GARDENERS are calling for animal-free fertilizer and compost.
Suppliers are being asked to guarantee their fertilizers are plant-based and manure pellets come from free-range animals.
The UK’s Royal Horticultural Society has said that if the trend continues, stockists will have to offer vegan options to meet demand.
Guy Barter, Chief Horticulturist at the Royal Horticultural Society said: “Vegan gardening is similar to organic in that it avoids synthetic pesticides and fertilizers but goes further; eliminating anything of animal origin which includes popular feeds with animal materials such as fish, bones and blood and manures from intensive animal farming.
“Should we see more in the coming years, the industry will need to look at providing more products, such as alfalfa meal fertilizer, currently a niche product, that meet this growing demand.”
Landscape designer and allotment owner Jack Wallington added: “Vegan gardening is a rising trend because we now know so much more about what we eat thanks to the internet. If more options were available they’d fly off the shelves.”
The number of vegans in Britain rose by more than 360 per cent to some 542,000 people in 2016, according to a poll.
Charles Dowding, a pioneer of organic growing, wrote in Gardener’s World Magazine: “I am in agreement about not using manure from battery farms, or bagged chicken manure from the same intensively-farmed source. However, I am also happy to use manure from local equine stables, free-ranging beef cattle and home-raised hens.”
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