Aren't Garden Centres and Nurseries essential?

I have been heartened by the number of replies from people who are trying to think of ways that our garden centres can stay in business, and our gardens continue to grow. I shall have a much wilder garden than usual this year. My pollinator-feeding plants will be the ones that have brought themselves here without my help.

I do agree with those Gransnetters who see gardening as an aid to mental and physical health, as well as our nutrition.

I hope we can all enjoy our gardens now and when we come out the other side of this current crisis, and the wildlife which will find them.

I am gutted that our local garden centre closed the day before we were going to go. It is very popular (especially since a huge housing estate was built either side of the road that leads to it, but it is only small. We decided against going on the Sunday as we knew it would be busy so were going to go on the Wednesday (our day off) and it closed on the Tuesday. So disappointed. My dear friend who lives on her own is an absolutely fanatical gardener. She is waiting delivery of 300 plug plants that she ordered online. She reckons they will keep her busy.

Gardening materials can be ordered online. There is absolutely no way that garden centres are 'essential' when we are in a pandemic crisis. Allotments remain open (except communal stores and tea huts) because it's easy to socially distance there.

Of course, it would make sense for excess plants to be left outside for collection. Any distribution, unfortunately, would count as an unnecessary journey.

I'm very keen but

My lovely MIL lives 40 miles away so we dont do her gardening for her.FIL was a man with the greenest of fingers and his garden won prizes every year for decades.She has a gardener now and was quite upset he wouldn't be able to work during the CV crisis .That was until this morning when she heard the FM announce gardeners were allowed to continue with their work and a bonus one for MIL window cleaners are allowed too.As long as they dont actually have contact with the occupants.MIL is delighted. she can shout instructions through the window and her lovely garden wont be neglected after all.
Maybe not essential services but the added bonus is they can see if she's OK on their weekly visits

there are very few stand-alone off licence shops now.
most are in mini-marts/ corner grocer shops.
a liquor licence is one of the few licences related to retail stock.
so it had to be clarified whether they were to be permitted to continue trading or not. it was probably thought to cause less strife to allow them to continue, rather than traders having to cordon off part of their shop.

www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/house-garden/gardening/online-garden-centres-plant-nurseries-buy-coronavirus-lockdown-a9439276.html

A friend gave me five sacks of well rotted horse manure in January. Backbreaking work mixing it with home made compost and adding it to all our raised beds but I love standing back and looking at the finished effect. DH keeps driving me insane annoying me by reminding me that 'everything should be in by now' but I keep reminding him that if the weather hadn't been so wet and I hadn't had three weeks of sciatica it would all be in by now (No, it wouldn't)

They say horticulturists should never ever marry agriculturists.

I'll drink to that.

I only ask about alcohol because I have heard of people [not us; we hardly drink] that are working from home, getting very stressed and wanting to unwind with a beer, then wanting to get some from a supermarket even though the family don't necessarily need a food shop. So, in some ways alcohol isn't necessary but some people seem to need it to unwind.

Oh no, growstuff, I thought your name was very appropriate at the moment

I did have an email explaining why the delay in receiving my order, which is what one would assume was happening and it is a busy time of year anyway.

We still had a gardener who came to do some heavy work, no contact at all as he was outside and we stayed in.
What a great pity about your friend, is it that he cannot get the plants?

In our village we are swapping seeds and plants, in my case for horse manure! I’m trying to use my greenhouse to gets loads of veg plants going so I can give these to people if I don’t need them. I have extra tomatoes for certain!
There should be a massive push to get us all outside and growing not only to provide food but also for our health!

PS. I might have to change my username to "grownostuff".

Maybe the NHS doesn't think it would be able to handle the fallout of millions of alcohol addicts.

Are they still selling alcohol in supermarkets?

If the word 'gardening' was replaced by 'growing' it might highlight the importance of supporting the horticultural industry. When all this is over, mother nature won't have been in isolation, she'll have been providing the necessary environment for plants and wildlife to survive. If we haven't been doing our bit there will be neglected gardens, food shortages and mental health issues.

If garden centre coffee shops and 'lifestyle' tat sections are closed I don't see why plants and accessories can't be sold during restricted opening hours. Social distancing must obviously be observed.

If younger people could collect items for older people in lockdown, (they are the ones doing most of the growing after all) it would cut down on the footfall and might just help the industry to survive.

It does seem unfair that the supermarkets are still selling plants and compost but the garden centres have to throw their stock.

While I can see the problems involved in allowing garden centres to open, I do have trouble reconciling their non-essential status alongside off-licences' essential status. Since when has alcohol been essential? I say that as someone who enjoys wine and a G&T I wish there was a way to allow them limited opening, it's such a waste of all those plants.

I’d say garden supplies are essential especially for growing food!

I was wondering if some of the neighbourhood groups such as Nextdoor could contact their local garden centre and see if they would be prepared to do bulk deliveries to their neighbourhood (to one central point or individual addresses, depending on what would work best in each neighbourhood.

The local group could contact everyone to get a rough idea of whether the locals want enough to make this viable, and agree it in principle with the garden centre, but everyone would then order from/pay the garden centre individually, making it clear that it would be added to the group's delivery on a set date/time. Not just for the plants, but for anything that is needed for the garden, such as seeds, compost, fertilizer etc.

Some people are really good at organizing things, and I'm sure they could make this work!

Couldn't these wonderful community support groups which have sprung up be gifted plants? Working in isolation, people could plant them

Labaik There's a huge garden centre not far from where I live. Originally, they said they were going to do home deliveries, but they use their own drivers and apparently they can't find enough additional drivers and vans to do all the deliveries which would be needed.

I'm really going to miss not being able to buy bedding plants, but in the grand scheme of things, it's not my main priority. I feel sorrier for a friend of mine who is a professional gardener and has had nearly all his contracts cancelled.

If people were only meant to be buying essential items, and plants and seeds are deemed inessential, why are the garden shops and centres and nurseries only now being closed? This is another example of mixed messages. Boris Johnson requested people not to visit cafes, bars and restaurants but stopped short of closing them. This gives the impression that it is fairly OK to keep using them.

Anyway, if you go into a supermarket are you prevented from buying every item that is not essential, e.g. books, plants, cut flowers, greetings cards, make up, etc. etc? Off-licences appear to be considered "essential", so why not garden centres?

I think it's a dreadful shame that many of all these beautiful, carefully nurtured plants and trees may be just thrown out. Surely, there could have been some way of avoiding at least some of the waste? Apart from anything else, I wonder if many of these businesses will be able to continue.

My local village plant centre is closed, but on the roadside they have left cages full of spring plants, which otherwise would have been wasted, stating for NHS workers. It was a nice thought.

I really thought that garden centre would be doing contactless deliveries; there is one in our area that is doing so but I think they're allowed to continue to trade as they have a shop as well. I'd love to order some plants from them but, unless more people in my village wanted things I wouldn't want a delivery to be made just for me. However, if it was one much closer I wouldn't feel so guilty about doing so. With people spending so much time at home it would benefit them greatly to be able to grow flowers, vegetables etc. And it would be educational for all of the children stuck at home. As long as it's contactless and delivered I can't see the problem.

The clowns buying growbags and fertilizers will more than likely be happy to share any glut of vegetables with their neighbours.