“There has, of course, always been a close alignment of interests between the RHS as the UK’s leading gardening charity and the HTA as the trade association of the garden industry” commented HTA Director General David Gwyther. “The meeting recognised the excellent work our two organisations have co-operated on in the past while recognising that there is more that we can do together to, for example, protect and promote horticultural science, build the profile of gardening and horticulture as a career choice and engage more consumers with the pleasures of gardening. The HTA looks forward to working with Sue Biggs and her team at the RHS to realise our shared ambition for the sector”.
Further discussions between the HTA and RHS will take place in the coming months to consider, amongst other things, the two organisations’ approaches to the peat debate and other environmental issues, joint promotional opportunities including Britain in Bloom, schools gardening and the Greening the UK campaign, and further engagement on technical and training matters.
Current HTA and RHS initiatives include co-sponsorship of the All Party Parliamentary Gardening & Horticulture Group and joint publication of the RHS/HTA Easy Guide series of consumer advisory leaflets. The two organisations launched a programme last year to enable HTA members to sell RHS Membership to garden centre customers.
