The Reader: Every Londoner can enjoy the wonderful benefits of gardening

THE RHS Chelsea Flower Show is on until Saturday and we would like to call on the non-gardeners of London to get outside and get involved — you don’t need acres of land or the knowledge of Monty Don, all you need is a pot and some seeds to reap incredible benefits.

Go on, plant one seed today, nurture it, watch it grow, feel connected to nature — there is nothing like gardening to make you feel great.

We teamed up with the NHS for the RHS Feel Good Garden to promote just that — the positive impact of gardening and plants on mental health. Personally, nothing makes me feel more calm or at one with the world than when I am gardening.

On top of making you feel good, gardens and plants are vital for our environment and can help mitigate some of the biggest challenges facing us today, such as soaking up pollution and helping prevent flash-flooding, as well as providing a much-needed home for our wildlife — all themes highlighted at the show this year.

At a time when the climate is changing, mental health problems are on the rise, obesity levels are increasing and we are losing connection with our planet, there has never been a more important time to get out and garden, and if you’ve never considered it, maybe now is the time.
Sue Biggs
Director-general, Royal Horticultural Society

EDITOR'S REPLY

Dear Sue

You’re right; there’s nothing like gardening to take us out of ourselves. Trying to pull up the taproot of a dandelion is a job that excludes worries of any other kind; it’s easy to see how gardening benefits mental health.

And as you know, London’s gardens are veritable havens of biodiversity, unlike quite a lot of agricultural land, which is bereft of hedgerows and inimical to wildlife.

The same goes for London’s lovely garden squares, even if most of us feel about them like the children in Oscar Wilde’s story, The Selfish Giant, pressing our faces against the railings.

However, you touch on a sore point when you call on non-garden owners to join in. We do our best with pot plants but it is just not the same. And the waiting list for allotments in many boroughs is prohibitive. The real divide in London is between the have-gardens and have-nots.

But the Chelsea Flower Show is a chance for everyone to get in touch with their inner gardener, even if only vicariously.

The show makes London a prettier, happier place. Thank you for it.

Melanie McDonagh, Senior Writer

Uber’s new ruling on drivers’ rights is not enough

Uber’s new scheme for sickness, bereavement or parental leave [“Uber drivers’ free insurance will be safety net for ‘lifes ups and downs’”, May 23] is not all the company would have you believe. It’s a smokescreen to protect a business model based on denying workers their basic rights.

By naming the scheme “Partner Protection”, Uber is once again wrongly classifying its drivers as self-employed, despite British courts repeatedly ruling that they have “worker” status. As such, the drivers have legal rights to holiday pay, rest breaks and the minimum wage.

Uber should stop trying to hide behind PR stunts to dodge its responsibilities. Instead, the company should drop its efforts to overturn rulings about drivers’ worker status, and it should do the right thing by its drivers and honour their legal employment rights in full.
Frances O’Grady
TUC General Secretary