Gardeners have used peat compost to pot plants and fertilize soil for decades but campaigners want it banned from being sold due to the environmental damage it causes.

Purchased in ready bags from garden centers, it is cheap, effective and convenient to use but peat is also the world's biggest land store of carbon on land, so excavating it has serious consequences for the environment. 

Conservationists and leading gardeners have formed the Peat-Free April Campaign, calling on the UK government to ban all peat compost sales. 

"We absolutely have to reduce carbon emissions. And yet, we're digging up this vital carbon store," said Dave Goulson, professor of biology at the University of Sussex, who penned a letter to the government on behalf of the campaign.

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"As soon as you dig it up, oxygen gets into it and it starts to turn into carbon dioxide. So, all the stuff we buy from the garden center will eventually end up in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide."

Peatlands cover 3 million square kilometers around the globe and in the UK around 80 percent of them are damaged.

"The sad reality at the moment is that our peat bogs are in such poor condition that they're net emitters of carbon, because they're degrading," said Goulson. 

"They've been drained and damaged, through peat extraction and so on. They should be our allies, they should be locking up carbon and acting as sinks of carbon, but instead they're acting as sources of carbon, because we haven't looked after them."

In 2011, the British government pledged to phase out peat compost, with the aim of achieving that goal by last year. But sales of peat products continue. 

Boyd Douglas-Davies, director of the British Garden Centres, a chain of nationwide stores, says a total ban on peat products is unrealistic, due to shortage of ingredients such as bark, or coia from India, which are used as alternatives to peat. 

"The problem at the moment is the sheer availability of the product that goes into a peat-free compost mix," said Douglas-Davies.

"To actually get good quality and sustainable products is a real challenge at the moment. Demand this year is beyond all previous records for compost in total. I think that's a lot to do with the new gardeners and the greater interest in gardening from everybody due to lockdown and spending time at home. 

"The peat-free ranges, both have expanded, so there is more and more peat free on offer, but the sales of those are also at all-time record highs."

Garden centers are working alongside growers to develop new peat-free products, but would like more government support.

"There's a massive opportunity for government to work with the industry at the moment, to help us in both sourcing these raw products, making it a level playing field so we're not competing against the power giants to get hold of the raw products. But also helping us to establish proper national trials, supporting that through investment in trials and funding of looking into all the research that takes place."

Peatlands can easily be restored, by blocking ditches, allowing them to retain water and grow back. In the Peak District, in Derbyshire, preservation of peat has already proved successful. "These peatland habitats are rare habitats that support all sorts of wonderful unusual birds, flowers, insects and so on," said Goulson. "So, we really need to look after them."

The advice for gardeners who want to protect the environment is to make their own compost, using natural garden waste. But until there are more convenient alternatives on offer, commercial sales of peat products are set to continue.