- What a wretched contrast to the start of the garden retail season in 2011 this season's opening has proved to be. This time last year, industry stalwarts such as Peter Seabrook were hailing the best ever spring for retail sales for 50 years.
- We report on yet more evidence this week that cuts to local authority green-space budgets risk undermining many years of highly-valued community involvement within the parks and tree-care sectors.
- For the past four years, our columnist Dr Ken Cockshull of Warwick University's crop centre has kept readers up to date with the latest findings from horticultural research published in scientific journals through his Research Matters column. He has covered a vast array of crops, targeting subjects of practical relevance to UK growers both now and in the future.
- Summing up perfectly the anger and frustration felt by landscapers and their suppliers across the hosepipe ban-hit regions this week, Palmstead Nurseries sales and marketing manager Nick Coslett spells out the situation thus: "Water companies have made a dogs's mess of the restrictions, saying 'yes' one minute to exemptions on turf and 'no' the next. We're right to be angry. We're the victims of 20 years of underinvestment".
- Our report this week into the budget settlements being agreed for parks and green-space services at councils from Leeds to London - the first of a series we plan to run in coming weeks - brings to the fore the unrelenting impact of the public-sector spending cuts on our sector.
- Over the past two to three years, primary care trusts have slowly begun to respond to calls for the well-documented contribution to public health made by the UK's parks to be recognised with desperately needed investment in their infrastructure.
- News this week of more progress made by industry bodies in winning concessions for drip-irrigation in hosepipe ban-hit regions - all seven regions have now agreed to the measure - is very welcome indeed.
- One of the most significant trends emerging slowly but surely from the ashes of the housing collapse has been the shift away from the development of high-density flats and towards homes with gardens.
- After the nightmare that the hosepipe bans of 2006 unleashed on parts of the garden sector, the news that drip-watering systems are to be exempted at three of the seven water companies that have announced similar bans this week, is very welcome indeed.
- When a requirement for householders to seek planning permission before paving over their front gardens was introduced, the news was warmly welcomed by many. Less warm was the reaction of yet more living in urban environments where it was clear that the legislation had arrived at least a decade too late. Take London, where two-thirds of front gardens had already been paved over.
- Congratulations to the winners of the Grower of the Year Awards 2012, announced at last week's evening of celebration of the outstanding achievements of so many businesses and individuals from the production horticulture community.
- Last week's information conference on the future of growing composts for gardeners at Stockbridge Technology Centre was designed to shed some much needed light on a subject that suffers from a lack of good-quality information.
- At last September's IoG Saltex exhibition a Horticulture Week panel debate on coping with today's tough maintenance budgets highlighted worrying examples of procurement practice, from frequent inclusion of long-obsolete machinery in tender documentation to out-of-date, heavily prescriptive contract specification squeezing out opportunities for contractors to bring their expertise to bear - and save money for cash-starved local authority clients in the process.
- A pledge by environment secretary Caroline Spelman to the delegation from the All-Party Parliamentary Gardening & Horticulture Group to look again at the seemingly discarded issue within Defra of applied research for the ornamentals sector is welcome news.
- Back in 2008 when the UK's Urban Canopy Initiative was launched to highlight the consequences of urban deforestation, co-founder Jeremy Barrell noted that while trees' importance in the urban environment was now accepted, what was missing was a coordinated approach to reversing widespread losses.
