There’s been an unexpected about-turn in the super tanker known as the Royal Horticultural Society. Their view on slugs and snails has done a full somersault, despite these notoriously nightmarish beasties topping the RHS list of garden pests in 2021. Chief Entomologist Andrew Salisbury is a man so green he is now asking gardeners to think the unsayable: slugs and snails are garden visitors rather than pests.

On hearing this, many gardeners will gasp and clutch their secateurs tighter, because they’ve had their runner bean crop ruined by a night-time raid. They’ve had their expensive petunias, the ones planted only yesterday, reduced to one-inch stalks and their hostas, martyrs to the dreaded gastropod, shredded into lace doilies. We’ve all had problems. I almost cried when one of my prized trilliums was ruined just as it opened.

Environmentally friendly gardeners have long turned to green solutions such as beer traps, bran, coffee grounds, egg shells and coarse horticultural grit. Larger slugs sup the beer and slink off; the smaller beasties almost always glide over any obstruction you care to lay down – like Indian fakirs walking on hot coals. Some gardeners have taken up arms against the slimy foe in the form of blue metaldehyde slug pellets. Unfortunately, it’s tricky to stick to the recommended mantra of one pellet every 4-6in, so using often turns into a case of over-using.

The big problem is, the active chemical in pellets (metaldehyde) pollutes water sources and it’s difficult, nigh impossible, to filter it out. Consequently, slug pellets are being banned in the UK on April 1, at the behest of water companies. Andrew Salisbury is trying to take the sting out of this by making gardeners appreciate that slugs and snails are part of wider food webs.