Gardeners should be brave and question garden centres about where they are sourcing their trees, shrubs and other plants in order to curb the import of pests and diseases, Britain’s chief plant officer has said.
Imported caterpillars, beetles and fungi, such as the one that devastated Britain’s ash trees after it arrived at a nursery from the Netherlands in 2012, pose a major threat to farming, biodiversity and native species.
Officials estimate that such pests and diseases cost the UK economy £4 billion a year.
Nicola Spence said that the authorities alone could not catch all threats at airports and ports. She wants the UK to emulate New Zealand, which has a plan for every one of its five million citizens to be a “biosecurity risk manager”.
The government is partnering with 30 groups including the National Trust and Royal Horticultural Society to raise awareness.
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Spence said that everyone had a role to play. “When I go to a garden centre I’m a bit of a nightmare, I look at every label. Have they got a [plant] passport? I look at what species are being grown, alarm bells might ring.
“So I’d ask the public to be aware of what they’re buying, [know] where has it has come from, and ask questions.”
She also asked people to “be observant” when out and about, particularly of anything unusual on trees, such as the distinctive oak processionary moth caterpillars, and report it via the online TreeAlert service.
The government also plans to monitor plants sold online via platforms including Amazon, eBay and Instagram to stop the import of pests and diseases.
About 500 plants a year are intercepted across all trading routes, including garden centres and online sellers, as a result of 80,000 annual physical checks by authorities. Online sales make up a growing proportion of plant imports, with many retailers with a physical presence taking to the digital sphere during Covid-19 restrictions.
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As part of a plant health and biosecurity strategy being launched on Monday, an internet trading unit at the Animal and Plant Health Agency will get more staff and tools to scour major selling platforms such as Alibaba and social media to spot high risk consignments.
“We love plants but we need to import plants because we don’t grow enough, so how do we do that safely? We’re investing more in our internet trading unit, to make sure that they’ve got the kind of the right investigation software capability, similar to that used by police forces,” said Spence.
She gave the example of the unit finding virus-laden ulluco, an Andean tuber, sold online by a network of allotment enthusiasts, which was traced back and sales were taken down. Regulation was then introduced to ban imports of the tuber from countries including Peru. The unit also monitors influencers on Instagram to see what they are suggesting to their followers, to identify new risks.
There are 1,200 pests and diseases on a government register of plant health risk, which is used to inform monitoring of imports via digital sales and bricks and mortar businesses. Plants imported from southeast Asia and China, North America and West Africa are seen as the greatest current risk.
Threats detected by officials include viruses that threaten the family of crops that includes tomatoes and white potatoes, plus a range of whitefly species that are a serious horticultural and agricultural pest. A high number of whitefly was found on poinsettias and cherry plants imported from Europe just before Christmas, leading authorities to act.
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The Woodland Trust said it supported greater monitoring of online sales, but it wanted to see a ban on imports of plants that pose very high risk threats, such as those known to carry the bacterium Xylella fastidiosa. The pathogen is not yet in the UK but is spreading in France and Italy, where it has killed olive trees, but it can infect many other plant species.
The biosecurity strategy, which was due in 2020, is also expected to show that a growing number of nurseries, retailers and other groups have been certified under a scheme to recognise organisations that are curbing the spread of plant disease. The RHS’s Harlow Carr garden in Yorkshire has become the first public garden to be certified as “plant healthy”.
