We had the great fortune to meet up recently with Graham Hull, the founder of Wool Pots, which are an environmentally friendly alternative to plastic plant pots.
We've known Graham for many years . We'd heard that he's been working on a new project that helps farmers and gardeners reduce their usage of single use plastic, so we were intrigued to hear more.
Graham worked in product development for many years in the Licensing and Merchandising world so when he read an article which said 500 million – that’s half a billion – plastic pots end up in landfill in the UK EVERY YEAR he was really shocked.
Everyone thinks of gardening and horticulture as a good industry, growing things and in general being very thoughtful about the world. But the reality is quite different. There is an unbelievable amount of single use plastic and plastic in general, that is used in the industry. You only have to look at regions of Southern Spain so see the discarded poly tunnel plastic in the soil.
Back to the UK and 500 million plastic plant pots is a huge number going to landfill. Surprisingly Graham said an additional 500 million get sent to be incinerated and because this generates electricity it’s considered as recycling!!
"I don’t often get on my high horse but when people plug in their electric cars they never think 'i wonder how the electricity was generated'. I'm sure they'd be astonished to hear that some of the electricity could have been generated by incinerating plastic plant pots!"
So this was the catalyst to making a change. Graham went to visit his friend who is a lady sheep farmer. As any self-respecting shepherdess would acknowledge, sheep tend to die unexpectedly, escape the whole time, have an uncanny ability to get their heads stuck in the tiniest hole in a fence and are forever falling over! But on that day there was even louder gnashing of teeth as it was shearing day.
She told him it costs her £1.50 per sheep to shear them but because the price she was offered was so low it wouldn’t even cover the cost of taking the fleeces to the collection depot. He asked what she did with her fleeces and she said they put them in a pile and burn them… he was horrified so immediately decided to try and find a way of using the unloved wool. So he created Wool Pots…an environmentally friendly and sustainable plant pot. Much better than plastic ones.
Graham went on to explain the different uses of wool: "There are over a hundred different grades of wool and all the wool collected by the British Wool Board is graded and then they try and get the best price for it, the high end wool is great for suits, scarves and higher quality products, the next levels down have long fibres and are hard wearing so great for carpets, rugs, blankets and this kind of product. At the lower end the short fibre wool is used for packaging and insulation and increasingly as part of the mix for peat free compost. In the middle there is a wide range of unloved wool which is perfect for Wool Pots"
Time for some Q&A! :
A: So can you use Wool Pots just like a normal plant pot? How do they stand up?
G: Yes you use them exactly like a normal plant pot – when you put the compost in them it gives them the structural integrity to stand up, you then plant seeds, cuttings or plugs in them and water like normal. After a few weeks you will see the plant roots appearing at the bottom so you know it’s time to plant them out.
A: They sound great, do you take the plants out of the Wool Pots when you plant them out?
G: No because there are a few other things that Wool Pots can do that plastic plant pots can’t, when you plant the pots out you just dig a hole and put the whole Wool Pot in the ground so you don’t get any root disturbance, you must make sure to leave the rolled collar of the Wool Pot proud of the soil because wool acts as a natural slug and snail deterrent.
A: Anything that keeps slugs and snails off my plants sounds good to me!
G: They retain moisture so use between 20-30% less water than plastic plant pots, the knit of the Wool Pots allows more oxygen through to the roots which promotes stronger root growth which in turn promotes stronger plant growth, they also insulate against high heat and in a recent test we did with Pershore college the soil in Wool Pots was between 3-5 degrees cooler than a plastic pot – and all this from a totally sustainable natural material… not bad for a plant pot.
A: They sound great and I’m very pleased that we have them on Ateliers Verts for all our garden lovers.
G: Thanks Andrew, and thank you for supporting us and British farmers… as we say we are just trying to save the planet one pot at a time.
A: Thanks for coming and explaining more about Wool Pots to us.
(Header Image: ©Wool Pots)
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