Defra minister George Eustice will undoubtedly have scored Brownie points at a Commons reception this week for revealing that he once budded roses at Bransford Nurseries.
Eustice, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for farming, food and the marine environment, guest speaker at the All-Party Parliamentary Gardening & Horticulture Group’s 15th annual reception, said that he left Riseholme agricultural college with an HND in horticulture and spent a year at Bransfords, where he had “one of the most memorable summers of my life”.
Nursery tasks included budding trees and roses. “Towards the end I got good enough to do some chip budding on their experimental stocks and new varieties. But when I came back the following winter, the tree manager shook his head and said nearly all of them had died. [Working there] was, nevertheless, “a very enjoyable experience”, although today, 20 years later, he found it difficult to remember plant names.
He told his audience: “We should never lose sight of the fact that horticulture is an incredibly important industry, employs around 200,000 people and makes £9bn contribution to our economy. It is a major industry which we have been keen to support in Defra.”.
It was also important, he went on, to attract a new generation to the industry and get across that it was a profitable industry with a good future.
