Why is the RHS so obsessed with diversity?

Chekhov had no illusions about horticulture (‘It’s a nice, healthy business to be in, but there are passions and wars raging there too’) but even he might have been bemused by the zealotry of our Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) commissars. Last September I enrolled on an RHS Level 2 Certificate in Practical Horticulture. I was hoping to improve my gardening skills and learn more about the propagation of plants to save me forking out a small fortune at garden centres.

Besides, I was tired of relying on my woefully inaccurate plant app to identify rogue forbs on my lawn. You only have to point your plant app at your family to realise the imperfections of the technology: my son is regularly identified as a Malus pumila (apple tree), and my daughter a Cucurbita pepo (field pumpkin); my wife gets off lightly as a Eustoma exaltatum (Texan bluebell).

At the end of our first session the instructor felt it necessary to make us aware that all of us were white

The course would also be my green and pleasant safe space from the divisive world of identity politics and culture wars. Or so I thought. What I hadn’t counted on was the ideology smothering the RHS like bindweed. The UK’s leading garden charity is mulching its very own grievance culture.

There were 15 students at my RHS- approved centre, an even spread of sexes, of all ages from different occupations. Semi-retired, mid-career changers and jobbing gardeners hoping to up their rates by bagging a professional qualification. Each of us paid £1,345 for a three-hour weekly course over nine months and there would be two practical exams in February and June, followed by a multiple choice theory test. This year, for some reason, they have dispensed with the rudiments of vegetable growing, which one disappointed student explained was why he had signed up in the first place.