What we present here is of necessity just a fragment from the cavernous archive of articles generated in 175 years of Horticulture Week and its forerunners. Nevertheless, we hope you enjoy the journey these pages represent through the development of the industry; a journey which includes the founding of long-standing horticultural businesses, the great age of plant hunting, game-changing innovations in machinery, kit and consumables, the interventions of science, the birth of garden centres, a revolution in grounds and landscape management – and more.
Haymarket Media Group’s own journey with Horticulture Week began in 1967, when the company, which is owned by the Heseltine family, acquired The Gardeners’ Chronicle, steering it with great success through nearly 50 years of change and challenge in the horticulture industry. Those changes and challenges form the subject of our opening article from Professor Geoff Dixon – who began his journey with us in 1966.
The world in which horticulture professionals operate today would be unrecognisable to the founders of The Gardeners’ Chronicle. But the driving heart of the industry remains just the same – the thirst for knowledge, the drive for technical innovation, the innate understanding of the benefit to society of the sector’s products and, underlying it all, an unceasing passion for plants.
From all of us at Horticulture Week, we wish you, our colleagues in the professional horticulture industry, every success in the years to come.
Kate Lowe, editor, Horticulture Week
