The UK’s love of horticulture has grown during the coronavirus pandemic, but avid gardeners are being warned of a Brexit shock, with rising prices, potential plant shortages and even the need for plant inspectors at nurseries.
Every year 55,000 trucks loaded with plants arrive in the UK from the Netherlands alone. Each individual pot or hessian root wrap bears an EU “plant passport”, which allows frictionless cross border trade.
But from 1 January, these passports will no longer be valid in Britain. Importers will need to complete their own checks to comply with new UK regulations to certify that each plant is disease- and pest-free, adding costs and delays to suppliers who will now have two layers of red tape to contend with – one for EU customers and one for British nurseries.
Andy Moreham, the sales and marketing manager at Joseph Rochford Gardens wholesale plant nursery in Hertfordshire, said the new regime would choke off some supplies from industrial suppliers in the Netherlands.
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