KATE
I am delighted to welcome Gemma Haigh to this episode of The Underground podcast. Gemma is the founder of The Plant Parlour, as well as being a designer and speaker. Good afternoon, Gemma.
PHIL
Hi there, Gemma.
GEMMA
Hi. Thank you so much for having me on your podcast.
KATE
You’re welcome. Lovely to see you. Let’s get straight into it. Give us a bit of background about yourself, please.
GEMMA
Oh gosh, so much to say. I’m a career changer, so I had a completely different background. I used to be a curatorial assistant in museums and heritage, where I mostly specialised in art.
Despite that very different background, there are actually a lot of similarities between heritage and horticulture. It makes sense when you think about organisations such as the National Trust, which cover both areas. The way horticulture works is not that dissimilar to heritage at all.
I do a bit of everything now I’m in horticulture. I’m a content creator, I do some design work, mostly interior landscaping, and I also do some speaking.
PHIL
What was it about houseplants in particular that really caught your imagination and made you think, actually, this is something much bigger than just a hobby?
GEMMA
It’s a really interesting story, because most people see that I do houseplants and think, ‘Why houseplants first?’ I always have to catch people and say, ‘Actually, I was an outdoor gardener before I was an indoor gardener.’
I think that puts a very different spin on things, because I started indoor gardening purely because I’d filled the outdoor space I had. I was living in a one-bedroom house and we had a very, very small suburban garden.
I’ve always loved plants. I grew up in a planty family and my uncle was a horticulturist, so I was surrounded by them from a really young age. As soon as I moved out in my twenties, and then moved into my late twenties, I was filling gardens with plants. I was being given leftover tomatoes, pelargoniums and fuchsias, and I was filling up the garden as much as I could.
I really started getting interested around the pandemic, probably in my late twenties, when I’d filled my garden and couldn’t fit anything else in. It was literally bursting at the seams.
KATE
I know that feeling.
GEMMA
Yes, and I wasn’t fulfilled. I really wasn’t. I thought, ‘I need more plants and I’ve got no space outdoors,’ so I started collecting houseplants.
KATE
Why wouldn’t you?
GEMMA
What I realised very quickly was that, as an outdoor gardener, you have a lot of things working in your favour. You have the weather, natural rain and natural sunlight. You also have pests that are managed by the ecosystem outdoors.
When I turned to indoor gardening, I had to learn very quickly that it was very different. I made a lot of mistakes, which I think is fair to say, but I love a challenge. I learned from them quite quickly and realised that, if you can control the environment and put things in place to help keep the plants alive, you can make it work. That might mean moving them closer to a window or giving them less water, because I was a serial over-waterer when I started.
The more I got into it, the more I thought, ‘I love how specialist this is.’ It is quite niche and you do have to really think about it. It kept me occupied, trying out new plants.
KATE
From starting with a hobby and simply wanting more plants, you went on to design a Houseplant Studio for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. How on earth did that opportunity come about, and what was it like?
GEMMA
Quite bluntly, probably because I’m completely mad. At least, that’s probably what a lot of people think.
Essentially, I just thought, ‘Why not?’ I’ve always been a ‘sky’s the limit’ kind of person. I’m pretty sure I have undiagnosed ADHD, so I have a lot of ideas. Sometimes I need to contain them a little bit, but I’ve also always been very, very creative.
I love storytelling, and one of the things I loved most about working in museums was putting on exhibitions. Part of my job was designing things, coming up with ideas and then working out how to create them.
KATE
To create it, yes.
GEMMA
Yes, and working out how to reach audiences with those ideas as well. It’s all well and good having a creative concept, but sometimes it’s about how that concept is received by people, making it accessible and easy to understand.
One of the things I loved most about my museum jobs was that ability to curate things and say, ‘Here you go. What do you think?’ Then people could have their own interpretation of the concept.
I came up with the idea just after the pandemic. My other half had been spending a lot of time playing a video game called The Last of Us, which you may have heard of.
KATE
Yes, it’s my son’s favourite.
GEMMA
I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be interesting if the apocalypse happened? What would happen in the UK if we had an apocalypse?’ That was really where it all started.
From that one seed of thought grew this huge, much larger idea. With my interest in houseplants, it then developed to include climate change, with that theme running through it.
I thought, ‘You know what? I’m just going to apply. I’m going to do it. Why not?’ I approached a sponsor, GrowTropicals, who sell houseplants. They thought I wasn’t mad, which was great. We applied, and the rest is history.
KATE
Fantastic. Was that the first year they had done the Houseplant Studios at Chelsea?
GEMMA
It was 2024, but they actually did them for the first time in 2022, I think. I visited that year, and it was the first time I had ever been to RHS Chelsea. I was fascinated by the idea.
I think that was when I first thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing to do something like this?’ It sat on the back burner in my mind. Then, when I had the idea, I thought, ‘Okay, yes, it’s time.’
KATE
The Houseplant Studios have become such a great draw for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. They have brought in a different audience as well, a younger, more vibrant crowd. Congratulations on doing that. It’s amazing.
Let’s talk a little about horticulture. It is famously an industry that many people enter because they have a passion for it. A lot of us, myself included, are career changers because it is something we want to do and something we love.
The problem is that it isn’t always well paid. Do you think the industry undervalues people’s expertise because there is an assumption that, if they are doing something they love, that somehow compensates for lower pay?
I get a bit cross when so many gardens are run by volunteers, perhaps older retired people who have more time and may not need the money. That can make it harder for other people to get work. What’s your take on that?
GEMMA
I totally agree. It is one of the many similarities I see between heritage and horticulture. People go into these lines of work and industries because they love them. Because of that, there is almost an expectation, which shouldn’t be there but is, that people will go above and beyond for their job. That often means putting in extra hours.
When I worked in heritage, I volunteered for years as a young person to get into the industry. I know that can be the same in horticulture for a lot of people.
Now that I do paid work as a social media creator, that is always a challenge as well. You have brands that make money, are big companies and have significant turnover, but are unwilling to pay creators. They come to you and say, ‘Could you do this gifted collaboration?’ or ask for these deliverables in return for a product.
I’ve had to become more business-minded about that. There will always be people who jump at the opportunities, say yes and take the gifted content. But if you view horticulture as your career, you should absolutely be paid for it. It isn’t unfair to ask to be paid, because the skill set you bring is unique.
As you said, Kate, so many of us have brought skills from other industries into horticulture. It is enriching. I’ve met so many amazing people, like both of you, who bring those skills in. I look at the way you tell stories and create projects that allow people to engage with horticulture in a new way, including this podcast.
I think it is only fair that people should expect to be paid for their work. I hope that answers your question.
PHIL
Do you think that is something peculiar or unique to horticulture, or is it part of a more general British reluctance to talk about money? Is that fair?
GEMMA
Yes, I think that is fair. In industries where people love what they do, there is often this drawback. People hold back a little and don’t want to ask for money.
Using content creation as an example, a lot of people I know who work on social media are scared to turn things down. They love it and want to do it. They might want the gifted items, but they don’t know how to have the conversation about money.
It comes down to being scared to ask for more because you don’t want to miss the opportunity, while also knowing you are giving a lot away for free. It is always a balancing act. The ability to have those difficult conversations comes with confidence, I think.
KATE
You also find that, if people are happy to do it for nothing or in return for a gift, it becomes much harder for the people who want to be paid. You are competing with someone else who is happy to do it for nothing.
GEMMA
Absolutely. I’ve spoken to so many people, particularly on the media side of the industry, who feel there are a lot of people willing to give a great deal for very little.
It is tricky because many of us are here for different reasons. For some of us, this is now our career and our career choice. For other people, it is additional income. They have a full-time job and do a speaking engagement or some social media work on the side.
That is a very different situation from those of us who are trying to make a career out of this. You are competing against people who are willing to create content, speak or travel for free, but they can afford to do that because they have a full-time job, perhaps with a big corporate organisation, paying them.
It is difficult to weigh that up as an individual. When this is your career, it can undermine the work we do and what we are paid for it.
KATE
I understand that. I’ve been in horticulture a little longer than you and came into it from the ground up. I still see the poor pay offered for head gardeners and general gardening roles.
I think I’m known for posting on LinkedIn and naming and shaming companies that offer a pittance while expecting so many skills. I still don’t think horticulture is seen as an important industry, and I think we need to change that.
We haven’t mentioned that you are on the committee of the Garden Media Guild, and you recently had a good discussion with quite a lot of people about this very topic. It is obviously close to your heart and to mine. I promise not to go on about it too much today, Phil, but it is such a pertinent issue.
I still don’t understand why gardening and horticulture aren’t seen as vital industries, especially when we think about food security. Knowing how to grow food is so important. So is knowing how to teach somebody else to grow plants, whether that is through social media or in another way. I think it will become increasingly important as we see what is happening to our climate.
GEMMA
I absolutely agree, and I think it is a very valid point. Phil, you also asked whether we see this in other industries. The honest answer is that you see it in industries where people do the work for the love of it.
It was the same in heritage. One reason I fell out of love with heritage was that organisations expected so much from people for free, despite their skill sets. I have an undergraduate degree and a master’s degree that I’m still paying off. I was never going to pay that off on a museum or art curator’s salary. The jobs that pay well in that industry are few and far between.
Horticulture and heritage have that in common. The pay structures are very similar. As a career changer moving into this industry, I sometimes see jobs advertised that ask for gardening qualifications. I think, ‘I haven’t even paid off my master’s in history of art, and I’m not using it directly anymore. I can’t think about spending more money on education when I don’t know whether it will earn me any more in this industry.’
What will it prove, other than that I have the knowledge I say I have and now have a piece of paper to prove it?
It is a really interesting argument. If you had asked me ten years ago, I would have said qualifications were very important and should help you earn more. That is how it is supposed to work, but we are not seeing that reality translated into industries where the earning potential simply does not fulfil it.
KATE
I’m going to put this out there. Is this issue more pertinent because you are a woman? What has your experience of being a woman in horticulture been?
GEMMA
Looking at heritage and horticulture, and thinking about industries where people work for passion, both have an awful lot of women working in them. There are no statistics behind what I’m saying, so I can’t substantiate it, but from what I have seen there may even be a majority of women in both.
What you also see in both industries is poor pay and people talking about poor pay as a problem. Does having more women in an industry correlate with that industry being lower paid?
Look at marketing and PR. We think about those functions within horticulture, but also in other industries. The top jobs in marketing and PR are not paid anything like the top jobs in engineering, for example.
Is the industry simply low paid, or is it low paid because of the employment dynamic and who works in it? I think it all plays a part, to be honest. Yes, there is the passion, but who the employees are and who works in an industry can also have a huge effect on take-home pay.
PHIL
I think it is to do with the value people place on it, isn’t it? Not just employers, but the people who enjoy those things. They have to place a value on that enjoyment.
If they spend more money, there is more money to go around and more opportunity to invest in paying staff better. I think it comes down to value, and people expecting things for nothing.
GEMMA
What is really interesting about horticulture is that I see a very clear divide in the industry. I’m a newcomer, having come from a different industry where the pay was, I think it is fair to say, poor across the board. There may be a few private galleries where people earn more, but generally heritage and art are lower paid.
When I came into horticulture, I saw two different areas. On one hand, there are people doing the practical work and media professionals like yourselves. On the other, there are garden centres. Some are huge corporate businesses and they are making a lot of money. You can look online at their turnover and see they are doing very well, which is great.
Horticulture is therefore an industry where income exists. The public value it because they spend money in garden centres and do their shopping at the weekend.
For some reason, that corporate side of horticulture does not seem to translate across to the other side. That includes gardeners, people employed by large public or private organisations to do gardening work, and media professionals. There aren’t enough journalism or magazine jobs to go around, and we are seeing a reduction in the number of roles being offered. Those roles are becoming more challenging to secure.
It is a very two-sided industry, almost two sides of the same coin. One side has a lot of income, which translates into jobs where people may not be paid brilliantly, but are probably not paid badly for what they do. The other side is the complete opposite.
I couldn’t tell you why that is, but it is something I have noticed as a newcomer. It is interesting.
KATE
That is a good point. Phil and I have interviewed some quite powerful women within the industry, but they are very much part of garden retail, garden centres or manufacturing. They are powerful and pretty well paid, wouldn’t you say, Phil?
PHIL
Yes.
KATE
There is scope to earn good money and hold a strong position. But, as you said, on a general level it is hard and the pay is poor.
When you look beyond your own experience, Gemma, do you see differences in the opportunities, expectations or career paths available to men and women within horticulture?
GEMMA
Yes, I think so. I have recently been in contact with Helen, who is a director at Perennial. At the Garden Media Guild, I’m the ED&I lead, so I specifically look at equality, diversity and inclusion.
We hosted a webinar in partnership with Perennial about women and women’s access to the industry. We heard common themes about problems within the industry that affect women specifically.
One of the things that came up repeatedly was care and caring responsibilities. That can affect both parents, obviously, but I think it is fair to say that it affects women more than men, generally speaking.
Access to childcare is a huge problem in this industry, as it is in any other. When we think specifically about women, it can affect the hours they work, their access to maternity provision, how often they work and whether they are part-time or full-time. All of that plays into the equation when you think about different roles.
It is also important to make clear what I mean when I talk about sex and gender. Gender relates to the things we perceive stereotypically, including gender norms. Sex relates to biological differences, male and female.
Women may have less access to some career paths because of those responsibilities, particularly care responsibilities. That is not unique to horticulture. It is an international problem. I think the statistic is that something like 75 per cent of all care work is done by women internationally, which is huge.
This is not an issue that exists independently within horticulture, but it affects women’s ability to work. I looked at figures from the Office for National Statistics the other day, and the employment rate is still lower for women in this country than for men in general.
We don’t have an industry-specific breakdown. But in industries I have worked in that are perhaps female-dominated, I think it is fair to say this probably plays into the equation even more. Women may not be able to take certain jobs because of childcare and other caring responsibilities.
KATE
Absolutely. From my own experience, I became pregnant while I was working as an acting head gardener at a large public school. I went on maternity leave and suddenly the role was advertised.
I was allowed to apply because I had been doing the role for two years as acting head gardener, but they changed the job description. An essential requirement became a spraying certificate or licence, which I didn’t have. The role had also changed to become much more physical and manual. I couldn’t even apply for my own job when I returned from maternity leave.
There are other issues too. A lot of women work as sole gardeners, so there may be no access to crèches or other childcare. It is hard work, and can be really hard work. If you are caring for children, or later caring for your parents, it can be exhausting.
I have certainly experienced inequality first-hand.
PHIL
To put the other side of that, gardening can sometimes appeal to women because they can work while the children are at school, pick them up at the end of the school day and work for themselves around those responsibilities. There is a flip side.
KATE
That is true. There is definitely freedom in it, and you can often choose your own hours.
GEMMA
I agree. I sometimes wonder, especially when we talk about female-dominated industries, whether that flexibility is part of the draw.
When I look at horticulture and heritage, I see a lot of part-time roles advertised. Those roles may be attractive to somebody with childcare or elderly-care responsibilities.
Unfortunately, that can also pigeonhole people into a career where their options become much narrower. I found that in heritage and I see it in horticulture too. You take a part-time role and it never becomes full-time because the money isn’t there. Then you want to return to full-time work and it becomes a problem because you can’t move up or move on from that role.
KATE
You recently held a webinar with Perennial about women in horticulture. There is much more discussion now about equality, women’s health and creating inclusive workplaces. Do you think we are generally making progress within horticulture, or is some of it lip service? Is there still a lot of work to do?
I should also point out that both chairs of the Garden Media Guild are women and there are quite a lot of women on the committee. There are powerful women there, but we still seem to have to keep working for it. How much further have we got to go?
GEMMA
I think that is a very valid question. Horticulture is one small part of something much larger. If you think about the international picture, especially around equality and women’s rights, I personally feel we are living through a very scary time.
There is a lot going on. I see a great deal of abuse towards women online, including verbal abuse and comments on social media. It is disconcerting.
I grew up in an era when women were being empowered. I grew up with the Spice Girls when I was about five, and I loved them. I’ve always been drawn to powerful women and we had those role models growing up.
Now, I sometimes feel we are going backwards. I’m going to say something political here, but we have Donald Trump as President of the United States. I saw something today where a senator in the US had stood up and said Trump was in the Epstein files thousands of times. When you see somebody with the power to lead a country who has done terrible things to girls and women, I feel scared for us.
It sets a precedent for other people to behave in that way, simply because he is setting an example for men, boys and impressionable people who may think that behaviour is acceptable, or adopt it because they see it happening.
When I think about horticulture as a small part of that equation, I think we are not there yet. We don’t live in the US, which is good, but there will always be criticism.
Because we work in what is probably quite a female-dominated area, I do see a lot of positives within horticulture.
KATE
It is interesting. I recently complained to a gardening magazine because it has an ‘Ask the Experts’ section where readers send in questions. All four experts are men of a certain age. All four of them.
Quite a lot of the people writing articles in that magazine are women, but for as long as I have been reading it, all four experts have been men. I wrote to the magazine and no one has replied.
It can sometimes feel as though women are not seen as the experts. We still haven’t had a female lead presenter on Gardeners’ World.
I see it on Instagram too. I am fairly new to being on Instagram regularly, only since January this year, and I have noticed that male influencers tend to have the largest followings within gardening.
A male influencer can wear tight shorts and it is funny. But if a female gardener wears a tight T-shirt and is of a certain age, she can be subjected to some of the most awful abuse online. I have seen it and was shocked.
I feel the inequality is still there. The experts on Instagram and Facebook tend to be men with higher followings. There are some women, but it is mainly men who have the really big audiences.
GEMMA
I absolutely agree with you, Kate, and I have noticed exactly the same thing, especially as someone working in the creator space.
I often see brand deals going to male influencers rather than female influencers. That is challenging because you think, yes, perhaps they are funny or have a big following, but women in that space cannot easily change what people think.
I believe online spaces, with Instagram as a good example, have become very gendered. I have an email address in my Instagram bio, although please don’t all start emailing me. Brands contact me with offers for collaborations, gifts and other things.
As a female content creator, the approaches I receive are for beauty, lifestyle and other areas that, quite frankly, I have no interest in. None at all. I don’t want your skincare products. I’m sorry, this may be controversial, but I don’t really use skincare products. I’m not going to buy your clothes. I have plenty. You marketed those to me in my twenties, I’ve got a wardrobe full and I’m not buying any more.
We see these gendered approaches from brands. The underlying message is, ‘You’re a female influencer, so you can’t be knowledgeable about that, but you can be good at staging how the plants look in your garden,’ or something similar.
I see a very gendered approach in the way brands distribute funds and decide whom to pay. It has been interesting to watch, especially because I’m doing a DIY landscaping series at the moment.
KATE
Which I’ve loved following.
GEMMA
Thank you. And I do the work myself.
I’ve had comments, mostly, I’m assuming, from men in the trades and probably men in dark corners of the internet. One of my favourites was something like, ‘She probably just did this for her little TikTok.’
I thought, ‘How patronising.’ He was essentially saying my partner had filmed me doing one small part so I could put it online, and that I hadn’t done the rest. It was horrible.
PHIL
I have a quick question to follow up on that and take you back to something you said earlier.
We spoke to Ross Pearson, who also does a lot on Instagram, about this a few weeks ago. You mentioned influencers, or creators, for whom content creation is not their main job. They earn money elsewhere and create content in their spare time.
That is different from someone like you, where this is your career and you are developing it as a career. Do you think there may also be a difference in the quality of the information those people provide?
GEMMA
Yes, I do. It is really interesting.
Take the Garden Media Guild and the awards we run every year as an example. Most of the people, and ‘most’ is an understatement, because it is pretty much everyone who wins those awards, have horticultural merit.
They share information that is helpful and educational. It is accurate, including horticulturally accurate. I have nothing to do with the judging, but I have seen this for myself year after year.
If you are pursuing a career in this industry, it is really important that you share correct information. Sharing content for entertainment and sharing content for information are two very different things.
This is a conversation I have with brands. I do a lot of brand collaborations, and when I build relationships with partners, I give them my rate. If they question it, I explain that they are paying for my expertise, my marketing skills, my understanding of audience engagement and my ability to follow a brief to a T, or create the brief for them.
A lot of the time, brands come to me and say, ‘We want this thing, but we have no idea what to do.’ I say, ‘Leave it to me.’ I go away, put something together and return with a plan. It might be an A4 document containing all the information. That is what they are getting from me, and that is the difference.
If you want entertainment, that is one thing. Yes, you may develop a viral following and be successful. But one thing people don’t always understand about virality and viral content on social media is that you can grow a following very quickly, but what does that following actually want to see? What are they investing in?
Are they investing in the product, or are they investing in you? Realistically, they need to invest in you, your expertise and your authority for that product recommendation to mean anything.
If you don’t have that connection, what is the point? The content may be entertaining and reach more people, but that does not necessarily translate into more product sales.
KATE
This is exactly what you have written about, Phil. You wrote a really interesting blog that says almost exactly the same thing. You should send it to Gemma.
It is very much about the fact that a big following does not necessarily mean someone will help you sell your product. Gemma has almost repeated your argument. Wouldn’t you agree?
PHIL
Absolutely. When brands look for influencers to promote them, choosing the wrong person can actually be quite damaging to the brand.
GEMMA
Exactly. I see it all the time. I see content produced by creators and think, ‘If I were the brand, I wouldn’t be happy with that.’
I missed out the middle part of my career earlier. When I left heritage and moved into horticulture, I spent a couple of years in marketing. One of the companies I worked for was a garden centre, so I have some marketing experience and understand both sides of the equation.
I understand the corporate side, its aims and what it is trying to achieve. I also understand the creator’s side.
A lot of creators want to make content, earn money and secure brand collaborations, but they do not always understand what is required from a corporate perspective. They may never have had a corporate job, or their corporate role may be so far removed from the product they are trying to sell that they do not understand what is needed.
KATE
Would you say, and this is a massive generalisation, that a lot of the marketing people responsible for social media and influencers are very young and perhaps do not understand the horticultural industry?
I have worked with quite a few marketing teams now. The majority of people who buy gardening products are women over 35. They may not be the people following the chosen influencer.
Brands often seem to choose very young people because they understand how social media works, but they do not understand how the garden industry works. I see it time and again. I see people failing, and it drives me mad.
GEMMA
For me, one of the biggest things in any content creation is relatability, and I think you have hit the nail on the head.
If your target audience, the people buying your products, is women over 35 or perhaps 35 to 45, what are you doing paying somebody who is 20 or 25 to represent you?
That is not a criticism of being that age. We have all been there. It is about making the connection between the person and the audience.
A lot of people I have met in horticultural marketing have experience of one field or the other. They understand marketing, or they understand horticulture. It is rare to find people who understand both, how they need to be brought together and how to get the best from that relationship.
PHIL
You mentioned at the beginning that you run The Plant Parlour, which is concerned with houseplants. Houseplants have been through an extraordinary period of popularity over the past few years. Where do you think our relationship with indoor plants is heading next?
GEMMA
That is a really good question.
With climate change being on everybody’s lips, and after one of the driest summers on record in the UK, I think we are looking at summers that will continue to become hotter and drier.
Our relationship with houseplants may change to the point that we stop seeing them purely as houseplants. I predicted this in 2024, so I’m putting that out there.
I think we will start seeing more of these plants surviving outdoors. As a grower, I have noticed it already. I started growing my caladium bulbs outdoors this year. If you don’t know caladiums, they are very colourful, leafy plants that grow from bulbs and are seasonal.
This year I put them outside in a terracotta pot with a semi-hydro substrate and left them. They are thriving. I have had the best caladiums I have ever grown.
They grow brilliantly in tropical climates, including Florida and parts of Asia such as Indonesia. They have also done really well in my garden. I have beautiful, vibrant pink leaves filling out the bowl.
As gardeners in the UK, we have a defined line between what we see as a houseplant and what we see as an outdoor plant. As the climate changes, I think we will start taking more of the plants we currently regard as indoor plants outside to see how they get on.
I have had a philodendron growing outside all summer as well. That relationship with houseplants is going to change. They are often much hardier than people think. They may not cope with temperatures below zero, but they can certainly survive the warmer months outside.
They can still create a beautiful display indoors, but they can also survive outside perfectly well. That is great for people like me who have far too many. As soon as summer arrives, I think, ‘I need to get some of these out of the house and into the garden.’
KATE
Brilliant. You clearly have a lot of passion and, as you have said, you like to be busy. Do you have more ambitions? Is there anything you particularly want to do next? Where do you see yourself in five years’ time?
GEMMA
I love challenging myself and doing new things.
People ask whether I’m going to do RHS Chelsea again. I think, ‘Well, yes, but I’ve already done it.’ If the right opportunity came along, perhaps, but sitting here now I don’t have an ambition to do the same thing again.
I would like to continue growing the business. Returning to Phil’s question about our relationship with houseplants, I see interior landscaping as a huge area of development as the climate changes.
We are going to think more about how we can green our world again, because we have built over so many green spaces, particularly in the UK. We are a small island.
That is an area of growth I’m really interested in contributing to. I have to do things I love, or I’m simply not passionate about them. One of the things I love most about plants is the ability to bring them back into our lives.
When I walk around London, and I don’t live in London, I sometimes cannot stand being there on a hot day surrounded by concrete. It kills me.
As our climate changes, I would really love to continue developing interior and exterior landscaping. I’m now learning more about exterior landscaping. One day, the men of Instagram will take me seriously and I’ll be bringing those skills to a garden near you. Watch this space.
KATE
Gemma, thank you so much for coming to talk to us today. I apologise for leaving your screen, but it has been really interesting and, I hate to say it, thought-provoking.
Good luck with all your ambitions. I look forward to following you on social media and seeing what you do next.
GEMMA
Thank you so much for having me, both of you.