GARDEN centres are being urged to set up home delivery services after the coronavirus pandemic forced them to close their doors.
Rural Affairs and Natural Environment minister Mairi Gougeon has written to bosses of such businesses, urging them to consider a mail order service for selling plants and seeds.
While some garden centres are doing this, she said many others had shut up shop completely as a result of Covid-19.
Explaining why she had contacted garden centres, Gougeon said: “It is important for people’s mental health to have the ability to be out in their gardens and do work and support their local plant nurseries.
"A lot have closed, and as a government we’ve been encouraging non-essential businesses to close, but I wanted to write to garden centres to make it clear that even though we have these restrictions in place within our emergency regulations, it is still possible for them to sell on line, and to encourage them to do that where possible.”
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