Reopen garden centres! Firms will face dumping 200m plants

MINISTERS are under growing pressure to allow garden centres to reopen immediately amid warnings the lockdown will force nurseries to dump 200 million plants and hand rival European firms an advantage.

Former Tory Environment Secretary Theresa Villiers said it was illogical to allow supermarket chains to sell plants and flowers, but not garden centres and nurseries.

She believes that the Government ‘should feel able to allow nurseries and garden centres to reopen’ as they would ‘find it easier to comply with social distancing than other shops because of their larger footprint, much of it outdoors’.

Research for this newspaper also showed strong public support for the move.

The Deltapoll survey found 56 per cent of people support the opening of garden centres, compared with 35 per cent who are opposed. By contrast, only 26 per cent back the opening of cafes, falling to 21 per cent for restaurants and 16 per cent for pubs.

Plant growers revealed they had begun dumping hundreds of millions of plants on compost heaps after missing out on sales on Mother’s Day weekend and the Easter weekend. The busiest week of the year normally starts tomorrow when garden centres start stocking up for the May bank holidays.

One of the UK’s biggest suppliers to nurseries, who estimated 200million plants in total had been lost, warned the lockdown had begun to threaten the future of 3,000 nurseries across the country, as they will not be able to make up for the losses later in the year.

Sandy Shepherd, owner of Oxfordshire plant producer Ball Colegrave, said widescale collapse would produce a gap in the market for firms in Germany and Holland, where garden centres have stayed open.

He warned that Dutch rivals could make exporting to the UK profitable by mass producing a different variety of plants than the UK market normally sees.

‘If a huge number of British nurseries fall out of the market, the gap will be filled up by the big European suppliers,’ he said.

Yesterday, a Scottish garden centre boss also backed calls to allow them to open.

Kieran Gallagher, director of Cardwell Garden Centre, near Gourock, Renfrewshire, said: ‘Gardening is a healthy outdoor activity both physically and mentally during the lockdown. It wouldn’t be a problem for Cardwell to operate safely, as we have lots of spacious areas – unlike some supermarkets and large discount stores – and it shouldn’t be a problem to keep a safe distance from other visitors.

‘Supermarkets are allowed to open because they sell food as an essential item, but they are also selling plants and gardening equipment. Garden centres have been put at a disadvantage during this crisis, as commercially we aren’t on a level playing field with supermarkets and large DIY stores.’ Deltapoll interviewed 1,518 UK adults online between April 23 and 24.