The removal of VAT exemption on products worth up to £18 posted from the Channel Isles to the mainland is hitting employment and the islands' economy. The increase in postal charges will also become a drag on the mail-order plant trade.
While the UK garden trade remains remarkably buoyant and optimistic, it is of concern that too many potential members of staff remain complacent and unaware of the fierce international competition that is building in every area.
Money is funny stuff, quite difficult to earn, even more difficult to hang on to and very easy to fritter away.
Our world has become a tiny place when it comes to sending messages.
While the Queen's diamond jubilee and the London Olympic Games are taking 2012's celebration limelight, there are other notable events to record. It will be 100 years since the death of Octavia Hill and Charles Dickens' bicentenary.
Over the past two years the credit crunch has had and continues to have a strong influence on horticultural businesses.
We are told nine out of 10 new jobs are taken by migrant labour and eastern European workers are earning as much as £150 a day pulling and bunching radish.
Elizabeth Banks, the new Royal Horticultural Society president, deserves our full support in her endeavours to put the "H" back into the RHS.
Petty-fogging rules and regulations drive me to distraction and the shows department of our Royal Horticultural Society is a past master at writing them.
April Fool's Day is an appropriate time to consider the Defra proposal to phase out peat in professional horticulture by 2030 and in the amateur market by 2020.
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