In This Issue
Safe Trading Guidance for all garden centres published by HTA
It’s #FloralFriday, our favourite day of the week!
GrowNation announce FREE ecommerce websites for Garden Centres with local delivery route optimisation
James Stamp to the rescue
Garden centre re-opening gains high attention
Introducing Cleaner Retail – helping retailers to stop the spread of Covid-19 with a one-stop solution for safe trading
Say “Thank You” to our NHS with bedding plants!
National Gardening Week is the perfect time to get involved in #FloralFriday
Find plant deliveries online with ‘Plants Near Me’ - over 450 business listed
Rosebourne appoint Carol Paris as Chief Executive
PFMA supports the HTA’s Garden Centre Reopening Campaign
A third of UK growers will be out of business before the end of the year reveals new industry survey
Dobbies supports National Gardening Week
Let your free time grow on you
Evergreen Garden Care, helping hands to combat coronavirus
Gardener’s World Mark Lane joins forces with Jeyes to launch “The Great British Garden Spruce Up”
HortAid-20 Gardening Competition, supported by Suttons and panel of well-known judges, kick starts Perennial’s emergency Covid-19 appeal
Keeping the community growing, The Gardens Group donates stock to charities, hospitals and schools
LifestyleGarden donates product to the NHS Nightingale Hospital
AQUA 2021 takes on an even more crucial role
Get your own copy of GTN Xtra
MSC advises garden centres to maximise relief grant opportunity and challenge rateable values
EGO’s new battery powers gardeners through the day
The trade fair Plantarium 2020 has been cancelled
GTN Xtra - Send to all
The best of last week's
How are suppliers faring during lockdown - Westland, Smart, Evergreen Garden Care and others are getting ready for re-opening of garden centres
Analogue survival for garden centres in a digital world
Behind the scenes at Baytree Click & Collect
Garden Leisure suppliers living in an on-line world but anticipating garden centres re-opening
Greenfingers Charity’s #floralfriday continues to bring a little floral cheer to the nation
Garden Centre Photo Tours
Haskins Snowhill re-opens after £15m re-vamp
Bestsellers Top 50 charts every week
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A third of UK growers will be out of business before the end of the year reveals new industry survey

We need to ‘Buy British to save our plant industry’ says Alan Titchmarsh as an increase of imports will have a devastating environmental impact on UK gardening.

 

· Around one in three businesses say that even with access to UK Government aid packages they are likely to be insolvent this year

· More than one in ten UK growers (13%) claim that they will out of business by the end of June

· Unless action is taken in the next two weeks a large range of homegrown British plants may not be available for up to two years, which will increase imports and leave the UK open to the risk of infectious diseases and pests

· Alan Titchmarsh is joined by UK’s top gardeners to support industry and launches new campaign #KeepBritainBlooming

 

Insert video here.

 

A new industry report conducted by The Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) reveals that the government’s current proposed aid package does not work for the horticultural industry and that a third of UK growers claim they will be insolvent by the end of June because of the impact of coronavirus.[1]

 

In response to the findings, the nation’s favourite celebrity gardeners, along with the HTA who conducted the survey amongst the UK’s ornamental grower businesses, are calling for the Government to act now and support growers before it is too late.

 

The HTA is asking for a compensation scheme to be set up and claims that the UK Government’s aid package simply does not work for the horticultural industry. Less than one in five growers have received help through the Government’s business support measures, while just 1% has received financial support from the government’s Coronavirus Business Interruption Loans scheme (CBILS).

 

Current UK Government support does not consider the total loss of annual income for growers, which is largely seasonal from March to June. Meanwhile, over three-fifths of growers (62%) said that they were not eligible for business support grants, while nearly four in five (79%) growers are not entitled to any kind of rates relief.

 

In the Netherlands, the Government has announced a scheme to help its industry while at the same time leaving garden centres open, meaning that Dutch growers will be perfectly positioned to supply the UK market if the British sector collapses.

 

Gardening icon, Alan Titchmarsh, has joined forces with an army of fellow TV gardeners including Adam Frost, Chris Beardshaw, James Wong, Bunny Guinness, Joe Swift, Pippa Greenwood, Jim Buttress, Matthew Biggs, Bob Flowerdew, David Domoney, Lee Connelly (The Skinny Jean Gardener) and Matthew Wilson, to help the industry by asking the millions of gardening lovers across the UK to show their support:

  • write to their local MP in support of opening their local garden centres immediately in a manged and responsible way sharing a message or image/video of how gardening keeps them healthy linked to #KeepBritainBlooming

Alan Titchmarsh MBE comments: “The shocking findings from today’s report show that around a third of our ornamental plant growers – many of them family concerns could go out of business by the end of June unless action is taken now. Put simply, if the Government is unable to offer a compensation scheme on the lines of that already put in place by the Dutch government, and independent garden centres remain closed, then our beloved British garden industry is on the brink of destruction. The longer the delay continues, the more costly the solution.

 

“Europe has stolen a march on the UK and already prepared its horticulture industry for the future. Without a similar financial lifeline, many of our growers will go under and even more, plants will need to be imported from Europe. Aside from the catastrophic economic implications, such imports leave our nation open to the risk of all the infectious diseases and pests that for the last decade British horticulture has worked so hard to avoid. We need to buy British not only to save our plant industry but also to help deliver on our climate change and plant health ambitions in the future.

 

“We are asking the public to support our campaign to #KeepBritainBlooming and to recognise the joy that plants bring to millions of gardeners across the country. Opening garden centres now, with the same safety measures employed as in supermarkets, will give people across the country access to plants, encourage them to garden, stay healthy and productive at home and help save an industry at the heart of British life.”

 

The scale of the challenge for UK growers is enormous. While some plants can be distributed through mail order and home deliveries, there are hundreds of millions of bedding plants in production - equal to the land area of Liverpool - and ordinarily 60% of UK plant sales go through independent garden centres at this peak trading period.

 

Questions have been raised as to why DIY stores have reopened with garden sections last week, while supermarkets have extended retail areas to sell more plants and gardening products. In many other countries, garden centres have been reopened.

 

If a decision is made to reopen garden centres, many premises are already set up to allow for social distancing as they have wide aisles and outside space. Plant areas and other essential garden supplies will be the focus for any reopening and cafes or restaurants will stay closed.

 

A recent YouGov poll showed that over 70% of those who attend garden centres would feel comfortable to do so once measures were eased – the highest scoring for any retail outlet.

A managed re-opening of garden centres would give people limited access and would focus on allowing the purchase of plants and other gardening supplies.

 

James Barnes, Chair of the HTA comments: “We’re now at the end of April and the only way of rescuing this sector is to pursue a simple compensation scheme like the system announced by the Dutch Government, which will save its horticultural industry. We should do the same.

 

“However, the cost of this scheme would be significantly reduced by allowing garden centres to sell plants and gardening equipment as soon as possible. Unless something is done in the next two weeks, we could lose between a third and a half of our seasonal growing sector, which will be a tragedy for hundreds of family businesses throughout the UK and result in a dependency on foreign imports, with all the potential biosecurity issues that brings.”

 

Horticulture not only provides a great deal of grow your own produce but also contributes to the positive physical and mental wellbeing of gardening. Gardening is one of the UK’s biggest hobbies with over 23 million gardeners throughout the country.

 

Peak season has only a matter of weeks left for the horticulture sector, which has formed an essential part of British life for over 350 years. Around 70% of plant sales are made between March and the end of May. Many of these growers are facing huge difficulties and a near-complete loss of income due to the coronavirus. Not only are they losing sales, but many are and will have to write off their stock making this a unique situation.

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