Those of us who work with plants get it. Gardeners, growers, farmers, ecologists, anyone who understands the natural world gets it. We don't need a report to tell us what a hedge does, or why a garden with a tree in it feels different from one without. We know soil and plants take up water, we see our gardens fill with wildlife. Call it nature, ecology, the green environment, horticulture, gardens, the name doesn't matter, we understand the benefits.

The older I get, though, the more I realise how many people don't get it. Not out of malice or stupidity, it simply isn't obvious to them, so when the money is being divided up, planting looks like decoration.

There's a saying that has stayed with me for many years along the lines of: only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, will we realise we cannot eat money.

It has been quoted so often it risks sounding trite, but basically it is saying that by the time we have lost everything it will be too late to get it back.

So, the challenge, it seems to me, is no longer persuading ourselves, it's translation. Somewhere along the line, accountants, economists, officials and ministers took control of society and so we now need to explain it in ways that they will understand.

The people who decide what gets funded are not, for the most part, gardeners and they are working to budget lines and business cases. That's as it should be, public money must be scrutinised.

This means that for them to get it, we must make the case in the language they use. Not "trees are good for us", but cubic metres of stormwater retained, euro of avoided damage, degrees of cooling, hospital days saved.

What the Climate Change Advisory Council found

The recent report from the Climate Change Advisory Council shows how far we still have to go. The council said Ireland's climate resilience planning and preparation does not match the scale or urgency of the risks we face. Professor Peter Thorne, who chairs its adaptation committee, said we are already living with the consequences of a changing climate, and that we are not prepared for either extreme. He means both of the extremes we saw this year, Storm Chandra and weeks of rain at one end, exceptional summer heat at the other. The council wants us to stop treating storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves as isolated emergencies and start preparing systematically.

We have, in other words, identified the risks, but we are not preparing for them. Are they getting it yet?

The detail is every bit as bad as the headline, 30 of our 54 major flood relief schemes are still at preliminary design stage, 8 years after being prioritised, and such schemes take an average of 11 years to complete.

The council went so far as to say the Government should be obliged to calculate the cost of inaction.

Planting is not a substitute for hard engineering, and it won't defend a town on its own but a green solution can be delivered in a single season and starts working the day it goes in. So, when we're told we are not prepared, it is worth asking what we could actually have in the ground before the next storm.

Planted ground absorbs and slows water in a way that tarmac and concrete never will, and satellite data from nearly 300 European cities shows that ground under tree cover can be up to 12°C cooler in summer than built-up streets. That is flood relief and heat protection from the same spend, one answer to both of the extremes the council says we're unprepared for.

Nor is any of this optional. Under the EU Nature Restoration Law, Ireland must ensure there is no net loss of urban green space or tree canopy cover by 2030 and show an increase after that. We have committed to this in law, with deadlines attached. The question is whether we fund it now or scramble to catch up later at greater cost with added fees and penalties.

Are they getting it yet?

The Horticulture Multiplier Effect

This is my attempt at the translation, developed through Beyond Gardens, and I call it the Horticulture Multiplier Effect: a single horticultural intervention delivers several returns, across several budgets at once. Take a row of street trees. The shade cools the street in a heatwave, the canopy and the soil beneath hold rainwater that would otherwise overwhelm drains, birds and pollinators get habitat and food, people walk more on a green street, which is good for their physical and mental health and for the local businesses. That is five returns from one spend but we count none of them, because each lands in a different department's accounts and no single department sees the whole return.

I'm not an economist or a civil servant, I'm a gardener. I've spent 30 years working with soil and plants but this is not just a gardener's intuition any more, it's measurable, and being measured. A well-known 1984 study by Roger Ulrich, published in Science, found that surgical patients whose window looked onto trees recovered faster and needed fewer painkillers than those facing a brick wall. A Toronto study found that ten more trees on a city block improved residents' sense of their own health about as much as a $10,000 rise in income.

And we now have Irish figures. Research from DCU and the RCSI found that, over time, the benefits of planting and maintaining urban trees in Dublin outweighed the costs, through better stormwater retention, less air pollution and the public health gains that follow. That study is one of those gathered in a review published this summer by Natural Capital Ireland and the Irish Green Building Council, which reached a conclusion which should be put in front of every department, nature is not a compliance obligation but a strategic asset or to put it more clearly, planting is infrastructure, and we should budget for it the way we budget for drainage and other essential services. Surely this is the translation which is needed.

The same researchers argue that trees should be treated as capital assets requiring ongoing investment, and that maintenance funding is an investment in natural capital rather than discretionary spending. Their modelling shows every €1 million cut from annual tree maintenance in Dublin means less canopy and two million cubic metres less stormwater retained.

That is a cost of inaction, calculated. Is the translation working, are we getting it yet?

Whose money this is

On October 6th the Government will present what it has called the tightest budget since before the pandemic. Most of the extra spending is already committed to an ageing population, pay deals and existing obligations.

This is my money and it is your money, and that must not be forgotten. It doesn't magically appear, it comes out of all our pay slips, every week. In a year like this, every euro has to work as hard as it possibly can, and I cannot see where a euro works harder than in the ground.

Maslow put clean air and fresh water at the base of his hierarchy of needs, the foundation everything else rests on. I suspect he assumed them as a given and never imagined we'd have to budget for them. We do now and planting is one of the cheapest ways to protect both.

Three things I'd ask of Budget 2027

None of which requires a large new spending line.

Create a shared green-infrastructure budget that health, housing and climate departments co-fund, so the returns are counted where they land rather than disappearing between departments.

Direct a share of the Infrastructure, Climate and Nature Fund to nature-based projects in towns and cities, and require new schools, hospitals and housing schemes to include planting from day one, so it can't be cut when costs rise.

Fund local authorities to measure what their planting delivers in terms of shade, run-off, usage, wellbeing. Irish researchers have begun building this evidence, the State should build on it, and those of us who work with plants should help, because this is exactly what we need to translate.

The problem, as I see it, is how we look at planting. Trees, hedgerows, parks and green space sit in the "nice to have" column, a line in a council parks budget, and usually the first thing cut when a project runs over.

The benefits land in other departments' budgets and because no single department sees nor measures the full return, nobody makes the case for the spend, because up to now, the non-gardeners who call the shots haven't understood that the natural tapestry is something upon which we all rely and its health is critical to our existence and wellbeing.

We're good at gardens in this country, we just treat them as a private pleasure rather than public infrastructure. Budgets are about choices, and in a tight year the smart choice is the one that pays back more than once. Plant the tree, and you've made five good decisions at once.

Perhaps now they might be at least beginning to get it.

Peter Dowdall is a horticulturist and broadcaster who writes and speaks about horticulture's role in health, biodiversity, climate resilience and better places. He is available for speaking and advisory work.