From Longman Dictionary of Contemporary Englishgreen shoots (of recovery)green shoots (of recovery)British English the first sign that a situation is improving, especially an economic situation → shoot
Examples from the Corpus
green shoots (of recovery)• The curtains looked like spring, but a spring that had happened somewhere else: all green shoots and rainfall and blossom.• Clematis so bristles with brittle green shoots in spring that planting then is an anxiety rather than a pleasure.• It can not just point smugly to the late-flowering green shoots of recovery and wait for economic summer to arrive.• If green shoots are now appearing, the media is entitled to claim some credit for watering them.• Using your thumb and index finger, remove soft, new green shoots to just above the set of leaves.• What Forest displayed at Elland Road were not green shoots of recovery but a field of talent in full bloom.• It was weeks before the bulbs in William and Jenny's bowls began to show green shoots.• To claim that a packed Oxford Street is an indication of the green shoots of recovery is surely rather premature. 