Avoid garden centre plants and grow your own, says 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 flower beds, 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, 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 was on gardeners but also on the garden centres they shopped at. “For gardeners, this means we have to consume less and think more about the connections,” he writes.