Everything in the English garden is not so rosy anymore

The English garden is one of our national treasures. From John Tradescant’s 16th-century journeys into uncharted botanical realms, and the 17th-century Bishop of London, Henry Compton, who charged his missionaries with the cure of seeds as well as souls, to those titans of modern gardening, Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh, our gardeners and gardens are the envy of the world.

But not everything in the garden is lovely. On the eve of Chelsea Flower Show, Tim Upson, the RHS head of horticulture, warns that the glorious variety of our garden plants is threatened by the vanishing of specialist nurseries. The herb-grower, Jekka Mcvicar, an exhibitor at Chelsea for 25 years, notes that she has seen many nurseries disappear, with their unique collections of violas, carnations, alpines, sweet peas and conifers.

The growing lack of diversity in horticulture echoes that of agriculture. Commercial pressures inevitably privilege a certain homogeneity, but the RHS foresees a bleak future for gardeners if specialist nurseries are lost: hundreds of different varieties of our favourite plants will be reduced to a handful.

Behind the disappearance of nurseries, the RHS identifies a bleak statistic: as specialist horticulturists wither and fade, new shoots are not springing up to replace them. The young, it seems, do not want to work in horticulture. Yet one of the most publicised exhibits at this year’s Chelsea is the Duchess of Cambridge’s Back to Nature garden, in which she emphasises the importance of outdoor play in early years development.

Many primary schools already do great work in introducing their pupils to gardening, and the link between growing plants and healthy eating. Yet somewhere between the early years and the moment

of making a career choice, that message is lost. It isn’t just that horticulture is not, on the whole, a career in which one grows rich. Plenty of occupations embraced by millennials offer satisfactions beyond the purely monetary; and the growing popularity of vegan diets and ecoawareness signals an interest in plant-friendliness. So why the decline in horticulture?

When it comes to choosing a career, many of us incline to what we know. The pressure on housing stock, especially in cities, is such that fewer children have a garden of their own. Gestures such as the Back to Nature garden, or Robert Macfarlane’s laments for the lost vocabulary of childhood wilderness, are admirable. But far more useful would be a holistic educational approach that combined the well documented psychological benefits of gardening with the practical responsibility of caring for our natural and cultivated world in all its beneficent variety.

The chief medical officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, has confessed to struggling with Imposter Syndrome. “I think to myself, ‘Come on, you can do it’,” she said. Her fellow Dame, Helen Mirren – she of the devastating Michael Parkinson put-down in her sassy youth – confided in a podcast her (apparent) belief that she is “boring, stupid, not exciting enough”.

It is generous, and right, for successful older women to chart a route for their younger successors. But it might be time to drop the insecurity trope. No one wants to be an entitled oaf, but a generation of women hoping to become their best selves are not helped by a pair of distinguished dames carrying on like nervous teenagers.

Read more at telegraph.co.uk/opinion