Getting people gardening should be policy, say MPS
GARDENING needs to be put at the heart of Government policymaking, Tory MPS have said in a report backed by Theresa May.
A 56-page report from the Conservative Environment Network said that “getting more people gardening” has to be part of a “truly holistic, cross departmental, high impact policy”.
The report, which has been sent to Cabinet ministers, said encouraging gardening should be adopted as a policy by a range of government departments including health, justice, defence, local government and education.
Gardening could help to cut childhood obesity, improve public spaces, help people deal with mental stress and provide purpose for prisoners in jails.
Tory MP Rebecca Pow, a former broadcast journalist who specialised in the environment, farming and gardening, wrote in the report: “Gardens, gardening, and horticultural skills can have a striking effect on our communities. Getting more people gardening is a truly holistic, cross departmental, high impact policy.
“Having spent much of my career pre-politics involved in garden journalism and broadcasting and working ‘in the field’, I am acutely aware of the rich benefits society can gain from horticulture, touching as it does on urban regeneration, growing food, contributing to the economy, influencing our wellbeing and surrounding us with beauty.
“These green gems provide important outdoor playgrounds for relaxation and exercise, often offering a therapeutic alternative to the pressures of everyday life.
“Realising the free benefits the outdoors can offer, some GPS are recommending ‘green prescriptions.
Ms Pow added: “The garden economy makes a significant contribution to the nation’s coffers, with £7.8billion being spent on this sector by tourists every year”.
The Tory MP described how “a bit of healthy rivalry for the best front and back gardens encourage the clearing of litter, (now there are regular community litter picks), the cutting of verges and of course the growing of a kaleidoscope of colourful ornamental plants and some nutritious vegetables.
“From tiny acorns, mighty oaks will grow. Certainly, providing people with the opportunity to green their communities can be a way of tackling deprivation: unemployment, lack of skills, low education attainment and mental health.”
Mrs May has already welcomed the network’s report and said it would be used to inform a new 25-year “environment plan” from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The Prime Minister said the report “raised the health benefits of green space, which are becoming ever more recognised”.
She also pledged that Defra “will consider the evidence within that report and will focus on what can be done to ensure that the benefits provided by access to green space are available to all segments of society”.
Kipling is at his most approachable when he writes about childhood, not usually sentimentally, and indeed sometimes with alarming violence. The Just So Stories get the balance more or less right, and they include a poem appealing to “kiddies and grown-ups too” who get the black and blue hump from not having enough to do. The cure for this ill, the poet advises, is not to sit still, or frowst with a book [or computer screen] by the fire; but to take a large hoe and a shovel also, and dig till you gently perspire.
As we report, the Government is being urged to encourage gardening, in order to fight childhood obesity, foster mental health and bring us closer to nature and home-grown food. In a way, we need no encouragement. The ideal in every British heart is a cottage with roses round the door and a good kitchen garden beyond. But not all of us have one, nor could. Yet the proprietorship of a bit of earth, even a window-box, brings reality to a theoretical interest in sweet peas or an approval of bees. It’s an expression of the self blessedly far from a selfie.