A Minute of Mud Week 5 - ‘34 Million gardeners, acres of artificial grass and the potential of community’
On Monday I headed up to the RHS Headquarters in London for their annual autumn press conference. I have been to this event a few times before and it's usually heavily loaded with the unveiling of what gardens and designers will be at Chelsea next year, maybe a conversation about peat and what the RHS are doing about reducing it and then a scattering of other announcements. I met fellow children's gardening enthusiast Lee Connelly (aka The Children's Gardening Coach) at Waterloo station and I was coerced to walk the 1.7 miles in the pouring rain, instead of taking the tube. We therefore arrived at the horticultural halls looking like drowned rats but a cup of coffee and a danish pastry soon cleared soggy heads.
This year's agenda felt different to those I have attended previously. There was a major emphasis on two major reports that the RHS have just commissioned and I got very excited about them. The first RHS ‘State of Gardening’ report is a very comprehensive deep dive into how many of us have a garden, why we do so, what we grow, how much space we have and its positive impact on climate and biodiversity. The highlights I pulled out were:
34 million of us garden regularly
7 million children garden at least once a month
8.9 million of us don’t water our plants
Our gardens are a distinct habitat for many species
The top plant in our gardens is a Rose
4 out of 5 said they hadn’t applied any pesticides or weedkillers in 2024
13.3 million of us have a bird bath, wildlife-friendly container pond or bog garden.
I think this report is a great resource for having conversations around the importance of horticulture, not only for those who get out into their gardens but the wider impact it has on the health, wellbeing and economy of the nation. I think people like me need to use this evidence to make decisions about the work we do and the people we do it for. Children said their main barrier for not gardening was bad weather and that it can be boring. Therefore I can now work harder to understand new ways to make gardening more appealing for children, so that they get hooked. I can’t do anything about the weather though…
The other report that I was even more excited and pleased about was ‘Space to Grow’; a report that lays out the impact, challenges and potential of community gardening across the UK. I think the term 'community' often gets second class treatment, one of the panel members Pam Warhurst, Chair of Incredible Edible said something very powerful about this, she said the terms ‘community’ and ‘volunteers’ can often be seen as patronising and second class. It shouldn't, it can be pioneering.’ I know first hand the power of community gardening and communities having access to spaces that can support their skills, confidence and friendships. I am so pleased that the RHS have taken this seriously and invested the time into understanding the important role community gardening plays. I was interested to learn that 59% of community gardens are based on land owned by local authorities. It worries me that 56% of groups are concerned about their future and 30% operate on budgets of just £500 a year!
There is clearly a lot of work to do to support communities and these statistics paint a challenging picture, but at least we now have the information to begin changing them.
So grab a cup of tea, get cosy and settle in for some good old fashioned reading. See you next week.