Garden Links

2009 New Year Predictions

30th December, 2008

With the New Year of 2009 fast approaching it is time to get out the Crystal ball and make a few garden and green predictions for the year ahead. We'll have to wait and see if they turn out to be good guesses or just the ramblings of an idiot!

1. GARDENING ON A BUDGET - With a full blown recession seemingly about to come crashing down on the UK, nowhere will be safe from its effects. However gardening can be a relatively cost free activity if you have a garden or allotment and some tools. Seed swapping will become ever more popular with more local events and websites, also local plant sales springing up at places these things used to be held, like community centre car parks, church grounds etc.

Garden centres will have to focus on cheap deals, and real value to ride out the storm. Those that think they can charge over the top prices and stock pricey non essential items could suffer badly.

2. BABYBOOMERS - Another tranch of babyboomers will be retiring this year and will be looking to take up new past times and challenges. Gardening, hill walking, cookery courses, traditional crafts should all get plenty of enquiries and if you have a skill like stick dressing or using GPS and compasses, it could well be turned into a sucessful training/ workshop/ holiday course business to cater for this market.

3. LOCAL FOOD - Organic food is seen as a luxury purchase by a lot of people and tends to be more expensive than mass produced food. Certain brands and food types might succumb to the credit crunch, eg. Organic smoothies. However due to the low value of the pound imported fruit and veg could well go up, so local produce could continue to increase in popularity. Pick your own fruit, which hasn't done so well in recent years could well make a come back as people have less money to go shopping they might well see fruit picking as how it used to be seen. A good way to occupy the kids, get some fresh air and bring back a pile of fruit for pudding and jams.

4. OVER POPULATION - The elephant in the room might well start to blow its trumpet. Whether its the roads, the strain on our water supply or building on greenbelt it all comes back to how many people are on our island. Food for thought; The Optimum Population Trust, a leading group of demographers say the maximum population for the British Isles is about 30 million before we start doing damage. We're double their sustainable limit and currently rising fast.

5. HOLIDAYS AT HOME - With the crashing pound holidays at home will be popular again in 2009, building on the growth of 2008. New campsites will start appearing, and a benefit of the credit crunch and low pound will be many more tourists from the EU coming over for a holiday which will help give vital support to small B&B's, country pubs and rural enterprises.

6. AN ENGLISH COUNTRY GARDEN - Staying at home and going on days out to castles and stately homes instead of lying on beaches could put a lot of people in touch with this countries heritage this year. Perhaps inspiration might come from English country gardens rather than trying to create a Tuscan garden in Ipswich or a Bali garden in Bristol. So instead of decking, steel pots, teak furniture and mirrored water features we might see more trellises, cloches, gravel paths, and stone birdbaths.