In this edition:
Mike Burks, Managing Director of the Gardens Group, explains the advantages of growing dwarf varieties of fruit trees if you only have a small garden, or a patio, since a number of them – apples, pears, cherries – can be grown very well in pots. He also explains the differences it makes to a fruit tree to prune in the winter or the summer. (And I learned a thing or two!)
Dr. Emma Phipps of the charity Songbird Survival, which funds scientific research, talks about just what two insecticides contained in pet flea treatments are doing not just to aquatic insects, but perhaps more worryingly to the adults and young of our best-loved and best-known garden birds. Along with a number of other leading conservation bodies, Songbird Survival is currently lobbying parliament to have these chemicals banned.
Kirk Hutton is a senior vet and a director of the Dorset veterinary group Friars Moor, and she explains exactly how those insecticides work and how they get from our cats and dogs into the environment via the spot-on flea treatments. But she also explains that there are safer ways to apply such treatments – such as by being injected.
And Andy Worth has been speaking to several representatives of organisations who were exhibitors at last month’s World Heritage Day and Jurassic Coast at 25 event in the Dorset Museum.
Presented by Jenny Devitt
