In school Zayne Sinclair was taught that if he worked hard and applied himself he would have a comfortable life.

“We were told that we would at least be OK,” the 19-year-old Devonshire resident said. He has been running his own gardening business, Sinclair Seed Sowing, since high school.

“Sinclair’s Seed Sowing is doing pretty good,” he said.

But the escalating cost of living in Bermuda means life has not exactly worked out the way he thought it would. The lifestyle he and his classmates expected is not materialising.

“It’s disappointing,” he said. “Something like buying a house and buying quality groceries is not in our grasp because we need so much more money to access those things. We are having to work so much harder to make ends meet.”

Mr Sinclair said his generation is trying its best to find direction.

He said: “A lot of young people are moving away because they feel the grass is greener in other places, but I feel you would just be struggling in a different place. The cost of living is rising everywhere.”

He is well aware that people of all ages are struggling in the community. Many of his clients are people who wish to create vegetable gardens to try to mitigate their escalating grocery bills.

“The majority of the island is struggling right now,” he said. “We are seeing the middle class disappear. Vegetables and especially eggs have really gone up. A lot of the import fees have skyrocketed. The cost of education has gone up. The cost of living has gone up.”

He is concerned that the rising cost of groceries could lead to an increase in lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and heart disease, which is already high.

“People are having to sacrifice a lot of aspects of their life and having to sacrifice eating healthy,” he said. “A lot of the fatty, sugary foods are cheaper.”

Mr Sinclair is determined to use his business to make things better for Bermuda. He is doing more work on the consultancy side, advising others on how to create their own gardens at home or in the community, rather than doing it for them.

He said vegetable gardening is not only therapeutic, it saves money.

But he said today people often end up giving away a lot of what they grow, or wasting it.

“To really get a bang for their buck people need to maximise the value by doing something like preservation,” he said.

Mr Sinclair said knowing how to can, dry, pickle or freeze foods grown in the garden means you can extend the usefulness of what is grown.

While these activities were common in days gone by, they are largely forgotten by today’s generation. He would like to see community education programmes to help people to rediscover these lost kitchen arts.