Roots, structural complexity in the garden and worries about the monarch butterfly

A couple of weeks ago I attended a brilliant symposium which has filled my mind with lots of ideas for the future. It was the biennial Beth Chatto Symposium held at the University of Essex in Colchester, entitled Beneath the Surface. Running over two days with an optional third day based at the Beth Chatto Gardens, it delved deep into soil, roots, resilience, boglands and much more. Just the type of event I thrive on.

Opening the symposium was the wonderful Merlin Sheldrake talking to Humaira Ikram about his best selling book, Entangled Life, which is mind blowing and if you haven’t read it yet, I encourage you to do so. Merlin talked about soil fungi and their role in plant health, the way that fungi can move around via their spores, and cutting edge science such as the use of viral therapy to deactivate pathogenic fungal resting structures, such as sclerotina, in the soil. It was interesting to learn how mycorrhizal fungi respond to the stresses of drought by producing spores, so th…