A handful of concerned Tavistock residents have expressed their belief that plants on sale outside local Morrisons and Tesco stores are not being adequately cared for, rendering them unsellable.

Linda Downing and Sarah Bridger, both of whom are avid gardeners based in the town and its surrounding areas, have become increasingly concerned for the plants on sale outside of Tesco and Morrisons supermarkets in recent weeks, believing they are being neglected, saying that this has been noted by other customers too and is thus influencing people’s decision to purchase them.

Linda, who frequents both stores in Tavistock, said: ‘I’m really concerned our local stores are just letting plants die because they won’t give them water. The suppliers or nurseries who provide them with the plants must put so much effort into growing and caring them before passing them on, I worry that if the supermarkets don’t sell them that they are losing out too. It just seems like such a waste.’

Sarah, who also uses the Tesco store in Roborough, said: ‘These plants are more often than not looking really sick, especially ones near the bottom of the racks. Lots of people come out of the store and say ‘we wouldn’t buy those’ and this has been happening for weeks now.

‘Care of living things is so important, our planet is short of them and we need to look after what we have. Imagine if you bought plants and found they hadn’t been watered for a while - they’re hard to recover in this instance so you can easily lose them.’

The two ladies are mutual friends through a wider network in the local area who have also made similar observations.

Helen France, community champion for Morrisons in Tavistock, said: ‘Unfortunately we’ve had a lot of people off work with covid recently. I know one lady who regularly waters the plants has been off sick but she’s back now. We water them morning and evening every day but in the last week we’ve had such extreme temperatures and plants are placed in direct sunlight because we have nowhere else to put them but they’re getting back to normal now. We do have some plants that naturally go past their best but they will be reduced for sale.’

A spokesperson for Tesco said: ‘We have procedures in place for the regular watering of plants on sale at our Tavistock store, but as the plants are displayed outside they have been drying out more quickly than usual during the recent warm weather. Our store team have now quality checked all the plants on sale and have set up a hose to make watering them easier so that we can better maintain their condition.’