Village Sustainability Newsletter January 2026

SUSTAINABILITY – WORKING TOWARDS THE COFE’S CARBON NEUTRAL TARGET 2030

Soil

Over the Easter holidays, I was fortunate to spend a couple of days visiting my daughter in Edinburgh.  While there I took the opportunity to head to the Royal Botanic Garden for the well-reviewed “Earth Matters – Seeing Soil Through Art”- exhibition marking 300 years since the birth of James Hutton, the Edinburgh-born geologist, farmer and thinker who revolutionised our understanding of Earth’s creation and the ground beneath us.

The exhibition combines art and science to highlight the importance of soil, and several of the gallery’s walls were painted in colours inspired by Scottish soil types.  A huge and stunning white paper-cut piece by Stevi Fiona Benson (on Instagram as Stevi_paper) shows beautiful and complex patterns which represent the tiny mycelium (funghi thread) networks underground that wind their way through soil providing much of its structure.  The fragility of the paper clearly represents the fragility of soil’s structure and its vulnerability to harm by human practices.  The piece – resembling large, intricate interweaving doilies - is displayed on a wall of deep blue paint, colour-matched to soil collected at Clockhill, Aberdeenshire.  Held in the National Soils Archive at the James Hutton Institute in Aberdeen, this soil is one of over 60,000 air-dried samples gathered from 15,000 locations.  Other walls were painted in ochre and mustard soil-colours.

An exhibit about peat reminded us of the huge reserves of peat in Scotland and the importance of their remaining undisturbed to enable them to continue as globally important carbon sinks.  20% of Scotland’s land surface is peatland which represents 2/3 of the UK’s peatlands.  But the Scottish government reported last year that nearly three quarters of this is currently degraded.  A substantial project is underway to restore peatlands and allow them to perform the carbon capture so greatly needed.

A section on regenerative farming reminded me of why I choose, when I can, to buy regeneratively farmed flour for baking – you can source it in Marks and Spencer and Waitrose (read the labels carefully) or elsewhere from the brand “Wildfarmed” who also sell bread.  The Wildlife Trusts say that while genuinely regenerative farming is highly advantageous, there are not clearly defined standards and the risk of greenwashing is ever present:  “Soil is key.  As the basis for most food production, its health is far higher up the agenda than it was even just a few years ago.  Conservation groups are now talking about the nature and wildlife below our feet, the extraordinary and complex plant, fungi, springtail and worm interactions.”

A fantastic poem by JL Williams called “Saoil – Soil Song” brought the ideas of the exhibition to life in words – lines became almost proselike: “soil is a mystery existing in spite of belief or disbelief, that which we cannot easily see or perceive – angels, earthworms - penetrating where the living body and eye cannot see, a sea of darkness, mass and air interweavings of rooty arms entwined and animals in fur and beetles in gold and ruby and cobalt and slaters in coats of armoured stone and worms whose blindness matters not in the sea of darkness, angels who eat disease and distaste, cleansing the soil of pesticide, poison, toxin, using the body itself to carve and glide and open channels of air to the clumped brown flesh of the earth.”

Gauzy hangings soil-dyed in delicate earth shades hung from the gallery ceilings.  Rocks, stones, paintings, sculptures told a story of soil as a precious and fragile commodity which we must preserve at all costs. 

No exhibition trip is complete without a browse in the bookshop and I have added  Sarah Langford’s excellent-looking “Rooted:  How regenerative farming can change the world” to my wish list.

If you happen to be in Scotland, do go and have a look.  And always, always, always- whether through reading, TV, podcasts, films, theatre, conversations and even art exhibitions continue to look out ways to learn and challenge and inform yourself about the planet we inhabit, the harm we are doing to the physical and natural environment, the ways we are making our climate worse for everyone, and how we can do better.

Julia Hoaen

PS No-mow May.  You know it makes sense!