The Independent says:-

Gardeners have turned horticulture into a £640m industry with a turnover that has soared by 40 per cent in the past decade, the National Union of Farmers say in a report.

Gardeners have turned horticulture into a £640m industry with a turnover that has soared by 40 per cent in the past decade, the National Union of Farmers say in a report.

The popularity of television gardening programmes, which have turned presenters such as Charlie Dimmock and Alan Titchmarsh into household names, is seen as the biggest factor behind the rapid expansion. Another is the relief from stress that gardening can offer as incomes rise but working hours becomes longer.

Bedding plants alone now generate a £142m turnover, driven by the demand for favourites, such as fuchsias, geraniums and patio plants, and for annuals, such as salvia and antirrhinums, or snap dragons. The rise in sales has accelerated as supermarkets have sold more house plants and as some wholesalers of seeds, hanging baskets and bedding plants have started to sell on the Internet.

The expanding trade, some of which is also directed at the export market, will be highlighted tomorrow on the opening day of a horticultural industry exhibition in Telford, Shropshire.

Ben Gill, president of the National Farmers' Union, will publish a report that points to horticulture as one of the few bright spots in an agricultural industry that is facing its worse crisis since the 1930s, due to the strong pound and BSE crisis.

However, he also will warn that the sector is vulnerable to the Government's proposed energy tax, the climate change levy, due to the bulk growing of plants in heated greenhouses.

Meanwhile, there were more gloomy predictions for the agricultural industry yesterday. Sean Rickard, an economist at the Cranfield School of Management, told BBC1's Country file that one in four farm workers, 100,000 people, could lose their livelihoods within 10 years as the industry became more streamlined.