Nick Knowles: Housebuilding plans are a chance to include ‘essential' gardens
In an at-times emotional speech at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, Knowles described the power of gardens to support people who had suffered trauma or grief, from the death of a child to veterans injured in Afghanistan.
He also said community gardens, public parks and allotments 'knit us together' and give people something in common at a time when everything was being driven apart in a polarised world.
The BBC's DIY SOS: The Big Build and its forerunner DIY SOS have transformed homes and gardens of people who have suffered loss or trauma or been affected by disability, turned derelict properties into suitable houses for homeless veterans and created facilities for communities and children.
Knowles, who has presented both shows, said with housebuilding high on the agenda, it was a chance to build new homes with solar panels, heat pumps and gardens to help the environment and people.
The Government has said it wants to build 1.5 million new homes as part of its plan for growth, and the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), which holds the Chelsea Flower Show every year at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, wants to see new homes built with garden spaces that benefit people and wildlife.
Describing the value of gardens, Knowles said: 'Gardens offer something that no amount of technology can replicate. They slow us down, they connect us to something ancient, something human.
'There's magic in watching something grow, in putting your hands in the earth and feeling, if only for a moment, that you're part of something bigger than yourself.'
'The simple act of tending to or sitting in the garden teaches patience, and teaches care.
'You can't rush a daffodil, you can't force a tree to grow quicker,' he said before joking that designers at the Chelsea Flower Show had been trying to get blooms to come to fruition in time for the event.
'There's great medical and scientific evidence, which, of course, the brilliant people at the RHS have championed for years that gardens are not just nice to have, they're essential for physical health, for our nation's mental wellbeing, for community spirit, for recovery from trauma, even for stopping loneliness.
'A garden doesn't just beautify a space, it heals it, and often the people in it,' he said.
'Whether you're growing a prize-winning rose, a handful of carrots, or even if you're fond of a weed that's growing in your garden, you're making the world better, greener, kinder, slower, in the best possible way,' he said.
'With house building being high in the public consciousness, it's a chance to think that new homes be built with solar on the roof to reduce electricity consumption, ground or air source pumps to reduce fuel consumption, maybe a garden to help the environment and stop us becoming 'neurovores', living on our nerves.'
While he acknowledged retrofitting green tech and putting in a garden could be expensive in tough times, it was easy to achieve and cost little when building a huge estate of new homes, he argued, and added construction firms were seeing it made homes more attractive to the buyer long term.
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