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Gardening is the new clubbing

The surge in interest has come in defiance of the horticultural establishment

Jane Merrick
Tuesday 14 April 2015 16:11 BST
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People walk around the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London
People walk around the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea in London

Of all the inspirational remarks I’ve ever heard about gardening, one of the best was by John Carter – who with his wife, Galen, is a leading collector of water irises – on the BBC’s Gardeners’ World last week. Referring to Van Gogh’s masterpiece Irises as he surveyed swathes of the blue flowers in his garden in Tavistock, Mr Carter said: “There is that overrated picture costing millions of pounds… A gardener can have a much better thing by having the original for just a few quid.”

Mr Carter puts his finger on the wonder of gardening – however ephemeral a flower might be, it is tangible. And the crucial thing is this: you don’t have to be a master to paint a picture with flowers in your own garden, just as you don’t have to be a master chef to grow vegetables that taste like they could be on a plate at a Michelin-starred restaurant.

I think it is fair to say that the Carters are at the veteran end of the gardening age spectrum. They have a lot of wisdom and experience to offer younger gardeners. But there is exciting news about the younger generation too: a survey commissioned by the Royal Horticultural Society has found that 90 per cent of 16- to 24-year-olds have a garden or an allotment, or grow something on a balcony or indoors. The RHS said the young in particular are “hooked on growing vegetables” and would rather be growing cucumbers than going clubbing.

As someone who is myself hooked on growing vegetables – my allotment takes up a huge part of my spare time – I can understand this addiction. I am now in my forties, but I started off growing tomatoes from seed in my twenties and was gripped from the moment the first shoot burst through the soil in the pot. It is a simplistic thing to say, but I will never stop being in awe at how one tiny seed can produce dozens of tomatoes. Children love sowing beans or peas in pots and watching over the following weeks how they turn into plants.

Crucially, this new generation of gardening enthusiasts has been helped along by Twitter, with young horticulturalists swapping notes and seeds through the social network. Gardeners and allotmenteers love sharing anecdotes, experiences and tales of adversity, as well as actual produce, so it is easy to understand why social media is fertile ground for this new wave of gardening, with sharing at its core. The wave has its leading figures – like the Kew-trained botanist and TV presenter James Wong, and 20-year-old Jamie Butterworth who co-founded Young Horts, a gardening club for 16- to 25-year-olds.

Yet this surge in interest has been in spite of the reluctance of the gardening establishment and the government to encourage young gardening. Four years ago, David Cameron compared gardening to unskilled work such as litter-picking when he was discussing community work for the unemployed. Successive governments have not done enough to encourage horticulture as a career – leaving a huge skills shortage in the profession, and, despite claiming it was going to protect allotments, is turning a blind eye to them being sold off for development. Gardening is not a compulsory part of the national curriculum – because the Department for Education seems to regard it as a “soft” subject rather than a route to a career in a multibillion-pound industry in the UK.

While the RHS has done a lot to encourage young people – through its campaign for school gardening, and its lobbying of the government to put horticulture on the national curriculum – it should do more to make Chelsea, the world’s greatest flower show, which takes place every May, accessible to the young.

For a start, the RHS could lift the ban on the under-fives, because I see no sensible reason for this apart from a mistaken desire to keep it more design-focused and elitist rather than family oriented. The over-fives are charged full price, which this year is £69 for a day for members or £59 for non-members. There is no discount for students, and this price is too high for many young people.

There are other, cheaper flower shows run by the RHS, such as Hampton Court, which does have an emphasis on younger people and families, but it still saddens me that Chelsea is out of reach for many. In another sad development, Kew Gardens, which is struggling under budget cuts, will from next week start charging children for tickets after years of free entry to the under-16s. The price may only be £3.50, but for a family with three or four children the total cost starts to become off-putting.

Then there is TV: the biggest gardening programme is still Gardeners’ World, which I watch every week, but the format – Monty Don presenting most of the show from his own garden – may not be appealing to the under-25s, particularly after Alys Fowler, whose edgier, more urban approach drew in younger viewers, was dropped from the programme four years ago.

This new generation of gardeners may not care about Gardeners’ World or Chelsea. But their enthusiasm must be matched by an inter-generational enthusiasm on the part of older gardeners and the horticultural establishment. There is actually no difference between the Carters and their water iris collection, a designer at Chelsea, and a teenager who’s just got their first allotment. They’re all gardeners.

Jane Merrick’s allotment blog is at: blogs.independent.co.uk/her-outdoors. She is also a judge for Britain’s Best Allotment competition: britainsbestallotment.co.uk

Twitter: @janemerrick23

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