IN THE GARDEN
Acclimatise to thrive Climate change poses gardeners significant challenges as we care and plan ahead for our outdoor spaces, as Sally Petitt explains
Images HOWARD RICE
H ow many of us gardeners consider where our plants originate from? That doesn’t just mean knowing which garden centre we bought them from, it means understanding where in the world they naturally occur, and what the local conditions are. This knowledge can help us understand which plants best suit our own gardens and follow the old gardening adage of ‘right plant, right place’. Recent evidence suggests plants began colonising the land more than 500 million years ago, and have evolved since that time to produce the plants we know today. Plant evolution is slow and is influenced by genetic composition, as well as climatic factors. Light, temperature, water and humidity are hugely influential in plant development, affecting plant growth and geographic distribution.
If climate change brings increased rainfall , the desert plants we are familiar with may cease to exist
threatened or extinct. High-altitude alpine plants, for example, are considered to be at high risk in a warming climate. They have evolved to survive in extremes of temperature and light. As temperatures increase, the only option they have is to migrate upwards to escape the heat, but there is limited scope for them to do this. For many known plant species, changes to environmental conditions such as reduced water can cause stress to the plant or even death. Unfortunately, the resulting stress could also increase a plant’s susceptibility to attack from pests and disease.
If any of these factors change, even slightly, it can have a detrimental impact on plant health and even survival, with changes to environmental factors affecting entire populations or species. For example, desert plants have evolved to survive with limited amounts of water, but if climate change brings increased rainfall to these areas, the desert plants we are familiar with may cease to exist. There are also concerns that the pace at which climate change is occurring, as well as the subsequent environmental change, means plants may not evolve at the same rate and will become either
78 JULY 2026 CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK
Powered by FlippingBook