As we enter lockdown 2, Horticulture again will play a crucial role in keeping the nation active through the production of food and non-food items. In particular Garden Centres and Public Green will play a pivotal role in providing the nation with the necessary outlet for activity, walks, exercise and creativity in the garden.
The lessons have surely been learned from Lockdown 1 that Garden Centres can contribute to wellbeing and creativity, while Parks & Public Green can provide open space, landscape, vistas, exercise, conversation, horticultural interest, design inspiration and room to grow!
Since the advent of compulsory competitive tendering in 1988, our Public Open Spaces have gone through a seismic change in their provision, design, management and fiscal allocation. In the eighties it would be customary to have a CIHort conference over three days and we would have over 100 Horticultural Officers from Local Government attending, but a consistent denigration of the need for horticultural experts to manage Public Open Spaces has seen a major decline in this sector of our industry. These days we welcome custodians of Public Green Space to our conferences and often this new category of member can provide a valuable insight to our horticulture and public green offering. The ever-evolving provision of Local Government ‘Public Green’ will be a central theme of our Public Green segment at our conference in September 2021, at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh. Edinburgh is such a wonderful city for Public Green, so the reference points will be many and varied.
The Horticulturists who made up the backbone of Parks and Open Spaces in local Government would have been trained at Horticulture FE colleges and Universities and these educational establishments would have a full and expansive list of revered academic staff. During this period we still had six universities offering undergraduate Horticulture and numerous county horticultural colleges, all playing a valuable role in training future staff. In addition, there were many Horticultural research stations throughout the United Kingdom providing valuable near market R&D in association with Growers and many Amenity bodies like ILAM and CABE providing support to Public Green professionals. Alas many of these institutions no longer exist and we must guard against ‘being lost’ in this digital and AI developing world. The widespread removal of Horticulture at undergraduate level was a catalyst for the further decline of the Horticulture component in Public Greenspace Management.
I sincerely hope that government departments and successive governments will reflect on this COVID period and fully appreciate and recognise the need for maintaining and growing public open space with horticulture input. The Chartered Institute of Horticulture has a role to play in this recognition and awareness programme.
Gerald Bonner CHort, FCIHort
PRESIDENT
president@horticulture.org.uk