BBC 2 TV show talks rubbish about decking…shame on you

Great British Garden Revival, BBC2 Lawns and Tropical

Whilst stood in a field Dr Stephen Head delivered his utter nonsense whilst having a cheap shot at concrete, paving and decking.

I am puzzled as to why the media luddites insist on playing these ridiculous programs with their ill-informed professionals talking tripe…

I quote.

“The only the thing the decking encourages in terms of biodiversity is rats, basically it’s a place where they can hide underneath it. Put concrete down or decking and you are essentially denying your garden for wild life.”

Stephen then spoke about concreting urban spaces in the city and how it led to flooding… This is quite possibly the most tosh I have heard in a good while, he simply echoed the rhetoric from one or two famous designers that have already either written or spouted this on the TV.

Let’s for the record get a few things said.

I am not a biodiversity specialist so I won’t profess I know anything about it. I beg you for future lectures and speeches that you don’t stray too far from the scope of your professionalism.

Decking should not be confused with concrete, nothing wrong with concrete though but decking is predominantly timber, inert, eco-friendly, fully recyclable, has the lowest carbon footprint when compared to 99.9% of other construction materials.

Decking; in no way what so ever has any possible link to any form of flooding, the water from the rain simply falls between the gaps, drop to the ground and simply soak back into the natural water table.

Oh and the bit about Rats is cobblers… they don’t live under decks.

Biodiversity, a shortened word for biological diversity, is the term used to describe the variety of life found on Earth and all of the natural processes. This includes ecosystem, genetic and cultural diversity, and the networks between these and all species.

What has this got to do with decking I don’t know…

Now; lawns, beautiful, the world’s best are in the UK and they form a generous part of gardens for the vast majority of home owners. These are spaces to look at, walk on, lay on, have a picnic and so on, planting near these areas are in borders, areas with this lawn area, planters and the like, the reason there is no planting in a traditional lawn as it’s a lawn… that’s all

In the UK we want to sit in our gardens, when its dry and the right time of year we lay on our lawns, from there we can admire the rest of our space. The majority have paved areas, gravelled spaces and decking, these in there simplest form of use are for tables and chairs, this is where we sit and enjoy our gardens, if we didn’t have them what would we use to form a structural base to create a seating area. It certainly wouldn’t be a lawn, although I doubt there would be anything wrong with that but it does have its limitations… It rains a lot in the UK and we wouldn’t appreciate a muddy quagmire for a dining area in our lawns, I wouldn’t in any case.

Decking, paving and the hard landscaping, it’s what we want, lots of us have them, we don’t want a field full of wild flowers in our small gardens… They may look wonderful and fit into a sentence with the word biodiversity in it but please I beg you leave well alone what you know little about.

Karl

Professional Decking Chap