The Green Cities grant will provide funding that allows the benefits plants and horticulture can offer to urban areas be promoted to policy makers, in order to further unlock support from Government to install more plants, trees and shrubs in our towns and cities.
Together, the trade associations will make a 20% contribution which will be 80% match-funded by the EU Consumer, Health, Agriculture and Food Executive Agency.
NFU horticulture adviser Amy Gray said: “This is fantastic news for UK horticulture. By securing this funding, we are now able to raise the profile of the benefits of green spaces in urban environments to new heights.
“Green cities are going to be an important part of our future, playing an important role in making UK urban environments more climatically resilient, productive, healthy and pleasant places to live.
“With a growing urban population, UK horticulture is ready to rise to the challenge and deliver fantastic quality, domestically grown, biosecure plants for the green cities of the future.”
HTA director of horticulture Raoul Curtis-Machin said: “We are thrilled to receive this grant, and the timing could not be better. At the HTA we were delighted to read the Government’s ambitions for more and better green infrastructure in the 25-year Environment Plan.
“It’s the right course of action for the world to take and we need to make sure that living plants are used more to make our towns and cities attractive, healthy and productive places to live.”
Plants and horticulture can make urban areas more resilient in many ways by helping to alleviate flash floods, cleaning the air and water, absorbing noise and moderating extreme warmth and cold.
The NFU and HTA will work with the Green Infrastructure Partnership and the Town Country Planning Association to deliver a series of stakeholder events and campaign activity over the next three years in this area.
The Green Cities grant is worth more than €2 million, split between seven different countries, to promote the environmental benefits of plants and horticulture in urban locations.