PlantforLife shows benefits of gardening
Growing veg boosts people's diet and gets them exercising
The Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) is aiming to highlight the positive impact gardening can have on people's lives with its PlantforLife campaign.
As part of the initiative, the HTA will encourage families to see gardening as a simple and effective form of exercise and a good way to ensure their diet is full of fresh fruit and veg.
To support its efforts, the HTA will be running a Crop Swap throughout the spring, with the aim of showing people how easy it is to plant and maintain crops.
A competition will be held to find a community to pilot the scheme, with the winning neighbourhood being provided with the seeds, plants, advice and support to plant and grow fruit and vegetables to share.
Later in the year, the campaign will focus its attentions on colour, highlighting the different plant palettes that suit different personalities. This will be followed by the Scentsational scheme which encourages people to plant various scents due to their therapeutic benefits.
Jennifer Thwaites, HTA promotions manager, said: "The PlantforLife campaign continues to go from strength to strength with increasing support from the industry with almost 900 retailers now participating with PlantforLife promotional activity.
"Our plans for 2010 aim to inspire and encourage customers to have a go and make the most out of their gardens."
Recent findings from the HTA highlighted that interest in gardening will continue to grow in 2010, driven by the need to cut costs and consumers increasingly trying to use their resources and time carefully.
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