A petition has been launched calling for a Minister of Horticulture to be instated by the government.
Lewis Normand, garden designer and sales manager at Bernhard’s Nurseries, set up the petition on change.org and is now seeking the signatures of those both inside and outside of the industry who recognise the benefit of having a dedicated minister in parliament to UK horticulture.
Lewis says: “This is something I have been thinking about for some time now. It came up a couple of times during FutureScape VIRTUAL discussion panels and I felt that the time was right, and I should try this to see how receptive people are to the idea.
“So far, it has been well received. We’ll see if it leads to anything or not, but I think it is worth doing, especially in light of how ill-prepared the government is proving to be to support horticulture through and post-Brexit. Recent talks have shown that they have done very little research to understand how much import and export horticulture undertakes annually across UK businesses. We need better representation in Parliament than we can possibly get being part of a Defra minister’s role.”
To find out more about the petition and to sign it, click here.
