Читать книгу The Organic Garden - Allan Shepherd - Страница 12

To keep a check on the villains in your garden, fill it up with lots of different species of plants. Gardens are healthier if they have a large variety of different species and plants are less likely to suffer from disease.

In the flatlands of Lincolnshire I lived amongst space that was more or less dead for nature. Field upon field of agricultural crops stretched out around my village. Every summer millions of black flies blew across the open hedgeless country into our gardens. Here they would rest upon our clothes on the line, so much so that we would have to wash them all over again. They fell between gaps in our window frames and filled up the aluminium corners like ground black pepper. They got into the roots of our hair and into the corners of our eyes. The worst job I could imagine in my childhood was mowing the lawn on a hot day, one hand on the sticky vibrating plastic handle of the hover mower, the other brushing away the sweat and the flies from my face.

And all beyond me I could see the flat, open, soulless fields filled with their single crops stretching out for miles and tractors showering chemicals over them. If you were a black fly where would you go? Beneficial insects like biodiversity and pests hate it.