In This Issue
Garden centres report busiest ever day as gardens are the focus for family re-unions this week - More comments added
Primeur raring to go for spring/summer 2021!
Studley Grange Garden Centre installs WinRetail
Cherry Lane acquires Langford Garden Centre
Suez Canal blockage causes further delays for garden furniture
One year on and sales keep growing
Garden Re-Leaf Day 2021 raises £35,000 with the total still rising!
Record high for plants in March
little dobbies opens its doors in Bristol
AMES UK goes the extra mile for Greenfingers
DJ Turfcare responds to Monty Don’s call to stop mowing our lawns
Gallery of pictures from Garden Re-Leaf Day
Tong Garden Centre invests in new Food Hall
Garden centres see big boost in furniture and BBQ sales
Clock-change signifies frustrating Spring for Northern Ireland’s cooped-up gardeners
Gardening boost for local primary school
Gardeners urged to help beetles
Dobbies teams up with the RSPB for latest podcast episode
Inside Outside... A New Beginning for the garden market - Read GTN's March Issue on-line now
Get your own copy of GTN Xtra
Record sales for garden products
No sign of a let up in Veg-2-Gro sales
Growing media up by 8% on last year
RHS Gardens Spring Activity Programme
‘Peonies’ – comprehensive new book by award-winning nurserywoman Claire Austin
The best of last week's
Westland call for reality to be brought to the peat debate
Eddie Topping retires
The BBQ game changer!
Garden centres facing cap on business rates relief
Barton Grange Christmas 2020 - Exclusive GTN Xtra Photo Tour
Squires Badshot Lea - Christmas 2020
Perrywood at Christmas 2020 - with correct photo gallery now...
Bestsellers Top 50 charts every week
Buy your subscription to the GTN Bestsellers printed weekly newsletter
All the latest news from the world of pet products
Water gardening industry looks forward to AQUA’s return
The Kennel Club cancels Crufts 2021
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Westland call for reality to be brought to the peat debate
 

Westland’s sustainable progress highlights significant action taken to date

 

By Keith Nicholson, Marketing Director, Westland

 

Westland Horticulture is significantly ahead of our plan in delivering ambitious sustainability targets across our potting soils and composts for 2021. However, we would warn that the toughest days lie ahead for the sector unless some reality is brought to the debate around peat.  If we ignore the challenges and continue down the current track, we could see significant parts of the garden sector retract by as much as 20% and gardening participation return to levels of the early 2000s.

 

Westland is now using more than 75% of non-peat materials to produce our range of potting soils.  This is significantly ahead of the industry standard and a result of over 18 years continuous investment in research and development into new substrates, and over £38 million investment in infrastructure, sites, and materials.

This positive progress hides a deeper challenge around the pace of change versus the clear lack of suitable alternative materials for use in the horticultural sector.

 

Not only is access to high quality, local, alternative materials at a critical level, but the development time for any new materials will take between 8 and 10 years - from source, to research, to full manufacture.  It is clear that we need to collaborate with government to overcome this significant shortfall in quality materials and deliver a positive road map which avoids setting unachievable targets, or worse again, simply shifts the environmental challenges elsewhere.  Any short-term thinking will undermine the positive work done by many in the sector over recent years.

 

Westland is one of the creators of the Responsible Sourcing Scheme, an initiative that has brought together industry, NGOs and retail, along with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) and the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA), to deliver a sustainable future in growing substrates.  This world leading programme assesses all substrates against several environmental benchmarks, ensuring the sector is making the right decisions for today and for the future.  The scheme will challenge all materials and will question substrates that have issues in relation to contamination, water use, ethical and labour conditions, excessive air miles, deforestation or habitat loss.  To avoid any damaging short-term decisions, it is crucial that the growing media sector has time to fully assess current and new materials to allow for a positive and sustainable transition.

 

The move from a reliance on a single material (peat) to multiple types of soilless mediums in order to germinate the 60 million seed packets sold annually and support all plants and edible production, is technically and operationally a massive undertaking for the industry. Some industry commentators assume that we, as an industry, can simply click our fingers and make another substrate available for gardeners. Clearly, this is not the case, and we must avoid decisions that will see the promotion of poor quality replacement materials that will have a long lasting impact on the gardening sector.

 

We need to recognise the importance of horticulture to our economy and the essential societal benefits that gardening has on wellbeing, health and biodiversity.  We must harness the increased interest in growing, propagating and planting, and use this momentum to deliver a realistic roadmap to support a steady transition to world leading sustainable substrates that meet the demands of our industry and helps our nation’s gardens to thrive.

 

 

 

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