How Brussels has launched a spiteful war on our glorious snowdrops and rhododendrons
Petty and vindictive even by EU standards, they’re banning the import of plants that have touched British soil – putting jobs at risk and raising prices in UK garden centres
THIS should be peak season for Joe Sharman, a man known as ‘Mr Snowdrop’ and one of the biggest growers in the country. Woodlands and front gardens are now dotted with the shimmering white flowers that the poet Wordsworth called the ‘venturous harbinger of spring’.
Mr Sharman, whose customers include the Queen, sells thousands of bulbs from his Cambridgeshire nursery to buyers in the EU and beyond. He also drives vanloads to sell at snowdrop festivals in Germany.
But not this year. At a stroke, draconian EU regulations have wiped out half of his business.
The punitive new rules, which treat British growers as if they were located thousands of miles away in China or Brazil, have all but ended his export business. They have even prevented deliveries of snowdrops and other plants to homes and garden centres in Northern Ireland, which, following the Brexit agreement, remains under EU trade rules.
So extraordinary are the regulations that a plant that has so much as touched the soil of Great Britain can never be exported to the EU or any part of Ireland. This affects more than 90 per cent of British plants grown for
I’ve had German customers in tears. Some have bought from us for years
sale. No one has calculated the total cost of the regulatory assault, but what is certain is that British horticulture has seen millions of pounds wiped from its profits overnight.
Businesses are confronting piles of paperwork and harsh inspection fees for even the simplest shipment of anything from packets of seeds to tree saplings.
One knock-on effect is likely to be a 20 per cent price increase on plants at UK garden centres as growers struggle to remain afloat. Mr Sharman alone expects to lose in the region of £100,000 this year and in subsequent years – and he is in no doubt who to blame. ‘This is Brussels playing hardball. They’re ticking every box and crossing every T,’ he says. ‘Last year, there were no restrictions for us, but at one minute past midnight on January 1 we became toxic.’
To him, it’s an act of spite, particularly as British plants have been grown to exactly the same standards as those in the EU for many years. ‘I’ve had German customers in tears. These people have been buying from me since 1988 – they’re my friends. I’ve shed tears, too. I never thought I’d have to deal with this. I’m now hoping the EU leaders get off their high horse and let us trade.’
The sheer weight of regulation and the stringent detail – some of it bizarre – make it all but impossible for British growers to turn a profit. Under the new post Brexit rules, Britain is treated as a ‘third country’ for horticulture, which means that for every consignment of plants – be it one bulb or one million – an expensive ‘phytosanitary’ safety certificate is required, stating that the goods are soiland pest-free.
These are issued by an inspector from the Government’s Animal and Plant
Health Agency (APHA) at a cost of £127.60 per every half-hour spent on the consignment.
The certificate itself then costs a further £25.52.
Species such as snowdrops are more tightly regulated. Controlled by CITES – the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora – snowdrop bulbs require additional permits at a cost of £74 per order.
Then come the rules about soil. Plants that have been grown in, or have ever touched, British earth can no longer be sent either to the 27 EU countries or to Northern Ireland because of the supposed potential risk of pests and disease. Even pots that have been placed on or touched the ground are deemed unsafe. It is all the more infuriating for exporters that UK plants grown in 100 per cent peat compost have been judged acceptable to EU bureaucrats, despite the serious environment damage caused by peat digging. Imports have also been hit. Many nurseries bring in plants from Europe, but from April they will have to pay an £182 inspection charge for every EU consignment.
The most unsettling effect has been the block on trade with Northern Ireland which, to prevent a hard border being erected across the island of Ireland, is still governed by EU trade regulations (placing a notional border down the Irish Sea instead).
So harsh are the rules that publishers of UK gardening magazines have been obliged to rip packets of free seeds from their covers before shipping them to newsagents in Belfast.
The sheer complexity of the rules means that some courier companies refuse to take plants from Britain to Northern Ireland and the EU. None of Mr Sharman’s Northern Irish customers seemed to realise they would be cut off in this way.
‘We had lots of enquiries from people who just weren’t aware of the changes,’ he says. ‘We had to say, “Sorry, you’re part of the EU now.”’
‘The rules are almost impossible to comply with.‘And even if I could comply – which I can’t at the moment – the expense would be disastrous. Just think of the staffing costs to plough through all these documents, and that’s before you’ve paid for the inspections and certificates. It’s extremely difficult and completely unnecessary.’
Johnsons of Whixley, in North Yorkshire, has been particularly hard hit. One of the largest commercial nurseries in the UK, it handles about six million plants a
There were no restrictions until January 1 – and then we became toxic
year and has many big customers in Northern Ireland.
Now, because of EU regulations, it will have to try to sell £500,000 worth of plants elsewhere or simply compost them.
‘I knew there would be issues,