The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) is encouraging the nation's young people to pursue a career in gardening.
A survey conducted by the organisation found that almost 70 per cent of 18-year-olds think a career in horticulture is only for people who have failed academically.
Almost 50 per cent of people under the age of 25 said they consider the profession to be an unskilled one.
Despite this perceived image problem, plenty of people work with garden tools for a living, as the UK's gardening industry employs nearly 200,000 individuals and contributes an estimated £9 billion to the national economy.
It is also buoyant enough to be successfully weathering the economic downturn and the same cannot be said for other industries.
However, the RHS expressed concern that not enough people have the skills needed to fill the minimum requirement of 11,000 new jobs needed over the course of the next eight years.
Speaking at the Horticulture – A Career to be Proud of conference last week (April 18th), celebrity gardener Alan Titchmarsh claimed that more needs to be done to raise awareness of the career opportunities gardening can present.
This may be a particularly pressing issue with over one million under-25s out of work at the present time.
"Through studying horticulture you could end up organising some of the most creative, artistic events in the world or as a scientist working on drought solutions for horticulture," he commented.
Indeed, this is set to be very well demonstrated at the forthcoming Chelsea Flower Show, with some of the gardens already announced being a good indication of the creativity gardening can inspire in people.
For instance, some of the entries into the various competitions include several gardens that are inspired by works of literature.
Welcome to Yorkshire is designed by Tracey Foster and recreates the county's rugged landscape immortalised in the work of the Bronte sisters and Tomaz Bavdez's Humko Garden borrows the central metaphor for the human body found in The Soft Machine by William Burroughs.
