow Carr in Yorkshire was a timely reminder of all this: I went in the rain (of course) and toured some impressive groundworks, involving many diggers and random piles of earth, aimed at using nature-based solutions to prevent the carpark from flooding and allow the garden to become a big, beautiful mop to dry out the surrounding area in times of excessive wetness.
You don’t have to call in the JCBs to do a similar thing at home, though: here are five, rather simpler suggestions for turning your garden into one big soakaway.
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