On 2014-05-21 20:43:23 +0000, David Hill said:

On 21/05/2014 11:04, Sacha wrote:
On 2014-05-21 07:27:27 +0000, stuart noble said:

On 20/05/2014 22:30, Martin wrote:
On Tue, 20 May 2014 13:03:37 +0100, sacha wrote:

How lovely that Hugo Bugg who is only 26, has won a Gold at Chelsea.
That may well encourage more young people into horticulture.

The TV programme this evening was awful.


Yes, Joe says we MUST get more women into garden design. Oh, hang on,
there are already more women than men. Stick to plants

We have more women than men working in the Nursery and the two part-time
gardeners are women. Bar one, none will see 40 again and some waved
goodbye to 50 a few years ago. They're terrific, talented,
good-humoured, knowledgeable and hard-working.


I fail to see why we want more garden designers of any age.
What we need are young people going into growing.
Many nurseries close because their owners get to old to do the work and
their offspring are not interested in taking over, They have better
ideas of how to make their living, and when you hear someone on R4
saying she cant get a mortgage at 63 despite having 2 work related
pensions and old age pension giving her around £50,000 a year income.
I can't see many nursery owners who would have a pension anything like that.

For myself, I meant 'horticulture' as a general term. Whatever route
people choose is up to them though we can only 'use' more growers if
they get more customers. Cheap plant imports flogged at higher prices
than nurseries charge seems to be the accepted norm. I don't understand
it myself, because everyone ends up with exactly the same plants as
everyone else. Members of urg are probably an exception to that because
so many/most actively seek out unusual plants that would otherwise be
lost in the flood of bog-standard 'take what you're given' things on
offer generally.
--

Sacha
www.hillhousenursery.com
South Devon
www.helpforheroes.org.uk