Garden Centre

Wednesday, July 4, 2007

Off on your holidays …?

It is that time of year, I suppose, when gardeners across the UK leave their glowing plots and acres and travel abroad, returning to find that bindweed and ground elder have taken root, the person who was going to water hasn’t, and slugs have eaten the hostas. That’s why I go on holiday in November …

Anyway – when you’re off on your travels, you’re bound to take in a garden or two, aren’t you? The bulbfields of Holland, Versailles and the Parc Andre Citroen in Paris, the Bauhaus garden Dessau in Germany – further afield, Cape Town has its Garden Route tours and New Zealand has wine and garden visits … almost wherever you go, there’s something to be seen.

But be careful – look all you like, but check the rules before buying plants (or even worse, taking seeds or cuttings from other people’s plants, which I’m sure you’d never do, dear reader) to bring home. Within the EU, you can bring in almost anything apart from rhododendrons, azaleas, camellias, and viburnums, which are excluded under complex quarantine regulations owing to problems with disease. From America, a much wider range is prohibited, and from many countries there are plants that either shouldn’t be exported due to rareness or due to their invasive nature once they hit our shores. The simplest way to check is on the DEFRA website, to see what you can and can’t do.

And another point is that many airlines don’t allow cabin plants. Arriving at check-in with a rare oleander or tree fern only to find it has to travel in the hold (or not at all if you’ve tried to evade plant rules) can be a disaster, because for any plant not securely wrapped the low temperatures in unpressurised holds can be like the same number of hours in a winter storm.

Travelling by car makes bringing in larger sizes and quantities of plants much easier and trips to Holland and Belgium in particular are perfect opportunities to top up your bulb and perennial stocks, but watch out for customs – whole vehicles full of plants can sometimes make them think you’re in the horticulture business, and for that you are supposed to have a licence ….

Labels: garden holidays, garden tasks, importing plants, travel

The All Seasons Gardener at 7:56 AM

---