It’s a sunny Friday morning as I open the Teams link to meet Jayne Horswill-Walsh, ready to dive into the ins-and-outs of peat-free compost quality controls.

Jayne works at Evergreen Garden Care, a large-scale business producing millions of bags of peat-free compost a year – operating on a completely different scale to other peat-free compost manufacturers, who tend to be small to medium sized businesses. In fact, Evergreen is the first major compost manufacturer to make the switch to 100% peat-free.

Evergreen converted their main brand, Miraclegro, to peat-free in 2023, and their other household name, Levingtons, this year. As they’ve made inroads into the peat-free compost arena, they’ve also become a clear voice in the call for compost quality controls. Last year, they released an open letter to Defra bringing together industry players on this very issue.

But as we talk, what’s clear to me more than anything else is the sense of excitement the industry has about striding into a peat-free future.

What do we mean by quality controls?

Most industries have some kind of quality control. For many gardening products you see in shops, the claims to kill X pest in Y days or to grow twice as fast in half the time are backed up by rigorous scientific trials performed before the product is on shelves. This means customers can see these claims and assume that when they take it home to their own garden, it will actually do what it says on the tin.

“The entire industry of compost does not have that regulation whatsoever” Jayne says.

Photo by Nicola Stocken at the RHS

As the environmental destruction wrought by peat mining is recognised, plenty of new peat-free composts are cropping up ready to meet demand. But too many of these are poorly made options looking to secure a share of the growing consumer demand for peat-free without much regard to whether or not they can actually grow plants well. These products can claim whatever they want on the bag; they might get complaints, but they don’t actually have to do anything.

It might not be the most glamorous subject but the call for quality controls in peat-free manufacturing is growing. The best peat-free products are really good these days: in fact they regularly out-performed peat-based composts in independent Which? Gardening compost trials until they chose to only test peat-free composts from 2025 onwards (although they say this is because peat is banned – it isn’t yet).

But the problem is that poorly made peat-free composts are giving all peat-free composts a bad name – and making gardeners reluctant to risk their precious plants on products they don’t feel they can trust. A reliable quality control for peat-free would do exactly what they do for other products: differentiate the brands you can rely on, from those you shouldn’t bother with.

It’s about helping the customer

Some peat-free options might be friendly on the wallet, but not so much for your plants. In poorly made peat-free compost, large bits of bark, poor structure, or lack of nutrients are all off-putting problems unsuspecting customers might face.

Jayne suggests “if you’ve spent £60 on a new houseplant and plant it up in what you think is the right thing and then it dies, you’re gonna be like ‘oh, I have a brown thumb’… and ‘I’ll never garden again’”. If new gardeners are put off by poor products, that means fewer customers for the industry – and worse, a hit for budding gardeners’ self-esteem if they start thinking they’re just “bad at gardening”. We are beginning to understand just how important it is to connect with nature, especially after the pandemic houseplant boom, and it feels unfair to put people off if they have no way of knowing which products will help them succeed at their new hobby.

Photo by Dixit Dhinakaran on Unsplash

Education can only go so far. I shared an anecdote about a garden centre employee telling the head gardener at Somerset-based peat-free compost manufacturer Rocketgro that “seedlings can’t germinate unless they’re in contact with peat”. While garden centre staff are knowledgeable about most of the products they sell, staff turnover or lack of engagement can mean education about peat-free falls through the gaps.

This “dirt-is-dirt-is-dirt” mentality, as Jayne so aptly puts it, amplifies the importance of quality controls. If we differentiate between good and bad products, the idea that your growing medium is something to be choosy about will register on people’s minds. “It’s just almost about…truth in advertising.”

Celebrating peat-free science

We frequently find ourselves combatting the myth that any peat-free compost “isn’t good enough” after someone’s been burned by one bad product. Now, as we move towards peat-free, all the hard work being put into formulating a good product by peat-free manufacturers like Evergreen deserves to be recognised.

When Evergreen make even a slight change to their composts, they undergo rigorous testing. At Evergreen’s Research Centre in Ipswich, plants are grown across hanging baskets and beds by the hundreds, with 2500m² of automated-control glasshouses allowing year-round operation.

Photo by Evergreen Garden Care

Evergreen want all brand claims to be supported by scientific trials that are just as rigorous. The solution they propose is to create a quality control system within the Responsible Sourcing Scheme (RSS). The RSS assesses various criteria along the compost supply chain to ensure sustainability, from social compliance (e.g., health and safety of workers) to energy use. To receive a sustainability rating, the product must be viable for use in growing plants. The open letter called for the RSS to be given “the respect it deserves” through government backing.

The focus on research-based product development mirrors the peatland research that is driving our understanding of why these ecosystems are so important. Earlier this year, one study showed that only 17% of peatlands globally are sufficiently protected by legal means, highlighting the “mismatch” between their importance and their protection that makes it even more important that we take steps now to protect them.

What should the standard for peat-free compost be?

Ultimately, what do we need from quality controls? The answer is simple. We need scientifically robust growing trials that must be used to prove any claims about products. We need a standard which can be maintained by government organisations, and we need it to be mandatory to display on compost packaging. With these three features peat-free quality controls can assure customers that when they buy a high-quality product, they’ll get what they were promised.

Evergreen’s 2023 open letter was received well, and Jayne reflects on the many contacts they made during its conception and release. “We had really good discourse with agricultural MPs” she remembers, but then everyone disappeared. We know well from our fight for legislation to end peat sales that this is the case with politics – when government changes, suddenly almost everyone you’d built contacts with has vanished off the face of the earth.

Legislation to end the sale and supply of peat for horticulture, which would provide certainty to industry professionals, continues to be delayed. In the meantime, extraction continues, mining peatlands down to the mineral layer. Thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide are released, while the unique ecology of the peatland is destroyed. As I write this, our extraction counter charting the rate at which peat is being dug up to use in horticulture sits at 171,798 cubic metres. That’s enough to fill nearly 70 Olympic-sized swimming pools. It’s only March.

This doesn’t mean we’re slowing down. Since the open letter was released, the energy around peat-free has only increased and the horticultural industry is responding. This February over 20 organisations including the Peat-free Partnership came together to produce an educational leaflet for consumers on caring for peat-free plants. More and more communication around peat-free is sprouting up.

The horticulture industry wants change

What comes across most in my conversation with Jayne is her enthusiasm about the industry taking action. The peat-free switch has been “one of the more exciting things I’ve done”, she tells me.

“It’s not about profit,” she says. “It’s about finding the right way to do the right thing and do it quickly, so we don’t damage the environment any further.” Upon choosing to switch, she tells me there was a real sense of excitement about what they were embarking on. It’s a move backed up by the confidence Evergreen has in their products.

The sense of camaraderie and collaboration shines through in the story of their journey: friends made and learning shared. There’s a real sense that the industry is joining forces to move forward, and as I somewhat dramatically suggest that they’re at the forefront of a new chapter of gardening history, Jayne humbly agrees. Peat-free businesses aren’t scared of change, they’re embracing it.

Although, she says, they “haven’t seen the government response that [they] would have wanted”. We need government action  to support the work the industry is putting into change. Producing clear quality controls will help customers identify the best peat-free compost for them. Further than that, we need legislation to end the sale and supply of peat. With the enthusiasm the industry shows for change, we now need to level the playing field, provide certainty for businesses, and end peat extraction for horticulture, once and for all.