Adam Dunnett is the amenity sales director at Hillier focussing on tree sales across all key customer market sectors. Customers include idverde, New Forest District Council, and Whiting Landscape, and Hillier endeavours to provide the highest quality British grown trees, pursuing policies that have proved both commercially and environmentally beneficial.
He will be speaking on HortWeek's Horticulture Question Time panel.
Join us on September 10 in the Landscape Zone in the HortWeek seminar area at GroundsFest at 11am.
This essential event is sponsored by Bourne Amenity and Hillier Nurseries.
You’re on the Horticulture Question Time panel at GroundsFest this year – why should visitors come along to listen?
Because the other panellists are really interesting! It’s a great opportunity to hear what is exercising others in the amenity landscape sector. Many of the challenges your businesses are facing are what we are all facing and there will be solutions, we just need to work together to find the best solution. Discussions such as this one can act as that catalyst. It’s also an opportunity for those in the audience to raise a subject close to your heart and hear what others think about it.
How long have you worked at Hillier and what’s your role there?
I’ve worked at Hillier for seven years. My title is production and amenity director. The role includes overseeing all aspects of our amenity tree division where we are growing 400,000 trees on over 600 acres. We also have a division which grows over 1 million plants which are distributed to our 22 garden centres, and I oversee this side of our business. In both parts of the business I’m very fortunate to have many very skilled and experienced colleagues who I work alongside.
What is Hilliers USP, especially in the amenity sector?
In the amenity sector our USP are our British grown trees, and our wide range of trees, both in the number of species and cultivars we grow, but also in our size range, from 6cm girth to 100cm+ We are the one stop tree shop. Maybe our particular USP would be our semi-mature and super semi-mature trees. Many of these would have started life with us, up to 30 years ago, and have been budded in our fields – has to be the true definition of a British grown tree?
What would you say are some of the most pressing challenges facing the amenity sector currently?
There are a number. The most pressing is staff availability, particularly skilled staff who want to work in tree fields, they are a very rare commodity, and the thing above all others which prevents us growing as quickly as we might like. Government policy to turn to business to raise additional funds. NICs in particular is a massive additional cost, over £1m annually for Hillier and this will be the case for many businesses.
Climate change – we have seen the extremes of weather impacting our ability to grow trees. We’ve had the driest, wettest, seasons, the most storms and some of the coldest temperatures in Hampshire all in the last 4 years. Are we growing the right trees for these changing weather patterns?
Not enough investment in research and development. As a tree nursery we are increasingly dependent on picking up the scraps from the R&D in Holland. Losing AHDB is starting to have an impact.
Some market concerns – Governments move away from prioritising environmental issues is starting to show in reduced tree planting funding at local authority level, not a crisis, but a concern. Housing. With the change in government policy and the increase in housing quotas, we had anticipated a big rise in demand, we are yet to see that coming through, perhaps its timing, but it feels like there are other barriers preventing the growth.
Considering these, what are some of the things Hillier is focussing on currently?
Staff training – we have taken in house and have created our own Learning and Development department as well as our own apprenticeship programme. It’s made a real difference to the current team, but recruiting in to the team remains a massive challenge.
Staff recruitment – We take any opportunity we are given to get the message out to schools and colleges. We are going to be running a trial, working with The Colegrave Seabrook Foundation (I’m a Trustee) and the RHS to pull together a programme of work placements for college students, initially just working with Hillier, but if successful this would be rolled out across multiple businesses and horticultural sectors.
We are very focused on ensuring we are growing the trees we need to thrive in our changing climate. Developing a climate resilient tree range is a priority and something based on science not hearsay.
