Growing awareness in the UK – people planting fruit and veg and returning to traditional trends

Photo from Plant for Life Environment Report.

Gardens across the UK are changing for the better, with more people planting fruit and veg and returning to traditional trends that benefit wildlife. But are gardeners as green as they think they are?

By Paul Evans
The Guardian, July 9 2008

– gardens plays a crucial role in the environment debate. They account for 15%-25% of the land area in Britain’s towns and cities, and their importance in offsetting some of the effects of climate change – through plants absorbing CO2, cooling urban micro-climates and supporting wildlife, and soils absorbing rainwater run-off and reducing flooding – is a message that is beginning to create trends in gardening.

But the big changes in gardening in recent years have more to do with a return to traditional values. Andrew Maxted, commercial director for HTA, says: “Society has been through a substantial materialistic expansion in the last 10 to 15 years, but consumers now are more discriminating. In the same way that more people are looking to experience new cultures and taste real food when they go on holiday, rather than going on package holidays, this search for the authentic is feeding into lifestyles at home and transforming gardens. Having fresh fruit and vegetables, tasting the difference, and growing them yourself has financial benefits, but it’s [also] authentic, and gardening for the table is producing a massive demand.”

Last year, the sales of fruit trees and plants went up by 43%, seeds of edible plants were up 13%, and herbs up 6%, while the average spend by gardeners was £291 per household. There is also a massive rise in allotment gardening. “The demand for allotments has risen logarithmically over the last few years,” says Bryn Pugh, legal adviser to the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardeners. “The decline in allotment gardening between the 1950s and 1990s has reversed, and we now represent a third of a million allotment holders. The average size allotment is the 10 pole plot – 300 sq yards.”

See complete Guardian article here.