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OPINION / 12
IS RISK ON YOUR MENU?
At a time when risk is at the top of the agenda, retired landscape horticulturist, Terry O’Regan, reflects on the importance of risk identification and mitigation in the landscape sector
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hen financial advisors ask “What is your appetite for risk?” it's tempting to ask to see the menu first, most will hesitate before answering and few will reply ‘insatiable’, apart perhaps from Formula One racing drivers, steeplechase jockeys or rugby players, who might well argue that their real appetite is for exhilaration rather than risk. In terms of learning curves, Covid 19
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has been a very different rainbow; the pot at the other side glitters with vaccine rather than gold! This particular curve has created risk awareness more akin to a wartime experience, even if the risks may masquerade as pantomime – sometimes he really is behind you! The approach of a panting, staggering, red-faced jogger is viewed with the same trepidation as a charging trooper with extended rifle and bayonet. Someone coughing in your vicinity resonates like an exploding hand-grenade and sneezers are no longer
HORTICULTURECONNECTED / www.horticultureconnected.ie / Spring 2021
blessed. Street conversations are socially distanced dances reminiscent of priest supervised school hops of the early sixties. All creatures are born with risk recognition and avoidance skills; small birds feeding at bird-tables are constantly alert and all birds in the garden occasionally spontaneously fly up, responding to alarms beyond our human ken – avian ‘fire drill’?. Humans have also been into the risk-avoidance business for millennia. Unlike birds we can enjoy our meals oblivious of risk, or
