RHS head: ‘Why Britain faces a horticultural timebomb’

When Sue Biggs, director general of the Royal Horticultural Society, had breast cancer last year, it was the life-affirming beauty of plants in her garden which helped her pull through. “I wanted to see my new garden grow, to see the wisteria flower again, to walk among plants and take in their scent,” she says.

She speaks highly of the dedicated NHS treatment she received to help her recover, but it is the memories of seeing the changing landscape outside her own window and experiencing the sheer potency of the natural world, which brings the most light to her eyes as she reflects.

“If horticulture was prescribed as therapy, our health would be much better and then we wouldn’t need to spend so much on treatment from GPs,” she said in a recent radio interview. It’s a belief that bolsters her professional mission to make green the country, as she hosts this week’s 25th anniversary of the RHS Hampton Court Palace flower show.

Biggs, 59, stresses that investment in all areas of horticulture can improve health (including reducing childhood obesity), combat loneliness and social exclusion, as well as reduce stress – especially in older and more isolated people. She points to the RHS Growing Trends Survey 2014 which found that of 2,000 people asked about gardening and growing plants, nearly 90% said gardening is good for your health and 95% said it helps lift their mood.

Given these findings, she would like to see Public Health England promote the health benefits of access to gardens and gardening, whether in a window box, a community allotment or just having access to green space in cities.

The RHS Greening Grey Britain campaign was unveiled in April with the launch of Europe’s biggest community gardening campaign and a three year target to transform 6,000 unloved grey spaces into thriving green.

Its Greening Grey Britain report reveals that a quarter of front gardens across the UK are paved over – three times as many as 10 years ago. One of the major culprits are thought to be buy-to-let landlords who want their rental properties to have easy and cheap to maintain outside spaces.

Biggs also wants more investment by government in horticulture education and warns of a horticultural timebomb. The push towards university education has been to the detriment of practical skills, she says, and country house owners have told her there will soon be no skilled gardeners to tend their gardens that are open to the public.

“We’re known as a nation of beautiful gardens but with the lack of incoming skills to maintain these, this may not be the case soon. We are facing a horticultural timebomb, given an increasingly ageing workforce and a skills shortage,” says Biggs.

Later this year, the RHS will announce the launch of a new northern school of horticulture. With the exception of Tatton Park, the RHS has no presence in the north-west other than through its partner gardens, community outreach work and its campaign for school gardening, which involves almost 19,000 schools.

The northern school is part of the RHS’s own £100m investment in horticulture over the next 10 years which aims to grow the next generation of horticulturalists.

And the Hampton Court flower show will be hosting the first RHS career changers conference to encourage more people into the sector.

An action plan drawn up earlier this year by the £10.4bn UK horticulture industry, calls on government to support an increased number of horticultural apprenticeships.

In addition to boosting the horticultural workforce, the society is also attempting to increase community and outreach work and to change its image as a bastion of the middle classes. “When I joined five years ago, it was seen as predominately white, middle class – and southern,” says Biggs. And she admits: “In the past, we have been shy about talking about some of our charitable work. We need to engage with new and diverse audiences.”

A Hull project with the Red Cross has provided refugees with the skills and knowledge to grow fruit and vegetables to feed their families. In Bradford, the RHS has helped homeless charity, Keyhouse, build a kitchen garden for people who use their drop-in centre. It follows a survey of service users that revealed more than half did not have the money to buy or prepare fresh food and only two per cent consumed five portions of fruit and vegetables a day. At Headley Court, a military rehabilitation centre in Surrey, the RHS has just started using horticulture in the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Since Biggs took the helm at the world’s largest national gardening charity in 2010, membership has increased by 90,000 to 440,000 people. With no government funding, membership is its lifeblood, and Biggs believes that membership is growing as people realise the RHS is a charity, not just concerned with the glitz of the world-famous Chelsea flower show. Its charitable work “makes people more likely to be a member and stay a member, so philanthropy and altruism rule OK”, she claims.

The RHS is Biggs’ first senior charity role. She worked in the travel sector for 30 years, including 25 years at travel operator Kuoni. Her husband urged Biggs, who had been an RHS member for 18 years and had enjoyed working on her three acres of land in Italy, to apply for the role. “They [the RHS] didn’t need another horticultural expert, ” she says.

“While at Kuoni, I had worked closely with leading charities Plan International and the Born Free Foundation, funding wildlife conservation projects, helping countries recover after civil war and building a maternity clinic in Sri Lanka after the tsunami.”

The RHS was set up in 1804 by Sir Joseph Banks and John Wedgwood, “to inspire passion and excellence in the science, art and practice of horticulture” and has the same mission statement today. Biggs says she has felt the “weight of responsibility for an historic institution”.

For her, public and private sector collaboration is the only way forward for a greener, healthier society. She points to a forthcoming cross-sector, cross-party health and horticultural forum later in the year which is backed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as well as the health, education and business departments. It is one of the working groups that came out of the Ornamental Horticulture Roundtable Action Plan 2015–2020 which aims to increase coordination between the industry and government. As Lord Heseltine, the RHS vice president, says in the foreword to the report: “Horticulture has an important role to play across education, training, housing, health and employment. By drawing these areas together and creating a coherent strategy we can harness the great potential of the sector.”

Biggs stresses: “We need fewer but bigger messages or it will be too noisy with all the shouting, and nothing gets through.”

Curriculum vitae

Age 59.

Lives Cobham, Surrey.

Family Separated.

Education Abbeydale Grammar School, Sheffield; Nottingham University, BA, English and American Literature; Manchester University; Postgraduate Diploma in Tourism.

Career 2010-present: director-general, RHS; 2009–2010: Managing director of Scheduled Businesses, Thomas Cook; 1999-2008 - MD, Kuoni; 1982-99: from product executive to deputy MD, Kuoni.

Interests Travel, gardening, wildlife conservation, long lazy meals with friends.