Some 60% of UK adults garden regularly, but less than a quarter see themselves as gardeners, says a new report. The main reason people garden, it found, is to stop their space looking neglected.
These findings are just some of the statistics highlighted in the new State of Gardening report, published by the RHS, which has mapped the UK’s gardens and the people who grow in them.
The report paints a picture of a popular activity that is already benefitting people and the planet – but shows that more needs to be done to boost peoples' confidence to care for their gardens, improve access to green spaces for all and to highlight the importance of gardens to policymakers in the fight against climate change and nature loss.
The RHS, working in collaboration with Gentian, used ultra-high resolution satellite imagery, AI and machine-learning algorithm technology to provide precise insights into cultivated green space across Britain. It was able to map key components, such as the number of trees, flower beds and ponds. It shows that gardens are a massive but overlooked ecological asset.
Researchers plotted 25.8 million gardens in Great Britain, amounting to 959,800 hectares or 4.6% of the total land area. It revealed that the provision of garden and green space varies across the UK, with an impressive 41% of London categorised as garden, compared to just 19% in Leeds, 25% in Edinburgh and 27% in Cardiff.
Some 20.6 million of the total number of gardens are domestic front and back gardens. The geospatial mapping work found that:
• The average domestic garden is 244m2 – the equivalent of nine tenths of a tennis court.
• More than a third of domestic gardens is lawn, with just over a quarter as trees and 11% as flower beds.
• 19 million trees can be found in Great Britain’s domestic gardens, with 50.5 million trees across all cultivated green space. Together, these trees form a vital green network that absorbs carbon, cools cities, supports wildlife, reduces flood risk and boosts wellbeing, making them an essential part of the UK’s natural infrastructure.
• 42% of domestic garden space is paved over (55% of front garden space and 36% of back garden space), reducing gardens' potential to cool, capture pollution, support biodiversity, carbon sequestration and storage, and restricting rainwater absorption by the soil and exacerbating flooding.
• Just 0.15% of domestic garden is artificial lawn - but this still accounts for 7.5 million square metres. Artificial grass across all cultivated green space stands at 18 million square metres - more than six times the size of the City of London.
A snapshot of gardeners in Britain today
Accompanying RHS polling revealed that well over half of all UK adults (34 million) garden regularly, but less than a quarter think of themselves as gardeners. Of those that said they hadn’t gardened in the last 12 months more than a third cited not having access to an indoor or outdoor space. The main reason for gardening was to keep the space from looking neglected, followed by wanting to create a pleasant indoor or outdoor space.
60% of UK children gardened at least once a month in 2024, and 58% said school is one of the places where they garden. But not every child has the same opportunity to get growing. There is a higher likelihood that children from a lower socioeconomic background have never gardened.
Across the UK, 2.5 million adults have gardened in their community in the last three years, with many more saying that they were interested in taking part and two fifths of community gardening groups reported an increase in volunteer numbers. Despite this, over half of community groups fear for their survival, with more than a quarter (30%) surviving on budgets below £500 per year and just 3% owning their own land.
“We need to recognize that gardening is a human right,” said Alistair Griffiths, the RHS director of science. “But 38% of people have lack of access and too many children from low income families miss out.”
Where do we go from here?
To maximise the benefits of cultivated green spaces and protect them for the future, the RHS is calling on policy makers to guarantee "Space to Grow” in all housing and urban planning, so that every household has access to a garden. It wants the developers of the 1.5 million homes needed in the UK to design gardens with water channelling, capture and storage facilities.
It also wants local councils to plant a diverse range of street trees, prioritising those that will respond best to climate change, and homeowners to choose permeable paving options to help mitigate the effects of flooding.
“Gardens are the most important touchstone to nature, fostering an active engagement in and understanding of plants and wildlife. That there isn’t equality in access to growing space in the UK reinforces the need to shore up garden provision in the 1.5million new homes promised by government this parliament. It also demonstrates the need to ring-fence space and increase support and funding for the community growing spaces that should be considered an infrastructural basic," said Clare Matterson, RHS director general.
"For too long, the reach, impact and potential of gardens has been largely overlooked. Understanding the who, what, where and why of gardening is a crucial step in the RHS, partners and local and national government helping to build more resilient and sustainable places.”