• Dalefoot’s popular Lakeland Gold clay-buster compost now vegan-friendly
• Its peat-free composts stocked in 112 garden centres/nurseries across UK including NEW for spring 2020 six Blue Diamond stores
• Dalefoot’s environmental business restored over 32,700 hectares of damaged peat bog in 20 years - over 1 million tonnes of carbon emissions stored since it was launched
• Company works on Dartmoor, the Cairngorms and in the Lake District restoring peatlands to lock in carbon and reduce flooding risk
Dalefoot Composts has boosted its pioneering peat-free gardening range with a vegan-friendly compost for spring 2020 and announced a major carbon-saving milestone for its environmental contracting arm that restores precious peatlands across the UK.
The family-run company’s popular Lakeland Gold* compost, made from bracken sustainably harvested from the local fells, is now 100% vegan-friendly, thanks to a tweak to its potash-rich recipe**.
Lakeland Gold acts as a powerful soil conditioner, ideal for spring and autumn mulching on your garden beds as well as clay-busting, and is packed with natural slow-release nutrients helping to develop a fertile, living soil. Like the rest of Dalefoot’s peat-free, premium compost range, it is Soil Association-approved for organic growing and is available to buy online or from a growing list of stockists.
As well as encouraging gardeners to use peat-free compost, in a further step to combat the challenges of climate change, Dalefoot also helps restore the UK’s damaged peat bogs. Last year its team repaired over 3,200 hectares of degraded peatlands across the UK – some damaged by peat extraction for the horticultural industry - adding to the 29,500 hectares it’s completed in the past 20 years, the equivalent of 45,800 football pitches. Using innovative restoration techniques, the work turns the bogs back into carbon sinks. This equates to 1 million tonnes of carbon emissions - equivalent to 500,000 flights from London to New York - saved since Dalefoot started two decades ago, .
Professor Jane Barker, who runs Dalefoot Composts with her husband Simon Bland, said: “We are all now witnessing the effects of global warming and climate change: be it earlier flowering bulbs, the need for extra watering or for some too much rain. As gardeners we all have the opportunity to make a difference! Going peat-free isn’t just a personal choice, it’s a way we can all have an impact in our own individual way on climate change. Peat is pure carbon laid down over thousands of years and it needs to stay in a bog (not a bag!). Lots of little steps make giant strides.”
Simon and Jane have pioneered techniques to repair these fragile landscapes, with their team often working in challenging conditions in remote sites for organisations like Natural England, Scottish Natural Heritage, Cumbria Wildlife Trust and South West Water. They have engineered specialist equipment, lighter than a human footprint, needed to work on the delicate surface of peat bogs.
Dalefoot Composts is a farm-based business producing an exciting range of peat-free composts using only the natural resources of wool and bracken sustainably sourced from the beautiful Lake District. Its premium composts include Wool Compost for Potting & Containers, Wool Compost for Vegetables & Salads, Wool Compost for Tomatoes, Wool Compost Double Strength, Wool Compost Ericaceous (and Double Strength), Bulb Compost and Wool Compost for Seeds. Lakeland Gold, the original bracken compost, is now 100% vegan-friendly.