'Mass-produced' plants from garden centres are fuelling climate change, warns Monty Don

Mass-produced plants from garden centres are harming the environment, Monty Don has said as he urges gardeners to grow their own flowers instead.

The cheerful stacks of bedding plants seen in shops across the land are fuelling over consumption, the BBC presenter has warned, as he says gardeners should have more of a "sackcloth and ashes" approach to tending their flowerbeds in order to prevent global warming.

Writing in Gardeners' World magazine, he said: "We should not be buying cheap, mass-produced disposable plants but either grow them ourselves or buy them locally from small producers.

"We should each own the impact of what we buy and how it contributes to carbon emissions."

While many love to load up on trays of bedding plants and other annuals, which cheer up a pot or garden for a few months before dying, Don said that a trend towards sustainable, longer-lasting plants would be better for the environment.

He explained: "If you don't care about this then you are sticking your head in the sand, not least because it will affect the quality of life for your children and grandchildren, let alone for the sake of diversity of life on this overcrowded planet.

"As it becomes more populated, the pressure to produce food and commodities will grow ever greater, and habitats will continue to be lost."

Don said that the responsibility is on gardeners but also on the garden centres they shop at.

"For gardeners, this means we have to consume less and think more about the connections," he writes.

Don admitted that giving these things up will be hard.

"Sackcloth and ashes are uncomfortable" he said. "Cheap, mass produced houseplants or bedding potted into peat cheer people up.

"The garden trade must must be a key part of this. The standard line is that if people did not buy it, then they would not produce or stock it.

"But if you supply a product that relies upon harmful environmental practices, cheap labour, poor conditions or the destruction of habitat, then you are part of the problem."

These cheap, colourful plants are some of the top sellers at garden centres during the spring and summer months, with the bedding plant industry worth hundreds of millions of pounds to the economy.

Around 650 businesses across the UK produce ornamental crops including bedding plants, which contribute £1.4 billion in total to the country’s GDP annually and employ over 15,000 people directly and almost 30,000 indirectly. 

The Gardeners' World presenter has been waging a war on peat compost for years, as it involves degrading "Britain's version of the rainforests" - some of the most biodiverse land in the country. Peat is also one of our most significant carbon sinks, which when kept correctly absorbs carbon from the atmosphere and keeps the planet cool.

He has turned his attention to eco-friendly gardening, and recently explained that instead of the tidy lawns and flowerbeds viewers of the show may be used to, he now keeps grass long, leaves out piles of sticks and allows leaves to build up, in order to help wildlife.