HortWeek Podcast

LUC managing director Jon Grantham is clear about the two biggest challenges facing his firm. "We need more people with the right skills" he says adding the skills shortage is a huge challenge for LUC and most horticultural businesses. But the second and "overriding priority" is "the role we play in tackling the climate and ecological crisis". Grantham outlines LUC's strategy on both of these in this podcast episode.

LUC is a planning, impact assessment, landscape design, ecology and geospacial consultancy and has had a successful year financially, which Grantham puts down to the quality of its almost 270 employees and the results of it becoming an Employee Ownership Trust, which was expanded to include all LUC's employees in 2020. Diversification of services has also given the firm a broad base upon which to build, he says.

Discussing some of the biggest projects LUC has been working on this year, Jon Grantham highlights the award winning Clay Pits project in Glasgowas well as LUC’s role as lead masterplanners on the expansion of The All England Lawn Tennis & Croquet Club in Wimbledon.

Another significant project on LUC’s books is the All-England Strategic Landscape Mapping Assessment commissioned by Natural England. LUC’s GIS and visualisation team along with landscape planners are leading on this project, which will look at “Whether we should be designationing new nationally significant landscapes, but expanding criteria for doing that to bring in more social and economic considerations alongside environmental considerations.” While it’s still in its early stages, Grantham explains exactly what they hope will come from this work.

Grantham touches upon how Covid is still affecting the business, but for the better, resulting in an optimum balance between work and life which LUC believes is crucial to productivity. He goes on to explain how it has also influenced projects with everyone thinking more locally, and, crucially, acknowledging that important connection between health and well-being and open green space and the need to extend access to "hard to reach groups".

But "Environment is a key client" says Grantham, and as well as advising and guiding others, LUC is looking at what it can do in the wake of the climate and ecological crisis, with Grantham noting “we can’t be going around preaching to others that they should do it if we’re not doing it ourselves.”

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Michael Perry, aka Mr Plant Geek, is one of the best known names in gardening.

He spent a decade at Thompson & Morgan in product development and is now ubiqutuous on TV, social media and at conferences promoting new plants.

Michael talks about his new book Hortus Curious, with it's catfishing plants, how he broke out of the trade into TV-land and how having good sector connections helps him with his work on, for instance Steph's Packed Lunch on Channel 4.

He explains how his strong social media presence brings him to the notice of companies such as Timberland, Florette and The Dutch Flower Council, for whom he recently ran a 'lonely plants club' in Mayfair.

Michael spent weeks this summer new plant hunting in the Netherlands, looking for the successor to the mangave, which he has been instrumental in making popular. He tips Begonia Spacestars from Beekenkamp/Dibley's, kalanchoe, a no-petal echinacea from van Noort, named orchids as key new trends, asks for someone to invent the universal windowbox and talks about the potential of multimedia newsletter platform, Substack.

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HortWeek editor Matthew Appleby speaks to Jeff Colegrave, Nicole Higginson and Neil Gow, all trustees of the Colegrave Seabrook Foundation.

The former David Colegrave Foundation was set up in 1993, in memory of seedsman David Colegrave. During his career, David took a keen interest in supporting and promoting the development of young people, and it was with this in mind that the foundation was launched.

His great friend Peter Seabrook, and fellow horticulturist, became one of the founder trustees until his death in January 2022. His name was added to the foundation earlier this year as a mark of respect and also to "lend us additional credibility and allow us to push forward our agenda of helping young people in horticulture".

Colegrave, Higginson and Gow talk about the benefits of working with the foundation and how it has changed. Nicole Higginson is one of several new trustees and she explains why she agreed to take on the role.

They outline the scholarships that are now available to encourage the students that "are going to be the future of the industry...embrace the new technologies, the new ways of doing things".

Blue Diamond Garden Centres recently initiated a scholarship which is funding apprentices to help them through their horticulture studies. One of these, an apprentice at New Leaf Plants Tom McDonald, is studying his Level 3 Crop Technician qualification at Pershore College. Other highlights include Majestic Trees funds a travel scholarship and the Colegrave Markham scholarship which funded Tim Curley and James Hearsom and helped them to career success.

Gow speaks about the promotion of the scholarships and then Colegrave discusses the fundraising push the foundation is making – going out to industry players.

Gow says horticulture is not seen as a profession by many people from outside the industry and is struggling to attract enough good people.

Colegrave points out: "We are really the only charitable organisation who's major remit is to support the next generation coming through into the industry... which is why we are asking companies to support our efforts...to lend their name to some of the scholarships that we support by sponsoring them."

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Ground Control's biodiversity manager, Jack Potter is under no illusion:

"The UK is one of the most nature depleted areas in the world...at a tipping point of environmental collapse so this is a really critical time in history where every single scrap of habitat..is absolutely critical. We are in a real crisis right now."

So how can a landscape maintenance company like Ground Control often contradictory demands of preserving biodiversity and making a good old fashioned profit?

"Typically speaking grounds maintenance of of any given site will be mowing it more times a year than is good for biodiversity, cutting hedgerows more times a year than is good for biodiversity. Effectively for Ground Control the more times we have to visit a site, the more money we get from from contracting so flipping that round maybe having a less intensive mowing regime and less intensive cutting regime, of hedgerows, it sounds counterintuitive from from our perspective but this is the direction of travel, this is the trends that the clients are wanting to do and if you don't move with the times, you'll end up getting left behind.

He discusses current initiatives and environmental legislation and describes recent statements from the Government, "which effectively porposes to expire our strongest and most important environmental legislation" as "worrying to say the least".

"There's a lot of proactive organisations...they can do it, it potentially doesn't cost them any more money, and it makes them look really good, so why wouldn't you do it?"

He talks about his favourite projects, staff training initiatives, and winning over reluctant clients to the benefits of improving wildlife on their sites. Potter gives suggestions of ways companies and individuals can take action and do their bit to improve biodiversity and of course, reveals his Desert Island Plant.

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"Frustrated farmer", environmental scientist and Amenity Forum executive officer Peter Corbett is working on the frontline of the crop protection industry "hoping making sure politicians legislate in a way that you still have freedom to operate".

From glyphosate to neonicotinoids, battles are being waged worldwide in courtrooms, governments and in the court of public opinion, and Corbett says decisions are made partly through ignorance: "It's quite interesting how little people understand about crop protection products.

He adds moves to ban glyphosate are based on arguments that "would be disputed by science...you need to look at everything in the right context, and also in the right dose".

He is involved in Defra's draft revised UK National Action Plan for the Sustainable Use of Pesticides, which he hopes will be published soon.

Corbett argues that the debates on sustainability regarding use of weed control products and techniques are often too simplistic, sometimes misinformation ("just because you read it on the internet, doesn't mean it's true") and based on a "misunderstanding of risk benefit".

"If you want vegetation managed there's lots of different ways that we can manage that vegetation, but there are more sustainable ways to do it which isn't necessarily put across in a way that everybody understands."

Outlining some of the different approaches available to contractors he says: "There are different techniques that we can use and obviously potentially we can be using the chemical techniques for managing vegetation and very often they are actually the most sustainable form when you take into account cost, environment and impact on society.

"The last two years have shown how important open spaces are, but it's also shown that we have to manage those and we have to invest in them."

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Sally Drury's lifelong journey in horticulture began in tragic circumstances when she took on the family garden after her father died in a road traffic accident. After studying at Reading University and a dissertation on horticulture and the Common Market, she got the attention of judge and HortWeek editor Jim Deen who asked her to work for the title - and the rest is history.

Turf is Drury's favourite sector and she has seen great advances since the 1980s including the development of Verti Drains and better construction, grass breeding and LEDs robotics. Across horticulture more broadly she adds how woodchippers have transformed how felled wood is used, capillary beds, LEDs and many more.

Drury believes that horticulture is capable of solving just about all problems because it involves plants and has a part to play in conservation, water management, food, pharmaceuticals, sport, therapy, employment and money for the economy.

She shares with the podcast her predictions for the future and as a former standup comedian she recounts some classic anecdotes and of course, offers a typically idiosyncratic take on her Desert Island Plant.

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The big idea for this week's guest, Natural England chair Tony Juniper, is 'nature recovery'. His remit covers promoting the benefits of green corridors including adaptation to climate change and flood risk as well as public well-being and carbon capture.

"One of the most important shifts in the discussion over the last ten years has been a move away from this idea that in order to grow the economy and improve conditions for people, that we have to sacrifice the environment and of course, nothing could be further from the truth," he says.

He explains why "biodiversity" has yet to cut through with the public or "achieve prominence in the policy discussion" as a "global emergency" and how the fact that most people seem to think it is a "washing powder" is "not helpful"!

With a new Prime Minister Liz Truss installed, Juniper explains how preserving the natural world is one of the most powerful ways to make progress in the Conservative's 'levelling up' agenda.

He says:

"For quite a lot of people, levelling up, job creation, bringing economic prosperity to those parts of the country that need it most, it's sometimes looked at as a different thing to restoring the natural world, when in fact these two things need to go hand in hand.

"If levelling up is going to be successful and if the environmental programme is going to be successful these two things are mutually interdependent.

"Imagine the outcomes we could get if we had the engineers, the town planners and the architects, the ecologists and the landscape architects on the same plan, rather than one group leading the discussion and then the others coming in at the end to complain that it's not green enough which is what usually happens!"

Whilst acknowledging the extent of the environmental challenges, Juniper is optimistic that "we have the tools we need" to meet them:

"Most environmentalists who think about this...conclude if you're not an optimist, we're possibly going to squander the last chance we've got...We have to paint a picture which is about possibility rather than catastrophe".

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On its way to net zero, Nurture Group’s head of ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) Criteria – Gordon Whyte speaks about the company's journey on this week’s podcast.

Speaking about how Nurture’s grounds maintenance teams balance the needs of the clients against the needs of the planet, Whyte explains that though they are governed by their customers' needs, they need to sell a greener service, while showcasing the social values that Nurture is building within the business.

Whyte also delves into the steps the business took to become carbon neutral, and how it’s taking that one step further on its journey to net zero. These changes are not exclusive to larger landscape companies, either, as Whyte explains the steps smaller businesses can make too.

Known for its acquisitions, Whyte also touches upon the reasoning behind some of Nurture's more recent ones and how they fit into the fabric of the company. 

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HTA president Boyd Douglas-Davies and chairman James Barnes speak about the upcoming HTA conference on 13 September at Birmingham ICC.

The conference will look at future trends and present the challenges and opportunities facing the UK’s horticulture industry by exploring areas such as the retail revolution, consumer insights, what garden design will look like nationally and globally in 2030.

On this podcast, Barnes and Douglas-Davies discuss trade and lobbying issues and how the conference will help businesses with their horizon scanning.

Douglas-Davies tells HortWeek editor Matthew Appleby: "We've all got to be super-conscious the next few years are going to be very challenging for all sectors of the industry.

These problems we have with us are established and settled for the long haul...so we need to focus on the long term. There's definitely price rises coming."

Speakers at the conference include economist Vicky Pryce from the Centre for Economics and Business Research, Simon Reeve, Mark Gregory, Tayshan Hayden-Smith, Tim Briercliffe, Dominic Harrison and Arit Anderson.

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Paolo Arrigo of Seeds of Italy, London-based importer of Franchi Seeds for more than 20 years, has been outspoken on Brexit and has been a pioneer in bringing aid to Ukraine.

Here he tells HortWeek editor Matthew Appleby about his views on importing in the post-Brexit and Covid era as well as his mission to the warzone in Ukraine, putting them in the context of his business.

Arrigo says although grow your own does well in recessions. sales have dropped back to 5-10% ahead of average after the Covid spike years. Some seeds are harder to get because of Brexit and associated rules, particularly tomatoes and peppers.

He also highlights that, in the midst of all these pressures, horticulture must not lose sight of climate change:

"As an industry we have a responsibility not only just to get rid of plastic packaging but if we have plastic packaging to reuse that packaging so it's not wasted and doesn't go into landfill. But plants and seeds are a win win win for everyone." 

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