RESEARCH BY the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) reported in March 20211 shows front garden greenery has grown by an area 70 times the size of Hyde Park since 2015. This increase in plant cover is expected to bring far-ranging benefits for health and wellbeing, the environment and wildlife. It will also improve air quality, help conserve water from rainfall and keep our streets cooler in hot summer months.
More than one million more UK front gardens contain nothing but greenery and the number of front gardens containing no plants at all has halved. However, more than a third of front gardens contain less than a quarter plant cover, and 2.5 million have no plants at all. So there is still work to do to unlock the true potential of UK gardens and green spaces. The RHS has been promoting the importance of adding plants to paved front gardens since 2015, and believe the improvement has been helped by millions of people taking up gardening over lockdown.
However, a third of front gardens are still mainly paved over so, given the ease of incorporating a few plants, there is plenty of scope for improvement. The RHS would like us to fill our gardens and homes with plants, no matter how small the space, to feel better for it and give the environment a boost. They say even adding a single plant to an empty space has the power to uplift.
Even If you’ve gravelled or paved your front garden to make space for parking a car, it doesn’t mean that there’s no room for plants2. The RHS provides plenty of advice on greening front gardens – see their webpages at: www.rhs.org.uk/garden-inspiration/garden-types/front-gardens
- rhs.org.uk/science/articles/Green-front-gardens
- rhs.org.uk/garden-inspiration/plants-we-love/10-easy-plants-for-driveways
