The HTA’s ‘Gardening is Good for You!’ campaign, supported by National Garden Gift Vouchers, is designed to demonstrate that gardening and growing fruit, herbs, crops and cut flowers are beneficial to health and wellbeing in many ways.

Points to promote: Perhaps gardening and growing your own could reduce the million prescriptions for anti-depressants issued every week. Picking your own fruit and crops can give you a harvesting high! Researchers have found that seeing, smelling and picking fruits and berries can release dopamine from the brain’s reward centre, resulting in a feeling of mild euphoria and wellbeing.

Eat the rainbow with colourful crops Colourful and nutritious fruit, veg and salads with which customers can create their own kitchen garden could include:

• RED: Tomatoes, Red Onions, Rhubarb Chard, Sweet Peppers, Chillis, Strawberries, Rhubarb.
• ORANGE: Carrots, Squash, Pumpkin.
• YELLOW: Golden Courgettes and Tomatoes, Sweetcorn, Yellow Beans and Sweet Peppers.
• GREEN: Asparagus, Spinach, Peas, Beans, Mangetout, Rocket, Lettuce and salad leaves, Kale, Romanesco, Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, Cucumber, Pak Choi.
• BLUE: Blueberries.
• PURPLE: Beetroot, Broccoli, Aubergine, Purple Beans, Purple Asparagus, Red Cabbage, Radish, Kohl Rabi, Plums
• WHITE: Cauliflower, Celery, Leeks, Onions, Garlic, Shallots, Spring Onions, Potatoes, Parsnips, Celeriac, Turnip.

Plants of the moment: summer displays & crops Flowering plants to display now for immediate colour include:

• Nemesia, Poppy varieties, Pinks (Dianthus), Polemonium, and shrubs including Berberis darwinii (AGM), choisya, ceanothus, weigela, lilac and many viburnum.

For further information click here  

Image © Adam Pasco Media