The Chelsea Flower Show is a stunning spectacle, but for too many young people the dream of owning a garden withers on the vine

But for many, especially the younger generations, it’s a frustrating reminder of what they’re missing out on, and their disconnection from the world of gardening has effects more wide-ranging than you might first think.

One can obviously appreciate the show for what it is, a high-spirited celebration of horticulture, design and the green-fingered, but as the coverage has ramped up I’ve found it hard to banish from my mind the findings of new research, conducted by my indoor smart gardening company Auk.

The survey, conducted with the London Student Network, found that a staggering 88% of young people do not feel confident they will ever own a home with a garden, and consequently, 75% believe that growing your own produce is now ‘a thing of the past’.

To be clear, it is not to say that young people aren’t gardening at all. Many discovered the joys of growing plants during the pandemic and some carried it on afterwards, primarily in balconies, window boxes and in rarer cases, gardens or allotments. But those solutions have limitations and can be inaccessible to many young people living in student or rented accommodation who don't have access.

In the survey we conducted, three-quarters of young people pointed to a lack of access to outdoor space like a garden or allotment as the thing that was stopping them from growing their own produce.

Furthermore those in rented accommodation who do have access to gardens, often find that they are disincentivised from using it. In many cases they simply aren’t allowed, restricted by the wishes of the landlord and other tenants.

Moreover, young people tend to move around more, meaning they’re disincentivised from putting down roots. Why invest in your space and start planting things in your garden, some of which can take years to reach their full potential, if you constantly face the risk of being forced to move.

One of the key incentives to encourage gardening is ownership. Growing things is a long, patient and deliberate process. It requires you to see things in terms of years not months, and to want to invest and put time into improving your space.

Young people on average move every two to three years, the same amount of time from planting it takes for rhubarb to produce a harvestable crop, and shorter than the amount of time it takes for a lemon tree to produce usable lemons. As an aside, this also partly explains the rise of smart gardens, you can grow your own produce in a way that allows you to take it with you when you move.

Which brings us to allotments. Around 100,000 people across the country are on the waiting list for one. The average wait time in the UK is four years, with that number rising to almost ten years in London where over 1 in 5 people don’t have access to a garden. For those with any kind of inclination to garden, nothing takes the wind out of the sails like a multi-year wait. That’s all before you take into account the government’s decision to allow the selling off of allotment land.

To recap: young people don’t have access to the space, or when they do they’re often unable to use it for gardening, and if they can use it for gardening, they’re unlikely to live there long enough to see their efforts bear fruit.

The effects of this lack are more widespread than you might think on a cursory examination. For starters, young people (whose mental health is experiencing an acute and measurable crisis) are not reaping the rewards of gardening, whose mental health benefits have been compared to CBT.

A study in the Journal of Environmental Psychology found that gardening for just two and a half hours a week was associated with improved mental wellbeing and life satisfaction. And it’s worth mentioning that half an hour of gardening has been found to burn around 200 calories.

Secondly, there’s the cost issue. Supermarket prices have risen by a staggering 37% over the past half decade. A basil plant costs generally a fraction more than a pack of basil. The former can last for years if treated right, the latter lasts a few days max. In fact, over half of store-bought herbs are often discarded due to spoilage.

But beyond that, there’s the less quantifiable but equally important issue of young people just generally losing their connection to the natural world. The research by Auk found a ‘herb-knowledge’ among young people, with over half unable to recognise a common herb like parsley and a third being unable to identify mint. We are less likely to cherish the world’s natural gifts, if we don’t interact with them, and don’t understand them.

The RHS Chelsea Flower Show is invaluable in its promotion of the values of horticulture and the ways in which it expands the public perception of what’s possible with a garden. But for so many even the basics are out of reach.

What we're seeing with younger people is a generation that values sustainability and fresh food but feels locked out of traditional home growing because gardens and outdoor space feel increasingly unattainable.

While there is no easy solution and the challenges are enormous, I believe we can absolutely be doing more on issues of access and education: Expanding access to community growing spaces and allotments; treating these spaces more as health infrastructure; bringing gardening back into school; and of course supporting wider adoption of portable and smart garden technology.

But a good place to start is with the flower show itself. While previous years have focused on some of the benefits of gardening like mindfulness and biodiversity, I would love to see more of a focus on how to get more people into actually doing it.

Didrik Dege Dimmen, CEO and Co-Founder of indoor smart garden company Auk (www.auk.com)