RHS commits funds to raise standing of gardeners and groundspeople
Many professional horticulturalists, groundpeople and workers from council parks departments have welcomed in principle the news that the RHS has made a commitment to provide £7.3m of funding for training and salary increases.
Pay levels in the professional gardening and landscaping industry remain relatively low. As part of their Horticulture Matters campaign which aims to close the ‘green skills gap’, the RHS has pledged funding over the next 10 years. This includes £3.2m to increase RHS horticultural apprentice and training positions and a further £4.1m investment in horticultural salaries by 2025. This is earmarked to fund salary increases of up to 10% effective from April 2015, which is in addition to the society's standard 2% pay increase for 2015.
Tony Arnold, chairman of the Professional Gardeners' Guild hopes that the move will encourage employers to follow the organisation’s example, as well as making a career in horticulture a more financially attractive option.
"Any salary increase will help make professional gardening more attractive and more training schemes will help as well. It's pointless taking on trainees without a relatively attractive salary at the end of it," he comments. "Gardeners should be on a comparable scale to tradesmen in the building industry so an assistant head gardener should be on the same as a carpenter, bricklayer or electrician, who earn £22,000 to £26,000 a year.”
As MD of Amberol, Patience Atkinson-Gregory works with professional gardeners and horticulturalists across the UK as well as community gardening volunteers. She welcomes the move as a step in the right direction.
“The people that we meet who create attractive displays using our self-watering containers are generally very talented and dedicated professionals,” she comments. “It is important to ensure that those who help change the landscape of Britain for the better are appropriately trained, recognised and rewarded so we are pleased to see the RHS raising the profile of this issue through their Horticulture Matters campaign.”
