6 facts about the CWGC’s global gardens

This week (30 April to 6 May) is National Gardening Week, which was launched by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) seven years ago to raise awareness of gardening and horticulture, and to encourage more people to get involved and learn about gardening. With gardeners and horticultural experts working in more than 150 countries and territories, the CWGC is one of the largest gardening organisations in the world. But did you know…?

• An area equivalent to almost 1,000 football pitches is finely maintained by the Commission’s gardening team of more than 850 men and women.
• The Commission has gardeners working in every continent on the planet, except Antarctica, and the choice of plants and turf varies in cemeteries around the world depending on the climate.
• 300,000 roses, predominantly red-flowering species, can be found in the Commission’s cemeteries across France, Belgium and the Netherlands, which if planted 1m apart would stretch from the CWGC’s Head Office in Maidenhead to the Thiepval Memorial on the Somme in France
• Thousands of varieties of plants are used across the Commission’s global landscape many very familiar to domestic gardeners all over the world.
• If lined up, the length of the flowering borders which are planted in front of the rows of headstones in France, Belgium and the Netherlands would stretch from Maidenhead to Cologne, Germany
• Some of the Commission's horticultural staff are third generation, their fathers and grandfathers having also cared for CWGC cemeteries, with some current horticultural staff having worked for the Commission for more than 50 years.