The amazing pledge came after the Daily Express revealed £200million-worth of greenery may be chucked because Britain’s 2,000 garden centres and nurseries have had to shut their doors. Yesterday we contacted the Garden Centre Association and two national taxi organisations who said they would be happy to help each other out. Wayne Casey, of the National Taxi Association, said: “A lot of our members’ work has dried up and we are basically taking people shopping. Helping the garden centres sounds like a great idea.”

Wayne, from Carlisle, confessed he had green fingers himself.

The National Private Hire & Taxi Association also backed the plan.

Spokesperson Karen Barlow said: “A lot of business for our members has closed down and they are collecting food from shops or delivering items from places like B&Q.We are definitely interested in this. It is so heartbreaking for the garden centres, with all those beautiful plants going to waste.

“If we could help get them out to gardeners, it would be wonderful.”

Both associations were last night linking their drivers with the Garden Centre Association (GCA), which has 200 members. It is thought the plants could be dropped off at homes without breaking social distancing rules.

GCA chief Iain Wylie said: “They belong in Britain’s gardens, not on compost heaps. If we can get them to the nation’s gardeners it should be win-win for everyone.”

Daily Express columnist Alan Titchmarsh said the scheme could help lift the national mood. He added: “This is a great initiative. I hope it works.We need gardens and gardening more than ever.”

COMMENT BY IAIN WYLIE

Garden centres and the wider horticultural industry supply chain, particularly growers of ornamental plants, are facing a catastrophic decimation of the industry as we know it.

Spring is their busiest time of year with up to 70 percent of annual plant purchases being made in just three months.

Quite rightly, public health has to be the nation’s priority and many garden centres are closed completely, while a few are soldiering on supplying a few deliveries in their local area.

Big online retailers are geared up to picking “things” off racks in huge warehouses and despatching them in a fleet of trucks, but garden centres don’t work that way. A few operate online but most rely on their customers coming to them – and just do not have trucks and drivers needed to start a large delivery service.

As one garden centre owner told me: “We are used to 1,000 delivery vehicles, driven by our customers, turning up every day, picking the stock they need and then delivering to the final destination.

“We don’t have the capacity to do more than a few deliveries each week”.

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Stock levels of plants are now at their highest but they have nowhere to go.

Yet there is huge pent-up demand. This is the time of year when gardeners love to get out in the garden and coronavirus means they have never had more time to tend their borders.

Instead many centres and growers are faced with the possibility of throwing plants away which is both a financial and emotional disaster.

And in all probability, it will be too late when the lockdown and social distancing is all over to plant summer bedding plants.

Hopefully, there is an opportunity for taxi drivers, who have also seen their income slashed by the virus, to link-up with centres and help distribute plants to some of our customers.

It would mean two sectors helping each other to help themselves while cheering up the nation’s gardeners.

Iain Wylie is Chief of the Garden Centre Association

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