Monday sees the start of Apprenticeship Week, when the Government's National Apprenticeship Service hopes to get more employers involved in the Government-funded scheme. It particularly focuses on under-represented sectors - a key objective for the service this year.
Full marks to the Institute of Horticulture for swiftly taking up the government's apparent ranking of gardening as an unskilled activity in its plans to tackle long term unemployment by introducing compulsory work placements.
"To change the world, we first have to understand it," trumpets the UK Commission for Education & Skills (UKCES) in its introduction to Skills for Jobs:
Last week's meeting of the cross-industry green skills initiative heard the University of Reading's Martin Emmett highlight the critical shortage of production and technical staff facing UK horticulture.
Faced with the arrival of a prolonged economic downturn, most would agree that while garden retail businesses have consistently demonstrated considerable resilience in previous recessions, to do little more than rely on this fact would be unwise in the extreme.
The credit crunch is on everyone's lips at the moment - not least at the HTA's impressive catering conference in Bromsgrove last week (see p5). And it is from the lean catering industry that hortculture can learn how to cut its cloth to keep profitability up.
While some commentators are increasingly to be heard using the "R" word when discussing prospects for the UK economy, there are still very good reasons to believe that we will avoid a full blown recession - just. At the top of the list comes the fact that it is the financial services sector that is...
When the Government replaces its performance targets for local authorities next month with a new system of national indicators, green space managers will need to work harder than ever at translating the benefits of parks into the language of the policy makers' favourite themes.
That close to 100 schools and colleges across England have applied to offer a new diploma in environmental and land-based studies for 14- to 19-year-olds is good news for horticulture.
In a recent discussion of the impact of the summer floods on growers, one seasoned hand told HW's correspondent: "Climate change is making growing an erratic practice - and growers who for thousands for years have adapted to all nature can throw at them, are now having to use more initiative then ever."
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