Greenfingers will become one of the first charities to benefit from the new carrier bag tax, which comes into operation on 5 October.

All businesses with 200 employees or more will have to start charging 5p per carrier bag  – and donate the money to their nominated charity. 

The Squires garden centre group announced at Glee today that they would be donating all their bag tax revenues to Greenfingers, an unexpected windfall for the charity in its quest to raise £1 million over the next three years through its ‘million moments’ campaign, to fund the building of more gardens at UK children’s hospices.

Greenfingers chairman John Ashley said he hoped many more garden centres would follow Squires’ example. “We need tremendous support from the industry to fund these projects,” he said. “The cheapest of the 15 gardens in the pipeline is £50,000 so we're talking large sums. We are aiming to raise £300,000 this year alone and are well on track.”

Squires MD Dennis Espley said: “We had no hesitation in choosing Greenfingers as the beneficiary. It’s really easy for garden centres to do this, because the whole system is automatic, so doesn’t mean extra work.”