Interest in gardening is at its highest level for years

17:13 5th February 2010

More people are dedicating their time to gardening, a new survey has shown.

A survey conducted by the Horticultural Trades Association (HTA) has revealed that an increasing number of people are spending time gardening.

The results show that 67 per cent of people asked said that they planned to do more gardening in 2010, compared with a total of 60 per cent ten years earlier.

Furthermore, there has been a rise in the average time spent gardening during the main season, to 3.9 hours per week in 2009.

This brings the average back towards levels previously seen in 2001, when garden makeover programmes such as Ground Force were at their peak.

Meanwhile, the garden industry as a whole benefited from a six per cent increase in 'grow your own', gardening and green products in 2009.

HTA says that this increase is likely to be linked to the recession, with many people looking to save money and resources by producing homemade food.

The HTA is the trade association for the UK garden industry.