We’Ve a Growing Interest in Gardening

By ADRIAN MATHER

IT wasn’t all that long ago that gardening was the new rock ‘n’ roll. It had all the essentials – risque fashions courtesy of the bra-less Charlie Dimmock; crazy nights on the tiles, as the BBC’s Ground Force team ran over their deadline to get a ceramic feature sorted out; vast budgets spent on delicate flowers which would only ever be 15-minute wonders.

But now, it seems, the garden party is over and horticulture has grown up, put down roots and settled down to a cosy retirement with a cup of cocoa.

When Dimmock’s TV show Ground Force was axed earlier this year, doomsayers warned this signalled the end of gardening as a “cool” hobby.

And now the Royal Horticultural Society has revealed that fewer and fewer people are willing to “get their hands dirty” or spend hours gardening in all weather.

They claim that many private gardens are getting smaller and overrun with weeds, whereas some larger ones are even turning into “brownfield sites” that are being sold off for new housing developments.

Many gardens are being concreted over and turned into parking spaces to increase the value of the property.

And in their grim picture of 21st-century gardening, the 200- year-old charity adds that the lack of interest has led to a shortage of skilled professional gardeners.

The effect of this is that many public parks are so poorly maintained they are keeping visitors away.

Spending on gardening is up – a record GBP 5.2 billion last year – but a lot of that rise can be accounted for by the 35 per cent lift in sales of labour-saving trimmers, strimmers, shredders and garden vacs, rather than seeds, compost and trowels.

Professor James Hitchmough, a lecturer in landscape architecture at Sheffield University, said this week: “A lot of people are very keen on gardening in one sense but it’s about trying to create a picture which you see in glossy magazines rather than actually getting their hands dirty.”

Even Alan Titchmarsh, the star of the defunct Ground Force, appears to have hung up his gardening gloves in favour of writing romantic novels.

But he still insists that once the uninitiated get a taste for gardening, they are hooked.

“Yes, in the wind and the rain, it’s cold and it’s uncomfortable but as soon as people are introduced to gardening, they find it’s rewarding,” he said this week.

So are the Capital’s gardens and parks at risk of going to seed? Or is the city bucking the trend and allowing its green-fingered young talent to flourish?

WAYNE MUIR

The city council can hardly be accused of not nurturing the next generation of gardeners – it’s just taken on two young apprentices, the first for 20 years.

One is 18-year-old Wayne from Niddrie. He says: “We spend half the time doing hands-on work in Princes Street Gardens, Saughton Park and the Inch Nursery and the rest of the time is spent at Oatridge College studying horticulture.”

A keen gardener, Wayne says that he was attracted to the profession after spending years working with his father, who runs the landscaping company All Pave. “It was something that I always enjoyed, so after I saw the advert for apprentices I just knew that I had to go for it,” he says.

“Originally, I’d wanted to get into mechanics, but I soon found out that I didn’t really like it so gardening was the only option.

“A lot of my friends think it’s a bit weird that I’m doing this and that I want to make a career out of it, but I think it’s fascinating.

“I’ve only been doing it for three months, but after the apprenticeship is up I’m planning on doing as many other gardening courses with the council as I can. It’s pretty intense, though.

“As well as the practical bits such as weeding, planting and grass cutting, we have to learning about the types of plants we’re dealing with as well as knowing all of the Latin names for them.

“When I was working with my dad, we mainly did slabbing and landscaping, so this is totally different and really enjoyable.

“I can’t imagine doing anything else.”

JULIE SCOTT

Twenty-five-year-old Julie, from Macmerry in East Lothian, is one of very few young, professional female gardeners working in the Capital. After graduating from a horticultural course at the Royal Botanic Garden, she decided to start up her own company, Garden Angels, with her sister Carolann Cairns three months ago. Since then, she says, their business has been booming.

“It was always a hobby of ours,” she explains.

“But after we’d watched a few of these reality shows about starting up a business, as well as some of the television gardening shows, we decided to try and do it professionally.

“I suppose it is a little strange to have two girls doing gardening for a living, but we’ve found that there is a lot of demand for our services – especially from older people who might think they’ll get ripped off by male gardeners or firms. They find us less threatening.

“We do weeding, pruning and design features for gardens, as well as doing complete makeovers for them. We’ve been quite surprised at how busy we’ve been and we’re hoping that we can keep it going as a profitable career. However, we’ve also seen a lot of younger people working in the gardening trade.

“A lot of them don’t have their own companies, but they’re all working professionally with some of the larger firms.

“There’s a great deal of demand for gardening services at the moment, so I’d be surprised if there are fewer young people getting involved and taking it up as a career.”

HAMISH JACKSON

Twenty-three-year-old Hamish from Morningside has run his own company, Landscape Solutions, for the past six months.

A landscape gardener and horticulturist with more than five years’ experience, he says demand for his services is at a high across the Lothians.

“I used to work with a larger landscape firm, but since I started my own business earlier this year it’s really taken off. I’ve not had a single complaint and the demand seems to be getting stronger and stronger these days.

“Maybe a few years ago, when the TV shows were popular, there were more people trying to landscape their gardens themselves but now I’m getting calls from everywhere within 30 miles of Edinburgh. People still seem to want to improve their gardens, so I’m doing pretty well out of it.”

Hamish left school in Selkirk at 16 to take up a place at Oatridge College, where he studied landscaping and horticulture for a year.

“It was something that I always knew I could do and it seemed like the obvious thing to go into when I left school.

“I’d also been regularly strimming the grass and helping in the garden back at home since I was much younger, so I’d always had an interest in it.

“And I still enjoy it. The experience I had at college and working for an established firm has helped me in building up my own.

“I’m not sure if there are fewer young people getting into the profession, either. I knew a lot of people my age at Oatridge who were looking to get into it.

“One of the guys on my course, who I sometimes work with now, also has his own company in Edinburgh, so I don’t think there is a shortage here.”