Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee
Oral evidence: Garden tourism, HC 2002
Wednesday 22 May 2019, The Chelsea Flower Show
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 22 May 2019.
Watch the meeting
Members present: Damian Collins (Chair); Clive Efford; Julie Elliott; Simon Hart; Ian C. Lucas; Brendan O’Hara; Rebecca Pow; Jo Stevens; Giles Watling.
Questions 1 - 67
Witnesses
Witnesses: Richard Barley, Philip Barnes, Sue Biggs CBE, Loyd Grossman CBE and Anthony Pickles.
Q1 Chair: Good afternoon. I call this meeting of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee to order. This is a special meeting of the Committee to look at gardens and garden tourism. We are delighted to be here at the Chelsea Flower Show—the first time the Committee has visited Chelsea. It is the first time, I believe, that a proceeding of Parliament has taken place at the Chelsea Flower Show.
Sue Biggs: We are very honoured.
Chair: We are meeting here on location in a marquee, which we do not normally do. This is a full and formal proceeding of the House of Commons Committee, just as it would be if we were meeting in Westminster but doing so on location here in Chelsea. We are very grateful to the Royal Horticultural Society for allowing us to conduct our session here today. We are looking forward to discussing garden tourism with the panel today as well.
Just one piece of housekeeping before we start: for the benefit of the parliamentary broadcasting unit, could I remind members of the Committee, and the witnesses too, to press the speaking button on the microphone before you start to speak and then turn it off when you finish so that the sound is captured by the broadcasters? Even though we can hear each other, we need to make sure that the sound is recorded as well.
Also, for the members of the panel too, five witnesses is more than we would normally have, so we would welcome your answers to questions, but we do not necessarily expect every member of the panel to answer every question, and Members may direct questions to particular people.
If I could start off, first, with Sue Biggs, as we are here at Chelsea and we are talking about garden tourism, perhaps you could tell us a little bit about what the impact of the show is here. How many visitors come? Obviously, a lot of them are RHS members, but how many people come from overseas maybe to be here at Chelsea? What is the footprint of the Chelsea Flower Show?
Sue Biggs: What always amazes me is that the footprint is only 11 acres. During the course of this week, 168,000 people come. They are very heavily from the UK and less than 10% are from overseas, but that is more a function of the fact that it is so popular with our members. The first two days are all members and then the rest of the show is free for anybody anywhere. We have members overseas as well, so we have just over 510,000 members of the RHS fighting for 168,000 tickets.
It is a very popular show and it generates literally millions of revenue for us to invest in the charitable works of the RHS. Obviously, if you have walked through Sloane Square and down Sloane Street at all, the Chelsea in Bloom that has now spun off is a tremendous attraction for people who live in London but also for all the international businesses that come to London at this time of the year.
Q2 Chair: Thank you. Obviously, as you say, there is more demand for tickets to the show than there are spaces available, but others will enjoy watching it on television and following it on the media. What do you think the national and international media audience is for the show?
Sue Biggs: We have literally millions. I was at the BBC earlier today and it has record viewing figures. I am sure that is helped by the Duchess’s involvement in one of the gardens this year, but literally between 3 million and 5 million people watch the 13 hours of coverage. That also goes out this year for the first time through BritBox, which as you probably know is the BBC/ITV joint company.
Chelsea is being watched for the first time ever in America this year, so it is spreading internationally, and one of the things that we will be doing going forward to build garden tourism—we would include this as garden tourism because it is all about gardens and gardening—is build an international audience as well.
Q3 Chair: As well as the show gardens here at Chelsea, obviously there are a number of businesses that are here exhibiting their wares. Do you gather data about the importance to businesses that come to Chelsea to show what they do, to promote their products to people in the gardening world, people who have a keen interest? Do you know what sort of economic impact it has for them?
Sue Biggs: We do not collect data of what their sales are. We know, because people fight for the trade stand spaces that there are, that they come back year after year fighting for those. They are not just trade stands from the UK. We have companies that come from Japan to sell their tools. We have the nurseries that come in from South Africa, for example. British and overseas are a core part of the show.
Q4 Chair: One of the reasons why we decided to hold this special session and have this short inquiry into garden tourism was based on the incredible statistic that one in three overseas visitors to the UK visit a garden as part of their visit here. Could I ask some of the other members of the panel, perhaps starting with Loyd Grossman and then Philip Barnes and Richard Barley whether you think there is enough recognition in the tourism strategy of the country of the really significant part that parks and gardens play in attracting visitors to the UK.
Loyd Grossman: I would not like to comment on that specifically, but I think, in terms of the parks, we have been able to play a pretty major role in attracting foreign visitors by participating in things like the GREAT campaign, and also through the soft diplomacy of being in things like “The Crown” and James Bond films and so on.
Of all our visitors we get 77 million visits a year, which is pretty significant, and across our estate about 24% of them come from abroad. In the central London parks about 40% have come from abroad, and indeed it would be hard to visit London as a tourist without going to one of the Royal Parks.
I think the importance of internal tourism needs to be stressed as well. For example, I am looking at visitors to Hyde Park; 40% are tourists from abroad, 18% are other British tourists from outside of London, and that internal tourism thing is hugely important.
Philip Barnes: Just talking about Sissinghurst in particular, about 30% of our visitors are international tourists. In 2018 it was about 13% of the overall visits, and we had about 189,000 visitors, so it is a big part of what we do and we know that these are repeat visits as well.
More could be done in terms of stating the significance and importance of these public spaces and gardens and the wider estates that we have, certainly in the National Trust’s ownership. We have 20 million visitors coming; a lot will be international tourists. In terms of supporting smaller businesses to help us work in a more collaborative way, partnerships around the creative environment would be a good thing, yes.
Q5 Chair: Philip Barnes, if I could just ask you on that: Loyd Grossman said, quite rightly, that it would be difficult to visit London and not visit one of the Royal Parks. Obviously, this would be a shocking and wrong thing, but Sissinghurst is not necessarily on everyone’s route map, even though obviously it should be. Do you work with Visit Kent to try to gather data on to what extent people who visit Sissinghurst are coming to Kent just to visit the gardens?
Philip Barnes: Yes, we do. Our regional marketing teams do work with Visit England and Visit Kent, and actually do collaborate where they can. We do not necessarily at a proxy level. We do not do a huge amount of promotion because it is expensive to do that. We have benefited from Chelsea this week. The number of visitors coming to Sissinghurst will increase and we will be getting 1,200 visitors a day and at the weekends perhaps 2,500. That will also increase the wider estate, so we are already benefiting from what is going on in London.
Q6 Chair: Is that because people might be following it on television or they are just inspired by it, and part of being inspired by it is thinking, “I will go and visit one of the great gardens near where I live”?
Philip Barnes: That is exactly it. They are inspired by the romance and beauty of what they see. The Chelsea Flower Show this year has been fantastic, with a real emphasis on nature and that environment. That is very important to our visitors. That is why they are coming and, yes, they will come to get inspired around gardening and, also, just because it is a safe space to socialise, contemplate, all of these things that gardens provide. So, yes, it is a broad offer that they come for.
Richard Barley: Thank you. From a Kew perspective, we are pressing close to 2 million visits a year, which makes Kew the most visited garden in the UK according to the ALVA figures currently. Around 23%, so just under a quarter, of those are arriving from international sources.
To address your question about whether there is enough focus on garden tourism for people who are contemplating visiting Britain perhaps, I can speak with the benefit of having come from outside the UK and viewing things from afar. I would have to say that there is an incredible popularity of visiting gardens here, as we know from the figures, but most of that is on reputation. It is not the product of a sustained, focused campaign that actually promotes visiting gardens here.
From my point of view, and certainly I think representing Kew, we would suggest that there is a huge potential upside that is not being tapped into currently.
Q7 Chair: Thank you. A couple of final questions from me. Loyd Grossman, do you feel enough is done to promote the Royal Parks as garden parks as well as public spaces?
Loyd Grossman: We certainly try to. Royal Parks are a unique combination of being public spaces, public parks, public gardens and also a great arena for state ceremonies and the location of 195 listed buildings. The Royal Parks are so comprehensive it is very difficult to promote them in any way other than as an absolutely unique entity, which is probably more associated with the City of London than anything else, more than any other parks that are associated with any other city in the world.
Q8 Chair: Finally, Anthony Pickles, perhaps you could say something about how Visit Britain tries to work with the gardens and parks as part of the UK’s tourism strategy. I must admit I had a quick look on the website to see how strongly they feature, and I was hoping I would get a difficult question out of it, but sadly they feature quite prominently.
Anthony Pickles: That is absolutely right, Chair. I was told that we have 994 mentions of gardens on our websites, which is pleasing.
I think there are two things to say. In terms of the remit the Government give us, it is very much about regional spread. Of the international visitors who come to the UK, 54% of them stay in London and do not leave. That is great because we have Kew and we have the Royal Parks, so people will inevitably experience a garden. There is such an inbuilt benefit that lots of these gardens—landscape gardens in particular—are far and wide across the whole of the UK, so there is a great opportunity for people to visit them.
In terms of our role, we market gardens absolutely across all of our channels. We push a lot of our press visits to them. There is a second part, which is about the knowledge of international visitors more generally when it comes to our infrastructure, so getting people to the gardens. Quite often they will be beyond that final mile of a railhead or rail terminus, and it is back to the common thing we have across the board when it comes to the knowledge of getting around our country and our ability to do something about it. That is something we concentrate on particularly within the tourism strategy.
Q9 Ian C. Lucas: The film and television industry is a hugely successful part of our cultural offer as a nation. Do you collaborate with the film industry, for example, to promote locations? I saw “Barry Lyndon”, the film, recently, which has the most incredible locations, many of which are within the UK. Is there an organised approach to that?
Anthony Pickles: It certainly is, from a Visit Britain perspective. You are absolutely right in what you say. The film and TV scope of the UK within the soft power reach is prolific. That is why we consistently come first in the Portland soft power league table.
In terms of our partnership, we do partner with a lot of the films that come out. We have done that since the inception of the GREAT campaign seven or so years ago, and it has proved very, very successful. Overall, the GREAT campaign sees a return on investment of about £25 for every £1 spent within it, of which film and television is very, very prominent within the marketing, so there is a lot of partnership.
We speak with the BBC, with RTV and obviously with the films when they are coming. There is always more to be done, and I think that the lead-in time for these things is always critical because a lot of the spend on marketing, a lot of the planning comes sometimes 12 months before the actual spend and the organisation is committed. I think there is more that we can do on that, but we certainly do collaborate with big partners.
Loyd Grossman: From the Royal Parks’ perspective, we do an enormous amount of work with the film and television industry. Some of the recent productions are “The Crown”, “Mary Poppins”, James Bond and even “Wonder Woman”. I am not sure which bits of “Wonder Woman” were actually filmed in the Royal Parks, but I can let you know later.
Also, in terms of media coverage, we do get a great deal from hosting special events, which does have this big soft power implication. For example, we are hosting on The Mall the upcoming opening ceremony for the Cricket World Cup, which the organisers claim will be watched by nearly 1 billion people, so we certainly know that many tens of millions watch the great ceremonies that take place, and this is very important in promoting Britain.
Q10 Rebecca Pow: Welcome, everybody. It is great to be here. I want to quickly pick up on Richard Barley’s point. You said that you thought there was a huge untapped potential in promoting our gardens abroad. What do you think we could be doing that we are not doing?
Richard Barley: I think that there could be a far more prominent and co-ordinated promotional campaign based on visiting gardens of all sorts in the UK. The breadth and diversity of gardens here is staggering, and nowhere else in the world has anything remotely approaching the quality and variety of garden visiting opportunities that the UK has, leaving aside wonderful events like Chelsea, of course, and other major single attractions like that, but in terms of gardens across the whole country. To me what is missing is something that reaches a broad audience from the countries that are likely to come here. We know roughly the current visitation—
Q11 Rebecca Pow: There are particular countries, aren’t there, that love us for our gardens?
Richard Barley: The United States of America, parts of Europe, particularly central and northern Europe, Asia, Australasia, Japan and, in an increasing way China, I think. It is pretty broad. Obviously, I am not an advertising or marketing person, but there are many clever people who are. To me that is what is missing and, as I said, I have looked at things from afar and known what is good, more by word of mouth and reputation than anything presented, that would help people and encourage people to come and do the visiting. That is why I think there is huge potential.
Q12 Rebecca Pow: Yes, in my previous role I did some PR concerts in some big gardens and we struggled, I have to admit, trying to get that message abroad. Visit Britain had some projects, but we had to fit in with their certain campaigns. Would you say that a lot more focus had to go on to that?
Richard Barley: I personally would say so, yes. That to me is what is missing—a co-ordinated and multi-layered approach that presents the diversity and paints the picture for people.
Q13 Rebecca Pow: Would you say—I don't know who wants to chip in on this—that it is not just about flowers? Could you just expand to us? Is it not about culture, history, nitty-gritty practical stuff as well but there is so much there that actually touches on the world of culture and our history?
Philip Barnes: Absolutely. I would very much agree about the multiple organisations perhaps coming together and working collaboratively in terms of how we market our gardens. You are absolutely right that it is the physical, emotional and historical connections of our gardens. Gardens have been at the forefront from the Victorian ages, where they have been pioneering and moving forward and setting trends with the arts and crafts movement and so forth. It is so much more. They offer that solitude and beauty, but they offer so much more in terms of historical depth and significance, innovation and creation as well. They are constantly evolving, and I think that is something we could perhaps make more of as well.
Q14 Rebecca Pow: On that note, do you not find it surprising that, while the remits of the DCMS include historic buildings as visitor attractions, they do not necessarily include gardens?
Richard Barley: I do find it interesting, because I think the Oxford Economics report, which we are looking at, does state that 2.2 million visitors are going specifically to see our gardens, wider estates and parklands. There is very much a focus on that museum, built structure but our gardens, our Royal Parks, are living museums and we know that more people come year on year to visit them and perhaps we should be doing more about it, yes.
Q15 Rebecca Pow: I think more people visit gardens than visit museums—
Richard Barley: Yes, they do.
Rebecca Pow: —isn’t that right, Sue?
Sue Biggs: Yes, before I came to the RHS I was 30 years in the travel industry, mainly at Kuoni Travel. I was lucky to be in the travel industry for the real creation of tour operation. If I look at what we have as an asset in this country, it makes me want to weep sometimes that we still do not even have a “Gardens are great” poster anywhere in the world. I think it is criminal because it is £2.9 billion we already create through garden tourism, and we know that we are known as this green and pleasant land, the English countryside garden and all these things that we all know and love, but nothing is really done to promote it overseas. I think we should have a trade mission about how amazing our gardens are and actually promote more around and about it.
I remember the early days of American tourism, and the USTTA, as it was then, created a whole set of fly/drive itineraries that showed where all the amazing things were. That is all they did, put it up on their website, “You can have a week’s holiday”. If I put that now into the UK, a week’s tour around Cornwall or a week’s tour around the gardens of Norfolk, it takes economic success to rural economies that are struggling. That regeneration of different parts of our country through garden tourism could just be so fantastic.
People tend to think, as well, that it is only a summer thing and everything is busy in summer anyway, but our four gardens get over 2 million visitors a year and we have as many visitors in spring and in autumn as we do in summer. Not only could we push it nationally if we had a campaign about promoting garden tourism but also we could do so seasonally as well, when people’s employment is low and economic success is low, really, through all of our different types of parks and gardens and shows, promoting this amazing industry that is £24 billion.
Q16 Rebecca Pow: It is interesting what you said because the British Association of Landscape Industries came to me desperate to do a show garden of British gardens at a big festival in Beijing.
Sue Biggs: The Beijing Expo, yes.
Rebecca Pow: They simply could not get the Government to take it seriously enough to raise the funds for it, say, from the British GREAT campaign. Do you think if we highlighted it more and put it alongside historic buildings and gave it more recognition in DCMS, that kind of funding and grant funding, which would then help the economy, would be forthcoming or not?
Sue Biggs: It would certainly help it and it would certainly help all the gardens that have historic houses attached. Going back to what Richard said, I do not think that we should ignore the fact that there are a lot of amazing gardens that are cultural and creative to this country that do not have historic houses attached. Those landscapes and those gardens also deserve to have some recognition. The oddity about our industry is that we do not neatly sit in any Department in Government. Of course, we have great links and a great relationship with DEFRA but we are also, we believe, part of DCMS, part of Education, part of Health, and all of the social and environmental benefits that tourism brings. When nobody loves us as number one, we have a tendency of sliding down the ladder.
Q17 Rebecca Pow: Finally to Anthony, you have been working on a separate deal for tourism. Are you working hard enough at including gardening in that?
Anthony Pickles: I think that is the nub of the reason to go to the Executive because tourism is an enormous industry. It is £127 billion annually and growing and it has been a huge success story, but there is still more that could be done. I think that the regional spread argument I was talking about earlier is the key point. There is also the overall productivity issue. tourism is not seen as an export industry and it absolutely is. It is the third largest service export to the UK. It is worth £24 billion a year. There is a competitive edge to that because people have more choice than they have ever had before and more ways they can spend that money.
The sector deal for us is to raise tourism’s profile across Whitehall and to have that co-ordinated approach that brings people together. We sit there in DCMS as a very, very small part. It has so many other things that it deals with—the BBC, tech, data, whatever—but tourism often slips quite far down the agenda. The sector deal has shown that there is an export component, that there is clear leadership and that there is an absolute appetite for it from the industry across the country. Most importantly, there is an opportunity to turn productivity around in an industry that historically has very, very low productivity.
Q18 Giles Watling: It is lovely to be here and it is lovely to see you all here. It is an incredible event, and we do gardens so well in this country. We have “Gardeners’ Question Time”, which I am a great addict of, and we all tend our little patches if we get the chance. It is a wonderful thing.
With the great gardens—and I think this is to Richard and Philip more—the historic landscape adviser John Phibbs suggests that the entire income generated by the great gardens, such as Chatsworth, Alnwick and many National Trust places, tends to go into these sites alone and does not engage with the local community. Would you say that is a fair comment?
Philip Barnes: Is it a fair comment? Some properties do it very well where those community links are really strong and have been built over a number of decades. Then others are very much on the start of that journey. To the National Trust strategy, we want to be inclusive and relevant and for everyone to be involved. The one example where I think we are very much involved is our volunteers who are ambassadors of what we do. We have a huge number of them. In Sissinghurst alone we have about 400 working in all different areas, but those people are all living within the local community. They are all supporting what we do. They are ambassadors of what we do and want to do more, be innovative and come up with new ideas of partnership and collaborative working.
I am just looking at putting in a community involvement role at Sissinghurst because I would like to think that we can do more, and we should be doing more around that because that supports our strategy. Some are doing it very well already. Ham House—the case study that was put forward as part of this evidence—is a really great example of where 80% of the local audience are coming from London and engaging with something really special, whether it is around the kitchen garden produce and reusable veg bag scheme or whether it is volunteering from a health and well-being perspective. There is a lot going on with our volunteers and the community already.
Q19 Giles Watling: That is good to hear. I am thinking more in terms of the isolated Chatsworth sort of example where—and I have done it, God knows I have done it—you turn up at Chatsworth. You go to the house and the grounds and you come out through the gift shop and you then stop for a pint at the pub in the village. Are you engaging in the big gardens in—
Richard Barley: I am not sure if we always stop for a pint in the village or not. If we are driving the car southwards we might not and we might have a half pint.
I want to add into that a couple of responses about Kew, because I cannot really speak on Chatsworth’s behalf. Most people visiting some of these gardens out in the countryside will usually stop somewhere or other locally, be it for a cup of tea or whatever. Generally, there is at least some dwell time there or an overnight stay or something like that.
From Kew’s perspective, we have close to 100,000 members, somewhere in the 90,000s membership, so that is the opportunity for people to visit Kew as often as they like during a year by paying an annual membership fee. We have very strong links to many members of our community who are frequent visitors. We also recognise that fees for entry can be a barrier to people within the community, so we have a range of different community access schemes that, in effect, provide subsidised entry to people who would otherwise be unable to come to Kew. That is an area that is also growing.
Aside from international tourism, there are some very active local connections with the community, both around Kew and more widely on our side of London perhaps. Maybe the other thing to recognise with regard to Kew is that we do have a global role in terms of our plant science, in addressing some of the key issues around food security, conservation, biodiversity and so forth.
We operate two sites, Kew and Wakehurst, as visitor attractions, but also seek to fund some very, very critically important work around the world. In terms of where some of the revenue goes, a proportion of it goes into ensuring that we can continue to do that sort of work for the greater good.
Q20 Giles Watling: Thank you. Just to Anthony, I suspect that you could also comment on open engagement in the great gardens. For instance, in this last year—this is not related, but it is in a certain way—I have visited a lot of RAF bases all over the country. They go to great efforts to hold events where local people come in and see their parades or whatever else it is they do, and they reach out to local communities. Is this something you would promote?
Anthony Pickles: I think it is. There are two things I would point to. The average spend for last year for domestic day trips was £37, so it is not insignificant. If you look at the overnight, so-called, it goes up to £73, so what we try to do with our strategy obviously is to encourage as much of the overnight spend and overnight stays as possible. In terms of that local engagement, it is really important because domestic tourism is often seen as going to entirely the other side of the country, but it is not. It is just sometimes going down the road to the local parks, and that is something we may have not done as much of as we might. It has certainly been a focus in the previous year or so, so it is important.
The second thing is the Discover England Fund projects, which is this three-year fund in England to partner products together. I think that has been a really important product development for England, because one of the things that we have found is that you do get people who come to England for themed breaks, because they are interested in gardens, or walking or whatever it might be.
There is a Gardens & Gourmet fund that runs from Essex. It runs through Cheshire and it meets that interest in food, in gardens and in general landscape interest. It is only in its inception so we still do not know the analysis of it yet, but we do know that there has been huge engagement locally on it. The spend data that comes from that will be absolutely fascinating to look at because we have taken international inspiration for that, looking at things like the great wild west way in Ireland, for example, which is 10 years in now. We have been looking internationally at how people are doing this well and thankfully we are emulating that success in England as well.
Giles Watling: That is good to hear. Thank you very much.
Q21 Chair: Thank you. Just a quick question from me on funding. This is to Loyd Grossman. Obviously, Royal Parks is not a membership organisation; nor do you take money at the gate. For the record could you tell us a little bit about the funding model for Royal Parks?
Loyd Grossman: Like many other arts and cultural institutions that used to rely very heavily on central Government funding, we have moved a great way from there in the last 10 years. I note that 10 years ago 60% of our income came from Government. Now it is under a quarter and it will continue to reflect declining Government support, although of course it is obviously very important for us that Government support should continue indefinitely.
Due to our location and the great number of visitors we have, we do have considerable income generating opportunity that maybe other parks and gardens do not have. We do make a great point, of course, of reinvesting all of our earnings into the parks because it is about a lot more than just seeing that the grass is cut, as you well know.
In relation to the last question, we also invest a lot of money in local projects, in outreaches, supporting community sports projects, education, apprenticeships, all that sort of thing. It is very important when we talk about tourism and creating great tourist attractions, wherever they are, that they are great for the people who live here first. They have to be great for the community and not just aimed at attracting foreign visitors. We have to do great things for our own neighbourhoods and communities before we can really hope to provide a wonderful tourist experience to foreign visitors, and we are very keen on continuing that.
Q22 Chair: Just for the record, you said that you raise most of your own funds. Is that through money you might make for allowing location filming or hosting events or from concessions for ice cream stands and the like?
Loyd Grossman: Yes, it is a great mix of things. There is location film and television work, the money generated through the catering operations, the fact that Hyde Park is now one of the great concert venues of the world, and Winter Wonderland, those sorts of activities. It also has to be put into the context of the fact that we do only 22 or 23 major activities like that a year because, of course, many people want to go to parks because nothing is happening. We have to strike an extraordinarily fine balance between those members of the public who really want stuff to be happening and those who want nothing to be happening.
One thing that I have learned while doing this job is the fact that we say that parks are for everyone but, of course, everyone has a different idea of what parks are for, so it is the balance between commercial activities and non-commercial activities that really occupies a lot of our time.
Q23 Simon Hart: As you can probably tell, nearly half of this Committee represent constituencies that are not in England. Have you had better success with devolved Governments than perhaps you do with central Government when it comes to the task that we are talking about?
Sue Biggs: No, not particularly. We have international membership in over 100 different countries, but the vast majority of our membership is in the United Kingdom and the vast majority of that is in England, so we have great support from councils.
I have to say the councils and the LEPs are probably where we find more support. We have a show in Cardiff and the council there is very supportive. With our new development at Wisley that we are investing over £60 million in the LEP is helping very much with the development of new buildings.
I do not know whether you know Wisley or not, but it is the home of gardening science and we are building new science research laboratories with gardening sites there. The LEPs, too, are interested in helping in Bridgewater, which is going to be our new fifth garden up in the north-west. That does not count as a devolved area, not yet at least.
It is very much within the United Kingdom and very much within England that we focus all of our activities.
Q24 Simon Hart: You mentioned earlier on, which we all sympathised with and understood, that you cover so many Departments, yet the devolved settlements in Scotland and Wales in particular are sometimes mysterious in that some things are devolved and some are not. I just wondered if that acts as a brake; whether it causes an inability to make progress because the devolution lines are not always necessarily clear.
Sue Biggs: No, I do not think that ever causes a break. We used to have a show up in Scotland and the Scottish Government were very helpful. As I say, the Welsh councils have been very positive when we have had shows there. It is difficult for us to expand gardens into those countries because the populations are literally so sparse, so we do not go ahead with that.
I am possibly the only one on the panel that does not get any Government funding, so we do need to make sure that when we create things, whether it is the Chelsea Flower Show or our retail or, at our very heart, our membership, we need to do things so that we can invest that money back into other community outreach or education or science.
Q25 Simon Hart: That leads on to my next question, because we probably all have in our devolved regions examples of some gardens that are runaway successes and doing incredibly well, and others that simply do not seem to quite generate the momentum necessarily. Has any work been done in relation to why that might be the case? What are the problems?
Sue Biggs: It comes right back to what we feel is a lack of focus of promotion specifically on gardens, the fact that we have never been included in the GREAT campaign, the fact that we have not focused on homing in on these great gardens.
I can look at Scotland, in particular, which has some of the best gardens in this country. If we did do things like fly/drive itineraries—. Tour operators can do big coach tours, and particularly internationally from the Chinese—
Q26 Simon Hart: Some are great successes; what is their secret?
Sue Biggs: I think they are doing their own promotion. A lot of our gardens are run by people who do not have huge amounts of money because they are investing it all to keep the estate going, whatever the estate might include. We may not recognise the value of those and invest in them, from whatever level of Government we are talking about. I am sure many of you have been to things like autumn in New England with the fall foliage and the colours there, or to cherry blossom in Japan. Those were never major events. Marketing created those events. Of course, there was always autumn colour and of course the cherry blossoms were always there, but we do not have that equivalent.
We have never actually focused on our beautiful gardens and countryside to drive people from all around the world to want to come, whether it is to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or England. We have some amazing products here that we could and should be marketing far better, but I think we need Government funding to help us do it.
Q27 Simon Hart: Without asking Anthony to answer all the same questions again, is your view the same?
Anthony Pickles: In terms of the devolved landscape, tourism falls into various tracts along the way. For example, Northern Ireland tourism is actually part of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement, so they have a contract with us to do some of their international promotion, whereas with Wales and Scotland we have targets that are given to us for international promotion. Those are discussed very regularly at ministerial level among strategy directors and marketing directors, and there is a good working relationship there.
If you look at the figures, Scotland has had runaway success from its international visitors in recent years. There has been phenomenal growth in Scotland, but Wales has not seen that in the same way. Of the 40 million visitors who come to the UK about 1 million go to Wales, which is not proportionate to its size or anything else. We know that the product is there. You have fantastic landscapes that are constantly winning international awards. Rough Guides put Wales as the destination of the year, just last year I think it was.
I think maybe it would be useful to share with the Committee after this inquiry some of the promotional work that we do. We have gardens, for example, on the Shanghai Metro, all over, some of our art theme, which included Wales and Scotland as well as places in England. We had some of our Instagram and influencers who go around gardens—so the Laburnum Arch at Bodnant, which is in full blossom at the moment, which has become almost like the cherry blossom in Japan.
The reputation is an incredible asset, which is in season right now and could drive people who are beyond the height of the tourism season in north Wales. That is the type of work that we need to do. We need to drive people to these places because they have had inspiration through some of the influencers.
Q28 Giles Watling: On exactly that, I think we might be missing promoting some extraordinary instances that happen now that we live in the age of social media. There is one particular example that springs to my mind because I grew up in and around the environs of Epping Forest. When you have a good summer and the autumn goes on and there is a sudden frost, you get this extraordinary effect—and it only happens once every 10 years—when everything goes golden on the forest floor in different shimmering colours of gold. We should be advertising that sort of phenomenon far and wide. It is not a thing you can do every year because it does not happen every year. Is there somewhere perhaps we can engage with that sort of event that happens in the UK?
Anthony Pickles: In my opinion, absolutely. It is so important because if you look at the spike in numbers in the core June, July, August months, compared to the rest of the year, we receive most visitors then and what we are trying to do—it ties back into the sector field—is spread the success across the year because so many jobs depend on it.
Initiatives like that are absolutely in the right direction. We have seen that Japan has done it so well. We have seen that lots of our competitors have used some of these inbuilt natural advantages in their marketing, and I think it is definitely something that we should do more of. We should do it in partnership. It is not to be done alone.
Q29 Giles Watling: Sue, do you think it might be worth doing that?
Sue Biggs: I think so, absolutely. From what I said before, we have potential to promote better what we already have. The costs of that are relatively low. We also have the ability to create new products as well, whether it is planting up whole fields full of spring tulips—it is not just Holland that can have tulips—or the rose banks that can be everywhere. We can create new products as well, but when you talk to the nurseries and the owners of gardens we are all lucky that we have quite big gardens or parks, but the backbone of the product in this country is the smaller gardens. At the moment it might be more domestic visitors than international—so creating tours that people can understand or regional differences that they understand. It is very hard if you are coming from China or Japan to know.
I challenge most British people to know because it is not promoted. You know about regional cheese and you know about regional wine, but I would put money on it that people do not really know very much about regional gardens and the difference that you will find in different parts of the country. I think that is where we have hidden treasure just below the surface. If we can have your support, I think the £2.9 billion that garden tourism generates at the moment should absolutely be at least doubled. It is really not fulfilled at the moment.
Q30 Brendan O'Hara: We have heard much about the importance to the tourist economy of gardening. It is good. There does seem to be a positive story. I know that in 2017 almost 1 million visitors came through the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, which is fantastic. My own patch, the fabulous Benmore Botanic Garden, which is attached to the Royal Botanic Garden, is also experiencing visitor numbers that are the highest since the 1930s, so things are good and there is a need and a demand for this.
If I could take it away just slightly from the tourist side, it seems to me that in the past there was a much more innovative way of thinking about gardens and the sector generally. We used to use it almost as a catalyst of regeneration. I am thinking specifically about the Glasgow Garden Festival in 1988, which was astonishing—152 days, 4.3 million visitors. Correct me if I am wrong, but we do not seem to do that any more and the question is why, and should we do it?
Sue Biggs: If I could just answer first—I am sure everyone else will have lots of other things—I think regeneration is a massively important role that big gardens can play. As part of our major £160 million investment programme, next year we will be opening a new garden at Bridgewater in Salford—the RHS Garden Bridgewater in Salford, Greater Manchester. It is amazing in that Greater Manchester area how little green space there is for people living in very close quarters with each other, in often difficult circumstances.
The creation of our fifth garden in 154 acres right between the M60, the Bridgewater Canal and Salford is a real belief for us in the regeneration of the area and, also, belief in garden tourism in this country. We would not do it, we could not afford to do it, if we did not believe that not only for the people of Salford and Greater Manchester but also regionally in the country and also internationally.
Manchester Airport is only 15 minutes away and we are able to bring in different markets, from the States, from the Gulf, from China, into the UK. While gardening in many of those countries is not cultural like it is with us, it is such a creative skill to be able to create a garden that is so beautiful that it moves you and gives people a respite from a life with very little green in it—to create that green space.
I agree with you that the garden festivals may not be around—I am not sure who could afford a garden festival the way they used to be done—but there are organisations like us that are actually investing in the regeneration of different parts of our country.
Richard Barley: I think the reason why a lot of these festivals disappeared was simply that it was often the local councils that were key players in them and, frankly, they no longer have the staff or the funding to actually be the engine behind doing it. That is a great pity because all that value they create, all that interest, all that pride in local areas goes out the door with them.
From what I have seen and heard, I do not actually think that people would be any the less appreciative of things like that because being proud of where you are, being proud of your surroundings and actually working to improve them is almost inherent in the human spirit, so there should be ways of doing that.
I know, for example, the wonderful work of the National Garden Scheme in opening 3,500-odd gardens each year in support of health charities. People go out to visit those gardens because they feel good about going there. They feel good about supporting charity, and people like to relax in tranquil surroundings and eat cake, as far as I can see.
These are very important things for the community as a whole. It strengthens the fabric of the community. So, aside from any international tourism issues, I think the optimism for the future that is embodied in gardens and garden festivals is critically important.
Q31 Brendan O'Hara: Following on from that, I know in Glasgow that the garden festival was a catalyst for huge change; for cultural, economic and social regeneration. It led into the City of Culture in 1990, and the city has really never looked back since. What do you think of the idea that the Government—and in this case maybe the Governments—as well as having a City of Culture should look at having a garden city?
Richard Barley: I think those are very interesting ideas. Singapore is perhaps the best example around the world of a major city that has totally embraced the idea of being green and being a city of gardens, or a garden in a city, and its reputation is now built on that.
From a Kew perspective, I guess the way that we have sought to spread that outreach and the re-greening of some communities and support for community projects is through the Grow Wild programme, which is across the whole of the UK. It is in support of local communities and local projects establishing wild flowers meadows, growing their own edible fungi and so forth. It has been funded through the National Heritage Lottery Fund, which now has a new name that I cannot recall. That has been immensely successful, in so far as it is also affecting people’s lives and influences the decisions they make about their own environments, and it has built a community connection. That has been a really helpful model of a way of supporting regeneration, of greening communities without necessarily the funding and infrastructure you need to do a massive festival in one place.
Sue Biggs: I would second that because I think now to do either a green city, a garden city or a festival, the investment and continuing that on would be quite hard to replicate. Like Kew, we launched a campaign several years ago of Greening Great Britain to try to get everybody to make our country greener. That fosters local pride. I think it is a very sad fact of life that of all the LEPs in this country only one specifically mentions horticulture that they are prepared to fund, and even then it is production.
It does not mean that you cannot make your case to them, but it does point out how low down the level it is in those local areas. I have no idea which Department you could then squeeze on that, but we could try to get a greening fund across the country. It is a little bit like Britain in Bloom, which we run, as you may know. There are 300,000 volunteers involved in Britain in Bloom. That started Keep Britain Tidy and was involved very much with Visit Britain in those days.
If we could somehow get funding—I know in these difficult times that is hard—local pride, engagement and social isolation and health issues would be helped by a green fund around the country. It does not have to be a fortune.
You would probably be amazed at the difference that is made to communities through our Britain in Bloom—and it is your neighbourhood. We give £500 to each community to pay for seed and basic tools and they transform some of the areas that we have: alleys in Liverpool, the high street in Southport. It is just an amazing transformation of communities. It transforms people’s lives and it is not a big amount of money.
I would be with you totally, Richard. I do not think one big is it. I think if we could make it cultural and endemic in the way we run our country so that we do have a green budget, it would be absolutely amazing.
Chair: I will just for the record thank the RHS for supporting the Folkestone Youth project in my constituency.
Q32 Julie Elliott: I want to continue on that theme of regeneration linked to garden tourism. I have a different view from Brendan on the garden festivals because we had one in Gateshead in the north-east and the one in Liverpool, where the legacy has not been what it was in Glasgow. It is very, very different, so I am not a big fan of charging in and creating something—I know it was creating something on former industrial land—and then disappearing.
I do think that the City of Culture stuff has legs in terms of gardening because I represent part of Sunderland, which bid for the City of Culture last year. We were not successful, but the ongoing permanent things that are happening around the legacy of that bid are enormous. I think there is something in a garden city type thing, not in coming in blank but in building on what is there and perhaps some sort of competition between cities and towns or even areas. It does not have to be a city or a town. It could be a sub-region or something. I do think there is something different in that where it is not just charging in and charging out.
Sue Biggs: You can join Britain in Bloom. You could become the national winner. You could have a garden at Chelsea.
Loyd Grossman: Before the Chairman forces us back into tourism, I think we have gone down an interesting route. We all agree—certainly on this side of the room—that parks and gardens have an extraordinary role to play, not just in physical regeneration but in spiritual regeneration and in building up a sense of citizenship and community.
One of the things that we are particularly aware of in Royal Parks, and indeed I think in all other parks, is how important it is to defend the public realm. We look around and everywhere property is being privatised and monetised. There are very few places where people can actually be citizens together on a level playing field in a place of beauty and tranquillity. We think parks in particular—gardens also—do have this tremendous role to play in developing citizenship, and that is all to do with local pride, a sense of responsibility and just a sense of being together. I think we would like to stress that before Damian forces us back to the tourism agenda.
Chair: I am happy with the diversion.
Q33 Julie Elliott: I think that is missing the point of what I am talking about because a City of Culture is very much about tourism. It is not just about permanence and the other things that happen. We in Sunderland have definitely benefited from that. We have people coming and looking at what we have in the city. We have a new theatre being built. So there is potential. It is not just about making your environment nicer, which is always positive. That is lovely, but that is not the focus I am interested in. I think, Anthony, you said 54% of people who visit here only stay in London.
Anthony Pickles: Yes.
Q34 Julie Elliott: I am interested in what it is we can do to attract people to the things around the country that we already have, which are there, which just need a little bit more of a push to make people know that they are there.
I travel 300 miles each week on the train. I meet lots of tourists going up to Edinburgh, but they often do not realise there is anything to visit in between London and Edinburgh. Not only does this train stop in York and Durham, which are beautiful, but they go past Durham cathedral and say, “Oh, what is that?” because nobody has told them.
It is what on the gardening side of it we can do to galvanise that. The garden city thing is just an idea, but there must be something that we can do to galvanise what is already there, which can spread it out. Everything you are talking about is wonderful and I love the parks in London. I spend half the week here, but a lot of people from where I live do not even visit London, never mind visit the parks and the Chelsea Flower Show, so what is it we can do, Anthony, do you think?
Anthony Pickles: The first point, obviously is knowledge and information about what is out there. In the role that I have, I am constantly struck by some of the heritage secrets. You talk about Sunderland. I do not know if George Washington’s house and gardens is in your constituency or just outside, but it is absolutely incredible for American visitors who we know, with the Mayflower project, are so interested in their heritage.
I think it was JFK who had his honeymoon at Chatsworth. You have Franklin D Roosevelt who had his honeymoon at the garden in Lincolnshire. These are things that are just not known about in this country let alone by our international visitors, so there is obviously that whole point about inspiration.
Some of that is the very, very high end, Instagram and all that kind of stuff. Some of it is just people knowing what is on their doorstep sometimes and making the noise themselves. The best advocate quite often is word of mouth.
The second point is that infrastructure point and, as I said earlier, it is the final mile. It is getting people from the railhead at Sunderland to the George Washington house, and how do you do that? I do not know if there is a bus going there.
Q35 Julie Elliott: This week on the train I was talking to a lady who had got public transport to Rothbury to visit Cragside Gardens and Cragside House. There is no footpath between Rothbury and Cragside House and it is a 10-minute walk. That is just an example of some of the issues outside of London.
Anthony Pickles: Sometimes it is obvious places as well. I go to Cumbria quite regularly. I am always struck by the fact that you can get a direct train or a bus out of Euston, and you are there in two and a half hours but there is absolutely no means of getting to the lake. I think Windermere is about four miles away from one of the stations. There is absolutely no bus link. Again, I am banging on about the sector deal, but that is one of the things that could perhaps be highlighted in there as something that has to be fixed.
It has to be done locally, but it has to have a link to the national core. Some of it is high-level marketing, having it on that tram in Shanghai but, frankly, the local fix has to be done by either a LEP or a council or a devolved Administration. Whatever it might be, the fix has to be a partnership fix. It is something that we just have not got right.
Philip Barnes: I could not agree more. There is something called the Great West Way that links up on a rail network journey. There are a number of places where you can get off and the accessibility is quite easy to some of these places.
Also, thinking about Scotland, there is Discover Scottish Gardens. A number of collaboratives and partnerships have come together, which I think have been really successful in promoting some of the stories that are so rich and will draw people there.
There are some good examples of where it does work but, I totally agree, if the LEPs are going to go anywhere, funding to try to link some of these places up to make it easy is critical.
Loyd Grossman: The whole ecology of tourism is very unhelpfully skewed towards London. We have seen recently, for example, Amsterdam telling tourists not to visit any more. It says, “Go somewhere else in the Netherlands. Don’t go to Amsterdam”.
The one thing we know is that tourist numbers are growing hugely and unsustainably over the next 25 to 30 years. We have to do a better job of getting them around the country, and gardens and parks can help to be the magnets to draw people around. It is a very disparate sector, so how you work together to do that is the interesting question I think.
Q36 Rebecca Pow: I just want to chip in and talk about the wider benefits of parks and gardens, and we do not want to stray too far. The big talk now is all about climate change, living net zero. What are your views about how this sector could help to deliver that with the benefits of all the plants, the trees, the taking in of carbon dioxide, the cleaner air, and how could you better harness that as part of the story for promoting your sector?
Sue Biggs: Increasingly, younger people are now worried about the environment for the future and climate change in particular. Speaking on behalf of the RHS, a lot of the work that we do now is promoting the message that people need to plant more plants. It is as simple as that, as they get out and discover how literally planting a tree can help in the fight against pollution, can help mitigate flood, all of the things that we know are problems that are helping to cause climate change. The engagement of children as young as primary school children is really, really important in this.
We had a meeting recently with Anne Milton about how we could try to get more about horticulture either on the curriculum or embedded at different levels of education, but it does seem that the curriculum is so full that we are losing generations of children who, although they are worried about climate change, do not understand anything about plants or where their food comes from.
Although two thirds of all schools in this country are teaching children about gardening, that is after hours or it is lunchtime stuff and, if we are serious about changing climate change, we do need to get young children through primary and secondary school then through apprenticeships and into our industry because otherwise we are losing. There is a real green skills crisis looming in this country.
Therefore, we need to take it all the way back to school level and start making gardening, gardens and parks something that children know about, care about and will treasure and know how to manage.
Q37 Rebecca Pow: Do you think if the sector was highlighted more within DCMS that would help?
Sue Biggs: Tremendously.
Q38 Rebecca Pow: I think Richard wanted to chip in.
Richard Barley: Absolutely. Can I add to what Sue has just said? I think one of the really important aspects is giving young people the tools to actually do something that makes a difference. Rather than talking about the value of plants, the value of gardens, the role in carbon sequestration and all of that, we should actually say, “Look, here are things you can do. For generations to come, there are things you can do that are positive and will have a benefit”. Otherwise, people are sitting there thinking, “Oh, God, it is all turning into a disaster,” without a way of changing that.
We talk about cultural cities and things like that. More and more people will expect or demand that there is more to be done in cities at every opportunity and will not be satisfied if it is not happening, so there is a duty and an expectation and obligation to be far, far better at including the green side of things in any development. If that does not happen, quite rightly, I think people will be asking some fairly pointed questions.
Loyd Grossman: We also have to lead in terms of our own practice in the way we behave. We have been for some time getting rid of all single-use plastics. We have been switching all our vehicles to electric vehicles. We put nothing into landfill. We recycle 40% of waste. Things like that are a very important part of the message that we need to send out that you can run a great organisation that entertains and inspires people that is still very environmentally responsible and inspirational.
Q39 Ian C. Lucas: I was just struck by what Philip was saying about the National Trust. We have Erddig, just outside Wrexham. It is a beautiful National Trust property. Does the National Trust partner with LEPs or other local partners to look at the economic development aspect of National Trust properties? I was struck by Anthony’s comment that there needs to be a local partnership. Just thinking locally, we have this sort of partnership, but I have not recognised the presence of the National Trust at any stage, and it feels like it should be around the table.
Philip Barnes: Yes. The actual detail I am not sure about. I would need to come back and find out exactly how much we are involved. I cannot speak for individual regions or areas. I know we do have involvement and we are quite keen to try to influence that in the future, but I am not entirely sure at this stage what level of involvement there is.
Q40 Ian C. Lucas: I understand that. Can I also say that the National Trust is doing some really good work with partnership projects in Wrexham town locally as well? I also think it would be helpful to have, for example, the Britain in Bloom organisation, which is a wonderful thing that we use locally, too. Again, I think the National Trust and maybe the Britain in Bloom project should work together more. Does that happen?
Philip Barnes: Certainly, from a National Trust perspective, we are keen to have more partnerships and collaboration. The new direction that the organisation is going in is all about that: coming together, bringing together. I think we will see more of that as we move forward from the Trust perspective.
Sue Biggs: The Britain in Bloom movement does work in some parts of the country together with the National Trust. You are absolutely right that the partnerships are coming together more and more.
In secondary schools we now have this programme called Green Plan It. That is where organisations like the National Trust, the British Association of Landscape Industries, and Kew have been involved at various points, act as mentors from the industry to help what are often disadvantaged schools to learn how to create a garden themselves as a model and then as an actual garden.
We might be asking you what you might be able to do for us, but I think we also have to do something as well. We are working more and more in collaboration through these different sorts of projects.
Q41 Ian C. Lucas: It would be really valuable for you to work more closely in collaboration. There is a lack of capacity in local areas to help regenerate town centres and so on, and it is important that local institutions, like Britain in Bloom and also the National Trust, are involved in town centre regeneration. That is something we have just done a report on about cultural input and the importance of that to local communities. If there could be more of that I would really welcome that.
Sue Biggs: Thank you.
Philip Barnes: I couldn’t agree more. I know that our new director general’s focus is on the urban areas and regeneration is part of the strategy, so yes.
Q42 Clive Efford: Thank you very much for allowing us to be here today. It is a real pleasure. Does anyone have any idea of what the overall contribution to the economy is of horticulture, not just tourism?
Sue Biggs: £44.2 billion.
Q43 Clive Efford: The horticultural industry?
Sue Biggs: Yes. We commissioned this work last year because nobody really knew. That was a bit embarrassing as we are all part of the industry. Anyway, we did finally commission it. It is bigger than aerospace in this country. It is bigger than agriculture and it is nearly 570,000 jobs. It is a really serious industry, but we have clearly failed miserably because nobody takes us seriously, really. There is the potential for that to grow and for those of us who did quite a lot of work on the report—Oxford Economics did the research—there is the potential for this industry to grow if we can invest in it, both as an industry but also as Government. Fantastic.
Q44 Clive Efford: Aside from Chelsea, is there a Hampton Court Flower Show?
Sue Biggs: Hampton Court Flower Show. Chatsworth Flower Show.
Q45 Clive Efford: Shrewsbury?
Sue Biggs: No. Cardiff, Malvern, and—who have I forgotten?—Tatton Park.
Q46 Clive Efford: Do you have any assessment of the overall impacts on those areas of the contribution of those shows?
Sue Biggs: We have the shows and we have four gardens open and a fifth in development, so that is round about 2.5 million people a year going between the shows and the gardens. When we look at the economic impact assessment for Wisley, with just the changes for Wisley that we are making, that is going to add another £1 billion to the local economy over the 10-year investment programme.
I was talking to someone just outside here before this started. They live in Knutsford and own several shops in Knutsford, and when Tatton Park is on they say, “It is such a real boom and the hotels are full. The pubs are full”. If you look at our gardens in Harrogate, in the middle of Essex, in the middle of Devon, the shows in Cardiff, Malvern, they are in rural areas generally and it really helps to make an impact because the shows generally tend to run for about five days. That is when the cafes, the restaurants, the bars, the hotels, the shops, all boom.
Q47 Clive Efford: Do you think there is enough there to conserve the heritage of our parks and open spaces? I am thinking of a place called the Winter Garden, which is the largest glass-enclosed area outside of Kew, which is attached to the manor house at Avery Hill College.
Sue Biggs: Oh, beautiful.
Q48 Clive Efford: But we are struggling. We have some money because the site has just been sold and we have managed to get a chunk of money from that. Even with that, because of the size, the scale and the historic nature of it, it is difficult to get the money together and it has to be sustainable going forward so any help you can give would be very welcome. But is there enough out there to conserve this kind of heritage?
Sue Biggs: I think the very easy, straightforward question is no, there is not. There are organisations like HLF—or the National Lottery Heritage Fund as it now is—that are tremendously helpful and many of us have received grants from them that have been helpful. Of course we would like more funding and I think, as I have probably said one time too many even, it is an industry that does need to be taken more seriously because the potential for growth is so good.
For me, and maybe it is just because I was in tourism for so long, I think we can all do a much better job if we work together generating more income for ourselves to then invest back into our businesses, whatever they may be, by getting more domestic and international visitors coming to our many varied gardens, from tiny, little gardens that you see in NGS right up to huge gardens like Wisley and Kew. There is so much that if we had the support to then market that—the industry can work out for itself what gardens are worth. We have over 200 partner gardens around the country, in all areas of the country. So Visit Britain, or whoever is going to then do it, can push out to our million members, knowledge about all these gardens. There just does not seem to be a belief in Government in the value of gardens, gardening and garden tourism.
Q49 Clive Efford: We are told in the evidence that we have been given that there are 22.5 million gardens up and down the country—I suppose that comes from your report—and there are 27 million people who would class themselves as gardeners, as in a hobby. Is that not a readymade open door to market yourself already without Government help, or do you need Government help?
Sue Biggs: Where we need the Government help is certainly internationally because there are very few organisations—as I say, because the industry is so much made up of small businesses, whether we are talking about the gardens, the parks, or the nurseries that breed and grow the plants. We are not a very integrated industry like car manufacturers. There are probably—I don’t know how many—five big organisations you can talk to and you have the lot. We have so many small businesses and a co-ordinated international campaign is not possible. Probably the gardens could get themselves promoted well enough domestically but not internationally, no.
Q50 Clive Efford: Where can you go next in terms of income generation? Mr Grossman, you are intending to raise 70% of your income?
Loyd Grossman: We do it, yes.
Q51 Clive Efford: You do that already?
Loyd Grossman: Yes.
Q52 Clive Efford: Where next? What more can you do to generate income to sustain your assets?
Loyd Grossman: We are in a different position because we do have such a huge number of visitors and we do have central London locations. It is using our income generation assets more efficiently, getting better deals, which we must do with our subcontractors, running our events in ways that make them more profitable to us. There will, of course, come a time when we reach the outer limits of how much money we can squeeze out of particular events and commercial activities, but that is not in the foreseeable future. It is doing what we do more efficiently and also finding different ways to engage the public, which then may help some income generation possibilities.
At the moment I am very happy with the income generation trajectory we are on and if we continue doing that we are pretty secure. The big difficulty, not just for us but for anything that runs as a heritage asset, is the fact that in general in this country for years, in spite of the fabulous work of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, there has been a significant underinvestment in heritage across the heritage sector. We are very pleased that we have such a huge tourism business, which is so reliant on heritage, but the asset base in general is running down.
Q53 Clive Efford: Is there a sustainability issue around the competing demand for increasing numbers of people—so there are more cars and more damage potential—and balancing that against making your future financially viable?
Loyd Grossman: In terms of issues like transport, at the moment 83% of all our visitors arrive by bicycle, public transport or foot. We encourage a decline in car use. That will continue. The sustainability issue—a lot of the issues are related to things like the sheer amount of rubbish that visitors generate. I noticed that in Hyde Park alone we collected 38 tonnes of rubbish, just on Easter weekend. I am particularly unhappy about those indestructible plastic sushi boxes that seem very popular. Those sort of issues are running down the infrastructure through sheer weight of numbers, and the enormous amount of trash that is being produced. Those are some of the problems that come with our success in attracting large numbers of visitors.
Philip Barnes: It has also been mentioned earlier on that we should be considering gardening for the whole year. We tend to think about those peak months that are now and run up until September, but we should be giving people a reason to visit during those off peak periods, as Sue was saying earlier on. In spring and autumn there is still a huge amount to see in gardens. We probably need to get better at marketing the seasonality. Gardens market themselves in the sense that they have things going on in each season. We probably need to be a bit better about that.
Where you have gardens such as the one I have the privilege of looking after, it is telling people what the situation is. We cannot take any more people during May and June and we need to—for want of a better word—try to help and educate people as to some of the conservation issues around sustainability in what are quite often very small and fragile gardens. Our formal garden is four and a half acres and with 1,000 people in there that needs to be carefully managed.
It is telling the story. Spreading the season across the year is an opportunity for us to manage that sustainability a bit better.
Richard Barley: Perhaps if I could just add to that, too, Kew runs a variety of events. I think we need to be careful in any garden particularly to ensure that the balance is struck because any mass group of people at any event will have an impact. A lot of gardens can deteriorate quite quickly if one is not very careful about striking the right balance. We try to do it to the best that we can, but I would not like anyone to think that the key to success for a garden is just to have more and more events that maybe have little relevance to the fact that it is a garden. That is a really key thing for us.
Thinking about the Winter Garden, any of those big conservatories inescapably are expensive to maintain and to look after properly. They are undoubtedly wonderful legacies for anywhere that has them, but with that comes quite a hefty bill to keep them in good shape. Even when they have been restored you cannot just sit back and think it is all fine. You have to keep looking after them. Historically in this country there has not been adequate investment in keeping things in good shape, so they deteriorate and then they have to be restored.
Q54 Clive Efford: Do your neighbours complain about large events?
Richard Barley: To be honest, occasionally we have a comment from our near neighbours that we deal with as best we can. Any event has some level of impact and the important thing is to maintain the communications with the local community so everyone knows what is going on and they can attend the events.
Sue Biggs: It does also come back to what we were talking about earlier, about public access. London is different because the congestion charge and emission charge is going to stop cars anyway, but most of the other gardens we are talking about are not on the end of a tube line or in walking distance. Public transport is important to be able to get to these gardens—if you are going and you need to change buses or whatever. At the moment there is nowhere you can get easily a bus out of London to Wisley. We are not exactly a million miles away looking down the A3. We have 1.1 million visitors there and the vast majority come by car because even though we are trying to persuade every bus company we know to run a service, they just will not do it. This linking up so that we have more public transport to gardens would be a real benefit for the environment and for the diversity of people who could come.
Q55 Clive Efford: The big events that are just using the space rather than being directly related to horticulture, do they generate interest and do you get spin-off benefits from holding these events?
Sue Biggs: We are opening next week a sculpture show with Henry Moore at Wisley, and that is something to bring the art crowd into a garden setting and see great sculptures, world-class sculptures, in a world-class garden. We hope, obviously, although it has cost us a lot to do that, that they will come back again. They would have never come to Wisley except for the sculpture, and we hope they will come back again and revisit and create more investment. Rich is right, with the compaction that you have with repeated crowds coming through on the grass, the gardens will not be so beautiful if you carry on doing that. We have to choose wisely and carefully. If there is any way that any of you could ever suggest of how we can get better transport links, I think that is one of the core problems we have for the real development through all the seasons of gardens.
Q56 Clive Efford: There is a lot of interest in issues around mental health, health and wellbeing. You mentioned tranquillity, and people enjoying open spaces and gardens. Do you, collectively all of you in your industry, make enough of that? Is there more that could be done?
Sue Biggs: With the garden at Chelsea that we have the Duchess involved in, that is an awful lot about mental health and children discovering very early on that they can play outdoors and play in nature, play in their back garden and other gardens, and really avoid those issues that so many of our young people now are suffering terribly from. We have done research with various of our scientists at Wisley into impact on mental health—we have a new science research building opening up next year in Wisley; about a £30 million investment we are making there. One of the big gardens coming there, a huge garden by Matt Keightley there, is about a lot of the research that we have done in living experiments about the impact of different colours, different scents, different touches, of how plants make people feel when they come in: therapeutically, mental health-wise. The industry does, but I certainly hope we do with all the areas in the gardens and the publicity we try to get for that very topic.
Richard Barley: Absolutely a key is involving young people in sites like this, in gardens generally. A children’s garden just opened at Kew, a little like the garden here, getting young people into the natural world and enjoying it. It is not always tranquil, I have to say, when they are there. It is anything but, but they are having fun, they are enjoying it, they are exploring and discovering things. That is a key thing for young people. We have the luxury across the length and breadth of the UK of having such extensive great gardens and parks that usually you can find a tranquil corner in some of that at some point in time if you are not under the Heathrow flight path. There are many opportunities for people to relax, to just unwind, in beautiful locations.
Whether we make enough of it or not, I don’t know. It is almost one of those things you do not want to talk too much about in case it undoes it.
Loyd Grossman: In this country our parks in particular have always done a very good job of stressing the physical health benefits and, indeed, it is often said that British parks will treat themselves as part of a public health service rather than just being places of beauty and contemplation. I think that is probably true. Certainly, in addition to the public physical health impact of what we do, there is now such an overwhelming body of evidence about the mental health benefits of parks that it is very much high up on all our agendas across the board.
Q57 Clive Efford: Last question from me. Do we give horticulture the recognition it deserves as a form of art?
Sue Biggs: You are in Chelsea. You are at the Chelsea Flower Show. I must confess it is one of my biggest frustrations that in the gardens, in particular when you see the garden designs, there is sheer artistry of how they are created and put together, trees and shrubs and flowering plants and sculpture together, to me that is part of our creative industry, that is art but, whether through Arts Council or any other area that recognises art, garden design is not recognised as art. I think that is plain wrong in my humble opinion.
Loyd Grossman: Given the fact that over modesty is one of the great British national traits, this may be a time to perhaps be a little bit voluble about saying that horticulture, garden design, and landscape design are some of the things we do best in the world. It might be nice to tell people about that.
Anthony Pickles: You will see the Yorkshire garden, which is a series of locks, and it just makes you think again about the natural beauty of our waterways, which I always think is a forgotten element of our heritage. It makes you look again and it is incredibly clever.
Philip Barnes: We should be promoting a career in horticulture in terms of arts at a very early level of career services promotions. It is not considered to be a creative artistic role necessarily or even a career path that could lead to something quite brilliant. We need to do more of that because just being here yesterday, every garden has an artist or a creator behind it that is brilliant. We have so many in this country. We have 251 gardens in the National Trust and I see so often brilliance on a small and large scale, and we should be making more of that.
Sue Biggs: Over the last two days I have had five different meetings with five different groups of Chinese officials, one way or another. They recognise the brilliance of British designers and they want to buy those skills. Leaving aside the social, the environmental, the beautiful and all the other reasons we have been talking about horticulture, where there is an export of the skills in this country nobody in the world has the range, the depth and the brilliance of our designers. We are renowned around the world for things like the fashion industry and for tech services; we are really for horticulture as well, but we only ever hear it at the Chelsea Show because the world of horticulture is here. It should be out there proudly. We should be promoting British horticulture and British design all around the world because it is amazing.
Q58 Jo Stevens: This leads quite well into what I wanted to ask you about. The core demographic dominant through the arts workforce is a perennial issue for us and DCMS, and similar concerns have been raised in evidence about the gardening workforce. There is some Policy Exchange research in 2017 that shows that gardeners and landscape gardeners were ranked as one of the least diverse occupations at 198 out of 202. I wanted to ask Richard and Philip in particular, through this lovely wall of flowers here, about what you think the talent pipeline for the UK gardens workforce looks like and what impact it is going to have on future garden tourism.
Richard Barley: I will jump in first there. I think that is a very interesting point and I am not surprised that the statistics bear out that point about lack of diversity among people working in the garden industry generally. The challenge and the job ahead of us is to promote with young people in those diverse communities the idea that a career in horticulture is a good and viable and valuable thing. We are a long, long way down that scale currently, as compared to other potential careers for people from diverse backgrounds. Often they may be people who have come from cultures where gardening is not seen as something to aspire to. It is what you might do in some places to grow some food for subsistence, and in some cases that is it.
This again just highlights the fact that there is a very big educative challenge in promoting the notion of the breadth of what horticulture can be as a career to those young people, just to get them thinking, get them involved a bit, and include them in things, with the hope that a proportion might them just pursue it a bit further up the path. It is a big challenge for the future in my view.
Already we know across the board we have a gap, we have a skills gap, in the industry. We are doing what we can currently, but a lot of horticultural colleges have disappeared over the last decade or so. All of these great gardens require people with excellent skills, with great knowledge, judgment and ability, and we have a dwindling number of people who have that cache of skills. There is a big issue and it is one of the things that needs a lot of focus, now and into the future.
Q59 Jo Stevens: Philip, before you answer, can I just ask you, Richard, what do you think is the one thing that could change what you have described?
Richard Barley: The one thing is going to be two things, I am afraid. One of them is that we need good ambassadors to communicate with diverse communities, people who those people can identify with and listen to and respect. We sometimes make the mistake of thinking that the great gardeners, the horticulturalists that we look up to, have the same status right across the length and breadth of the community. It is not always the case. We need people who can relate well to young people from diverse backgrounds and be role models, and to promote that as building a foundation from which we will move forward.
Then more widely in horticulture, I think we need to promote and invest more in horticulture as a career. Part of our challenge there is that the word “horticulture” to many people just conveys a very narrow band of activity, which might be growing lettuces. There is nothing wrong with lettuces, let me assure you, but it is a many-fold, varied career. It can be everything from ecological rehabilitation through to all manner of horticulture, garden design, all sorts of things. We say “horticulture” and instantly you can see people narrow the boundaries down to something that perhaps they understand. We have a big job of communicating what it is all about and what the value is for the future.
Q60 Jo Stevens: Your turn now, Philip.
Philip Barnes: It is a very interesting one. Just reflecting, the education starting at career services and promoting horticulture as a highly skilled career path to follow is an important thing.
What we have had in the National Trust is a lot of career changes that are recognised as being quite brilliant and make a career path worth exploring further. Certainly, we have a lot of people coming into horticulture in their middle ages and wanting to start a new career, which is encouraging, but we do need to start right at that educational level.
I think we also need to promote the broad spectrum that is horticulture; it comes in so many different forms. I am thinking here about living walls and buildings, indoor gardens and public green space and arts and contemporary art installations in gardens. It is not just that stereotype of going to a horticultural college, growing lettuces, it is so much more now and it is so much more exciting. We somehow need to get that across, both to career changers but also at a young age.
A lot of people want to be involved in something where they feel like they are giving something back to the community. Horticulture is a career that you can get into that benefits mental health and wellbeing, so you feel good about it as well. There is so much more we could be talking about rather than just a broad horticultural line.
Q61 Jo Stevens: Richard, if I am a horticulture graduate and I come to work at Kew, how much would I get paid?
Richard Barley: It depends what position you come into. There are different bands for different levels of experience and qualifications. You would probably be somewhere in the £20,000 to £25,000 area. If you had more experience and it was a slightly more senior supervisory role, it would be in the high £20,000 to mid £30,000 and you would go up from there, depending on what level of responsibilities you would have.
Horticulture is not a well-paid career and that is one of the hurdles we have to overcome, particularly when young people are being advised to go to the thing that is going to make them the richest. I would say, though, that there is a groundswell of feeling among young people that it is not all about the money and it is about the future of the planet. That is something that we, as people in the industry, should take very close note of and ensure that we are aligning ourselves and providing the opportunities for people to follow that concern and passion about the environment through a career such as horticulture.
Q62 Jo Stevens: Sue, do you measure the diversity of your membership? You have half a million members.
Sue Biggs: We do, although it is strange because a lot of people do not want to fill that question in, so we know it is not an accurate figure. We also know, for similar reasons that Richard already said, that our membership is below 5% diversity, if you mean ethnic diversity, because there are lots of different sorts of diversity. If we are talking specifically about ethnic diversity, then very much it is white middle class and it is one of the reasons why for our fifth garden we chose the location of Bridgewater because of all the different ethnically diverse communities, and diversity of financial backgrounds, to make the RHS more open and more accessible to far more people.
We are also trying to do it in our shows as well. It was only four or five years ago that we had Juliet who came and she did a fresh garden. She is of mixed race background. We had a gold medal winner, who created a Mexican garden. We have oriental garden designers now. We are trying very hard to make it very diverse here at the show. That comes back to Richard’s point about role models. When James Wong did a Malaysian garden, for example, then the Asian community could see that and say, “Well, if he can do that, I can do that”.
I know when we set up our Horticulture Matters campaign—six years ago now—that was from a comment that David Cameron made about the unemployed, “We will have them all sweep the streets or become gardeners”. I heard that in a taxi on the way to meet Alan Titchmarsh for the first time. He did us a favour actually because Horticulture Matters as a campaign was born out of that. I am sad to say our first thing was to try to get more women into horticulture. We never even got as far as ethnic diversity then, it was to get more women, and now, today, at Chelsea there are as many women designers here as there are men designers, which is an incredible change in the last eight years.
We appointed a diversity consultant last year and we are working really hard to try to create these role models now. Floella Benjamin has agreed to become—we announced it yesterday here—vice president of the RHS and she has said she will do a lot to help us on the diversity front.
Through our community outreach work, we go into an awful lot of ethnically diverse communities, but the problem is—and Richard has already referred to it—that the parents, the grandparents, the teachers do not think the career is the right one for their child. They want them to go and be an accountant or a dentist or a doctor. That is not where they want to go because gardening has not culturally been part of their background the way it is in the UK.
It is coming. It is coming slowly. We have doubled it, but it is still such low numbers that I will not even give you them because they are so low. It is going in the right direction. I think where we advertise now—we advertise on Hindi radio stations, we advertise in Woking town centre and are working with the council there to make everybody who lives in Woking feel welcome when they come to our garden at Wisley. We are doing the same at the other gardens, too. Twice a year we have free days when anybody can come in for free, so whatever situation they are in they can still come and see the amazing, transformative power of gardening and gardens.
Q63 Jo Stevens: I represent the most diverse constituency in Wales, Cardiff Central, so I am delighted you have the flower show in the constituency every year. Thank you for that.
I just wanted to finish with a last question about social impacts. We just published a report on social impacts in culture and sport and part of our report concentrated on the justice system. I notice you have a Gardening in Prisons programme. I was just interested to know about the main positive benefit that you have from that programme.
Sue Biggs: That is the Windlesham Trophy and there are a number of prisons that compete against that. The feedback from both the prisoners themselves and also those looking after the prisoners is the effect it has on their behaviour. Prisoners who have been violent, who have been taking drugs and having drugs smuggled in, once they get to grow plants—and I think it is to do with having hope for the future and tending and looking after something—that really does transform behaviour in the prisons.
As it happens as well, there is an economic benefit for them because most of them, if not all of them there, actually grow their own fruit and vegetables as well. It is also reducing costs in the prisons. It is the behaviour. We talked about regeneration of cities before; I think it is regeneration of those people who are going to come back into society again. They have gained a love that they never had before and a love for growing things, looking after things, and making something positive. Whether we are talking about for prisoners or for the health side of it towards mental health or people recovering from physical health problems, gardening is incredibly restorative. That is another huge benefit of it.
Q64 Jo Stevens: Great. Maybe that is a career path for people coming out of prison into horticulture in the future.
Sue Biggs: At Bridgewater, our fifth garden coming, there is a therapeutic garden in there and we are actively looking to recruit people, ex-prisoners, to come into that.
Q65 Chair: Thank you. That concludes our questions this afternoon. We are extremely grateful to all the witnesses for their time and to the Royal Horticultural Society for hosting us here at Chelsea.
Sue Biggs: Pleasure. I hope everyone can go around the show now.