Luke Corby and Will Gadd, Britain's landscape gardening contestants at next week's WorldSkills competition in Canada, seem an order of magnitude more focused than I was at their age, and I'm sure they will do us proud. The contest certainly sounds a gruellling one, and the two have been on a training and dietary regime for months in preparation for it, so perhaps it's not surprising that they're both blokes.

But one telling detail of last night's send-off reception for the UK team is that, while women increasingly outnumber men in the professions, the chaps seem to be leading in vocational skills. No surprise to see male contestants in Bricklaying and Network Support, but our representatives in Confectioner/Pastry Cook, regular Cooking, Floristry and Jewellery were all burly lads too.

How times have changed. The evening's "celebrity guest", TV chef James Martin recalled his father's horror when he announced at a young age his intention to become a chef rather than a farmer or a welder. Imagine Pa Martin's reaction had his boy opted for floristy.


Q: What do call a reception with no nibbles or alcoholic drinks?
A: A UK Skills reception! The first two-thirds thereof anyway. Nice one guys - those numerous similar-themed speeches just flew by!

The news that the Chinese are becoming addicted to virtual farming seems only a little less strange when seen in light of previous meetings of horticulture and video gaming.

Who could forget:

Gardening Mama (Nintendo DS) "Plant, water, fertilize, prune, eliminate pests and then harvest what you've grown!"


Cultivation (PC, Mac) "A game about a community of gardeners growing food for themselves in a shared space... there is no shooting, but there are plenty of angry looks."
I must admit I could make no sense of this game whatsoever.


Flower (Playstation) "Playing as the wind, the player guides and grows a swarm of pedals by interacting with other flowers and the surrounding environment."
Spreading flowers around via their petals (rather than, say, their seed) is odd enough. Spreading it via a swarm of pedals... the mind boggles.


Plant Tycoon (PC, Mac) "breed and cross breed plants until you find the 6 Magic Plants of Isola and solve the genetic puzzle"


and perhaps weirdest of all, Plants vs. Zombies (PC) "A mob of fun-loving zombies is about to invade your home, and your only defense is an arsenal of 49 zombie-zapping plants. Each zombie has its own special skills, so you'll need to think fast and plant faster to combat them all."


And for those who go outdoors and grow actual plants once in a while, why not give into geekiness and turn any unwanted radishes into Super Mario Mushrooms?

Rupert Murdoch's comments earlier this week that News International titles will in future charge users for online content will have struck a chord with park managers, who have faced a similar dilemma for far longer - how do you fund a resource that people are accustomed to using for free?

Perhaps they can learn lessons from the national museums. They cost rather more per visit to run than parks do, yet they have been relatively successful in bringing a diversity of funding - not just from government, but corporate support, internal revenue generation - since the attempt to charge for admission was abandoned in 2001.

The Natural History Museum, for example, has doubled visitor numbers since then, while successfully bringing in construction of the £78m Darwin Centre, which opens next month.

As we reported this week, parks will be under great pressure to wring every penny from funding sources in these difficult times, making it all the more imperative to make their case with what hard facts they can muster.


Red faces at Haymarket's charity pub quiz last night, when the "Horticulturally Weak" team were pipped for first place, having (appropriately) put down that ‘Tom Thumb' was a tomato, not a lettuce. However it turns out we're not the only ones to be confused...