Roots and All – Gardening Podcast

Mitch McCulloch is redefining how we grow and cook with plants. He’s is a former chef, turned seed hunter and gardener, who applies his culinary knowledge when choosing and cooking with the produce he grows. Not only does he select the most diverse and interesting varieties, he gets creative with how he serves up his produce. His new book The Seed Hunter is properly inspiring if you’re both a cook and grower and you want to get the absolute most out of your edible plants. 

About Mitch McCulloch

Author, seed hunter, and gardener with a passion for promoting and preserving rare heirloom food crops. A former chef from London, Mitch has turned his culinary expertise toward a quest to safeguard the rich, diverse flavours our world has to offer. Currently, he explores the globe in search of unique fruit, vegetable and flower seeds, documenting and preserving them to ensure that future generations can experience the delicious heritage and beauty of our past. Through his work, Mitch aims to champion and protect the biodiversity of our food system, one seed at a time.

Links

The Seed Hunter: Discover the World's Most Unusual Heirloom Plants by Mitch McCulloch

Mitch on Instagram: @mitch_grows

Other episodes if you liked this one:

If you liked this week's episode with Mitch McCulloch, you might also enjoy this one from the archives: 

287: Heirloom Vegetables - This episode my guest is former jewellery designer to the stars, turned social media veg grower, Lucy Hutchings. Along with music festival organiser, Kate Cotterill, Lucy set up SheGrowsVeg, an heirloom seed company which is bringing the most unusual veg, fruit, and edible flowers to veg patches and plates everywhere. 

188: Huw Richards on Veg Growing - This week’s guest is veg growing expert Huw Richards. Huw grows a vast range of plants in his garden in mid-West Wales and is always trialling and experimenting with new ways of growing. He has an enormously popular YouTube channel and has authored a number of books, the latest of which is ‘The Vegetable Grower’s Handbook’ which draws on his experience as very much a thoughtful and philosophical gardener.

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Andy Mitchell believes gardening has the power to be a uniquely beneficial arena for the addiction recovery journey. In this interview, we discover why he feels this is the case and why we have much more to learn about this particular aspect of horticulture.

Andy is Professional Addiction Recovery Coach and has conducted research into gardening as a tool to help people overcome addictions. Alongside having lived experience, Andy has extensive professional training within the field of Addiction.

About Andy Mitchell

Andy Mitchell is a Social and Therapeutic Horticulturalist (STH) and addiction recovery coach. His interest in how people in addiction recovery were using gardening through his work within the homeless and mental health sectors led him to do an MSc in STH within the field of Occupational therapy. His particular interest is how non-traditional recovery interventions, such as gardening, are helping people to help themselves through their recovery journeys.

Links

Andy Mitchell - www.myrecovery.me

Veterans’ Growth - if you're a veteran of the UK military or a family member/carer for a veteran and would like to speak to us about our courses or support services, please email hello@veteransgrowth.org

Making the hard work of recovery more attractive for those with substance use disorders -

PubMed (nih.gov)

Putting Down Roots | St Mungo’s

To view the video filmed at Veterans' Growth to see how gardening can help with the recovery journey click here.

Samaritans 116 123

NHS call 111, or 999 

Text the word SHOUT to 85258

Perennial helpline - 0800 0938543 

Veterans’ Growth hello@veteransgrowth.org 

Forces Helpline - 0800 7314880

Other episodes if you liked this one:

If you liked this week's episode with Andy Mitchell, you might also enjoy this one from the archives: 

A Therapist’s Garden - This week I’m chatting with New England-based horticultural therapist and master gardener, Erik Keller, who is also the author of the book A Therapist’s Garden: Using Plants to Revitalise Your Spirit.Over 20 years, Erik has worked with thousands of people of all ages and types, using horticulture and therapeutic techniques to help them deal with physical, emotional and mental challenges. Erik talks about using an outdoor space as a place for therapy and learning and about the downs and ups of bringing horticulture into peoples’ lives as a way to heal. 

Social & Therapeutic Horticulture - In this episode, I speak to Damien Newman of Thrive, a charity responsible for promoting and providing Social Therapeutic Horticulture throughout the UK. Thrive is also the leading provider of training for those entering the profession. The Thrive website states;“Social and therapeutic horticulture is the process of using plants and gardens to improve physical and mental health, as well as communication and thinking skills. It also uses the garden as a safe and secure place to develop someone’s ability to mix socially, make friends and learn practical skills that will help them to be more independent.” – www.thrive.org.uk

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If you’ve ever been even a little curious about the magic of trees, you won’t want to miss this conversation with the ultimate tree expert, Tony Kirkham. We’re diving into Tree: Exploring the Arboreal World—a seriously stunning collection of art, history, and culture, centred around the human-tree connection. 

This book documents the historical significance of trees throughout human history, society and culture. This really is the coffee table book to end all coffee table books for anyone with even so much as a passing interest in trees.

About Tree: Exploring the Arboreal World

This exquisite survey presents a breathtaking sequence of full-page images – from landscape paintings and botanical drawings to ancient frescos, vintage book illustrations and contemporary photographs – revealing the tree as a source of inspiration throughout history. Spanning continents and cultures, Tree reflects the diversity of its subject, depicting giant sequoias, cherry blossoms, palms, poplars, ginkgoes and other species found across Earth’s forest biomes, in a wide-ranging selection of visuals dating from Ancient Greece to the present day. More than 300 images include Roman stone mosaics, illustrated Norse myths, Edo-period woodblock prints and living tree installations, each lavishly reproduced. Curated by an international panel of botanists, naturalists, art historians and other experts, the images expand the definition of botanical art, together forming a vibrant, vital homage to the natural world.

About Tony Kirkham

Tony Kirkham is a renowned British arboriculturist and tree expert, best known for his lifelong dedication to the care, study, and preservation of trees. He served as the Head of Arboretum, Gardens, and Horticultural Services at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where he played a pivotal role in maintaining one of the world’s most diverse tree collections. Over his distinguished career, Kirkham became an authoritative figure in tree health, conservation, and education, helping to shape public understanding of trees’ importance to ecosystems and human culture.

He has participated in several international expeditions, collecting seeds and studying trees in countries such as China, Japan, and Chile, to enhance Kew's collections and support global conservation efforts.

In addition to his practical work, Tony Kirkham is a popular figure in the media and has authored several books, including Remarkable Trees and Essential Pruning Techniques. He has also been featured in television series like BBC’s The Trees That Made Britain, where he shared his extensive knowledge of how trees are woven into the fabric of human history and culture.

Throughout his career, he's received numerous accolades, including an MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) for services to arboriculture, in recognition of his contributions to tree preservation and education. His work continues to inspire tree enthusiasts and professionals alike, highlighting the deep connection between trees and humanity.

Links

Tree: Exploring the Arboreal World - Phaidon Authors, forward by Tony Kirkham

Other episodes if you liked this one:

If you liked this week's episode with Tony Kirkham, you might also enjoy this one from the archives: 

The Language of Trees - My guest this episode is artist and activist Katie Holten. Katie has just released a book called The Language of Trees, a collection of literary and scientific works by people like Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ursula le Guin, and Ross Gay. Using her Alphabet of Trees, the book is underpinned by the Katie’s art and asks us to examine our relationship with trees by pulling together wide-reaching strands and demonstrating in one place, just how connected we are to them.

Inspiration from Nature - This week, my guest is watercolour artist Lisa Gardner. Lisa is inspired by the natural world, the connection between breath and brushwork and rare wild plant species on the edge of extinction – seemingly far flung interests that come together in a beautifully natural and synergistic way in Lisa’s work.

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Want to know what the soil food web is, what inhabits the soil habitat, why soil health impacts on plant health and ultimately our health and what you can do to get the best out of your garden?  

Eddie Bailey is a geologist, organic no-dig gardener, and soil food web specialist who runs Rhizophyllia. Eddie is passionate about soil health and growing healthy plants that are good for you and good for the planet.

About Eddie Bailey

Eddie Bailey is a geologist, organic no-dig gardener, and soil food web specialist who runs soil health workshops through his company Rhizophyllia.

Links

www.rhyzophyllia.co.uk

Rhizophyllia workshops

Other episodes if you liked this one:

If you liked this week's episode with Eddie Bailey, you might also enjoy this one from the archives: 

Growing Real Food for Nutrition - In this episode, I’m talking to Dr Elizabeth Westaway and Matthew Adams, founders of Growing Real Food for Nutrition, or Grffn for short. Grffn’s vision is for a world where all food is grown for its nutritional qualities using regenerative practices, and made accessible to all. We talk about how the way food is grown can affect its nutritional value and how this can support environmentally sound growing practices.

Garden Amendments with Nigel Palmer - This week’s guest is Nigel Palmer, an experimental gardener who brings to bear his experience as an aerospace engineer to analyse, identify and organise the various components that make plants grow well. From his research, he’s compiled a recipe book of garden amendments, some easy to make and some involving more complex methods, but all of which you can recreate at home and use on your garden for better plant health and resilience.

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What feature does a wildlife supporting landscaper refuse to install in a garden? What is the most beneficial addition for wildlife? And how can hard landscaping be compatible with wildlife and nature?

This week my guest is former ecologist and founder of NatureScaping, Nick Townsend, who sheds light on building greener gardens. Nick uses his knowledge of ecology and the environment in his landscaping business in order to make better gardens and outdoor spaces for wildlife.

About Nick Townsend

Nick holds a masters in Environmental Management and is a former ecologist. After working with different organisations within the ecological, environmental sectors, and landscapers he is applying this knowledge in a unique way to make a genuine difference to our cherished native wildlife. He works closely with teams of trusted contractors during NatureScaping projects to bring each project to life.  

Links

www.nature-scaping.com

NatureScaping on Facebook

Other episodes if you liked this one:

If you liked this week's episode with Nick Townsend, you might also enjoy this one from the archives: 

Green at Heart - The episodes generating the most feedback recently have been those featuring other gardeners and business owners who are trying to run green businesses, so I called on former guest and supporter of the podcast, Dave Woolmer. Dave changed career from law to gardening and has been forging ahead creating a business based on sound principles and horticultural excellence.

Landscape Led - Alexandra Steed is a passionate landscape architect with a profound commitment to art, sustainability, and the transformative power of landscapes. Alexandra recently authored Portrait to Landscape and we talk about the possibility of and the necessity for shaping our landscapes so they may help to heal the earth.

Please support the podcast on Patreon

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode which features garden writer , broadcaster and returning guest Kate Bradbury. Kate has a new book out One Garden Against the World: In Search of Hope in a Changing Climate. It’s been a while since we last spoke about Kate’s garden and with the opportune timing around the release of the book, I thought it would be the ideal time to catch up on what’s changed for Kate, her garden and nature in general since 2019.

Links

One Garden Against the World: In Search of Hope in a Changing Climate by Kate Bradbury

Other episodes if you liked this one:

If you liked this week's episode with Kate Bradbury, you might also enjoy this one from the archives: 

Wildlife Gardening with Kate Bradbury - Following on from my episodes on native vs. non-native plants and gardening for wildlife, who better for me to interview than wildlife gardening guru Kate Bradbury?

We talk about the best ways to garden for wildlife, including what to put in to your wildlife garden and what to leave out. Kate champions some unusual species and our conversation touches upon aspects that may surprise even the most seasoned wildlife gardener.

The timing was perfect too, as Kate’s new book Wildlife Gardening for Everyone and Everything hit the shelves 5 days ago. Once she’s tempted you with snippets of wildlife gardening gold, you can go buy the book and find out everything you need to know about turning your own garden, whatever its size, into a haven for all creatures great and small.

The Biodiversity Gardener with Paul Sterry - My guest this week is wildlife author and photographer Paul Sterry. Paul has written many books on wildlife but his latest, The Biodiversity Gardener, pulls together his decades of knowledge and the result is a wildlife gardening manual with real-life examples taken from Paul’s Hampshire wildlife friendly space.

Please support the podcast on Patreon

Think you know what slugs eat? And what eats slugs? You might be surprised...This episode my guest is retired academic and lifelong gardener Jo Kirby. Jo has written The Good Slug Guide, the first-ever book on slugs and snails that explains why the usual controls often don`t work, what slugs and snails really get up to, what they really eat and – importantly – what eats them.

About the Good Slug Guide

The Good Slug Guide is full of simple, practical advice on how to encourage your new-found friends and transform your garden into a beautiful, leafy and above all slug-resilient haven. It really is that easy, and The Good Slug Guide is all about the why and how.

Most scientists are not gardeners, and most gardeners are not scientists, and few scientist-gardeners have a background in the ecology of decomposition alongside a deep interest in environmental toxicology. This combination of skills and knowledge has prepared Jo Kirby uniquely to write a gardening book for the modern age.

About Jo Kirby

Jo Kirby is a retired academic and lifelong gardener who is passionate about the environment. His family were commercial growers who used pesticides and other grim methods of pest control routinely. By the 1990s it was clear that chemical pest control was causing a decline in flora and fauna, polluting the planet and harming a whole range of species, not just the intended victims. At college, Jo became interested in environmental toxicology and went on to do post-doctoral research in the ecology of decomposing plant matter before returning to the family business. Jo has undertaken a 30-year quest to understand the ecological processes at work in gardens, and how they might be adapted and used to help create beautiful places in which pests could never become a major issue.

Links

The Good Slug Guide: How to tackle the slugs and snails in your garden and help save the planet by Jo Kirby

Other episodes if you liked this one:

If you liked this week's episode with Dave Jo Kirby, you might also enjoy this one from the archives: 

The Living Jigsaw - This week, I’m talking to journalist and author Val Bourne about her book The Living Jigsaw: the secret life in your garden. Val is a perfect example of a gardener who loves ornamental plants as much as she respects the wildlife in her garden. She walks the walk, produces writing based on her observations and has a palpable love for all the things that share her garden. We talk about how to achieve an outdoor space where there’s room for everything to flourish.

Making a Wildlife Garden - This week I’m speaking to gardener, TV presenter, author, government adviser and wildlife and environment advocate, Chris Baines. Chris designed the first ever wildlife garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in 1985, which was swiftly followed by his bestselling book ‘How to Make a Wildlife Garden’ so I thought it would be a perfect time to speak to Chris, given the continuing interest in wild gardens that we witnessed again at this year’s Chelsea.

Please support the podcast on Patreon

The episodes generating the most feedback recently have been those featuring other gardeners and business owners who are trying to run green businesses, so I called on former guest and supporter of the podcast, Dave Woolmer. Dave changed career from law to gardening and has been forging ahead creating a business based on sound principles and horticultural excellence.

Links

The British Association for Supported Employment 

Safe Opportunities are at safeopportunities.co.uk

Disability Confident Employment registration is at www.gov.uk/government/collections/disability-confident-campaign

And Green Heart is at facebook.com/greenhearthort 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

If you liked this week's episode with Dave Woolmer, you might also enjoy this one from the archives: 

Soil and Soul - This episode, my guest is Ella Malt. Ella runs an all female gardening team in Norfolk called Soul and Soul Norfolk Ltd. She is passionate about the intentional reimagining of existing spaces, and about renovation over replacement. Listen on to find out how Ella started her business and developed her team, whilst maintaining a focus on sustainability and nature.

Making Gardening Accessible - Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of Roots and All, where my guest is garden designer, TV personality and Trustee of the Gardening with Disabilities Trust Mark Lane. Mark talks about the various types of challenges people can face that might impede their activity in the garden, and how gardens and gardening can be adapted to enable people to carry on with these activities. He gives some excellent, practical advice for anyone who may need to adapt horticulture to suit their own needs or those of others.

Please support the podcast on Patreon

My guest this episode is gardener and activist Ed Allnutt. Ed is part of Plastics Rebellion and the @plasticscrisis Instagram account and campaigns to reduce the use of plastics, particularly in a gardening context. We talk about the most common offending items in the gardening world and discuss possible solutions to the current accepted ways of gardening so we can make changes that better the environment. 

Links

Plastics Crisis on instagram

Other episodes if you liked this one:

If you liked this week's episode with the Ed Allnutt, you might also enjoy this one from the archives: 

Waterwise Gardening - I’m talking water-wise gardening with Janet Manning. Janet undertook a three year project with the RHS and Cranfield University where she looked at strategies and techniques currently available to gardeners to help them both conserve and manage water in a way that reduces waste and protects the environment. We talk about why there’s a need to be water-wise in wet countries like the UK, what we can do to help and why gardens are an important part of the bigger environmental picture.

Running a Green Nursery - This week I’m speaking to Chris Williams, co-founder of Edibleculture, an inspirational nursery based in Faversham in Kent. From the day the nursery was established 5 years ago, ethically and ecologically sounds principles have been employed to create the brilliant business that exists today. We talk about how the nursery succeeds where so many others are failing to make changes; using peat-free compost, gardening organically without chemicals, eliminating single use plastics from their sales output and many other initiatives that make this nursery truly revolutionary.

Please support the podcast on Patreon

Welcome to the 300th episode! Join me as I take a look back at some of my favourite episodes, some of your favourites and take a bit of time to reflect on the sheer enormity and yeah, I’ll say it, the sheer excellence of the back catalogue of the podcast!

Find out;

The Top 3 episodes of all time as ranked by downloads

How I choose guests to be on the podcast

What guest had me in tears

The ones that got away…

The episode that was a load of shit

And listeners’ pick their favourites

Links

Episode 168: Cottage Gardens with Andrew Sankey

Episode 204: No Dig with Charles Dowding

Episode 188: Huw Richards on Veg Growing

Episode 23: Esiah Levy’s SeedsShare project

Episode 136: In Search of Mycotopia with Doug Bierend

Episode 44: Creating An Ark with Mary Reynolds

Episode 281: Shrouded in Light with Kevin Philip Williams and Michael Guidi

Episode 297: Soil and Soul with Ella Malt

Episode 294: Wood Meadows with Jake Rayson

Wildlife: Jeff Ollerton, Dave Goulson, Kate Bradbury, Terry Woods, Doug Tallamy, Richard Jones, Benjamin Vogt, Ian Bedford, Val Bourne, Paul Sterry, Hugh Warwick and Kate Risely

Q&A with Sarah Wilson

Episode 178: Feeding your Soil with Humanure

Episode 247: Botanical Education

Epsiode 66: Beth Chatto: A Life with Plants with Catherine Horwood

Please support the podcast on Patreon

What if growing food was never meant to be about just the end product? What are we missing from conventional agriculture and gardening?

Steven Martyn is an Ontario based teacher and practitioner of sacred agriculture and what he terms wildculturing. He focusses on the traditional living skills of growing food, building and healing and has a unique take on how we can live in the with the earth. Steven had me pondering how agriculture has been used to create culture historically, how we incorporate intentionality into horticulture, he even had me rethinking my morning beverage…

About Steven Martyn

Steven says “After passing from my body when I was 19 I saw what my life purpose was, and that I had fallen well short. I was given back my body to fulfill a very specific purpose in this life. Since that time forty some years ago I have spent my life spreading the green gospel and bringing people back to be healed by our Great Mother Earth. I spent many years teaching traditional plant use and many more de-programing colonial thinking, opening peoples minds and hearts to a sacred relationship with land, and specifically with the plant people. I practice and teach forms of sacred agriculture and “wildculturing” that our ancestors have practiced since the Paleocene, that generate such abundance the land easily feeds our family, school and friends.”

Steven has more than thirty years experience living co-creatively with the Earth, practicing traditional living skills of growing food, building and healing. Steven created Livingstone & Greenbloom in 1986, Toronto’s first green landscaping company.

In 1996, he created the Algonquin Tea Company, North America’s premiere bioregional tea company. He has given talks and run workshops internationally for more than twenty years and taught plant identification and wilderness skills at Algonquin college for 11 years, and at the Orphan Wisdom School for eight years. In 2014, Megan and Steven started the Sacred Gardener Earth Wisdom School. Steven released his first book The Story of the Madawaska Forest Garden in 2016, his second, Sacred Gardening in June 2017 and The Roundhouse in 2022.

Steven Martyn: M.A. (traditional plant use), B.F.A. honours, artist, farmer, wildcrafter, builder, teacher, writer, visionary.

Links

Steven's books on Amazon

Here are a couple of podcasts that Steven has been on:

MYTHIC MASCULINE : Agents of Cultural Regeneration

FOR THE WILD: Letting Land Lead

www.sacredgardener.ca 

On instagram

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Regenerative Design - This episode, my guest is Erik Ohlsen, a US based regenerative designer, permaculturist, landscape contractor, author, farmer, herbalist, storyteller and practitioner of Nordic folk traditions. His approach to regenerative landscaping is rooted in decades of practical experience and a humbleness that allows Erik to be led by what the land has to tell him.

The Human Garden - This episode is an interview with environmental landscape artist, TED Speaker and art21 Educator Tobacco Brown. Tobacco connects art and environmental justice and is a visual artist, digital storyteller, master gardener, social practitioner, cultural historian and intuitive environmental advocate. We talk about community green spaces, how humans connect with the land and why it’s so important that we do.

Please support the podcast on Patreon

Why have gardens been underused in care home settings in the past, even when they're designed to be used?

This episode, my guest is Debbie Carroll. Debbie is a Southampton based garden designer with experience in designing for care homes and other health settings for residents with dementia. Her work in these surroundings prompted her to question why these gardens were not more actively used even when they were designed to the latest design guidance. Along with her fellow designer Mark Rendell they researched what hindered engagement with the garden, in particular for people living with dementia.

About Debbie Carroll

Debbie Carroll is a Southampton based garden designer celebrating 20 years as a designer. She is passionate about gardens being well used and well-loved long after she has left. Her experience in designing for care homes and other health settings for residents with dementia prompted the question of why gardens were not more actively used even when designed to the latest design guidance.  Along with her fellow designer Mark Rendell they researched what hindered engagement with the garden, in particular for people living with dementia.

Step Change Design Ltd was formed 10 years ago to share the findings of this study and has since published their ‘Why don’t we go into the garden?’ series of books and tools. These support both the care sector towards more person-centred care and designers in working effectively alongside them. Their ultimate aim is to enable residents to continue to step outside as and when they choose and for gardens to be well-used and much loved long after the designer has left.

Links

• Summary of Step Change’s research
• Free resources – loads of articles on the Step Change download page
• Books & tools – ‘Why don’t we go into the garden?’ series of books and tools

Webinars:

• Webinar Debbie did for Salford Age UK. YouTube
• Panel webinar for the Dementia Housing group

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Sensory Gardens & Autism - Hello and welcome to this week’s episode, where in recognition of World Autism Acceptance Week, I’m speaking about Sensory Gardens, with a focus on design for people with autism. I have three guests; Camellia Taylor who’s designed The Natural Affinity Garden, which will be at the Chelsea Flower Show in May, after which time it will be relocated to Kent, to the charity Aspens where it will be used by residents of and visitors to the site. Next, I speak with Meraud Davis who’s overseeing the project at Aspens and finally, to Alexis Selby a foraging obsessed, nature-loving, all-round amazing person who’s giving us her take on using outdoor spaces with her son, Jared.

Making Gardening Accessible - Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of Roots and All, where my guest is garden designer, TV personality and Trustee of the Gardening with Disabilities Trust Mark Lane. Mark talks about the various types of challenges people can face that might impede their activity in the garden, and how gardens and gardening can be adapted to enable people to carry on with these activities. He gives some excellent, practical advice for anyone who may need to adapt horticulture to suit their own needs or those of others.

Please support the podcast on Patreon

This episode, my guest is Ella Malt. Ella runs an all female gardening team in Norfolk called Soul and Soul Norfolk Ltd. She is passionate about the intentional reimagining of existing spaces, and about renovation over replacement. Listen on to find out how Ella started her business and developed her team, whilst maintaining a focus on sustainability and nature.

About Ella Malt

Ella Malt runs an all female gardening team in Norfolk called Soul and Soul Norfolk Ltd. She is passionate about the intentional reimagining of existing spaces, renovation over replacement with a focus on sustainability and nature.

Links

www.soilandsoulnorfolk.co.uk

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Hiring a Gardener - Anyone with a modest or sizeable outdoor space will appreciate the time and effort that goes into maintaining it.  So the question professionals in the industry are often asked is, how do I get a good gardener?

In the second episode of this series, Sarah Wilson finds out some answers as she interviews Claire Vokins a friend and fellow Horticulturist, who runs her own garden care business, Elizabeth Clare Gardening Ltd, in South West London.  With a no-nonsense approach, Claire blows the lid off this topic and reveals a wealth of knowledge and practical advice.

Learn about the benefits and pitfalls of hiring a gardener, the many variables to consider and the most important factors when deciding on your choice, especially the ever grey area of how much you can expect to pay on an hourly rate.  Adversely, pick up some helpful pointers on what to do if hiring a regular gardener is out of your budget.

So whether it’s a ‘jungle cut’ or a more detailed maintenance and care plan you have in mind for your outdoor space, there is bound to be something that will grab your attention in this episode.

The Organic Nursery - This episode, my guest is Sam Frings who founded The Organic Plant Nursery. Sam explains in his own words how he got started and how things have been along the way. It’s not easy being a pioneer, but listen on to find out how Sam and his family have battled against the odds to do it right.

Please support the podcast on Patreon

This episode, my guest is Erik Ohlsen, a US based regenerative designer, permaculturist, landscape contractor, author, farmer, herbalist, storyteller and practitioner of Nordic folk traditions. His approach to regenerative landscaping is rooted in decades of practical experience and a humbleness that allows Erik to be led by what the land has to tell him. 

Links

www.erikohlsen.com

The Regenerative Landscaper: Design and Build Landscapes That Repair the Environment by Erik Ohlsen

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Ecological Gardens with Sid Hill - This week’s guest is eco gardener, landscape designer, permaculturist, horticultural thinker and garden experimenter, Sid Hill.Sid is concerned with building gardens that can sustain people and wildlife and he’s talking to me today about his particular brand of gardening, what we can do differently to improve our gardens and the whole discipline of horticulture in the UK.

Ecologically Integrated Gardens - My guest this week is Shawn Maestretti of Studio Petrichor, a design studio working out of California. Shawn’s personal mission is to reconnect with the natural world, tread lightly on the land, nurture biodiversity, protect water, and bring people together. We speak about how Studio Petrichor designs with these values in mind and the systems and techniques that are used to achieve these goals. I as we wend our way through eco-gardening.

Please support the podcast on Patreon

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode where my guest is freelance photographer Mark Bolton. Mark photographs gardens and interiors for editorial and commercial clients and after purchasing a house in Devon, he decided to create his own picture perfect garden. He chose the cottage style of gardening to fit the bill, so listen on to find out how he created his perfect space and tips for how to create your own picturesque paradise.  

Links

A New Cottage Garden: A practical guide to creating a picture-perfect cottage garden by Mark Bolton

About Mark Bolton

Mark Bolton (@markboltonphoto) is a freelance photographer who photographs gardens and interiors for editorial and commercial clients throughout the UK and  Europe. He lives in Devon.

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Cottage Gardens - This episode features garden designer, grower, speaker and writer Andrew Sankey. Andrew specialises in English cottage gardens and has meticulously researched the subject for decades, becoming an expert on this style of gardening. He’s recently released a book called The English Cottage Garden and in the interview, we talk about what defines a cottage garden, both in the past and now, the plants and features most commonly found in one and tips if you’re looking to create your own.  Wild Gardens with Jo McKerr - This week’s episode features garden designer and horticulturist Jo McKerr, who runs Pratensis Gardens. Jo is particularly interested in designed spaces where soil health, biodiversity and wildlife are encouraged but which still look good to the human eye. I started with a list of questions for Jo but the interview became more of a fireside chat, so pull up a chair and join Jo and I as we wend our way through eco-gardening.

Please support the podcast on Patreon.

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode where I have a returning guest, Jake Rayson. We’re talking about wood meadows, or rather we’re talking around the periphery of wood meadows as a concept. We’re talking about the use of land, gardens, humans and wildlife and generally getting a bit ranty about the absolute state of things. I realise that’s not by much in the way of introduction, but the conversation twists and turns and the best thing to do is just take a listen…

Links

When culture supports biodiversity: The case of the wooded meadow by Kull, Kukk & Lotman 2003 Three Hagges Wood Meadow, designed by Linden Hawthorne & managed by Plantlife Tending The Wild by Kat Anderson Readings on Land Ownership reading circle by Antonia Malchik How Buildings Learn, TV series & book by Stuart Brand The Real World of Technology lectures & book by Ursula Franklin The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber & David Wengrow Responsive Web Design by Ethan Marcotte Less Is More by Jason Hickel Meadows by George Peterken Is fly-tipping good for biodiversity? by John Little

Other episodes if you liked this one:

No Mow May - This episode, my guest is Mark Schofield, Plantlife’s Road Verge Advisor for the UK. Mark has a huge amount of experience when it comes to green space conservation and is currently involved in a number of projects across the country to manage road verges better for wildlife involving biomass harvesting trials and the use of AI in surveys. He’s also one of Plantlife’s representatives for the #NoMowMay campaign, and in this interview, he talks about how we can maintain both private and public green spaces more sympathetically for wildflowers and the wildlife they support.


Meadows with Keith Datchler - Join me for an interview with conservationist and wild meadows expert Keith Datchler. We talk about the state of our wildflower meadows, their importance for biodiversity and where we, as humans, fit as part of the biodiversity that feels at home in meadows.we take a light-hearted look at the power of plants to help you manifest your deepest desires. 

Please support the podcast on Patreon

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode where my guest is Sue Reed. Sue’s background is varied and she’s worn a variety of hats, including teacher, museum guide, upcycler of waste wool knitwear and published author. Her most recent creation is the fictional character Molly McFlynn, a quirky and courageous character who comes to terms with the concept of being an outsider against the backdrop of covid and a rugged Northern landscape. Listen on to find out how nature factors into the rewilding of Molly…

About Sue Reed

Sue Reed lives in rural Northumberland with her husband, Tim where their love of wild places and nature can be realised. They have three grown-up children and two granddaughters who mean the world to them.

Born in Worthing, Sussex, Sue migrated steadily north and has worn a variety of hats in her professional life from teacher, museum guide, upcycler of waste wool knitwear as The Woolly Pedlar to published author. It was in 2019 that she decided to go to Newcastle University to do an MA in Creative Writing, which is where the idea for the Molly McFlynn books started.

When not writing, Sue divides her time with her husband in the garden, travelling in their converted campervan or looking after the grandchildren. They try to live as sustainably as possible, leading gentle lives in tune with the seasons, and growing their own fruit and vegetables. Sue also writes about organic gardening, seasonal eating and foraging at The Bridge Cottage Way.

Links

www.suereedwrites.co.uk 

Sue on Facebook 

On Instagram 

Sue’s Substack: Down Clarty Lonnen 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Can Women Save the Planet? - This week I’m speaking to Dr Anne Karpf. Anne is Professor of Life Writing and Culture at London Metropolitan University and is a writer, sociologist and award-winning journalist. In 2021 she released the book ‘How Women Can Save the Planet’, where she looks at how there is gender inequality across the board from how we experience the climate crisis to our ability to effect change.


Magical Plants & Flowers - This week’s episode, my guests are Chris Young and Susan Ottaviano. Chris and Susan are better known as the 2 Green Witches. Chris Young is a lifelong gardener whose acclaimed garden, Tiny Sur is a certified wildlife habitat and Susan is an artist, performer, songwriter, and food stylist. Their new book is The Green Witch’s Guide to Magical Plants & Flowers: Love Spells from Apples to Zinnias and together we take a light-hearted look at the power of plants to help you manifest your deepest desires. 

Please support the podcast on Patreon

This week, my guest is Meg Skinner. Meg works as an invertebrate ecologist, surveying sites for protected species and volunteers for the British Arachnological Society. We’re talking today about spiders in your garden; how they go about their business,  how you can encourage more, to visit your garden, oh and we talk about the much maligned false widow…

About Meg Skinner

Meg Skinner works as an invertebrate ecologist, surveying sites for protected species. She volunteers for the British Arachnological Society as a Press Officer and recording scheme organiser for harvestmen. Meg grew up in the rural Cotswolds and has always had a fascination for the natural world.

Links

BAS website

BAS youtube channel

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Worms in Your Garden  - Sarah interviews Paul Hetherington, Director of Fundraising and Communications at the Buglife Invertebrate Conservation Organisation, with a particular interest in discussing worms and depending on the type, their significance in the garden.

So dip into the world of our 2 enthusiasts for an insightful chat about the trials and tribulations of this common garden dweller and much understated invertebrate. Learn about the enormous impact they have on our ecosystems and how we can encourage and nurture these ultimate ‘friends of the earth’. However it pays to be mindful that not all worms have a positive effect on our environment!


Bugs in Your Garden - I’m speaking to esteemed entomologist Dr Ian Bedford about accepting the insects in your garden and learning to accept their vital role in the wider ecosystem. We talk about the how gardens can work alongside public spaces to provide habitats for beleaguered bugs, how we can reconcile growing food with welcoming bugs and whether reports of Insectageddon are justified.

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This week, my guest is watercolour artist Lisa Gardner. Lisa is inspired by the natural world, the connection between breath and brushwork and rare wild plant species on the edge of extinction - seemingly far flung interests that come together in a beautifully natural and synergistic way in Lisa’s work.

About Lisa Gardener

Lisa Gardner is a watercolour artist inspired by the natural world, the connection between breath and brushwork and rare wild plant species on the edge of extinction.

Passionate about wild plants and the vital role they play in the health of our environment, Lisa’s  art strives to connect people to nature, to improve their wellbeing, and inspire action to save species and their habitats.

Links

Lisa has created 6 video workshops that share her journey with Plantlife, they can be found here.   Short film mentioned in the interview    Plantlife's important work can be found here.   Information on the Grassland Action Plan Lisa and Plantlife are campaigning for can be found here.   You can also get involved and volunteer for the National Plant Monitoring Scheme.   Other episodes if you liked this one:

Garden Sculpture  - This episode I’m speaking to Victoria Leedham, Co-Curator and Gallery Manager of the Hannah Peschar Sculpture Garden. I visited the garden earlier this month and even in winter garb, it was beautiful, set as it is in ancient woodland with streams running through it that pour down from Leith Hill in Surrey. The sculptures in the garden are diverse in character and look stunning within the location, each one fitting harmoniously into the backdrop of planting and landscape. Victoria is responsible for sourcing and placing sculpture in the garden, alongside owner garden designer Anthony Paul. We spoke about Victoria’s work, about the sculpture garden and also how you can select and place sculptures in your own garden.


Plants as Art - Sarah chats to Alyson of Alyson Mowat Studio and author of Terrariums & Kokedama. Alyson Mowat runs her studio out of Shoreditch in London and has been creating botanical masterpieces for the past 5 years. She works with indoor and outdoor plants to make visually stunning green displays and specialises in terrariums, jarrariums, aquascapes and kokedama to stage plants in unique ways. We talk about using plants to create visual statements, finding sources of inspiration and how you can try some of these techniques for yourself.

Support the podcast on Patreon.

Sue has been CEO at SongBird Survival for the last three years leading the charity in its ambition to protect the amazingly diverse but sadly declining songbird populations across the UK. With its growing body of scientific research which is fuelling solutions, SongBird Survival is advocating that we can and should take action to protect these ecologically threatened creatures. Campaigns including Gardens for Birds provide accessible and rewarding opportunities to play a part in much needed practical ways to reverse the drastic declines many species are facing.

Charlotte has been the research and engagement manager at SongBird Survival for over two years, and her passion is in bringing science to the public. By overseeing the research programme at SBS, she hopes to create the greatest impact on UK songbirds possible. Prior to her role at SBS, she worked as a scientific researcher and wanted to do more to connect scientific research and conservation.

Links

SongBird Survival

www.songbird-survival.org.uk

Advice on the optimum methods for protecting birds in your garden

Downloads of plant lists and hints and tips to support birds through gardening

Whether you are a novice or an experienced gardener, see our tips for some ideas to get gardening with wildlife in mind.

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Britain’s Birds with Benedict Macdonald  - This episode, I’m talking BioChar with Craig Sams, the co-founder of Carbon Gold, a company that produces a range of BioChar products for the garden but also for agricultural use. I interviewed Craig in his beautiful garden in Hastings, so please excuse the cries of the seagulls who tried to get in on the act around halfway through the interview.…


Garden Birdwatch - This week I’m speaking to Sue Allen of Microbz, which produces and distributes probiotics for gardens. The concept of probiotics in gardens is new to me, but it dovetails nicely with previous episodes looking at soil health and mycorrhizal fungi so I was delighted to speak to Sue and find out more about how probiotics work in gardens and what we can do to encourage them.

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This week, my guest is Los Angeles-based landscaper and fertiliser guru Erin Riley. Erin specialises in organic vegetable gardens and native, drought-tolerant landscapes and we’re talking today about her work to create fertilisers that are good for plants, people, animals and the planet.

About Erin Riley

Erin is stewarding a gardening renaissance: elevating organic fertilizers past their dependance on animal byproducts by founding the vegan fertilizer company. Her mission: to grow plants without killing the planet.

Links

www.cabbagehillfertilizer.com

Erin’s substack post “Does fertilizer matter?”

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Biochar - This episode, I’m talking BioChar with Craig Sams, the co-founder of Carbon Gold, a company that produces a range of BioChar products for the garden but also for agricultural use. I interviewed Craig in his beautiful garden in Hastings, so please excuse the cries of the seagulls who tried to get in on the act around halfway through the interview.…


Probiotics for your Garden - This week I’m speaking to Sue Allen of Microbz, which produces and distributes probiotics for gardens. The concept of probiotics in gardens is new to me, but it dovetails nicely with previous episodes looking at soil health and mycorrhizal fungi so I was delighted to speak to Sue and find out more about how probiotics work in gardens and what we can do to encourage them.

Support the podcast on Patreon

This episode my guest is Alan Heeks, former corporate world inhabitant, organic farmer, coach and author of the book ‘Natural Happiness’. After his transition into organic farming, Alan realised that “a cultivated organic ecosystem is a profound guide to tending human nature, and that organic growth methods have parallels for people: such as composting your stress, and using crop rotation to avoid burnout.” We explore the idea further…

About Alan Heeks

Alan Heeks had a baptism by mud at age 42, when he dropped out of a successful business career and followed a wild impulse to start an organic farm as an education centre where young people could find their roots and direction as they entered adult life.       Despite Alan's lack of any relevant experience, the project succeeded, and gave him a huge education too. He explains, "I realised that a cultivated organic ecosystem is a profound guide to tending human nature, and that organic growth methods have parallels for people: such as composting your stress, and using crop rotation to avoid burnout."       Alan's new book about this approach, Natural Happiness, also draws on the workshops he has led for hundreds of people sharing his insights, from troubled teenagers to super-stressed NHS doctors. Alan and his wife Linda live in Hay-on-Wye, and grow many of their own vegetables.   Links

www.naturalhappiness.net  Twitter  Facebook  LinkedIn  YouTube 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Forest Bathing - Forest Bathing, or Shinrin Yoku, is the practice of immersing yourself in nature as therapy. It’s the perfect antidote for those who feel disconnected from the land and unattached from nature, which is increasingly likely to happen in a world where 55% of us live in urban areas. In this episode, I speak to Stefan Batorijs who founded Nature and Therapy UK in 2017, as a response to a growing need to foster a spiritual and psychological connection to the land. If you’ve always wondered what Forest Bathing, or Shinrin Yoku, entails, this is the episode for you!


Gardening for Your Senses - This week I’m chatting with writer Kendra Wilson. Kendra has written a vast amount about gardening but I was particularly interested in speaking to her about her book Garden for the Senses. Engaging all your senses can lead to a deeper connection with the landscape and it can be an unusual and transformative experience. I wanted to find out how we can all learn to better use our senses and firstly, what prompted Kendra to write the book. 

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Hello and welcome to this week’s episode where my guest is Mark Schofield, Plantlife’s Road Verge Advisor for the UK. Mark has a huge amount of experience when it comes to green space conservation and is currently involved in a number of projects across the country to manage road verges better for wildlife involving biomass harvesting trials and the use of AI in surveys. He’s also one of Plantlife’s representatives for the #NoMowMay campaign, and in this interview, he talks about how we can maintain both private and public green spaces more sympathetically for wildflowers and the wildlife they support.

About Mark Schofield

Mark used to work for the Lincolnshire Wildlife Trust before he joined Plantlife as their Road Verge Advisor for the UK. He has 15 years of experience of road verge and urban green space conservation and has organised extensive citizen science surveys. He is currently involved in a number of projects across the country to manage road verges better for wildlife involving biomass harvesting trials and the use of AI in surveys.

Mark is also one of Plantlife’s representatives for the #NoMowMay campaign, and has written much of the guidance on the Plantlife website for how we can maintain our lawns and public green spaces more sympathetically for wildflowers and the wildlife they support.    Links

No Mow May and lawn management guidance: https://www.plantlife.org.uk/campaigns/nomowmay/ https://www.plantlife.org.uk/advice-learning/managing-grassland/   Trends in green space management:

Report from APSE with good news from local authorities for meadows and biodiversity priorities  

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Tapestry Lawns - This episode, I’m talking to Dr Lionel Smith, horticulture lecturer and author of the book Tapestry Lawns: Freed from Grass and Full of Flowers. As the title suggests, a tapestry lawn replaces grass with flowering dicots, increasing biodiversity, lowering maintenance needs and seriously upping the aesthetic value of a lawn. Living with a tapestry lawns involves a little bit of self-education around how you treat plants and I start by asking how to overcome one of my own biggest worries about having one…


Gardening for Your Senses - This week I’m chatting with writer Kendra Wilson. Kendra has written a vast amount about gardening but I was particularly interested in speaking to her about her book Garden for the Senses. Engaging all your senses can lead to a deeper connection with the landscape and it can be an unusual and transformative experience. I wanted to find out how we can all learn to better use our senses and firstly, what prompted Kendra to write the book. 

Support the podcast on Patreon

This episode, my guest is Sam Frings who founded The Organic Plant Nursery. Sam explains in his own words how he got started and how things have been along the way. It’s not easy being a pioneer, but listen on to find out how Sam and his family have battled against the odds to do it right.

Links

www.organicplantnursery.co.uk

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Running a Green Nursery with Chris Williams of Edible Culture - This week I’m speaking to Chris Williams, co-founder of Edibleculture, an inspirational nursery based in Faversham in Kent. From the day the nursery was established 5 years ago, ethically and ecologically sounds principles have been employed to create the brilliant business that exists today. We talk about how the nursery succeeds where so many others are failing to make changes; using peat-free compost, gardening organically without chemicals, eliminating single use plastics from their sales output and many other initiatives that make this nursery truly revolutionary.


School Gardening - This episode I’m joined by 3 guests; Louise Moreton who heads up the horticultural programme at Wicor Primary School and 2 of the MiniHorts themselves, Rebecca and Kieran. Louise set up a horticultural programme at the school 11 years ago, initially in a voluntary capacity. The programme became such a success she’s now employed by the school and works 4 days a week to deliver what has become a vital part of the curriculum. Rebecca and Kieran are Year 6 pupils who are members of the after school gardening club and leads in the MiniHorts programme, passing on their knowledge and enthusiasm to younger pupils. The MiniHorts have been in the media quite a bit, including featuring in an episode of Gardeners’ World in 2017, so they’re seasoned pros at this sort of thing! If you don’t have children or children of school age, I think you’ll still find this episode interesting and inspiring, it’s well worth a listen.

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This episode, my guest is Sarah Dodd AKA the Tree Hugging Lawyer and founder of law firm Tree Law. Sarah specialises in civil and criminal claims arising from disputes with trees, in particular trees causing damage to properties. She’s also the host of Tree Law TV channel on YouTube and today, we find out all about her background, her work and the law as it relates to trees.

What We Talk About

Common neighbour disputes when it comes to trees

Subsidence

Cutting trees that overhang your property

Is there such a thing as a right to light or a right to privacy?

How TPOs work

Is enough done to protect trees through the law?

About Sarah Dodd 

Sarah is the Tree Hugging Lawyer and founder of law firm Tree Law. Sarah specialises in civil and criminal claims arising from disputes with trees, in particular trees causing damage to properties. Sarah acts for various clients including homeowners, commercial properties owners, insurers, local authorities and developers. Sarah is a past chair of the Subsidence Forum and a member of the LTOA, MTAO and the Arboricultural Association. Sarah is the host of Tree Law TV channel on YouTube providing free contents answering some commonly asked questions about trees.  

Sarah is hosting the Tree Law summer conference in London on 17 September.  Tickets are on sale for that event at Lincoln’s Inn via Eventbrite - Treelawconference 

www.treelaw-ap.co.uk

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Trees with Peter Thurman - Selecting and planting trees can be a minefield. Never fear though, help is on hand as ‘legend in the world of trees’, Kew-trained, Peter Thurman is here to provide straight-forward advice about what to do and what not to do when buying a tree and planting it out. Discover how to select the right tree for your garden’s soil type and which species of tree will help you create the effect you are targeting. Learn how pleached trees can become an attractive alternative to fencing, just beware of the High Hedges Act! Does it pay to have patience when growing your tree, or is it easier to have instant impact? Pick up some valuable tips and tricks on the planting process. From deciding which food you should feed your prized specimen with, to mulching and watering, your questions are sure to be addressed in this informative episode.


Irreplaceable with Julian Hoffman - This episode’s guest is writer Julian Hoffman and we’re talking about his book ‘Irreplaceable’. I read the book a few months back and as you might expect from reading the blurb, it’s about those irreplaceable wild environments and the species we’re in danger of losing. But it’s also about the people who are so deeply connected to the landscapes and the animals they’re battling to save. Julian speaks about why it’s imperative that we stop the destruction of precious landscapes, how we can help at the individual level and why it’s vital to maintain the connection between people and place.

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This week my guests are Northern California based musical duo Misner & Smith. Sam, who is Misner, and Megan, who is Smith comprise one of the most acclaimed acts in the Americana world. Blending elements of that genre with bluegrass, traditional folk ballads, and more pop leaning ideas, they’ve been described as making music that is gloriously nonconforming. Aside from their musical chops, Sam & Megan are expert gardeners who focus on pollinators, sustainability and community gardening. Listen on to find out how their connection to nature feeds into their music.

What We Talk About

Sam & Megan’s gardening backgrounds

Gardening sustainably and for the community

Gardening as a creative outlet? 
How gardening inspires when you are looking for creative prompts

How gardening factors into their music?

The garden soundscape

About Misner & Smith

Northern California based unclassifiable duo Misner & Smith treasure the unpredictability of their band. Technically precise songwriting mirrored with an improvisatory spirit and soaring harmonies have made the band consisting of Sam Misner and Megan Smith one of the most acclaimed acts in the Americana world. Blending elements of that genre with bluegrass, traditional folk ballads, and more pop leaning ideas, Misner & Smith makes music gloriously nonconforming. 

The duo first met at a Shakespeare festival as professional actors in California in 2002 but began working as a musical duo two years later when Sam and Megan discovered a mutual love of roots music, Woody Guthrie, and in particular, harmony singing. Before the release of their career defining sixth LP ALL IS SONG, the duo had released five critically acclaimed records, including Halfway Home (2004), Poor Player (2008), Live at the Freight & Salvage (2010), Seven Hour Storm (2013), and headwaters (2017). It was that 2017 release that found the group stripping their sound back down to where it began, two voices and two instruments. headwaters was recorded live in the studio and features the duo doing what they do best. On ALL IS SONG, they build upon that momentum and turn in their finest work to date, an album of inspired declarations to the power of music, song, and, most importantly, collaboration.

www.misnerandsmith.com

YouTube 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Natural Fibres - This week’s guest is multi-media artist Hanna Varga. Hanna incorporates the natural world into her work and her current projects involve foraging for fibres she turns into both useful and beautiful items. The conversation began with Hanna talking about her work past and present and developed into a really important conversation about the value of items at their more than fiscal level.


Soundscapes & Landscapes - This week I’m speaking to Dr Mike Edwards, Chief Listening Officer at Sound Matters, a company focussed on using sound and listening to create more sustainable and resilient futures. Sound Matters provided the soundtrack to the Rewilding Britain garden that one best in show at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. Mike recently spoke passionately about climate change, soundscapes and landscapes at the Beth Chatto Symposium and wowed a lecture theatre full of rapt listeners with his prowess on the didgeridoo.

Support the podcast on Patreon

This week my guests are Kevin Philip Williams and Michael Guidi, authors of a new book ‘Shrouded in Light: Naturalistic Planting Inspired by Wild Shrublands’. I’ll let Kevin and Michael say more about the idea behind it but a book about horticulture that compares natural landscapes to graffiti and branch frameworks to sigils catches my attention immediately…

What We Talk About

The premise behind the book

What is a shrub?

Why have shrubs fallen out of fashion?

Which of the global shrublands most inspires and informs their planting design at the garden level

Good examples of designed shrublands

The future of innovative garden design

Shrouded in Light: Naturalistic Planting Inspired by Wild Shrublands by Kevin Philip Williams and Michael Guidi

Other episodes if you liked this one:

The View From Federal Twist - This episode features James Golden, talking about the naturalistic garden he’s built around his home in New Jersey. James’s garden has been created intuitively over time and sits perfectly within the landscape, in fact is a landscape in its own right. Sometimes baffling, sometimes threatening and without utilitarian purpose, the garden is nonetheless life-affirming, vital and dramatically beautiful in different ways from one moment to the next.


Gardening in a Changing World - My guest this episode is garden and landscape designer and writer, Darryl Moore. Darryl is one of the most, if not in my opinion, the most informed voice on gardens and design in the UK and his new book Gardening in A Changing World: People, Plants and the Climate Crisis presents an overarching perspective of the complexity of plant life, and the ways that we can begin to appreciate and work together with plants, rather than against them, in addressing the rapidly changing conditions affecting the planet.

Support the podcast on Patreon

This week my guest is Carolyn Dunster. Carolyn is a planting designer, botanical stylist, garden writer and author of a book all about eating flowers entitled ‘A Floral Feast: A Guide to Growing and Cooking with Edible Flowers, Foliage, Herbs and Seeds’. We discuss how to expand your culinary endeavours to encompass the ornamental parts of your garden.

A Floral Feast: A Guide to Growing and Cooking with Edible Flowers, Foliage, Herbs and Seeds by Carolyn Dunster

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Edible Flowers with Jan Billington - In this episode, I’m speaking to Jan Billington of Maddocks Farm Organics, a flower farm in Devon growing and selling organic edible flowers. We talk about the easiest and tastiest flowers you can grow, colour trends, some more unusual edible flowers and how you can use edible flowers for your own special event. The episode starts with Jan telling us about her farm and why she feels her business needs to give something back.


Welcome to Mintopia - This week’s guest is Dr Si Poole, founder of Mintopia, a website dedicated to mint featuring its own online reference library for the different types, the mintopaedia. Si holds one of the National Collections of mint and holds getting on for 200 different cultivars. From his plastic-free, organic nursery, he sells themed collections of mints and he’s passionate and knowledgable about every aspect of the Mentha genera, impressive given that there’s much more to this plant than mint sauce and mojitos. 

Support the podcast on Patreon

My guest this week is Kumud Gandhi, a food scientist, author and founder of The Cooking Academy. Kumud has written a book called The Garlic Story, a look at the history of garlic and its culinary uses. We talk about how garlic has been celebrated and revered throughout history, the different types and uses and how you can incorporate more of it into your life.

'The Garlic Story' is a celebration of all things garlic with over 50 delectable recipes, promising a flavourful journey that showcases the diverse and irresistible facets of this humble ingredient.

The Garlic Story by Kumud Gandhi

www.thecookingacademy.co.uk

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Unusual Edible Plants - This episode I’m speaking with Kevin Hobbs & Artur Cesar-Erlach, authors of EDIBLE: 70 Sustainable Plants That Are Changing How We Eat which looks at edible plants from around the world that are revolutionising how we grow, eat and appreciate food. It tackles important questions like what do we eat when our usual diets are no longer sustainable, how do we future proof food and how can we be more mindful about what we eat and considers what the future of global food production might look like.


Climate Cuisine with Clarissa Wei - this episode of the podcast, I’m speaking to journalist and host of the Climate Cuisine podcast, Clarissa Wei.

On her podcast, Clarissa shares the stories of the crops grown sustainably around the world. The goal is to highlight climate-centric conversations about crops and the food we eat as they become increasingly important to the resiliency and survival of our food systems.

Support the podcast on Patreon

My guest this week is Nadine Charlton. Through her business Home Spring Gardens, Nadine provides specialist services to the horticultural and landscape construction industry, advising on sustainable best practice and creating beautiful gardens and landscapes with an environmental conscience. We talk about the importance of sourcing sustainable garden products, how you can tell whether what you’re buying is sustainable and whether enough is being done on this front.

About Nadine Charlton & Home Spring Gardens

Nadine provides specialist services to the horticultural and landscape construction industry with commitment to sustainable best practice and creating beautiful gardens and landscapes with an environmental conscience. 

She has exhibited personally at RHS shows, and has project managed and advised on multi award winning gardens at RHS Chelsea Flower Show.

Nadine has an ability to see a vision and make it happen, connecting people and bringing teams, partners as well as commercial objectives together with demonstrable results. She has a lifelong passion of historic landscapes and architecture and is an advocate for using traditional methods with the benefit of modern insights and techniques.

A passionate lover of outdoor living, Nadine is committed to innovation and education; inspiring the next generation.

www.homespringgardens.co.uk

Nadine is currently working with Landscape Architect Michael Lote on his debut show garden ‘It doesn’t have to cost the Earth’ which will be featured at RHS Malvern Spring Festival 9-12 th May 2024 showcasing innovative sustainable construction products and methods. 

The garden will be repurposed to Woodoaks Farm which is owned by the Soil Association Land Trust to create a permanent training and educational space to facilitate learning for school children and adults, growing together with the horticultural and agricultural industry.

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Historic Roses


Irises

Support the podcast on Patreon

My guest this week is Polly Nicholson. Polly is the owner of Bayntun Flowers in Wiltshire, and holds the national collection of Tulipa (Historica) with Plant Heritage. Polly has also written a book called ‘The Tulip Garden: Growing and Collecting Species, Rare and Annual Varieties’ which is released on the 21st March and today she shares her knowledge of this complex and fascinating group of plants.

About Polly Nicholson

Specialist flower grower and tulip expert Polly Nicholson is the owner of Bayntun Flowers in Wiltshire – growers of organic flowers cultivated in walled gardens and a one-acre field at the foot of the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire. Nicholson holds the National Collection of Tulipa (Historic) with Plant Heritage, and has featured on BBC Gardener’s World, Radio 4, in Gardens Illustrated, Country Life, T: The New York Times Style Magazine, The World of Interiors, and House & Garden.

Links

The Tulip Garden: Growing and Collecting Species, Rare and Annual Varieties by Polly Nicholson

www.bayntunflowers.co.uk

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Historic Roses


Irises

Support the podcast on Patreon

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode where my guest is Kyo Maclear. Kyo is an author and her latest book is centred around family secrets, her mother and how gardening shaped their relationship and helped her frame their mutual experiences.

About Unearthing

Kyo Maclear's Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love & Family Secrets is published on 7th March 2024. It’s a gripping and emotionally eloquent memoir about a family secret revealed by a DNA test, the lessons learned in its aftermath, and the transformative possibilities of growing plants.

A memoir of inheritance that goes far beyond heredity, Unearthing is about what happens when we give up the watered, weeded, and pruned plots of our family histories and embrace a more expansive view of kinship. Told through the passage of seasons with exquisite illustrations by the author, it is a tender testimony to the ineradicable love between a mother and daughter for readers of Michelle Zauner’s Crying in H Mart and Katherine May’s Wintering.

When Kyo Maclear receives the result of a DNA test showing that she and the father who raised her, whose death she is grieving, are not biologically related, she is suddenly a detective in her own life, desperately seeking answers from her ailing mother whose memories and English are failing.  Maclear no longer speaks Japanese, her mother's first language, so she turns to her mother's second fluent tongue: the wild and green language of gardening, to provide them with a way of connecting. This beautifully constructed, intricate memoir is a work as unique as its author, and yet, movingly, achingly relatable.

About Kyo Maclear

Kyo is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and children's author. Her books have been translated into eighteen languages and published in over twenty-five countries. She is the author of the hybrid memoir Birds Art Life (2017,) and winner of the Trillium Book Award. She holds a doctorate in environmental humanities and is on faculty at the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA.

Links

Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love & Family Secrets by Kyo Maclear 

www.kyomaclear.com 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

A Rolling Stone Gathering Moss

All My Wild Mothers

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Vicky Chown is a Medical Herbalist, foraging instructor and self taught permaculturist. She’s head gardener at Omved Gardens, a fascinating community garden in London which focuses on food, creativity and wellbeing. 

What we talk about

The idea behind Omved Gardens

How nature factors in to the garden

Where food and creativity fit in

The design of the site and how it feeds into the purpose and the overall experience for visitors

Who uses the site

The activities that take place

About Vicky Chown

Vicky Chown is a Medical Herbalist (BSc), foraging instructor and self taught permaculturist. She is head gardener at Omved Gardens and Coordinator of their Seed Saving Network. 

Links

Vicky Chown on Instagram @handmade_apothecary 

The Seed Saving Network @seedsavingnetwork

Omved Gardens @omvedgardens

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Gardening for your Senses

Permaculture

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Caroline & Jon have created the most amazing swimming pond in their back garden and have documented their journey on social media, posting videos of year-round swimming adventures and pond-life. If you need inspiration to tackle a garden project you’ve always thought was just a pipe-dream, listen in as Caroline & Jon offer their refreshingly optimistic and can-do approach.

What we talk about

What made Caroline & Jon install a pool in their garden?

Planning permission

Filling the pond

Cleaning the pond

Swimming year round

Bringing in wildlife

The planting scheme - aesthetic or functional?

Build cost   Links

Caroline & Jon on TikTok

Caroline & Jon on Instagram

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Creating Wildlife Habitats

Bats

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Alexandra Steed is a passionate landscape architect with a profound commitment to art, sustainability, and the transformative power of landscapes. Alexandra recently authored Portrait to Landscape and we talk about the possibility of and the necessity for shaping our landscapes so they may help to heal the earth.

What we talk about

Why portrait to landscape?

The biosphere

An overview of Alexandra’s ideas for better landscape design and management?

Urban vs rural landscaping

Can we rely on change that comes from the top down? 

How individuals can make a difference

About Alexandra Steed

Alexandra Steed, a passionate landscape architect and Fellow of the Landscape Institute (FLI) and the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), has a profound commitment to art, sustainability, and the transformative power of landscapes. In 2013, she founded URBAN to bring joy to people’s daily lives through landscape design that enhances beauty and fosters well-being. Steed actively advises and serves on expert panels for organisations such as the Design Council UK and the Government’s Office for Place. As a lecturer at The Bartlett, UCL, she shares her knowledge and volunteers her time to support community empowerment and inclusive public spaces. Steed’s exceptional contributions to landscape architecture have garnered prestigious awards, including the WAFX Award for innovative global solutions and The LI Award for Excellence in Tackling Climate Change. With a strong focus on preserving biodiversity and ecosystems, Steed’s dedication to integrating natural processes into her designs is evident. Through her work and advocacy, she champions climate change mitigation and inspires others to connect with and appreciate the natural world.   About Portrait to Landscape

“Portrait to Landscape: A Landscape Strategy to Reframe Our Future” is a ground-breaking book that calls for a transformative shift in our relationship with the natural world. Written by a renowned landscape architect, this book offers a new perspective on our place in the world and a compelling vision for a regenerative future. In an era plagued by environmental disasters and global challenges, the book argues that our exploitative and fragmented relationship with nature is at the root of these issues. Drawing upon the metaphor of a self-focused portrait versus a wide-angle landscape view, the book illuminates the profound impact of our narrow perspective. It offers a roadmap for reconnecting with the larger community of life.

Through a captivating narrative, the author explores the interconnectedness of the living world and the urgent need to shift from a human-centric mindset to one that embraces the wisdom of nature. It demonstrates with inspiring examples from around the world how landscapes can become catalysts for healing and regeneration, leading to improved well-being and sustainability.

“Portrait to Landscape” presents a holistic approach to restoring the earth, addressing not only the symptoms but also the underlying causes of environmental degradation. The book outlines practical strategies for policymakers, activists, and individuals to protect and restore landscapes, emphasising collaboration and long-term stewardship.

With passion and expertise, the book calls on global citizens to take action and become active participants in the healing process. It offers a powerful message of hope and possibility, envisioning a future where humanity and all nature coexist in harmony.

This thought-provoking book will inspire readers to reconsider their relationship with nature and join the movement towards a more sustainable and regenerative future. It is a must-read for anyone seeking a deeper understanding of our place in the world and how we can inhabit it with integrity.   Links

“Portrait to Landscape” is available here.

 South Essex Estuary Park Project, UK

Sponge City Project, China

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Led by the Land with Kim Wilkie

Responsibly Designing the Built Environment

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Perrine Bulgheroni is a renowned farmer who, along with Charles Herve-Gruyer, co-authored the Living with the Earth series of books and co-founded the famous Bec Hellouin, an ecoculture farm in Northern France. We talk about growing produce, closed loop farming, how food growing helps capture carbon and how to manage your natural environment for maximum benefits for people, wildlife and ecosystems.

What we talk about

What ecoculture is

Does it take up less space than traditional agriculture?

The ecoculture approach to rainfall and soil

Volumes two and three of Living with the Earth

Ideal land area for a plot

The Flow of Organic Matter

How ecoculture contributes to carbon capture

About Living with the Earth: A Manual for Market Gardeners - Volume 1: Permaculture, Ecoculture: Inspired by Nature

by Perrine and Charles Hervé-Gruyer

Living With The Earth is a three volume series bringing together years of hands-on organic growing experience and research from the world-renowned Bec Hellouin Farm in France.

In 2006, Perrine and Charles Hervé-Gruyer set out on a mission to discover a new form of agriculture that provides organic crops, creates healthy soil and brings meaningful employment to the local community. A combination of biointensive methods and permaculture design, which they have named ‘ecoculture’, and backed by scientific research, has resulted in a highly abundant market garden that sequesters carbon and frees up land for Nature.

This beautifully illustrated, comprehensive first volume shows you how natural systems work, and explains how a wide range of simple and effective techniques can create ecologically diverse gardens or highly productive farms. The in-depth chapters on weather patterns, soil types and ecosystem services, give the reader a sound understanding of the environment they are growing in.

The book covers everything you need to design a farm and implement a high-yielding food system from scratch, from understanding permaculture and its tools to the full design process, using the successful systems at Bec Hellouin as examples. Chapters on composting, mulching, fertilisers, green manures and working with beneficial microorganisms offer the reader a selection of tools for creating healthy soil within the farm ecosystem.

About the Authors

Perrine Hervé-Gruyer pursued a career as a lawyer in Asia before devoting herself to psychotherapy. She is now a farmer. An educator by training, Charles Hervé-Gruyer travelled the globe aboard the training sailboat ‘Fleur de Lampaul’ for 22 years. He is the author of several books. Perrine and Charles became certified permaculture teachers in 2013.

Links

Living with the Earth: A Manual for Market Gardeners - Volume 1: Permaculture, Ecoculture: Inspired by Nature

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Urban Smallholding

The Garden of Equal Delights

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Miles Hayward is a dendrophile and keen plantsman, who discovered a passion for Japanese Maples and soon began to accumulate a wide variety of different cultivars. He started Miles Japanese Maples in 2016 specialising in Japanese Maples, after becoming frustrated by the lack of good quality trees in garden centres and local nurseries. He now grows high-quality trees in relatively small numbers, focussing on quality over quantity.

What we talk about

What is a Japanese Maple?

The different species

Preferred growing conditions

Should you feed your Japanese maple?

Where to site them

Growing maples in containers

Pruning maples

Miles’ favourites

About Miles Hayward

 Miles Hayward is a dendrophile and keen plantsman, having studied Botany at Reading University in the late 1990s before going on to work at a hardy exotic plant nursery for ten years where his love of trees flourished. While exhibiting at various flower shows around the country, he discovered a passion for Japanese Maples and soon began to accumulate a wide variety of different cultivars.

Miles decided to start a small nursery in 2016 specialising in Japanese Maples, frustrated by the lack of good quality trees in garden centres and local nurseries.  We like to think of ourselves as ‘small batch growers’, producing high-quality trees but in relatively small numbers, due to lack of space! Each tree receives a lot of care and won’t be sold to a customer until Miles is completely satisfied that it is the best it can be (or he really likes it and wants to hang on to it!)

Miles Japanese Maples has been peat and pesticide free since inception, although there is always experimenting and tinkering to find the perfect compost mix. The trees have been grown in Air-Pots for the last 5 years or so, to ensure that they have the best possible root systems.

The nursery is open to visitors by appointment or we are at various plant fairs around the south-east at some lovely venues. We were delighted to exhibit for the first time at Chelsea Flower Show last year and will be returning in 2024.

Miles is a member of The Maple Society of Britain and Ireland, The International Dendrology Society and various others too numerous to mention!

Links

www.milesjapanesemaples.co.uk

Miles Japanese Maples on Instagram

Green Heart Horticultural Services on Facebook

Green Heart Community Nursery

The Nursery Fundraiser

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Bonsai with John Hanby

Hardy Eucalyptus

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My guest this week is Catherine Conway-Payne. Catherine is the course director of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh’s diploma in Herbology and an expert on the history of natural remedies. Catherine recently authored possibly the most beautiful book ever, a book called ‘Herbology – A Physic Garden Pharmacy’ where she looks at the origins of the physic garden at RBGE in the mid-17th Century. She recreates and reimagines original recipes from that time, mentioning in the book the historical uses of such ingredients as powdered toads and spiders’ web, but thankfully providing alternatives to those who want to look at growing their own medicine and herbal remedies.

What we talk about

What is the ‘Herbology’ about?

What is green pharmacy?

What are the Materia medica?

What is a vulnerary herb and can you give me an example of one and how you could use it?

What are lunar infusions? 

Some of Catherine’s favourite plants to work with

About ‘Herbology – A Physic Garden Pharmacy’

The practice of referencing and using nature to create remedies, recipes and therapeutic preparations has been around for thousands of years.  Over time, our knowledge of the more traditional ‘green pharmacy’ of this sort has diminished.  Yet today herbology, the study of herbs, is enjoying a renaissance as reconnecting with nature and sustainability surges.   To coincide with this renaissance, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh has published Herbology – A Physic Garden Pharmacy,  a beautiful, hard-back book filled with natural remedies and recipes, and  showcasing the best practices on gathering ingredients and safely preparing them.   Much more than a recipe and remedy book, Herbology is also a history of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, a place where medicinal plants have been grown for hundreds of years, for the benefit of the medical profession and their patients.     The book references four other publications which date from the origins of the Garden in the 17th century. One, the Edinburgh Pharmacopoeia (1699), was discovered in the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. Originally published in Latin, the contents of the Pharmacopoeia have remained relatively inaccessible to most for over 300 years.    However – with the kind assistance of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the dedicated work of one research associate from the Garden, Robert Mill – the work in its entirety has now been translated into English; several extracts of which are being shared, for the first time, within the pages of this book.

Author Catherine Conway-Payne said, “It was an absolute joy to delve in to the Pharmacopoeia and discover which medicinal plants were being grown in Edinburgh during the latter part of the 17th century, which may be regarded as something of a golden age of herbalism. Then, the worlds of plants and medicine were closely aligned and it has been fascinating to find out that some recipes have not changed at all and that others contained extraordinary ingredients such as powdered toad, mouse droppings and even spider’s webs.  Readers of Herbology will be relieved that our modern-day holistic formulations have omitted these from their list of ingredients.”   There are many precious botanicals within the pages of Herbology – among them nettle, dandelion, wild garlic and winter blooming witch hazel.  Organised by the seasons, the book is filled with recipes and remedies and readers will join Catherine on a journey into ‘green pharmacy’ making special botanical creams, green ointments, herbal honeys, syrups, juices and teas along the way.   Catherine continued, “So much has been lost and forgotten over the years but we have been enjoying a real resurgence of interest in herbology recently.”   “There has never been more desire to study all things ‘green’ and to learn how to work as one with nature, understand the precious therapeutic potentials of medicinal plants and nurture the earth that sustains them.  The very nature of herbology is so expansive that once you are immersed within this facet of botanical learning you cannot help but become more aware of its inherently curative and dynamic spirit.  For generations to come, perhaps this age in time might be viewed as a period of great holistic change and life sustaining initiative.”   Herbology is illustrated by botanical artist Jacqui Pestell and contains evocative photography by Kate Soltan.

 Links

Herbology – A Physic Garden Pharmacy by Catherine Conway-Payne

www.rbge.org.uk

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Herbs with The Herb Society

Magical Plants & Flowers

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This episode features horticulturist, garden designer, RHS Show Judge and plant guru Nina Baxter. We talk about what garden designers do, why they differ from landscapers, how you can find one and what they might charge for their work. Whether you’re thinking of hiring a garden designer, thinking about becoming one or are just curious about the profession, this is worth a listen. Nina begins by describing her journey into garden design…

What we talk about

What is a garden designer?

Where can you find one?

What might the process look like once you’ve hired one?

What should they possess in terms of qualifications, insurance, etc?

How do they differ from landscapers?

How do they charge for their work and what might you expect to pay?

About Nina Baxter

Nina Baxter is an experienced garden designer and horticulturist who has run her successful practice; Nina Baxter Garden Design Ltd. since 2004. Nina is Director of London College of Garden Design, an RHS Show Judge and a member of RHS Show Gardens Selection Panel.

Links

Nina Baxter Garden Design 

London College of Garden Design

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Hiring a Garden Designer

Hiring a Gardener

Support the podcast on Patreon

My guest this week is writer, broadcaster, nature observer, citizen scientist and champion of the outdoors, Kelly Brenner. This episode came about off the back of a listener suggestion and begins with a look at Lycoris radiata aka the Death Flower, and its place in nature and culture. This may seem an odd choice of subject for this festive time, but this is the last episode of 2023 and the nearest to the winter solstice, which heralds the death of the sun, so it somehow seemed fitting.    Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Overwintering fruit and veg pests   What we talk about   What intrigues Kelly about Lycoris radiata, and why she thinks it has garnered such dark symbolism throughout history   Nature, wildlife, and folklore – how they are seamlessly woven into Kelly’s work   The origin story of Kelly’s passion for plants, nature and folklore and how they naturally blend into her writing and explorations   How urban dwellers can maintain their connection with nature, and are there specific aspects of urban landscapes that come alive during these colder months?   The Sleuth Wood Show   Invertefest   Links   Kelly Brenner’s website   Other episodes if you liked this one:   The Winter Garden   Camellias with Fiona Edmond   Support the podcast on Patreon

My guest this week is Belgian nurseryman Karel Goossens. Karel runs an internationally renowned nursery supplying box plants and is the Chariman of the Belgian arm of the European Boxwood & Topiary Society. With decades of experience growing box and an irreverent approach to tackling the problems that go along with it, when he was recommended to me, I thought he was my ideal sort of guest! He does recommend intensive cultivation methods which include spraying chemical fungicides and insecticides, so this epsiode is not for everyone. However, I do acknowledge that many historic gardens are built around a backbone of box and that many listeners are professional gardeners who deal with box and its attendant blights, so this epsiode is a practical look at what you can do. 

Dr Ian Bedford's Bug of the Week: Box Tree Moth

Links

Kwekerij Goossens on Instagram

European Boxwood & Topiary Society

Karel's website for tripod ladders

Our Plant Stories with Sally Flatman

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Lawns with David Hedges-Gower

Hiring a Garden Designer

This week's guest is Naomi Slade. Naomi is a journalist, author, designer and consultant. She works as a writer and broadcaster and lectures on a range of specialist subjects. She has written a number of popular gardening books and as if that weren't enough, she's also an award-winning garden designer and will be exhibiting the Flood Resilient Garden, which she's co-designed with Ed Barsley, at RHS Chelsea 2024. We're speaking about her latest book, The Winter Garden: Celebrating the Winter Season.

Dr Ian Bedford's Bug of the Week: Organic Recyclers and Millipedes

The Winter Garden by Naomi Slade

Other epsiodes if you liked this one:

New Nordic Gardens

Natural Stone

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This week’s guest is multi-media artist Hanna Varga. Hanna incorporates the natural world into her work and her current projects involve foraging for fibres she turns into both useful and beautiful items. The conversation began with Hanna talking about her work past and present and developed into a really important conversation about the value of items at their more than fiscal level.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Cabbage Whiteflies

About Hanna’s ‘Say It With Knots’ Project

"I am currently working on an engaging and urgent body of work in response to our current ecological times. I'm making a new series of sculptural forms using wild foraged plant fibres and transforming them into tactile artefacts of cordage, ropes and knots to tell stories. I source the art materials I use from the local environment to minimise my carbon footprint. The process of both gathering and making cordage is beautiful, versatile and yields evocative results. The metaphors in language offer us a diverse range of symbols, hiastorical and cultural associations and highlights the important role of rope making technologies played in the development of civilisations.

I juxtapose the craftmanship with the natural history of the landscape where the raw materials come from. I'm beginning this work on the north coast of the Scottish Highlands where a long history of shipping and fishing trades have been present. Natural and human history intertwines in the resulting artworks. I am currently in Cromarty on an artist residency developing this project that will culminate in the first exhibition of this project opening on the 15th of December.

I wish to transport my audience in time - back to the beginning, where it all started by twisting together vegetal fibres into a piece of string. Also, looking ahead into the future, an invitation to imagine new possibilities in tactile dimensions in our increasingly digitised age. I wish to awaken curiosity and evoke questions about interconnectedness. 

How will we continue making meaning with our hands?

How can we create in reciprocity with the more-than-human world around us?"

Links

Hanna on Instagram

Ashleaf London

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Botanical Storytelling with Amanda Edmiston

Amanda’s new book - The Time Traveller’s Herbal 

Making & Using Natural Dyes

Patreon

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode where my guest is Gill Perkins, CEO of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust. We talk about bumblebee populations and habitats, what we can do to encourage and care for bumblebees in our gardens and about the role of bumblebees in tomato pollination, which came as a complete surprise to me!

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Fuchsia Gall Mite

What We Talk About 

Bumblebee concerns

Bumblebee identification

Honeybees and beekeeping

Encouraging and caring for bumblebees

Tomato pollination

Links

Bumblebee Conservation Trust

Bee the Change

Managed Honeybees

lbka.org

Article on beekeeping

Honeybees and other wildlife

Trouble with beekeeping boom

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Urban Bees with Mark Patterson

Pollinators with Professor Jeff Ollerton

Patreon

This week’s episode my guest is Pete Russell, founder of Ooooby, an online platform which matches customers with small scale, local growers. Shopping for food in this way promotes homegrown produce, farm to consumer sales, supports independent growers, helps people to buy local, protects our farming heritage and helps us to move away from the chronically broken food system we currently live under. Listen in as Pete tells us how Ooooby works and how you can get involved if you’re interested.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Allium Leafminers

What We Talk About 

The idea behind Ooooby

The value of small scale and local farming 

Sustainability

The range of products available

Quality control

The cost to the producer

Links

www.ooooby.com 

Pete’s Ted Talk 

More on Ooooby 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Climate Cuisine with Clarissa Wei

Greg Peterson of The Urban Farm

Patreon

My guest this episode is New Zealand based landscape designer Jo Wakelin. Jo creates low impact and environmentally conscious spaces and her own garden is a masterclass in water-wise planting that sits lightly within the landscape - beautiful but in keeping with its surroundings both aesthetically and ecologically. We talk about her extensive research and the lessons she’s learnt along the way.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Black Vine Weevils

What We Talk About 

Jo’s work and what she does in her own garden

Jo's thoughts on native versus non-native plants in a garden setting

How gardens can and should work with their surrounding landscape

Current schools of thought in NZ garden design 

Links

Jo Wakelin on Instagram 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Design Experts - Xanthe White

Ecologically Integrated Gardens

Patreon

This week’s episode, my guest is Clive Farrell. Clive is a butterfly expert who established The London Butterfly House at Syon House and has dedicated his life to breeding and studying the butterflies of Britain and the world. His latest project has been to develop the 100 or so acres around his home in Dorset into a haven for insects, that features unusual, even magical elements such as a giant fibreglass dragon, a replica of a Saxon longhouse that is home to a huge bog oak sculpture, a temple dedicated to ravens and a giant’s chair. Clive’s garden is the stuff of dreams to adult and child visitors, but also to the invertebrates which makes their homes amongst this garden which is built for them.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Overwintering Butterflies

What We Talk About 

I’m not telling you, just listen ;-)

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Butterflies with Peter Eeles

Bugs in Your Garden with Dr Ian Bedford

Patreon

This episode my guest is Jarema Osofsky, founder of the design studio Dirt Queen NYC and author of Moon Garden: A Guide to Creating An Evening Oasis. Moon gardening is an enchanting way to slow down in the evenings, immerse yourself in nature and cultivate a relationship with your plants and the moon and I’m talking with Jarema about how you can create your own.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Large Hairy House Spiders

What We Talk About 

What is a moon garden?

Do they have to contain all white flowers?

Should you plant for year round interest? 

Should the garden be visible from the house? 

Apart from colour, what else is important in a moon garden?

Can you create a moon garden indoors?

Can moon gardens benefit wildlife?

Night blooming and night fragrant plants

How best to enjoy your moon garden

About the book

MOON GARDEN: A Guide to Creating an Evening Oasis (Chronicle 10/3/23) is a guide to creating a garden that comes alive at night, with night-blooming plants and night fragrant flowers. The book is full of design and horticultural wisdom; planting tips for outdoor, indoor, and container gardeners; and soothing rituals such as journaling and meditations. With beautiful botanical illustrations, Moon Garden encourages readers to approach gardening as a grounding, spiritual practice.

Spending time outdoors, and bringing nature into one’s home, is both joyful and healing. MOON GARDEN is part of Jarema’s mission to design beautiful garden spaces that help people cultivate meaningful connections to the natural world, while also benefiting local ecosystems in the process.

About Jarema Osofsky

Brooklyn-based landscape and interior plant designer, Jarema Osofsky is the founder of Dirt Queen NYC, a garden design and plant care business. Her debut book, MOON GARDEN: A Guide to Creating an Evening Oasis (Chronicle 10/3/23), invites readers to dive into the world of moon gardens and all that they offer. MOON GARDEN is a guide to creating a garden that comes alive at night, with night-blooming plants and night fragrant flowers. The book is full of design and horticultural wisdom; planting tips for outdoor, indoor, and container gardeners; and soothing rituals such as journaling and meditations. 

With beautiful botanical illustrations, MOON GARDEN encourages readers to approach gardening as a grounding, spiritual practice.

Jarema grew up in New York’s Hudson Valley, the daughter of an avid gardener. Throughout Jarema’s life, visiting family in Hong Kong and Arizona sparked Jarema’s love affair with tropical plants, the desert landscape, and unusual cactuses. What started out as a hobby and a “fresh start” after a bad break-up, Jarema began growing plants and sold them in vintage pots in her neighbourhood. She earned her BA in East Asian studies and fine art from Oberlin College and worked as an artist assistant in New York and Los

Angeles, where she struggled to find her own form of expression. It was a pivotal moment when she realised that plants were the medium she had been searching for. After developing a strong customer base and advising plant owners, she decided to pour all her energy and passion into starting her own business. 

Jarema’s design studio, Dirt Queen NYC, works closely with clients to create verdant gardens that offer meaningful and ecologically sustainable connections to the natural world. Jarema’s work has been featured in Architectural Digest, T Magazine, Elle Decor, Apartment Therapy, and others.

Jarema currently resides in Brooklyn, New York with her partner Adam, and their pup, Esme. A day in the life includes a trip to the local farmers market, walks in the park with her dog, qi gong and evening journaling. Always watering, pruning or propagating in her garden, Jarema also loves to travel and immerse herself in other cultures, landscapes, botanical gardens, art and architecture. 

Links

Moon Garden:A Guide to Creating an Evening Oasis

Jarema on Instagram @dirtqueennyc

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Botanical Styling

Houseplant Legends

Patreon

This episode I’m speaking with Kevin Hobbs & Artur Cesar-Erlach, authors of EDIBLE: 70 Sustainable Plants That Are Changing How We Eat which is a beautifully illustrated book looking at edible plants from around the world that are revolutionising how we grow, eat and appreciate food. It tackles important questions like what do we eat when our usual diets are no longer sustainable, how do we future proof food and how can we be more mindful about what we eat and considers what the future of global food production might look like.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Harvestmen

What We Talk About 

The idea behind the book 

Traditional staple crops

Hopniss

Great Burdock

Cornelian cherry

Ebbing’s Silverberry

Sea buckthorn

Kevin & Artur’s vote for the most under-utilised crop

About the authors

Kevin Hobbs is a UK-based professional grower and plantsman with over thirty years’ experience in the horticulture industry. He is the author of The Story of Trees and Herbaceous Perennials, Hillier’s Gardener’s Guide.

Artur Cisar-Erlach is an ecologist and food expert based in Vienna, whose work spans the fields of food and ecotourism. He is the author of The Flavor of Wood.

Katie Kulla is an illustrator, writer and farmer based in Oregon in the United States.

Links

Edible: 70 Sustainable Plants That Are Changing How We Eathttps://www.summerfieldbooks.com/product/edible-70-sustainable-plants-that-are-changing-how-we-eat/

Lucinda Weldon Coaching

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Wild Food Tasting Session

Edimentals with Stephen Barstow

Patreon

This episode, my guest is Susan Poizner. Susan is the author of the award-winning fruit tree care book Growing Urban Orchards and her new book, which is now an Amazon Number One Bestseller, Grow Fruit Trees Fast. Susan trains thousands of new growers worldwide through her award-winning fruit tree care training program and is the host of The Urban Forestry Radio Show and Podcast and an ISA Certified Arborist. She founded the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard in Toronto in 2009, helps others establish and maintain community orchards and food forests in Toronto and beyond and has won multiple awards for her work.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Ivy Mining Bees

What We Talk About 

Selecting trees for disease resistance and planning for a staggered harvest if you grow multiple trees

Choosing a spot for your tree 

Tree roots as the tree matures

Feeding your fruit trees

Mulching

Success in a community orchard 

Summer and winter pruning 

About Susan Poizner

Susan is the author of the award-winning fruit tree care book Growing Urban Orchards and her second book Grow Fruit Trees Fast. Susan trains thousands of new growers worldwide through her award-winning fruit tree care training program and is the host of The Urban Forestry Radio Show and Podcast and an ISA Certified Arborist. She founded the Ben Nobleman Park Community Orchard in Toronto in 2009, helps others establish and maintain community orchards and food forests in Toronto and beyond and has won multiple awards for her work.

Links

Growing Urban Orchards

Grow Fruit Trees Fast

The Urban Forestry Radio Show

Great Dixter Charitable Trust

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Plan, Plant & Maintain Fruit Trees

Apples

Patreon

This episode, my guest is qualified herbalist Meghan Rhodes. Meghan discusses how we can tap into our gardens for better health, why herbs are good for dealing with conditions that are manifestations of multiple problems, such as stomach issues, the 7 keys tastes you find in herbs and how you can get started on your own journey using herbs for wellbeing.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Spanish Slug Story

What We Talk About 

How herbalism adds another layer of wellbeing to gardening

Why taste is baked into our biologies, even if you’re brand new to working with plants and herbs

How to recalibrate your palette to be able to detect the 7 key tastes of herbs

How understanding tastes helps you make the most of foraged and homegrown herbs

About Meghan Rhodes

Meghan Rhodes is a qualified herbalist who has helped over 80 people start living herbalism, making healthier, safer solutions for themselves and their families a reality. As the founder of Rhodes Roots & Remedies, she has written 10 course books, authored the books Easy Herbal Remedies for Infants and Slow-Infused Self-Care, as well as developed a unique four season sense-based herbalism course and journey, Awaken Herbal Wisdom.

Meghan’s practice of herbalism is rooted in the belief that we must remember, reclaim and relearn our knowledge of our bodies, our autonomy and how to work with plant medicine in order to bring control of our own health back into our families and homes for a sustainable future for ourselves and the planet.

Meghan is a member of both the College of Practitioners of Phytotherapy and the Ayurvedic Professionals Association.

Links

• Get on the waiting list for Meghan's intensive herbalism course - Awaken Herbal Wisdom - enrolling annually - or DM Meghan the word ACCESS for the link.  
• Exclusive access to exploring one of the seven tastes 
• Instagram - @rhodesrootsandremedies

GreenBlue Urban

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Sensory Herbalism

The Herb Society

Patreon

Hello and welcome to Roots and All, where my guest this week is urban apiculturist Mark Patterson. Mark founded and runs Apicultural where he work with businesses and communities to invest in natural capital, improving the environment for pollinators and delivering pollinator monitoring surveys for clients. He provides honey bee hive management solutions, beekeeping training and education and also supplies quality urban honey to a select group of establishments. So you’d think Mark would be all for the idea of urban honeybees, right? Listen on…

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Ear Wigglers

What We Talk About 

How many hives are there in London, does anybody have an estimate? Is it a sustainable number? Where are they foraging for floral resources? Are there enough of these?

Are urban conditions more taxing for bees? Do environmental stressors lead to higher incidences of disease, for example? 

Do managed bees outcompete wild bees when it comes to consuming pollen and nectar? 

Are managed bees necessary? Useful? Desirable? Filling a niche left by potentially dwindling numbers of wild bees? A useful pollination and food source for humans? 

Why are commercial beekeeping companies trying to muscle in on the beekeeping tradition in London?

Do honeybees count as an ‘environmental credit’ in terms of planning and building? 

About Mark Patterson

After completing a National Diploma in Agriculture, Land use and recreation which included a practical Horticultural course Mark went on to study for an Honours Degree in Countryside Management and Ornithology at Kingston Upon Hull University - an ecology based course of study. It was during this time at University that Mark was introduced to bee keeping by a fellow student. 

As senior Consultant Mark has amassed over 26 years of experience in the fields of nature conservation and ecology. His past professional positions include marine biologist/ranger on the Farne islands national nature reserve, Countryside Ranger for a local Authority, Nature reserve manager for Durham Wildlife services, Worked on a bird of prey Reintroduction program with the RSPB , Freelance consultancy and 11 years as a project and program manager for a national Environmental regeneration Charity, Groundwork.

Having assisted others with their beekeeping for several years Mark began bee keeping on his own in 2010 having attended an introduction course and a seasons mentoring. Since then he has volunteered extensively for Bee keeping associations, serving as elected committee official and Trustee to the LBKA, taught courses and organised forage planting activities for the bee keeping community he serves. Mark spent 3 years working for DEFRA as a seasonal Bee Inspector and currently cares for around 30 colonies of honey bees,10 of which are his own.

Mark currently posses the BBKA Bee basic certificate, BBKA Honey bee management certificate, several of the BBKA modular exam certificates and the General Husbandry certificate. Mark has extensive training and experience in notifiable bee diseases diagnosis and management. 

As well as Honey Bees Mark is also highly knowledgeable about Solitary bees and Bumblebees and teaches Bee identification courses for the Field Studies Council as part of the nationwide BioLinks program.

Links

www.apicultural.co.uk 

Mark Patterson on LinkedIn 

www.howgreennursery.co.uk

Other episodes if you liked this one:

The Garden Jungle with Professor Dave Goulson

Pollinators with Professor Jeff Ollerton

Patreon

My guest this week is David Hedges-Gower. David is a prominent figure in the UK's lawn care industry, known for his expertise and dedication to promoting sustainable lawn care practices. He wrote the book ‘Modern Lawn Care’, is the Chairman of The Lawn Association, founded the world’s first lawn care qualification and works tirelessly to promote responsible, sustainable lawn care practices that benefit the environment and homeowners. What David has to say on lawns certainly challenged my notions on what lawn care involves, whether they’re a sensible option to those concerned about wildlife and the environment and what they can and should be like from a horticultural perspective, so listen on with an open mind…

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Horse Chestnut Moth

What We Talk About 

Lawns and their uses

Do lawns have to be high maintenance? 

Ideal grass species for sustainable lawns

Do you have to feed a lawn?

Can lawns be of use to wildlife?

Artificial lawns

About David Hedges-Gower

David Hedges-Gower is a prominent figure in the UK's lawn care industry, known for his expertise and dedication to promoting sustainable lawn care practices. His background in greenkeeping, including his role as Superintendent at the prestigious Oxfordshire Golf Club, provided him with a strong foundation in turf management.

After recognizing the need for better information and knowledge in the lawn care field, David transitioned into lawn care and authored a book titled "Modern Lawn Care" in 2014. This publication served as a valuable resource for those seeking to improve their lawn maintenance practices.

In addition to his book, David has been actively involved in educating people about proper lawn care through training days, seminars, and advisory services. He is a trusted source of information, having accumulated 43 years of experience in the field. He often serves as an expert for publications, radio channels, and other advisory bodies, helping to disseminate his knowledge to a wider audience.

One of David's notable achievements is founding the world's first lawn care qualification, which caters to both homeowners and professionals. This qualification helps individuals gain a better understanding of modern and sustainable lawn care practices, contributing to the overall improvement of lawn maintenance.

David Hedges-Gower is also the Chairman of The Lawn Association, an organization dedicated to promoting the value of living lawns and distinguishing between genuine sustainable lawn care and marketing tactics that claim sustainability without delivering on it. The association collaborates with significant horticultural bodies like English Heritage to educate staff, trainees, and apprentices on sustainable lawn care methods.

Recently, David launched the True Garden Range, a groundbreaking product in the form of 2-in-1 fertilizers and soil conditioners made from composted recycled food waste. This product addresses the need for sustainable lawn care options in the retail market, providing a more environmentally friendly choice for gardeners.

David's passion lies in making sustainable lawns a priority, countering the practice of franchises that prioritize profits over the health of lawns. He envisions sustainable lawns as not just a feature of our surroundings but a necessity, and he works tirelessly to promote responsible lawn care practices that benefit both the environment and homeowners.

Links

www.davidhedges-gower.com

Modern Lawn Care by David Hedges-Gower

www.lawnassociation.org

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Tapestry Lawns

So & Mo

Patreon

This week, my guest is Andrew Bullock, who runs The Lavender Garden Nursery. Andrew holds the National Collection of Buddlejas and grows a huge range of lavenders and buddlejas from his nursery in The Cotswolds. We talk about how to attract pollinators to your garden, when and how to prune your buddlejas and lavenders, whether buddlejas are invasive, why lavenders are sometimes short-lived and anything else you ever wanted to know about these two plants for pollinators.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Mosquitoes

What We Talk About 

Which is better for bees - buddleja or lavender?

The best varieties for bees/butterflies/pollinators in general

Night time pollinators

How to grow lavender and buddleja

When to prune and how much to take off

Buddleja - invasive?

Causes of short-lived lavender

Links

The Lavender Garden 

Contact Andrew on the phone: 01453 860356 or 07837 582943

www.premierpolytunnels.co.uk 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Pollinators & Pollination

Bugs in Your Garden

Patreon

Several years ago, Penn Allen inherited a collection of diaries that had been meticulously maintained by her great grandmother. Penn discovered the diaries documented the building of her great grandmother and grandfather’s Arts and Crafts house and the development of the garden that followed. She uncovered an untold story of her family, of plant hunting and of rock gardens - one that has significance to the wider world of horticultural history and in fact, goes some way to rewriting it.   

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Buddleias and Butterfly Tongues

What We Talk About 

What the book is about and why Penn felt it was important to write it

How the garden helped heal; through providing a space to contemplate, a space to communicate, a distraction…

Alpines and rock gardening

Plant hunters

Reginald Farrer

Will Purdom

What became of house and garden

About Penn Allen

Having spent most of my life in the UK, I moved permanently to the beautiful Lot region in SW France with my husband around fifteen years ago.  I have a passion for my garden and the outdoors and can generally be found either striding over a windswept hillside or upside down in my flower beds, always with a Labrador or two by my side.  The Lost Garden of Loughrigg is my first story, though hopefully not my last!

Links

The Lost Gardens of Loughrigg by Penn Allen 

Tickets to see Penn Allen at the Kendal Mountain Book Festival

Twitter @PennAllenwrites 

Instagram penn.allen

www.modicagardens.com

My guest this week is Amy Anthony, a certified clinical Aromatherapist and Aromatic Gardener. In addition to that, Amy is an aromatherapy educator, podcaster, herbalist, certified master composter, and artisanal distiller and is one of New York’s top aromatherapy practitioners. We talk about the importance of connecting with nature through scent, how aromatherapy can support wellness and vitality and how you can become an aromatic gardening practitioner yourself. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Rosemary Leaf Beetles

What We Talk About 

What is aromatherapy?

What is aromatic gardening?

What’s the difference between plant aromatics and synthetics?

What are best essential oils for supporting wellness and vitality?

Do you need to be careful with any aromatic oils? What are safe and practical approaches to aromatherapy?

How are you connected to plants from your culture?

“Aromatherapy is not a consumptive exercise.” Why? What can we do about this in our own gardens? 

How is aromatherapy linked to the moon? 

Where to find out more

About Amy Anthony

Amy is a certified clinical Aromatherapist and Aromatic Gardner who left her career in marketing research to pursue what is closest to her heart: working with plants. As a certified aromatherapist, aromatherapy educator, herbalist, gardener, certified master composter, and artisanal distiller, Amy is one of NYC’s top aromatherapy practitioners.

Host of the Essential Aromatica podcast, Amy also tends her own aromatic garden on the North Fork of Long Island where she distills her unique products. 

Listed as one of America’s most influential aromatherapists, Amy Anthony is currently the New York State representative for the Alliance of International Aromatherapists and has her private practice called NYC Aromatica which includes one-on-one customized aromatherapy sessions, online class offerings, corporate consulting and article writing. 

Links

Essential Aromatica Podcast

NYC Aromatica

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Scent Magic with Isabel Bannerman

Gardening for Your Senses

Patreon

This episode, my guest is green roof guru, urban designer, photographer, birdwatcher, punk ideologist and all-round straight talker Dusty Gedge. We talk about green infrastructure, encouraging species back into landscapes, how to maintain landscapes for habitat value and what’s being and can be done to up the green value of public spaces.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Woodlice

What We Talk About 

Brownfield gardening

Biodiversity in decline

The problems faced by birds in urban environments 

What initiatives Dusty is most excited by

What happens if biodiversity starts causing a problem?

Maintaining green roofs as habitats

About Dusty Gedge

Links

www.dustygedge.co.uk

Facebook

Instagram

Twitter

LinkedIn

Collecting the Love 1

Collecting the Love 2

Other episodes if you liked this one:

The Botanical Mind

Public Green Spaces

Patreon

This episode is an interview with environmental landscape artist, TED Speaker and art21 Educator Tobacco Brown. Tobacco connects art and environmental justice and is a visual artist, digital storyteller, master gardener, social practitioner, cultural historian and intuitive environmental advocate. We talk about community green spaces, how humans connect with the land and why it’s so important that we do.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Beewolf

What We Talk About 

What can gardens teach us about ourselves? 

Lessons we can learn from a garden that help us live our lives well

Are there lessons we can take from life that will help us be better gardeners? 

Wisdom residing in the soil

Land justice

Communication blight remediation

How gardens grow with you as you go through life

About Tobacco Brown

Links

Email tobaccobrownartist@gmail.com

Tobacco Brown

What Gardening Taught Me About Life - Tobacco Brown’s TED Talk

On Instagram

art21

Other episodes if you liked this one:

The Botanical Mind

Public Green Spaces

Patreon

My guest this week is Blanche Cameron, who leads UCL Bartlett School of Architecture's Environmental Design and Greening Cities modules, and is an urban green infrastructure advocate who works closely with industry and the government on urban greening issues. To say our towns and cities are not always good examples of environmentally sound design and biodiversity would be quite the understatement, but Blanche is one of a group of outspoken advocates for nature inclusive design who are are working towards better outcomes in this regard.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Dagger flies

What We Talk About 

The built environment and biodiversity collapse

Landscaping in towns and cities

How good design can help mitigate biodiversity loss and climate change

Vertical planting and green roofs

Do we need a coherent plan or is it up to individuals to start changing their landscapes?

“Productising” and the construction industry’s need for homogeneity

Where does technologically fit in?

About Blanche Cameron

Blanche leads UCL Bartlett School of Architecture’s Environmental Design and Greening Cities modules and contributes to other modules and programmes, including the Landscape Architecture and Sustainable Heritage MSc.She coordinated the Living Landscape Strategy for UCL’s £1Bn UCL East development, and sits on UCL’s campus greening ‘Wild Bloomsbury’ steering group. Blanche is an urban green infrastructure advocate, working closely with industry and government, bringing practitioners into the heart of teaching, including John Little, biodiverse landscapes innovator, and Dusty Gedge, living roofs expert and founder in 2004 of the independent advisory organisation, Livingroofs.org. Blanche edited the GLA's 2019 10-year update report on the impact of a decade of urban greening since the London Plan's Green Roofs and Walls 2008 policy, co-written by Dusty Gedge and Gary Grant.

Links

Blanche on LinkedIn

www.naturalgrower.co.uk

www.veteransgrowth.org

Other episodes if you liked this one:

John Little

Green Roofs with Dr Anna Zakrisson

Patreon

This episode I’m speaking with author and expert gardener Maggie Stuckey about growing food in containers. We talk about growing a container garden of vegetabhttps://rootsandall.co.uk/podcast/episode-52-grow-fruit-vegetables-in-pots-with-aaron-bertelsen/les, herbs, and edible flowers and the inspirational history of wartime Victory Gardens and their legacy for today’s gardeners. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Painted Lady Butterflies

What We Talk About 

Victory gardens 

Growing food in containers

With container space at a premium, how can you choose what to grow? 

Essential equipment

Cool season and warm season plants

Maggie’s neat trick for planting garlic cloves

Root vegetables in containers

Should you try to focus on one type of plant or can you grow a mixture of things?

Succession planting 

About Maggie Stuckey

Bestselling author Maggie Stuckey is an expert in the art of growing good things to eat in containers. For more than twenty years, Maggie has been enjoying vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers grown in her own container garden — and inspiring others to transform even the tiniest spaces into vibrant personal foodways.

In her book The Container Victory Garden, Maggie shares practical and comprehensive tips and techniques for container gardening alongside the rich history of the original wartime Victory Gardens, which date back to 1917. 

Links

The Container Victory Garden: A Beginner’s Guide to Growing Your Own Groceries by Maggie Stuckey - HarperCollins Focus, April 2023

Move with Adele

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Fruits and Vegetables in Pots

Container Planting with Harriet Rycroft

Patreon

This episode I’m speaking with Seb Stroud. Seb is based at Leeds University and is part of the Ecology & Evolution Group, where his research looks at many different topics including botany, freshwater ecology, ecosystem structures and urban landscapes. He recently co-authored a research paper which looks at the state of botanical education and that’s what I was particularly interested in chatting about today.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Woolly Aphids

What We Talk About 

What is the extinction of botanical education? Why is it happening?

The effects of losing our tradition of botanical education

Plant blindness

The UN’s sustainable development goals and future funding

The impact of botanical education extinction on climate change, food security and our economy

What is actually being done about it? 

Natural history GCSE

Equity and accessibility in environmental education

The UK as a nation of gardeners and nature lovers…? 

About Sebastian Stroud

Links

Botanical education paper

Seb Stroud on Twitter

Botanical University Challenge

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

RBGE’s PropaGate Learning - Online Courses

BSBI

Kew’s Grow Wild

Botanists are Disappearing with Seb Stroud - The Conversation, July 2022

CW Studio 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Modern Plant Hunters

The State of Horticulture

Patreon

My guest this episode is urban smallholder Sara Ward. Sara runs Hen Corner, a backyard smallholding in London. Her website Hen Corner has a wealth of information on growing and making food, she runs courses, sells products from her bakery and has just published a book ‘Living the Good Life in the City’. I began by asking Sara what prompted her to follow in the wellieprints of Barbara Good.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Gardening for Nature

What We Talk About 

What prompted Sara to set up Hen Corner

How much can you grow in your average urban garden?

Keeping animals

Getting rid of waste from the garden

Preserving food

Looking after things when you're away

About Living the Good Life in the City

Sara Ward has transformed her Victorian terraced house in London into an urban smallholding, ‘Hen Corner’, and in Living the Good Life in the City she shares some of the ways she and her family have brought city and country together, and shows that you, too, can make a difference to how you live and the food you eat.

Divided into sections covering Make, Grow, Preserve, Keep and Celebrate, Living the Good Life in the City is packed full of recipes, stories, tips and tricks including baking

bread, making your own jam, pasta, sausages and cheese, keeping bees and livestock, preserving, foraging, harvesting and celebrating with food.

Links

Living the Good Life in the City by Sara Ward - Pimpernel Press, July 2023 

www.hencorner.com

Digital Fuse

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Huw Richards on Veg Growing

Food Forest in Your Garden with Alan Carter

Patreon

My guest this episode is artist and activist Katie Holten. Katie has just released a book called The Language of Trees, a collection of literary and scientific works by people like Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ursula le Guin, and Ross Gay. Using her Alphabet of Trees, the book is underpinned by the Katie’s art and asks us to examine our relationship with trees by pulling together wide-reaching strands and demonstrating in one place, just how connected we are to them.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Asian Hornets

What We Talk About 

The idea behind the Language of Trees

The Tree Alphabet

Themes behind the essays

Inspiring Tree People

About The Language of Trees

In this beautifully illustrated collection, artist Katie Holten gifts readers her visual Tree Alphabet and uses it to masterfully translate and illuminate pieces from some of the world’s most exciting writers and artists, activists and ecologists.

Holten guides us on a journey from prehistoric cave paintings and creation myths to the death of a 3,500 year-old cypress tree, from Tree Clocks in Mongolia and forest fragments in the Amazon to the language of fossil poetry. In doing so, she unearths a new way of seeing the natural beauty that surrounds us and creates an urgent reminder of what could happen if we allow it to slip away.

Links

The Language of Trees by Katie Holten - Elliott & Thompson, June 2023 

www.katieholten.com

Starcroft Farm Cabins

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Plants and People

The Botanical Mind

Patreon

My guest this week is wildlife author and photographer Paul Sterry. Paul has written many books on wildlife but his latest, The Biodiversity Gardener, pulls together his decades of knowledge and the result is a wildlife gardening manual with real-life examples taken from Paul’s Hampshire wildlife friendly space.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Dark Edged Bee Flies

What We Talk About 

Can small gardens really make a difference to our declining biodiversity? Won’t they become unsupportable islands of life?

How to start wildlife gardening

Butterfly caterpillars and when to safely cut the grass/meadow/hedges

Weeding and cutting back and species that use certain plants as larval hosts

Is scrub good and how can you incorporate it in your garden? Do you need to manage it to avoid it becoming woodland?

Advice for anyone looking to transition away from a conventional to a wildlife garden

The Nature Conservancy Council!

About Paul Sterry

Links

The Biodiversity Gardener by Paul Sterry - Princeton University Press, June 2023 

Paul Sterry on Twitter 

www.naturephotographers.co.uk

Other episodes if you liked this one:

The Garden Jungle with Dave Goulson

Making a Wildlife Garden

Patreon

This week’s episode, my guests are Chris Young and Susan Ottaviano. Chris and Susan are better known as the 2 Green Witches. Chris Young is a lifelong gardener whose acclaimed garden, Tiny Sur is a certified wildlife habitat and Susan is an artist, performer, songwriter, and food stylist. Their new book is The Green Witch’s Guide to Magical Plants & Flowers: Love Spells from Apples to Zinnias and together we take a light-hearted look at the power of plants to help you manifest your deepest desires. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Invasive Species

What We Talk About 

What is a grimoire?

What is green witchcraft?

The forward to the book is written by the iconic Debbie Harry. Is she a green witch?

Love spells

Do spells work? 

How the practices in the book help you to connect more deeply with your garden

The Indian paintbrush plant.

Queen Anne’s lace jelly

About Susan Ottaviano

Artist, performer, songwriter, and cooking maven Susan Ottaviano welcomes you into the lush and whimsical world of green witchcraft with her new book, The Green Witch’s Guide to Magical Plants & Flowers: Love Spells from Apples to Zinnias ( 6/6/23 Skyhorse Publishing).

With her rich illustrations and inspiring vegan recipes, Susan and co-author Chris Young shine light on brilliant ways to use products from the farmers market, supermarket, or even your backyard garden to bring light, love, good food, and good humor into your life.

Susan has been a groundbreaking food stylist and recipe developer for over twenty years. Her work has been featured in magazines, cookbooks, and advertisements from Bon Appétit to Grey Goose to Uber Eats.

Best known as the lead singer for pop band Book of Love, Susan and her bandmates recorded five albums for Warner Brothers Records/Sire Records. Book of Love was a fixture on the Billboard Dance Club charts throughout the 1980s and 1990s, with multiple hits in the top ten. The group reunited in 2016 for a sold-out world tour to mark their 30th Anniversary.

Her evocative artwork, which explores food, femininity, and sexuality, has been featured in numerous gallery shows, including a Spring 2023 group show titled “Eat It” at Collar Works Arts Organization.

She earned a BFA in Painting from The Philadelphia College of Art, and has been awarded post-graduate certificates from the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park and the Institute of Culinary Education in New York City. She lives in New York’s East Village. 

Susan can be found on Instagram at @susanottavianoart

About Chris Young

Author, gardening expert, and former Comedy Central executive Chris Young first discovered his love of the outdoors growing up exploring the vast Indiana backyard of his late grandfather. Even while obtaining a degree from Indiana University and working as the Director of Talent at Comedy Central, Chris never lost his fascination with the power of nature.

In his new book, The Green Witch’s Guide to Magical Plants & Flowers, Love Spells from Apples to Zinnias (6/6/23 Skyhorse Publishing), Chris and co-author Susan Ottaviano share the surprising mystical properties of dozens of plants and flowers. 

Over the years, Chris honed his expertise working with green witches, gardening virtuosos, and botanical magic practitioners from New York City to rural Oregon. Eventually Chris settled down in California with his husband, television writer Jon Kinnally, where he re-committed himself to the botanical world.

Chris’ own garden, “Tiny Sur”, has been designated by the National Wildlife Federation as a certified Wildlife Habitat. It is also certified by The Xerces Society as a Pollinator Habitat, by Monarch Watch as a Monarch Waystation, and by the Humane Society as a Humane Backyard. On Facebook, Tiny Sur (@tinysuroflaurelcanyon) boasts thousands of loyal, engaged followers. 

Chris writes, gardens, and practices green witchcraft in Laurel Canyon, where he lives with husband Jon, cats Simon, Howard, and Elliott, and two Russian tortoises, Wentworth and Boris. 

Chris can be found on Instagram as @plantymcflowers.

About The Green Witch’s Guide to Magical Plants & Flowers

Chris Young and Susan Ottaviano, better known as the 2 Green Witches. Chris Young is a lifelong gardener whose acclaimed garden, Tiny Sur is a certified wildlife habitat. Susan is an artist, performer, songwriter, and food stylist. 

Their new is The Green Witch’s Guide to Magical Plants & Flowers (6/6/23 Skyhorse Publishing). 

Couldn’t we all use a little more magic in our lives? Equal parts practical guide and beautiful keepsake, The Green Witch’s Guide to Magical Plants & Flowers shows you how to bring more love and contentment into your life using elements of nature. This book, written by our favorite 2 Green Witches, unlocks the secrets hiding in your garden, transforming everyday flowers, fruits, and plants into bath salts, herbal infusions, soaps, sachets, tinctures, and more. It provides all-natural recipes that illuminate pathways to health, peace, love and prosperity, and harmony. The book deals with:

• Love Potions: Learn how to attract your soulmate and cultivate your best self with these love rituals including jasmine bath salts, lavender candles, oils and more
• Food for the Soul: How to use vegan recipes made with organic ingredients that ease stress in your relationship, boost your immunity, relieve a headache and even enhance your fertility. Susan can share recipes, including a meadowsweet and mint tea, lust parsley salad, orange cake, to candied violets. 
• Magical Mindfulness: Say goodbye to stress and hello to relaxation with these anxiety-reducing methods and recipes. 
• Plant Magic: How does your garden grow? Master magical gardening and growing with plant whisperer Chris Young. Learn about which plants offer protection, give you good luck and prosperity.

Links

The Green Witch’s Guide to Magical Plants & Flowers - June 2023, Skyhorse Publishing 

The 2 Green Witches on Instagram

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Sensory Herbalism

The Wheel of the Year

Patreon

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode where my guest is poet and scholar Camille Dungy. Camille has documented how she diversified her garden to reflect her heritage in her book ‘Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden’. We talk about the politics of gardening, planting a nature garden and how nature writing has influenced our gardens in the past and how it can shape the way we do so in the future.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Bloodsuckers

What We Talk About 

Why Camille believes “Every politically engaged person should have a garden”

The idea behind Camille’s pollinator garden in Colorado

Gardens that offer something more than beauty

Is there something we can do to make ourselves take more thinking, creating time?

The state of modern nature writing

The lessons learnt from gardening

“If I cultivate a flourishing I want its reach to be wide”. What Camille means by this.

About Camille Dungy

Camille T. Dungy is the author of Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (Simon & Schuster: May 2, 2023). She has also written Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and four collections of poetry, including Trophic Cascade, winner of the Colorado Book Award. Dungy edited Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, the first anthology to bring African American environmental poetry to national attention. She also co-edited the From the Fishouse poetry anthology and served as assistant editor for Gathering Ground: Celebrating Cave Canem's First Decade. 

Dungy is the poetry editor for Orion magazine. Her work has appeared in Best American Poetry, 100 Best African American Poems, Best American Essays, The 1619 Project, All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis, over 40 other anthologies, plus dozens of venues including The New Yorker, Poetry, Literary Hub, The Paris Review, and Poets.org. You may know her as the host of Immaterial, a podcast from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Magnificent Noise. A University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University, Dungy’s honors include the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship, an American Book Award, and fellowships from the NEA in both prose and poetry. 

Links

Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden by Camille Dungy - Simon & Schuster, May 2023

www.camilledungy.com

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Can Women Save the Planet?

Ecologically Integrated Gardens

Patreon

This week’s episode, my guest is writer Victoria Bennett, author of'All My Wild Mothers – motherhood, loss and an apothecary garden’. The book weaves memoir and herbal folklore and is a story of re-wilding our wastelands, and the transformation that can happen when we do. Daisy, for resilience. Dandelion, for strength against adversity. Borage, to bring hope in dark and difficult times…

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Box tree moth

What We Talk About 

What is an apothecary garden?

How Victoria learnt about gardening and herbalism

The garden Victoria and her son built in their new house

Dealing with the challenges thrown up by neighbours and housing associations

Some of the most powerfully useful plants Victoria has grown

How Victoria’s mother influenced her gardening aesthetic

Victoria and her son’s next joint gardening adventures

About 'All My Wild Mothers – motherhood, loss and an apothecary garden’

The book was published earlier this year with Two Roads Books. An intimate weaving of memoir and herbal folklore, it is a story of re-wilding our wastelands, and the transformation that can happen when we do. Daisy, for resilience. Dandelion, for strength against adversity. Borage, to bring hope in dark and difficult times.

Victoria says, “faced with a life very different to what I thought it would be; deep in grief following the tragic death of my eldest sister, facing financial difficulties, and caring for my young son who was diagnosed at age 2 with Type One diabetes, I decided to see what could grow on the barren land of the former industrial site over which our new social housing home was built. With my son, I began to grow, relying on the weeds that were under our feet and the things that other people threw out or eradicated from their pristine gardens.

Stone by stone, seed by seed, my son and I turned the rubble into a wild, healing garden. As we did, we discovered that sometimes what grows does so, not in spite of what is broken, but because of it.”

Links

Victoria’s website

'All My Wild Mothers – motherhood, loss and an apothecary garden’ by Victoria Bennett

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Grounding Roots with Lulah Ellender

Darwin’s Garden with Dr Jude Piesse

Patreon

My guest  this episode is author and activist Ellen Miles. Ellen is the founder of Nature is a Human Right, she runs Dream Green, a social enterprise that helps people get guerrilla gardening with guides, grants, and workshops and has a book that will be released this Thursday the 8th of June, Get Guerrilla Gardening: A handbook for planting in public places.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Spider silk

What We Talk About 

What is guerrilla gardening?

Does it matter who owns the land you guerrilla garden?

Is it illegal? Are you liable if someone trips over your planter, for example?

Should we be growing more food in communities? 

If you’re growing food in an urban location, how can you know the soil isn’t contaminated with anything that will be taken up by your plants?

Who decides why a space should be used for? Where is the input from the people that live with and use guerrilla gardened spaces? 

What are some potentially good sites?

What are parklets?

Are there spaces (such as wild spaces) that should be left alone?

In order for a plant to establish either from seed or as a plant, it needs to have a degree of tenacity. Is it easy to strike a balance between finding plants that are tough enough to survive and persist and avoiding plants which can be invasive?

How do you cope with practical hurdles such as no water, nowhere to store your tools, nowhere to sit down…?

How do you cope with vandalism?

Should you try and communicate with the local authority? If so, who and how can you best get hold of them?

How do ensure a garden continues to thrive after it’s established? 

Other resources and people doing good work in this area

About Ellen Miles

Ellen Miles is an author and activist rooting for nature in urban neighbourhoods. She founded Nature is a Human Right and edited the acclaimed anthology of essays inspired by the campaign (Nature is a Human Right: Why we're fighting for green in a grey world, DK, 2022). Ellen also runs Dream Green, a social enterprise that helps people get guerrilla gardening with guides, grants, and workshops.

Get Guerrilla Gardening is a joyful handbook – packed with illustrated 'how to's, inspiring stories, and photos of vibrant transformations – demystifies the art and science of planting in public places. With no prior gardening knowledge required, Get Guerrilla Gardening guides you through a straightforward, flexible action plan to suit your aims and abilities, covering everything from the legalities of guerrilla gardening, to how to choose the right plants for your patch.

Links

Get Guerrilla Gardening by Ellen Miles

Ellen on Instagram

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Public Green Spaces with Neil Sinden of CPRE

Ecological Gardens with Sid Hill

Patreon

My guest this week is gardener Benny Hawksbee. Benny has a background in biology and gardens with one eye on biodiversity. His projects include the Eden Nature Garden, a community garden designed to be a haven for people and wildlife, and John Little’s garden in Essex. 

We talk about how Benny brings biology and ecology into his work, what we can all do to garden for wildlife whilst reducing our input in terms of resources and how we can involve the community in building and using gardens that work for everyone. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Broad bean pests

What We Talk About 

Benny’s professional background and how he got into horticulture

The Eden Nature Garden

How Benny brings biology & ecology into his work

Gardening on a low budget and with low resource availability, such as the absence of running water and electricity

Going against the horticultural rule book

Bees - native species and honeybees

The importance of community involvement in public gardens

The future of gardening in the UK

Links

www.edennaturegarden.org

www.hawksbeegardening.com

Benny on Instagram 

London Natural History Society

UK Bees, wasps, ants recording society

Other episodes if you liked this one:

John Little

Nature from the Rubble

Patreon

This episode goes out in celebration of The Chelsea Fringe. The Fringe is an annual event which runs concurrently to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and celebrates everything alternative in horticulture. And this episode is certainly alternative! It was intended to be an AMA (Ask Me Anything) episode but quickly evolved into a general chat with my host this week, Jake Rayson. We then moved on to talk about a new initiative I’m launching. The idea is in its embryonic stage and I have no idea how it’s going to develop, but listen on for some more info. 

Thank you very much Jake for being a friend, stand-in host and long-term supporter of Roots and All. Please check out the links to Jake’s work below. 

Links

Jake made a handy list of free resources, NBN Atlas and GBIF his latest faves, quite amazing. 

And he's available for wildlife forest garden design work, remote sites a speciality. Here's his portfolio

Here's Jake's Garden Wild Spreadsheet

Other episodes if you liked this one:

The Chelsea Fringe with Tim Richardson

Introduction to Forest Gardening with Jake Rayson

Patreon

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This episode features writer, garden historian and returning guest Caroline Ball. In eighteenth-century Bavaria a prosperous apothecary, Johann Wilhelm Weinmann began an extraordinary project, the compilation of an A to Z of plants, meticulously documented, and lavishly illustrated by botanical artists using the latest colour-printing methods of the time. He aimed to include thousands of plants from all over the world, describing their individual characteristics and commissioning magnificent colour illustrations of each specimen.

The first complete volume of the Phytanthoza Iconographia, as he called it, was published in 1737 and the work grew to four immense tomes. The Iconographia gives an unparalleled view of the ornamental and useful plants that were known to botanists and gardeners in the early eighteenth-century. Caroline has written two books, A Splendour of Succulents & Cacti and A Cornucopia of Fruit & Vegetables, which document how this piece of work came to be collated and which reproduce many of the amazing images featured within. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Butterfly Tongues & Buddleia

What We Talk About 

Johann Wilhelmina Weinmann and his Phytanthoza Iconographia 

Where Weinmann sourced the plants that were included

The painters who documented the specimens

Historical plant pots

How the work was reproduced

Matching the plants depicted to contemporary specimens

Are historical botanical texts merely a curiosity, or can they inform our knowledge of horticulture in the present day?

Some of the more surprising medicinal uses for plants that are documented in the book

About Caroline Ball & the Phytanthoza Iconagraphia

In eighteenth-century Bavaria a prosperous apothecary, Johann Wilhelm Weinmann, grew an ‘American aloe’ that astounded all who saw it. He was also the mastermind behind an extraordinary project - a comprehensive A to Z of plants, meticulously documented, and lavishly illustrated by botanical artists using the latest colour-printing methods of the time. Weinmann aimed to include thousands of plants from all over the world, describing their individual characteristics and commissioning magnificent colour illustrations of each specimen. The first complete volume of the Phytanthoza Iconographia, as he called it, was published in

1737 and the work grew to four immense tomes. The Iconographia gives an unparalleled view of the ornamental and useful plants that were known to botanists and gardeners in the early eighteenth-century.

Caroline Ball is an editor, copywriter and occasional translator who has written on many subjects, but has a particular interest in horticulture, garden history and plant-hunters. She is also a keen gardener.

Caroline’s books A Splendour of Succulents & Cacti and A Cornucopia of Fruit & Vegetables feature illustrations from an eighteenth-century botanical treasury, celebrating Weinmann’s rare and precious volumes by theme. 

Links

A Splendour of Succulents & Cacti

A Cornucopia of Fruit & Vegetables: Illustrations from an eighteenth-century botanical treasury

Members of the public can explore the collections via the Bodleian’s online image portal here.

digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Heritage Apples with Caroline Ball

Herbs with the Herb Society

Patreon

This week, my guest is Dr Neil Bell, bryologist at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and author of The Hidden World of Mosses, which takes a look into the minute and fascinating world of bryophytes. 

If you’ve ever wanted to know how these plants live and reproduce, whether you can cultivate moss indoors or outdoors, what that green stuff is you find on the surface of potted plant’s compost and whether you should take it off, the environmental and habitat value of mosses and how they are affected by the moon, listen on…

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Tardegrades

What We Talk About 

What is moss? How is it different to other plants? 

Liverworts and hornworts

How mosses reproduce

Moss species in the UK

Cultivating mosses in a garden or as a houseplant

Liverworts growing on the surface of potted plants

Is there a place for mosses on brownfield sites?

Do all mosses need shade and moisture? 

How mosses take in nutrients and attach to structures

The role mosses play in the environment in terms of water attenuation and conservation, and as habitats for other creatures

Sphagnum bogs as a ‘potential positive feedback loop’ for climate change and what can be done about this

The connection between sphagnum moss and the moon

How you can better see mosses, to explore what they look like in detail and appreciate them

About The Hidden World of Mosses

Did you know that there are nearly 20,000 different species of mosses and their relatives worldwide with over 1000 in the UK? And did you know that Sphagnum moss is almost wholly responsible for the creation and maintenance of peat bogs, preventing harmful carbon from being released into the atmosphere?

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh has published The Hidden World of Mosses, providing an accessible guide to these not-so-humble botanical gems. Written by bryologist Dr Neil Bell, the book presents information about these incredible plants, exploring their tiny, intriguing and diverse environments in detail. This fascinating book also contains hundreds of stunning photographs which reveal the beauty and splendour of moss.

Perhaps the most misunderstood and misrepresented of all groups of organisms, moss is often thought of as unattractive and unremarkable, but nothing could be further from the truth. Mosses and their relatives (liverworts and hornworts) are found in almost every part of the world, from lush forests to rocky mountains tops and from city centres in the tropics to Antarctic tundra. Mosses are critical to the planet - if they ceased to exist tomorrow the world would be in a lot of trouble. 

Examining the many different types of moss, including those found in the UK and internationally, The Hidden World of Mosses explores the incredible environments of these plants that form their own miniature forests filled with grazers and predators, and have their own ecological norms and mechanics. They play a critical role in climate change prevention and have an extraordinary ability to hold and control water in forests, uplands and valleys. 

Incredibly, some mosses can hold more than 20 times their own weight in water. Peat mosses (Sphagnum) are almost entirely responsible for creating and maintaining peat, which is a traditional fuel and used for the flavour it imparts to many whiskies. Sphagnum moss keeps the soil in which it grows permanently wet, largely preventing decomposition.Interestingly, Sphagnum moss has also been used by medics over the centuries. Due to its absorbent and antiseptic properties, it was used as a cheaper alternative to cotton wool dressings in World Wars One and Two, and has been used to treat wounds for many years. 

On tropical mountains, mosses prevent flooding by capturing large amounts of water, gently controlling the flow of heavy rainfall, absorbing it like a giant sponge and then slowly letting it out again into rivers in a regulated manner. Additionally, mosses offer hunting grounds, protection and food for a host of much smaller creatures such as worms, mites, spiders and beetles, who use moss as a place to shelter, graze, or reproduce. 

Speaking about the publication of The Hidden World of Mosses, Neil Bell said, “Mosses are just a little smaller than most things we deal with in our everyday lives, so we tend not to notice their intricate beauty and how different they are from each other unless we make the effort to look really closely. Mosses and their relatives have evolved to live in a different way from other plants, playing a critical role in the environment that other plants can’t, and the mosses and liverworts we have in Scotland are of international significance - far more so than our other native plants, in fact. We need to recognise that and protect them. I hope that this book will raise awareness of this hidden botanical world and encourage more people to explore it .”

Dr Neil Bell is a bryologist at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.  Much of his research is focused on quantifying, understanding and promoting Scotland’s globally important bryophyte flora, of which mosses are part.  Neil is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Bryology.  This year, the British Bryology Society celebrates its centenary. 

The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is one of the world’s leading scientific botanic gardens, holding knowledge gained over centuries that the world needs today.  All known life depends on plants and fungi. The Garden’s mission is to explore, conserve and explain the world of plants for a better future. We all know biodiversity loss and climate change is threatening thousands of plants with extinction. Through cutting edge science, conservation and education, the organisation is helping to save them.  Its four Scottish gardens – Benmore, Dawyk, Logan and ‘The Botanics’ in Edinburgh – attract over a million visitors every year. Together, these gardens comprise one of the richest plant collections on earth. As a registered Scottish charity, the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh is funded principally by the Scottish Government – but as an organisation, it is very much global, taking positive action for plants and people around the world – from local communities in Scotland, to over 40 countries overseas.

Links

The Hidden World of Mosses by Dr Neil Bell 

www.britishbryologicalsociety.org.uk

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Lichen

Mycorrhizal Fungi with Jeff Lowenfels

Patreon

My guest this week is Ben Raskin, the Soil Association’s Head of Horticulture and Agroforestry. Ben is the author of several books on gardening, including Zero-Waste Garden and The Community Gardening Handbook. His latest book is ‘The Woodchip Handbook’, which I was very excited to read and even more excited to speak with Ben about, because I’ve long been a fan of using wood chip in the garden. 

In the interview, we cover the many uses for woodchip in the garden, how it can help with plant and soil health, what sort of wood makes good chip and the do’s and don’ts of using it.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: The Syrphids

What We Talk About 

Sourcing woodchip

Making your own

Different species of tree woodchip

Runoff when storing woodchip

Do we need to store or compost woodchip before we use it?

The uses for woodchip in the garden

What is ramial chipped wood and what can it be used for? 

The benefits of using woodchip as a mulch

Avoiding suppressing self-seeders

Woodchip and carbon retention

What happens to woodchip if treated as ‘waste’? 

About Ben Raskin

Ben Raskin has worked in horticulture for more than 25 years, developing a wide range of experience both in practical commercial growing and wider policy and advocacy work.

As the Soil Association’s Head of Horticulture and Agroforestry, he provides growers at all levels of production with technical, marketing, policy, supply chain and networking support. He is currently implementing a 200-acre silvopastural agroforestry planting in Wiltshire.

Ben is the author of several previous books on gardening, including Zero-Waste Gardening (2021), The Community Gardening Handbook (2017) and three volumes of the Grow Together Guides aimed at families with young children: Compost, Grow, and Bees, Bugs, and Butterflies.

Additionally, Ben co-chairs the Defra Edibles Horticulture Roundtable and sits on the boards of the Organic Growers Alliance and Community Supported Agriculture Network UK.

Links 

The Woodchip Handbook by Ben Raskin

www.benraskin.uk

Innovative Farmers Field Lab - willow woodchip for apple scab (with Glynn Percival)

Innovative Farmers Field Lab  - peat free woodchip propagation substrate (with Iain Tolhurst)

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Dr Glynn Percival’s episode where he talks about tree health and the various uses of different mulches in terms of suppressing diseases

A recording of Iain Tolhurst, where he talks about his use of ramial woodchip

Patreon

This week’s episode, I’m speaking to holistic funeral director, Holly Lyon-Hawk. It’s not easy for most of us to talk about end of life, death and funeral arrangements and yet it’s such an important thing to prepare for, it’s unavoidable, it needn’t be frightening or taboo, and it is something we can make easier for ourselves and our loved ones if we start a conversation around it whilst we still can. In the interview, Holly talks about her approach and about what options are open to those of us who love nature and gardens and I expect you’ll find what we talk about sometimes surprising and also reassuring to know that there are alternative options.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Choices for pest control

What We Talk About 

Holly’s background and how she became a holistic funeral director

How Holly approaches funerals differently

Some common misconceptions around funerals

Can I be composted? Can I be buried in my garden?

Eco-friendly ways to be buried

How a garden or love of gardening can be incorporated into a funeral

Talking about your funeral wishes and how we can prepare for dying

How to make sure your last wishes are followed

About Holly Lyon-Hawk

I originally trained as a veterinary nurse before working as a sculptor for many years. 

I set up my own business  working as a holistic funeral director many years ago understanding that people needed not only more choice, but also more support than they had been, on the whole, from mainstream traditional funeral directors. I now work across the S/E England supporting many families as both as End of Life Practitioner and a Holistic Funeral Director.

I am an author as well as a multi-award winning Holistic Funeral Director, Specialist in Ceremonial Care of the Body and End of Life Practitioner for People and Pets. 

Links

www.hollylyonhawk.com

Holly’s Podcast - No One Gets Out of Here Alivehttps://noonegetsoutofherealive.buzzsprout.com

Holly’s Book - A Gentle Goodbye

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Caring for God’s Acre with Harriet Carty

Sacred Woodlands with Simon Leadbeater

Patreon

This week’s episode I’m speaking to horticulturist, journalist, host of the On the Ledge podcast and author of a new book ‘Legends of the Leaf’, Jane Perrone. Have you ever wondered why the leaves of the Swiss cheese plant have holes? How aloe vera came to be harnessed as a medicinal powerhouse? Or why – despite your best efforts – you can’t keep your Venus flytrap alive? If you’re familiar with the On the Ledge podcast, you’ll know Jane takes deep dives into the background of houseplants; where they come from, how they behave and how we can best grow them.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: The Lepidoptera

About Legends of the Leaf

Have you ever wondered why the leaves of the Swiss cheese plant have holes? How aloe vera came to be harnessed as a medicinal powerhouse? Or why – despite your best efforts – you can’t keep your Venus flytrap alive?

You are not alone: houseplant expert Jane Perrone has asked herself those very questions, and in Legends of the Leaf she digs deep beneath the surface to reveal the answers. By exploring how they grow in the wild, and the ways they are understood and used by the people who live among them, we can learn almost everything we need to know about our cherished houseplants.

Along the way, she unearths their hidden histories and the journeys they’ve taken to become prized possessions in our homes: from the Kentia palms which stood either side of Queen Victoria’s coffin as she lay in state; to the dark history of the leopard lily, once exploited for its toxic properties; to English ivy, which provided fishermen with a source of bait.

Each houseplant history in this beautifully illustrated collection is accompanied by a detailed care guide and hard-won practical advice, but it is only by understanding their roots that we can truly unlock the secrets to helping plants thrive.

About Jane Perrone

Jane Perrone is a horticultural expert, journalist and the host of On The Ledge, a podcast dedicated to houseplants and indoor gardening. She is a regular contributor to the Guardian, the Financial Times and Gardens Illustrated. She lives in Bedfordshire with her husband, two children, a dog called Wolfie and a home full of plants. 

Links

www.janeperrone.com 

Order Legends of the Leaf 

Jane on Instagram 

On Twitter 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Plants as Art with Alyson Mowat

Botanical Styling with Michelle Mason

Patreon

My guest this week is Shawn Maestretti of Studio Petrichor, a design studio working out of California. Shawn’s personal mission is to reconnect with the natural world, tread lightly on the land, nurture biodiversity, protect water, and bring people together. We speak about how Studio Petrichor designs with these values in mind and the systems and techniques that are used to achieve these goals.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Orange Tip Butterflies

About Studio Petrichor & Shawn Maestretti

Studio Petrichor is a group of compassionate individuals on a journey to manifest meaningful change in the world through transformational and environmentally-aligned landscaping practices.

Our goal is to help individuals and communities cultivate stronger, richer relationships with their environment. Along the way, we educate and empower one another to support and protect Mother Nature’s living systems.

When we see and believe our actions and lives matter, it places us in a role of responsibility. It is this belief that will bring about a more beautiful, abundant, connected world.

Shawn Maestretti is an Oracle and Alchemist, (aka plant daddy, licensed landscape architect, certified arborist, certified permaculture designer, biospheric caretaker, speaker, and educator). Shawn is a member of the Climate Reality Leadership Corp, a Kiss the Ground Soil Advocate, and has co-founded the non-profit Poly/Ana to empower communities to honor and protect natural, living systems. He is also a Landscape Design Teacher at the Theodore Payne Foundation.

Shawn has been presenting on Nature’s intelligence and humanity’s impact on climate change in his presentation series Regenerative Landscapes and the Climate Crisis, Reimagining Landscape and Lifestyle, and Landscape Architecture and The Death of the Ego. His personal mission is to reconnect with the natural world, tread lightly on the land, nurture biodiversity, protect water, and bring people together. Shawn always considers impacts on flora, fauna, fungi, soil, water, the environment, the interconnectedness of our actions, and of course, a changing climate.

Links

www.studio-petrichor.com

Other episodes if you liked this one:

A Post-Wild World with Thomas Rainer

Water-wise Gardening with Janet Manning

https://www.patreon.com/rootsandall

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of Roots and All where I’m speaking to both of the Seeds Sistas, Fiona Heckels and Kazzla Goodweather about their latest book ‘Poison Prescriptions’. The book takes a look at three key plants; datura, henbane and belladonna aka the power plants. Steeped in political history, the mysterious past of our native power plants calls to us somewhere deep within. The book urges the resurrection of the ancient tradition of using of these plants in medicine, as well as being a practical guide to plant magic, medicine and ritual.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Ectoparasites

What We Talk About

Witching herbs

How long have they been used by humans and what have they been used for?

The chemicals they contain and how they can affect the body

Developing a deeper connection with plants

Henbane

Datura

Belladonna

Links

www.seedsistas.co.uk

Poison Prescriptions by The Seed Sistas - Watkins Media Limited, November 2022

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Sensory Herbalism

Nicole Rose of Solidarity Apothecary

Patreon Membership

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode, where in recognition of World Autism Acceptance Week, I’m speaking about Sensory Gardens, with a focus on design for people with autism. I have three guests; Camellia Taylor who’s designed The Natural Affinity Garden, which will be at the Chelsea Flower Show in May, after which time it will be relocated to Kent, to the charity Aspens where it will be used by residents of and visitors to the site. Next, I speak with Meraud Davis who’s overseeing the project at Aspens and finally, to Alexis Selby a foraging obsessed, nature-loving, all-round amazing person who’s giving us her take on using outdoor spaces with her son, Jared.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Narcissus Root Fly

What We Talk About

Why do we need to distinguish between men and women when it comes to environmentalism? 

Isn’t it fair to say some women are interested in improving and caring for their environment and some aren’t, and this is the case too with men? 

The feminisation of responsibility as it relates to climate change

Why women are more affected by climate change than men

Women and the control of the means of polluting production 

Why women lack the opportunity to generate a larger climate footprint

Women who are making a difference

About The Natural Affinity Garden

Aspens will partner with garden designer Camellia Taylor to create a show garden for the RHS Chelsea Flower Show (23 – 27 May 2023), supported by Project Giving Back. Aspens is a social care charity that provides high quality care and support topeople on the autism spectrum and with learning disabilities, and their families in the South-East.

The Natural Affinity Garden for Aspens, is one of six All About Plants gardens being supported by Project Giving Back in 2023. It will encourage a connection with nature and maximise the benefits to a visitor’s wellbeing by engaging with the seven senses (touch, taste, scent, sight, sound, movement and temperature).

Each planting zone of the design targets specific senses and every aspect of the planting has been included for sensory stimulation. The dominant use of green in the garden provides an overall feeling of calm for those with hyper-sensitivity (sensory avoidant) and subtle additions of purple and yellow provide stimulation and interaction for those with hypo-sensitivity (sensory seeking).

After the show, the garden will be relocated to the heart of Aspens’ Kent site, where it will provide a rich, therapeutic haven for the charity’s community. The Natural Affinity Garden for Aspens’ designer Camellia Taylor has a background in psychology and health care and has worked on previous projects with Aspens. She has a strong connection with the charity’s core values of empowerment, inclusivity and integrity and is passionate about supporting their vision for an inclusive society where people with disabilities can thrive.

Links

www.aspens.org.uk

World Autism Awareness Week - The National Autistic Society

Social Stories

Autism Training 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Making Gardening Accessible with Mark Lane

Gardening for Your Senses

Patreon Membership

This week I’m speaking to Dr Anne Karpf. Anne is Professor of Life Writing and Culture at London Metropolitan University and is a writer, sociologist and award-winning journalist. In 2021 she released the book ‘How Women Can Save the Planet’, where she looks at how there is gender inequality across the board from how we experience the climate crisis to our ability to effect change.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Queen Bumblebees

What We Talk About

Why do we need to distinguish between men and women when it comes to environmentalism? 

Isn’t it fair to say some women are interested in improving and caring for their environment and some aren’t, and this is the case too with men? 

The feminisation of responsibility as it relates to climate change

Why women are more affected by climate change than men

Women and the control of the means of polluting production 

Why women lack the opportunity to generate a larger climate footprint

Women who are making a difference

Links

How Women Can Save the Planet by Anne Karpf - C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd, May 2021

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Gardening in a Changing World

Wildfires with Saul Elbein

Patreon Membership

This week my guest is Tim Richardson, who, amongst many other things, is a garden writer, historian and founder of the Chelsea Fringe. The Fringe is an annual event which is a collection of all things horticultural, the quirkier the better, and it runs concurrent to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show each May. Events are held around the world and are an opportunity to celebrate horticulture in an alternative way.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Cabbage Bomb Aphids

About the Chelsea Fringe

The Chelsea Fringe – the alternative garden festival and established highlight of the horticultural calendar – will take place for a 12th year with nine days of festivities confirmed from 20 - 28 May 2023.

After two years in which participants responded creatively to the restrictions of the pandemic, the festival returned to the real world with a bang in 2022. A programme brimming with stimulating and diverse events took place with contributions from Cranbrook to Perth, and from Naples to Seattle. Fringe organisers are now encouraging everyone to start thinking about the imaginative, quirky, and unusual ideas they might bring to the 2023 Fringe to help create another bumper celebration of horticulture and grassroots gardening.

Fringe founder and director Tim Richardson said:

“We are a ‘true Fringe’ in that we don’t commission or curate. We accept everything that our participants suggest – if an event is on-topic, legal and interesting, it’s in! That means everything from community-garden events, art projects and performances to walks and talks, craft demos, and workshops – just a few of the categories we end up with. We are always surprised – and delighted – by what pops up each year, fresh from the imagination of our horticultural comrades in the UK and around the world.”

Thousands of events have taken place in more than 20 different countries since the first Fringe was held in 2012. What started as a back-of-a-postcard idea has grown over a decade into an international event which is an established — if unorthodox — fixture of the gardening calendar.

It remains an unfunded, unsponsored and volunteer-run Community Interest Company (CIC), powered by a small but dedicated group, with many events in the festival free to attend.

Contributors and venues over the years have included community gardening groups, public parks, artists, poets, chefs, galleries, schools, and major institutions such as Kew, the Inner Temple, the Natural History Museum, and Covent Garden Flower Market, among many others. Despite its name, the festival reaches well beyond Chelsea; not just to every quarter of London, but also to the far corners of the UK and around the world. Events have taken place on the Isle of Mull, in Monmouth, Margate, Leeds, Bristol and Henley-on-Thames, and the Fringe’s global appeal has been underlined by enthusiastic participants signing up in Canada, Sweden, Poland, Italy, Australia, and Japan.

Events usually begin to appear on the Fringe website from February, while registration remains open right up until the very last day of the festival. Potential event organisers are encouraged to make contact as soon as possible in order to make the most of the promotional potential that taking part brings.

Anyone with an idea – however unformed – is encouraged to get in touch now. Our team of volunteers will do everything we can to turn germs of ideas into flourishing blooms by May 2023.

The Chelsea Fringe is now inviting individuals and organisations, first-timers and Fringe veterans, to contact us at info@chelseafringe.com outlining what they propose to do as part of the 2023 festival programme.

Links

https://chelseafringe.com

www.chelseafringe.com

On Instagram

On Twitter

On Facebook

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Show Gardens

Public Green Spaces

Patreon Membership

My guest this week is Dr Ana Attlee, co-founder of the company Seedball. The idea for Seedball started to germinate in 2010 when Ana and her fellow PhD student Emily Lambert were looking into ways to successful start wildflowers from seed in order to encourage pollinators. 13 years later, Seedballs are stocked in respectable horticultural establishments all over the country and their range continues to grow with new and exciting seed packages being added all the time.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Preparing for Spring

What We Talk About

What is a Seedball?

What different types can you get?

How many seeds are in a ball and what’s the germination rate like?

How many seedballs do you need?

Can you throw them anywhere?

Do you need to water them?

How long are they viable?

How might you reuse the tins?

Links

www.seedball.co.uk

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Creating Wildlife Habitats 

The Garden Jungle with Dave Goulson

Patreon Membership

This week, I am delighted to welcome back champion of the soil food web, Jeff Lowenfels. Jeff is the author of the Teaming With series of books which look at what goes on at a micro level in the soil beneath our feet. His new title ‘Teaming with Bacteria’ lifts the lid on new findings about how plants use and interact with bacteria and he’s here to give us the lowdown on this amazing relationship.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Solitary Bees

What We Talk About

Rhizophagy

Bacteria and endophytic bacteria

How bacteria helps make healthy soil

What bacteria does for plants and vice versa

How plants attract bacteria

How plants know when to stop letting in bacteria

Can bacteria still exist happily in the soil without a plant?

Bacteria and monocrops 

Bacteria carried in seeds 

Bacteria and hydroponics

Simple and practical things we can do to help the plant/bacteria relationship

Bacteria research and the future of gardening and plant growing

About Jeff Lowefels

Jeff Lowenfels is the author several of award-winning books on plants and soil, and he is the longest running garden columnist in North America. Lowenfels is a national lecturer as well as a fellow, hall of fame member, and former president of the Garden Writers of America.

Links

The Teaming with series, written by Jeff Lowenfels

Teaming with Bacteria

Teaming with Nutrients

Teaming with Fungi 

Teaming with Microbes

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Mycorrhizal Fungi with Jeff Lowenfels

Mycorrhizal Fungi with Dr Petra Guy

Patreon Membership

My guest this week is Hilary Collins who runs Hardy Eucalyptus at Grafton Nursery. Hilary researches the best way to grow Eucalyptus trees in the UK and also Europe. At the nursery, they run all manner of trials and Hilary writes papers and articles on Eucalyptus plus she has a book called Cut Foliage Eucalyptus – Fantastic Foliage and How to Farm it. She consults all over the world, and also works in the Garden Design and Construction Company advising on planting design. Hilary is here today talking all things eucalyptus and my first question was how she came to specialise in this group of plants.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Signals

What We Talk About

Different garden-worth eucalyptus varieties

Eucalyptus selection

Eucalyptus pruning

Eucalyptus seed provenance

How to plant them to ensure success

The benefits of air-pot containers

What is March 18th all about in the Horticultural Calendar and the life of any Eucalyptus tree owner?

About Hilary Collins

First and foremost in my career: I am a horticulturist…and also parent to 2 daughters Charlie and Victoria.  Charlie is our landscape Architect for our garden design and build company Envisage Gardens.  Victoria has escaped from professional horticulture and works in education.

I started growing plants when I was about 3 or 4 with my father who was a very keen gardener and amateur tree-grower, but we grew all manner of bedding plants, fruit and vegetables, tomatoes, perennials. He was very into Bonsai too.  And my mother was very keen that I should learn all about our native flora, from a very early age.

I went to University of Bath to read Horticulture because I loved the subject, loved the city and the location and also partly in rebellion because it really appalled my headmistress who thought it was a really unsuitable career for a ‘young lady’!  The course is no longer on offer sadly.  

Whilst at Bath, I worked for Long Ashton Research Station running the Specific Apple Replant Disease Trials, following year I ran the Fireblight Trials for Showerings (Allied Lyons) and then just before my final year I worked at the National Fruit Trials – trees again, but this time working in Tissue Culture.  So I would have liked to have gone into research, but all the Research Stations closed down.  I am an escaped Lab Rat.

So I went into commercial horticulture, growing plants and also garden design.

When I graduated, I ran a tree seed business for a couple of years before selling it.  We bought Grafton Nursery in 2008 and decided amongst other plants, to grow trees.  This has evolved into almost exclusively growing Eucalyptus trees for a wide range of customers.  

I like to talk talk about the wide range of applications of Eucalyptus.  There isn’t just Eucalyptus gunnii.  We grow over 70 species.  They have a wide range of applications.

·       Carbon sequestration

·       Producing timber for firewood logs, biomass, hardwood lumber and silvo pasture

·       Cut Foliage for floral art and fodder for Zoo Animals

·       Screening trees – shade trees

·       Nectar and pollen for bees – all year round

·       Sustainable drainage systems – via the Swamp Gums

·       Tencel – Lycocell for clothing fabric and carpets etc

·       Oil – antimicrobial – used in cosmetics, medicinal products and rocket fuel

·       Gold prospected – ok may be not in the UK…

I run Hardy Eucalyptus at Grafton Nursery, where I research the best way to grow Eucalyptus trees in the UK and also Europe.  We run all manner of trials. I write papers and articles on Eucalyptus;

Shrub-on-a-stick – how to prune them to keep them small

Shrub-in-a-tub – how to grow them successful in containers

Screening trees for privacy. How to grow them as a hedge

Best way to grow Cut Foliage so we can support our Flower Farmers with the right advice in their Eucalyptus orchards/plantations

We also have a small firewood plantation and we trial the trees for their use in sustainable drainage systems.

I’ve written a book on how to grow Cut Foliage Eucalyptus – Fantastic Foliage and How to Farm it.

Prior to Brexit we exported all over Europe – trying to make that happen again with our French Project.

I consult all over the world, including America, Norway, New Zealand and Australia.

I also work in our Garden Design and Construction Company – I do the planting plans. I have a particular interest in Wild Gardens and Kitchen/Fruit Gardens.

Links

www.hardy-eucalyptus.com

Cut Foliage Eucalyptus: Fantastic Foliage and How to Farm It by Hilary Collins 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Exotic Plants with Graham Blunt of Plantbase Nursery

Camellias with Fiona Edmond

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Hello and welcome to this week’s episode of Roots and All, where my guest is garden designer, TV personality and Trustee of the Gardening with Disabilities Trust Mark Lane. Mark talks about the various types of challenges people can face that might impede their activity in the garden, and how gardens and gardening can be adapted to enable people to carry on with these activities. He gives some excellent, practical advice for anyone who may need to adapt horticulture to suit their own needs or those of others.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Stridulation

What We Talk About

Is gardening one of the more tricky hobbies to modify if you find yourself less able?

Why is it a good thing to keep on gardening?

How many people in the UK are gardening with disabilities? What are some of the most common types of disabilities facing gardeners?

Some of the biggest challenges you see come up time and again

Helpful solutions

Where can people go to get help to garden/grants?

Where can designers and pro gardeners go to get guidance?

About Mark Lane

Roger Hirons has been a horticultural speaker for over thirty years, presenting to garden clubs and societies as well as the University of the Third Age and the Women's Institute. Since studying horticulture at Pershore College, he has also run and co-run plant centres and worked in the landscaping industry for nearly twenty years.

Links

Mark Lane Designs

Gardening with Disabilities Trust

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Gardening by Touch, Smell, Sound and Taste with Andrew Hesser

Stephen Hackett of Horatio’s Garden

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This week’s guest is Roger Hirons, a horticultural expert and speaker, who’s been in the industry for over 35 years. Roger has just released a really excellent book called the Gardener’s Guide to Hedges and Living Boundaries, which covers preparation and design advice for establishing a new living boundary; advice on dealing with existing boundaries in need of restoration or extension; planting for both your human and wildlife neighbours and also a directory of some really interesting hedging plants, climbers and trees.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: The Swallowtail

What We Talk About

Why plant a hedge or living boundary instead of installing a fence?

What is a living boundary?

Which plants are well suited to creating a fedge?

What plants are good for wildlife?

Boundaries that are low maintenance

Boundaries that are good for security

Mounds aka bunds

Wall shrubs

Tips for staking newly planted plants

Hedges that are good for wildlife 

When to cut a hedge if being considerate of bird nesting and feeding behaviours

About Roger Hirons

Roger Hirons has been a horticultural speaker for over thirty years, presenting to garden clubs and societies as well as the University of the Third Age and the Women's Institute. Since studying horticulture at Pershore College, he has also run and co-run plant centres and worked in the landscaping industry for nearly twenty years.

Links

Gardener’s Guide to Hedges and Living Boundaries by Roger Hirons - The Crowood Press Ltd, October 2022

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Low Allergen Planting with Olivia Kirk

Ivy with Fibrex Nurseries

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Hello and welcome to this episode of Roots and All. This week, I’m speaking to landscape architect Sally Bower. Sally has just been awarded the main RHS prize for her Bursary Report titled ‘Nature Rising from the Rubble’ which looks at gravel and recycled aggregate gardens in Essex and London. Specifically, Sally looked at John Little’s Hilldrop garden, RHS Hyde Hall, Beth Chatto’s gravel garden, the Langdon Nature Discovery Car Park and the Horniman Museum Grasslands garden and her findings were invaluable if you’re interested in designing with or growing in these types of media, and Sally had some surprising findings of note too.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Harlequins

What We Talk About

The purposes of the study and the distinctions between the different growing media used by people creating gravel/rubble gardens

Is this style of gardening be appropriate across the whole of the UK?

Big Sky Meadow - is this style of planting is as labour intensive as a traditional flower border might be?

In Beth Chatto’s garden, when beds are newly installed or are refreshed, they are subject to double digging during which process mushroom compost is incorporated to improve soil fertility. How does this gel with the idea that plants grow really well in low fertility, well-drained gravel substrates?

John Little’s private garden and how it is built to encourage biodiversity

How important is a site specific approach?

One of the gardens is a success because once the plants grow through the aggregate and reach the clay below, they grow happily and healthily. Isn’t this just a gravel mulched garden rather than a proper gravel garden?

How gravel gardens make a positive environmental contribution

Why does soil which contain demolition waste high in lime capture carbon more quickly?

Sally’s favourite example of this type of garden from the ones she wrote about

About Sally Bower

Based in Liverpool, I’ve been a landscape architect and garden design for over 20 years. My designs aim to develop attractive low impact schemes which reconnect people with nature, support wildlife and respond to the site and its setting. I am particularly interested in what it means to make a ‘wild’ garden and brownfield gardens for biodiversity and wildlife.

Links

www.sallybower.co.uk

Link to Sally’s Report - ‘Nature rising from the rubble’

Other episodes if you liked this one:

John Little of the Grass Roof Company

Beth Chatto with Catherine Horwood

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My guest this episode is the super-talented and creative gardener and designer Brent Purtell and we’re talking about the Capitaspring Rooftop Garden in Singapore, which shares the ‘2nd highest’ building ranking along with 3 other buildings, all the same height. There are 3 gardens on the building, covering an area of 10,000 square feet and containing a mixture of ornamentals and edibles, all growing at dizzying heights. Brent was involved on the build and design side before he became the Head Gardener, overseeing the maintenance of Capitaspring Rooftop Garden. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Stinky pigs

What We Talk About

What is the Capitaspring Rooftop Garden and where is it located? How much growing space is there in total?

The kind of things which grow in the garden

How productive a rooftop edible can forest be

How the produce is used

The challenges of growing edibles on a rooftop

Who visits the garden? 

About the Capitaspring Building & Gardens

The Capitaspring building was completed in early 2022. At 280m high, it shares the ‘2nd highest’ building ranking along with 3 other buildings, all the same height. This is due to Singapore having a cap of 280m on any new building. It's owned by Capitaland, a major property developer in Singapore and the region. Designed by BIG-Bjarke Ingels Group, and Carlo Ratti, it is very much a flagship building for the company and Singapore in general, with the relatively unique use of planting throughout the building. Current tenants are the big investment house JPMorgan, for example. 

An article about the building

Within the tower are three restaurants. These are:

‘Sol and Luna’ on level 17 - a casual latin inspired theme

‘Kaarla’ on level 51 - Fine dining coastal Australian

‘Oumi’ on level 51 - Fine dining Japanese

Originally there was no concept of a ‘food forest’ or similar from the architects, and indeed, the chef's garden only takes up 50% of the overall rooftop space, with the other 50% planted in typical ornamental, low maintenance fashion. Rather, the addition of the edible section came from 1 Group, who reached out to a local company, Edible Garden City Pte Ltd to help with the design and installation.

www.ediblegardencity.com

Edible Garden City was started in 2012 with the aim of ‘helping Singaporeans grow their own food’. It has 3 pillars to the business, one being food production at 2 ‘urban farms’, which supplies produce to many restaurants through the city, including many Michelin starred. The second pillar is education, which runs workshops for the public at the aforementioned urban farm, along with onsite workshops for teachers in schools across the city. Thirdly, they design and build edible gardens, with over 260 built to date. The majority of these are gardens built within schools so that the students have access to a working garden, however many gardens have been built for commercial/hospitality venues, including the famous ParkRoyal Hotel, Marina Bay Sands etc. The remaining founder Bjorn Low, is a very recognised figure within Singapore for his environmental efforts.

The garden was opened in Feb/march 2022 and so is still quite new and produces approx 70 - 80 kgs of produce a month. For example, here is a breakdown for October:

Apple mint 200gm

Brazilian Spinach 19.6kg

Fame Flower 1kg

Lemon Balm 800gm

Lemon Myrtle 1.5kg

Moringa leaves 10gm

Kaarla Salad mix 12kg

Purslane 3.1kg

Rosemary 280gm

Thyme 50gm

Wasabina Mustard 1.5kg

Wild Water Cress 15.5kg

Mizuna Mustard 1.5kg

Komatsuna 1kg

Oyster Leaf 500gm

Wild Pepper 500gm

Pumpkin x 3

Edible flowers 2kg

And here are a few of the ways the kitchen use them all:

• KAARLA CLOSED LOOP SALAD - ROOF TOP LEAVES AND FLOWERS, TIGER NUT CURD, DAIKON
• WESTERN PRAWNS, GERALDTON WAX, NATIVE TAMARIND
• ARDEN GROWN TIGER NUT ICE CREAM, TIGERNUT NOUGATINE, WHITE CHITOSE CORN, CALAMANSI JELLY, POACHED ORANGES
• AUSTRALIAN MARKET OYSTER, FIG LEAF AND OYSTER PLANT VINEGAR 8PP
• SESAME CRUST TUNA SERVED WITH WOOD-FIRED PADRON PEPPER, LEMON MYRTLE DRESSING
• LOBSTER DONABE - Garden Komatsuna, Tofu, Shungiku, Chestnut, Mitsuba, Seafood Dashi
• KOHITSUJI YAKI - Grilled Australian Lamb, Red Garlic Sauce, Lemon Myrtle, Lemon Balm, Calamansi, Satsumaimo
• UNI IKURA - Sea Urchin, Salmon Roe, Wasabina, Yuzu
• CHIRASHI Sashimi Of The Day, Daily Produce From Our Food Forest
• BUTA KAKUNI - Braised Australian Pork Belly, Fresh Yuzu, Fame Flower, Eringii, Egg Yolk, Mountain Caviar
• SHIO KOJI TEPPAN CHICKEN - Free-Range Chicken , Sansho Koji, Garlic Flower, Curry Leaf

The ‘Kaarla closed loop salad’ in particular is popular as a signature dish. 

Links

www.1-group.sg

www.kaarla-oumi.sg/kaarla

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Food Forest in Your Garden

Food Forests for Plant Lovers

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To book-end the winter break, I’m sort of picking up where we left off by talking about a way to mark the passing of the year and the seasons and to ground yourself and your gardening endeavours in the natural patterns that govern them. My guest is Lia Leendertz, author of the annual The Almanac: A Seasonal Guide and she starts by talking about the origins of her almanac.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Winter in the veg garden

What We Talk About

The history of Lia’s Almanac

How Lia intends for people to use the Almanac throughout the year

The importance connecting with traditions, celebrations and rituals

The monthly list of gardening jobs

Gardening by the phases of the moon

Underlying themes of the Almanac; the pond and the zodiac

A discussion of Lia’s line about the month of August, “Your ancestors would be proud to see how far you have come, sipping a glass of cold wine and laughing in the sun.”

About Lia Leendertz

Lia is an award-winning garden and food writer based in Bristol. Her reinvention of the traditional rural almanac has become an annual must-have for readers eager to connect with the seasons, appreciate the outdoors and discover ways to mark and celebrate each month.

Links

The Almanac: A Seasonal Guide to 2023 by Lia Leendertz - Octopus Publishing Group, September 2022

Lia’s Website

Lia on Instagram

Lia on Twitter 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

The Wheel of the Year with Dr Rebecca Beattie

Garden Roots with Lulah Ellender

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My guest this week is Dr Rebecca Beattie. Rebecca has just released a book called ‘The Wheel of the Year’, which is a look at what is happening in nature and in ourselves as the seasons move from one to the other. She suggests tools and rituals to rediscover and appreciate each seasonal festival, giving you a chance to pause, reflect and connect you to the wheel of your own life. As this is the last episode of 2022 and the winter solstice is just 2 days away, I thought this would be a perfect way to wrap up the year and to encourage you to take time to appreciate, well time, as it passes and as things shift from one state of being to another. Christmas can be a frenetic time so I hope you can take half an hour out of your schedule to sit down and listen to Rebecca and to contemplate your place in the wheel of the year.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Lycaenidae butterflies

What We Talk About

What is the wheel of the year?

The origins of the events and customs you find at the sabbats

In our secular society, are we beginning to realise the importance of connecting back to a framework that makes sense of time and our place in the world?

Useful hints for people to make sure they remember to mark the passing of seasons at appropriate times

Advantages gardeners have in terms of being connected to the wheel of the year

Our own annual wheel of the year and how this connect to those that occur in nature 

How our unsettled seasons might affect how we celebrate the sabbats

About Rebecca Beattie

Dr Rebecca Beattie is a Wiccan Priestess with a PhD in Creative Writing. Rebecca grew up on Dartmoor, which gave her an early appreciation of the power and joys of nature. She has been practising solitary witchcraft for twenty years and an initiate of the Gardnerian Wiccan tradition for fifteen. She is acclaimed for her highly informed teaching of witchcraft subjects at Treadwell’s Books in Bloomsbury. By day she is a professional in a major charity, with advanced degrees in Literature and Creative writing.

Links

The Wheel of the Year by Rebecca Beattie - Elliott & Thompson Ltd, October 2022

Catherine Heatherington Designs

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Sacred Woodlands with Simon Leadbeater

Sensory Herbalism with Karen Lawton

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This week’s guest is Martyn Richards who is the Home & Garden Manager for Agriton UK, part of a large European group of companies who manufacture products to help commercial and domestic users deal with the ‘soil, crop, animal waste cycle’. Martyn contacted me to see if I would be interested in speaking to him about their bokashi composting system and I thought, yes, I would, because I didn’t really understand the process. So my first question to Martyn was, just what is bokashi? Listen now and all will be revealed…

What We Talk About

What is bokashi compost? 

How bokashi systems are different to traditional composting methods

What can you compost? Is there anything you can’t?

Do you need to add anything for the process to work?

What are Bokashi organisms? Where do they originate from?

Is it expensive to set up?

Does it work at any scale?

Does what you put in affect what comes out in terms of nutrient value?

What is Bokashi bran?

Links

Agriton’s Bokashi Brochure 

www.agriton.co.uk

Other episodes if you liked this one:

The Composting Process

Feeding Your Soil with Humanure

Patreon Membership

This week, my guest is David O’Carroll. David runs an 11 acre agroforestry learning centre in Totnes, Devon where he teaches natural farming methods, based on the techniques around Indigenous Microorganisms (IMO) and Korean Natural Farming (KNF). He focuses on building healthy soil to produce healthy plants and is both generous with his time and knowledge as he aims to share the details of his techniques to help other growers.

What We Talk About

What is Korean Natural Farming?

What is IMO? How do you make it? Why do you need it?

What is LAB? How does it help plants?

Is KNF as useful for ornamental plants as it is for edibles?

Do you need a lot of space to make the KNF preparations?

Preparations for home gardeners to try 

Links

www.ballaghbotanicals.co.uk

www.zerosoap.info 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Mycorrhizal Fungi with Jeff Lowenfels

Garden Amendments with Nigel Palmer

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This week, my guest is renowned horticulturist Andrew Bunting. Andrew is the Vice President of Horticulture at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, where he leads the utilization of planting and design to promote environmentally sound gardening practices across the organization. Andrew's extensive experience informs the work of PHS' Public Gardens and Landscapes team which maintains a network of public gardens and landscapes across the Pennsylvania region, contributes to creating vital greenspace and encourages all to see the impact of horticulture in their own lives and I must say, it sounds a really wonderful organisation. 

Andrew’s expertise extends to many subjects but given his experience of gardening large landscapes in an area where deer are prevalent, and given that at this time of the year in the UK, our gardens are becoming tasty prospects when the wider landscape is offering slim pickings, I thought it would be very useful to get Andrew’s take on managing deer.

What We Talk About

The species of deer Andrew deals with in the US

Can you exclude deer from a garden? How can you do this?

Deer deterrents 

Plants that can cope with predation 

Is it just eating plants that’s the problem? Do deer trample on plants too?

The times of the year are they most active

Deer welfare

About Andrew Bunting

Andrew Bunting, Vice President of Horticulture at PHS, leads the utilization of planting and design to promote environmentally sound gardening practices across the organization.  

As a renowned horticultural expert, Andrew's extensive experience informs the work of PHS' Public Gardens and Landscapes team which maintains a network of public gardens and landscapes across the Philadelphia region, contributes to creating vital greenspace and encourages all to see the impact of horticulture in their own lives.

Links

Pennsylvania Horticultural Society

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Foxes in Your Garden with Terry Woods

Cats and Gardens

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This week’s guest is permaculture designer and author of 'The Plant Lover's Backyard Forest Garden’, Pippa Chapman. Growing our own food is becoming more and more important, and Pippa has tips on creating a year-round food forest that is low-maintenance and good for wildlife, that can work in a variety of aspects and that is an enjoyable and beautiful space for people too.

What We Talk About

What is a forest garden?

Can forest gardens can be a bit limited in their plant palettes?

Does a forest garden have to be a decent size in order to work?

Food forest design techniques such as keyhole beds and lasagne beds

The random assembly design technique

Pippa’s essential perennial food plants

Good examples of forest gardens

About Pippa Chapman

RHS-trained and garden designer, Pippa Chapman, is the author of 'The Plant Lover's Backyard Forest Garden', where she shares how she turned her grassy and paved back garden into an abundant, biodiverse, edible and beautiful forest garden that provides for her family and the local wildlife.

Pippa also includes flowers into her garden design, so the garden is both beautiful and productive, and gives advice on using perennials for structure and food, as well as info on guilds, polycultures and growing in containers.

Pippa's real-life examples and years of experience will help anyone create their own multilayered, edible paradise that can be enjoyed by the whole family.

Growing our own food is only going to become more important, and a food forest of any size can offer: year-round food that is low-maintenance; wildlife habitat; beautiful gardens for people to enjoy; carbon sequestration; shady microclimates; and more. 

Links

'The Plant Lover's Backyard Forest Garden’ by Pippa Chapman - Permanent Publications

www.thoseplantpeople.com

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Introduction to Forest Gardening with Jake Rayson

Food Forest in Your Garden

Patreon Membership

This week, my guest is Julian Ives, founder of Dragonfli Limited, a company specialising in taking biological controls which have been more commonly used in professional growing environments and bringing them to home gardeners. We talk about why these controls might be suitable for helping you manage your own garden, how and when you can apply them and why they might provide a useful long-term solution for those looking to avoid chemical deterrents.  

About Julian Ives

Julian Ives is a Director of Dragonfli Ltd, a company he founded in 2010 with the aim of bringing biological pest control to the gardener.

Julian spent his early career advising professional growers on how to use biological pest control whilst working for Koppert Biological Systems, and now advises a number of leading botanical gardens in how to manage insects using biological controls. 

Links

Gardener's Guide to Biological Pest Control: Using natural predators in the garden by Julian Ives - The Crowood Press Ltd, August 2022

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Probiotics for your Garden

Patreon Membership

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode where I’m speaking with Marianne and Camilla, joint founders of Wolves Lane Flower Company. Marianne and Camilla are on a mission to inspire everyone to have a go at growing flowers and are part of a new wave of “farmer florists” putting the environment first. 

Their new book ‘How to Grow the Flowers’ charts a year at Wolves Lane Flower Company and in easy to understand and digest fashion, shows you what to do and when to do it in order to create your own flower farm at any scale. 

About Wolves Lane Flower Company

Camila Romain and Marianne Mogendorff are the founders of Wolves Lane Flower Company, a micro flower farm in north London. The duo is on a mission to inspire everyone to have a go at growing flowers and were earmarked as one of British Vogue’s “most talented female gardeners” in 2020. They are part of a new wave of “farmer florists” putting the environment first. 

Flowers are something we are irresistibly drawn to and turn to at the milestone moments of our lives, at births, marriages and deaths, to connect with an estranged friend, to send love or say we’re sorry. They colour our most formative experiences and are our gateway to finding our own personal relationship with the planet we inhabit. No matter the size of your garden, ‘How to Grow the Flowers’ is a practical, but approachable guide that will instill the confidence in you to grow flowers to bring into your home and enjoy all year round. 

Links

‘How to Grow the Flowers’ by Camila Romain and Marianne Mogendorff - HarperCollins, Sep 2022

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Growing Cut Flowers with Georgie Newbery of Common Farm Flowers

Alstroemerias with Ben Cross

Patreon Membership

This week my guest is garden and landscape designer and writer, Darryl Moore. Darryl is one of the most, if not in my opinion, the most informed voice on gardens and design in the UK and his new book Gardening in A Changing World: People, Plants and the Climate Crisis presents an overarching perspective of the complexity of plant life, and the ways that we can begin to appreciate and work together with plants, rather than against them, in addressing the rapidly changing conditions affecting the planet.

About Darryl Moore

Darryl Moore is an award-winning garden and landscape designer and writer.  He is Director and co-founder of the innovative urban landscape organisation Cityscapes, realising creative approaches to greening city spaces through novel design ideas that ensure ecological, economic and social sustainability. He is co-curator of thehub.earth. He sits on the Society of Garden Designers Council, and is a fellow of the RSA. His most recent award was for the St Mungo’s Putting Down Roots Garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2022, showcasing sustainability and ecology in public places. 

Links

Gardening in A Changing World: People, Plants and the Climate Crisis by Darryl Moore - Pimpernel Press Ltd, Oct 2022

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Wild Gardens with Jo McKerr

James Basson of Scape Design

Patreon Membership

This week I’m speaking to Dr Mike Edwards, Chief Listening Officer at Sound Matters, a company focussed on using sound and listening to create more sustainable and resilient futures. Sound Matters provided the soundtrack to the Rewilding Britain garden that one best in show at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. Mike recently spoke passionately about climate change, soundscapes and landscapes at the Beth Chatto Symposium and wowed a lecture theatre full of rapt listeners with his prowess on the didgeridoo.

End music included with the kind permission of Sound Matters.

Links

The Soundtrack from the Rewilding Britain Garden at the 2022 RHS Chelsea Flower Show  

The Sound Matters Soil Composer

Listening project 

www.sound-matters.com 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Gardening by Touch, Taste, Sound & Smell

Gardening for Your Senses

Patreon Membership

This week, I’m speaking to co-founder of Roots Allotments Ed Morrison. Along with Christian, Will & Josh, Ed set up Roots Allotments on a site in Bath as an alternative to traditional allotments with their long waiting lists, large and often difficult to manage plots and set up a low carbon footprint, no dig and wildlife-friendly site where people could lease some space and join the grow your own food movement.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Harvestmen

What We Talk About

How Roots Allotments came about

How they are different to conventional allotments

The costs of a plot, waiting lists, term of lease, facilities and support offered

What can be grown on a Roots Allotment? 

Why no dig?

Links

Roots Allotments 

Other episodes if you liked this one:

No Dig with Charles Dowding

Sharing & Borrowing Gardens with Joyce Veheary of Lend and Tend

Patreon Membership

This week, my guest is Nikki Barker. Nikki’s long career in horticulture has seen her work across many sectors of the industry and she is now the Senior Horticultural Advisor at the RHS.

She’s just had a book published called ‘A Gardener’s Guide to Propagation Techniques’ and I spoke to Nikki to get some general tips on propagation and to find out what we can be propagating at this time of year. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Allium leaf miners

What We Talk About

With peat being phased out, what are good alternative proprietary growing media for propagation? 

Some common seeds that require light to germinate

Seeds that can be particularly tricky to germinate

Good ways of propagating plants at this time of the year

Dahlias - good ways to propagate them

The easiest methods and plants to try propagating if you don’t have a lot of space or equipment

Links

Gardener’s Guide to Propagation Techniques: The essential guide to producing plants by Nikki Barker - The Crowood Press Ltd, September 2022

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Young Propagators’ Society

Growing Under Protection with Guy Deakins

Patreon Membership

This week’s guest is Carol Smith, garden designer, lecturer and author of the book ‘Gardening on a Gradient: Designing and Establishing Sloping Gardens’. Interestingly, the book is relevant to home gardeners and professional designers and covers everything from the initial garden site assessment and survey, right through the design process to the final stages of planting, as well as inspiration and ideas from sloping gardens around the UK. If you’ve ever faced the challenge of a sloping site, you’ll know how tricky they can be but fear not, Carol is here to help you tackle them.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Large hairy house spiders

What We Talk About

Main drawbacks to gardening on a gradient and any advantages

Is it more expensive than gardening on the flat?

Gardens that slope back towards the house and drainage issues

Making changes to levels and water run off

Soil moisture and temperature ranges across a slope

Surveying a sloping site

Retaining soil

More naturalistic ways to deal with a sloping site

About Carol Smith

Carol Smith is a professional garden designer and freelance lecturer. She has worked on several award-winning show gardens and teaches on all aspects of garden and planting design. 

Links

Gardener’s Guide to Gardening on a Gradient: Designing and Establishing Sloping Gardens by Carol Smith

Other episodes if you liked this one:

I Want to Like My Garden with Rachel McCartain 

Natural Stone with Giles Heap of CED

Patreon Membership

This week, making his second appearance on the podcast, is my guest Charles Dowding. Charles is the leading proponent worldwide of No Dig gardening. He’s authored and co-authored many books and articles on the subject, including his latest book No Dig which is the result of 40 years experience and looks set to become the definitive text on the subject.

He produces enough food to sell to local restaurants and inhabitants, to feed all his course attendees and visitors and also his own household from his plot which until recently has only been a quarter of an acre in size, proving categorically that no-dig equals maximum productivity. He is a prolific generator of media content, his YouTube channel has over 55 million views and he’s bought the no-dig technique to a worldwide audience. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Spider silk

What We Talk About

How Charles got started out in gardening

Why do we need compost for no-dig and is it essential to create our own?

No dig techniques on different types of soils

Giving the beds a year off (or not) and crop rotation

No-dig and plant pests and diseases

Why every last gardener in the UK hasn’t adopted no-dig!

About Charles Dowding

Charles Dowding is the leading proponent of no-dig gardening. Not only does he have a huge following, but his advice is born out of more than 40 years of growing, analysing, comparing, and recommending. He has been growing veg since 1981, having gardened in four different locations and grown hundreds of thousands of crops.

Charles currently gardens his modestly sized plot Homeacres, in Somerset, from which he produces enough food to sell to local restaurants and inhabitants, to feed all his course attendees and visitors and also his own household. He is a prolific generator of media content and has bought the no-dig technique to a worldwide audience. 

Links

No Dig: Nurture Your Soil to Grow Better Veg with Less Effort by Charles Dowding - Dorling Kindersley, September 2022 

www.charlesdowding.co.uk

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Feeding your Soil with Humanure with Joseph Jenkins

Growing Food with Stephanie Hafferty

Patreon Membership

This week I’m chatting with writer Kendra Wilson. Kendra has written a vast amount about gardening but I was particularly interested in speaking to her about her book Garden for the Senses. Engaging all your senses can lead to a deeper connection with the landscape and it can be an unusual and transformative experience. I wanted to find out how we can all learn to better use our senses and firstly, what prompted Kendra to write the book. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: The blue butterflies

What We Talk About

How catering to the senses can lend another dimension to the garden

How many senses should we aim to stimulate in a garden?

One good plant that will engage with each of our five senses

How you can learn to engage your senses more when in the garden

About Kendra Wilson

Kendra has contributed to The Sunday Times, Gardens Illustrated, Guardian Weekend, Garden Design Journal, RHS The Garden,  and Vogue. She is a longstanding correspondent for Gardenista online and contributed a chapter 'The Gardenista 100' to the 2016 book, Gardenista: The Definitive Guide to Stylish Outdoor Spaces.

Kendra has worked on numerous projects including a limited-edition book for Mulberry and other books including My Garden is a Car Park and The Book of the Flower.

Links

Garden for the Senses by Kendra Wilson - Dorling Kindersley, February 2022 

www.kendrapagewilson.com

This week’s guest is ecologist and author Julian Doberski. If you think about compost heaps, how much do you really think about the living micro and macro organisms that dwell within them, how they contribute to the composting process and how what you do to your heap can increase or decrease their chances of survival?

Julian has written about the science of what goes on in a compost heap and about the living organisms who provide the ‘hard graft’ of transforming waste organic matter in his latest publication The Science of Compost. I spoke to Julian to find out more. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Fuchsia Gall Mite

What We Talk About

What is compost?

Does what go in also come out? Eg if we want a high nitrogen compost product should we use raw materials that are also high in nitrogen?

How do you know what you’ll be getting as an end product?

How do you get the right balance of the organisms that break down the heap?

The correct ratio of woody versus green materials in a compost heap

What makes a compost heap break down, apart from the organisms in it? 

About Julian Doberski

Julian Doberski has degrees in Zoology (BSc Southampton), Forestry (MSc Oxford) and a PhD in biological control of insects using fungi (Cambridge). He has thirty years of teaching experience at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge (and its predecessor institutions) where he was a Principal Lecturer in Ecology. He has jointly published a resource pack for A level ecology students and a range of scientific research and science in education papers. He is currently retired and lives in Cambridgeshire.

Links

The Science of Compost: Life, Death and Decay in the Garden by Dr. Julian Doberski

Other episodes if you liked this one:

The Regenerative Grower’s Guide to Garden Amendments with Nigel Palmer

Mycorrhizal Fungi with Jeff Lowenfels

Patreon Membership

This week I’m speaking to Juliette Goggin, perfumery consultant to some of the most recognised brands in the world, upcycling and reusing champion, owner of the cosmetics company Hand Made by Juliette and author of the books Handmade Beauty and Handmade Spa. We talk about how you can use plants from your garden to create products that are natural, inexpensive, easy to make and that actually work. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Gooseberry Sawfly

What We Talk About

Juliette’s background in perfumes and cosmetics

The impetus behind the books Handmade Beauty & Handmade Spa

Why should we try to make our own products? 

How are they better than what you can buy?

Do you need a lot of equipment?

Do you need to source fairly specialist ingredients? 

How you can incorporate items from your garden into your products

Prepping ingredients

About Juliette Goggin

Juliette trained in perfumery evaluation, and worked for a Fragrance house in Grasse in the South of France to develop bespoke products for niche brands in the UK. Throughout this time Juliette was always keen to learn how everything was made and to expand her knowledge, combining this with a natural love of crafting which she developed as a child forever making things from cast off bits and pieces. 

Juliette teaches classes in Natural Skincare and Candle Making, based around her Handmade Beauty and Handmade Spa illustrated books. The books also acted as a springboard to creating her own Collection of natural skincare and home fragrance products in 2018, appropriately called Handmade by Juliette.

Links

www.handmadebyjuliette.com

Instagram @handmadebyjuliette

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Sensory Herbalism with Karen Lawton

The Rose in Perfume with Mairi MacKenzie

Patreon Membership

This week’s guest is Hawaii-based writer and grower Ja-Ne de Abreu. When the pandemic began, Ja-ne became an instant 24/7 caregiver for her hanai mother. To keep things positive, she started growing food and discovered it also grew peace and calm to their lives amid the ongoing chaos. Ja-ne had an intuition to write Sassy Food to share the inspiration that everyone can grow food at any time of year, anywhere in the world on any budget and harvest peace in the process. We talk about growing in small spaces, how growing food can foster positive connections in difficult times and what happens when the creative spark catches. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Butterfly decline

What we cover

The idea behind Sassy Food

The climate in Hawaii and what you can grow

Why it’s important that we all grow food where we can

Seeds that can be eaten as sprouts

Grow tents to increase indoor growing space

Easy and cheap/free ways to propagate edible plants

Washing produce and some easy, natural products to use

Why is food like music?

About Ja-ne de Abreu

When the pandemic began, Ja-ne de Abreu became an instant 24/7 caregiver for her hanai mother. To keep things positive, she started growing food and discovered it also grew peace and calm to their lives amid the ongoing chaos. Ja-ne had an intuition to write Sassy Food to share the inspiration that everyone can grow food at any time of year, anywhere in the world on any budget and harvest peace in the process. Sassy Food has won two first place book awards and was a finalist in two book contests for the book cover as well as interior design.

De Abreu’s other award-winning books are a memoir with her sister and brother-in-law, Chasing the Surge: Life as a Travel Nurse in a Global Pandemic, and her debut novel, The Energy Inside Valsin’s Choices. In addition, de Abreu also published five books of the Richard Tregaskis Classics Collection under the JMFdeA Press imprint last year and will publish five more in the near future. Ja-ne’s focus is exploring the energy inside our choices and the resulting responsibilities and freedoms by telling stories through various methods. 

Links

Join Sassy Food Farms on Instagram 

Ja-Ne de Abreu’s website

www.jmfdeapress.com

Ja-Ne on Facebook

Ja-Ne on Twitter

Ja-Ne on Instagram

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Abundance and Self-Sufficiency with Liz Zorab

Patreon Membership

This week I’m speaking to Founder of Wildflower Turf Limited and author of the book ‘How to make a wildflower meadow’ James Hewetson-Brown. James has a vast amount of experience creating meadows at domestic and public scales, is passionate about creating species rich habitats which are attractive to people and wildlife and which have the added benefits of pollution mitigation and carbon sequestration. We talk about the nuts and bolts of meadow making but also about why meadows can be the solution to so many of our landscaping needs.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Tardegrades

What we cover

Why meadows can be a quick solution to bring biodiversity to previously relatively barren areas, particularly in urban environments

If you build it, will they come? Or is biodiversity too depleted already?

The best ways of establishing a meadow

Convert an area of lawn to meadow

Annual species, perennials, and mixtures of both

Do you need grass species in a meadow?

Unusual or interesting projects James has worked on

Links

www.wildflowerturf.co.uk

How to make a wildflower meadow: Tried-And-Tested Techniques for New Garden Landscapes by James Hewetson-Brown - Filbert Press, 2016

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Meadows with Keith Datchler

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My guest this week is naturalist, conservationist and writer Benedict Macdonald. Benedict has recently released a new book ‘Cornerstones’, which talks about how by restoring cornerstone species we can help turn around the current impoverished state of nature in the UK. His previous book ‘Rebirding’ was how I first came to know of his work and I’ve been a great admirer of his work ever since. We talk about the numbers of UK birds, how land management needs to change in order to stop the loss of species in this country and what we can do at a garden level to make changes.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Box tree moth

What we cover

- Do we waste money propping up untenably small populations of threatened species in isolated areas?

- Bird species that are the ‘walking dead’ in Britain

- Achieving cooperation between individual land owners to create the large scale and connected habitats that are needed to sustain populations

- Adopting a build it and they will come approach

-  Are we wasting our time trying to make a difference at the garden scale? If not, what can we do to make a difference? 

- Some of the problems mentioned in Rebirding are directly related to the EUs common agricultural policy. How could this change given Brexit?

- Ecotourism

About Benedict Macdonald

Benedict Macdonald is a conservation writer, field director in wildlife television, and a keen naturalist. He is passionate about restoring Britain's wildlife, pelicans included, in his lifetime. 

During his extensive global travel experience, Benedict has found inspiring examples of why desecrating our country’s ecosystems is both entirely avoidable and against the national interest. This book is his attempt to ensure that this generation, for the first time in thousands of years, leaves Britain’s wildlife better off, not worse, than the generation before – for wildlife and people alike.

Benedict is a long-time writer for Birdwatching magazine, as well as a contributor to the RSPB Nature’s Home and BBC Wildlife. He has been fortunate to work on TV series for the BBC and Netflix - most notably the grasslands and jungles programmes of Sir David Attenborough’s conservation series Our Planet.

Links

Cornerstones: Wild forces that can change our world by Benedict Macdonald - Bloomsbury Publishing PLC , 2022

Orchard: A Year in England's Eden by Benedict Macdonald - HarperCollins, 2021

Rebirding: Restoring Britain's Wildlife by Benedict Macdonald - Pelagic Publishing, 2020

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Irreplaceable with Julian Hoffman

Patreon Membership

This week’s guest is Martin Harvey, an entomologist and biological recorder based at the UK CEH Biological Records Centre. His main areas of work include the iRecord online recording system, liaison with national recording schemes, and the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme. Martin enjoys watching and recording hoverflies and I was delighted he agreed to an interview as although I know next to nothing about them, I do love seeing them in the garden and I’m always keen to find out more.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Beewolf

What we cover

The UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme

How hoverflies are distinct from bees or other flies

How many species of hoverfly are in the UK

More common species and the rarest

Mimicry

How to encourage more hoverflies into our gardens

Where to find out more about hoverflies

About Martin Harvey

Martin Harvey is an entomologist and biological recorder based at the UK CEH Biological Records Centre. His main areas of work include the iRecord online recording system, liaison with national recording schemes, and the UK Pollinator Monitoring Scheme. He also teaches for Field Studies Council. Martin enjoys watching and recording hoverflies and other insects, and as a volunteer he runs the national Soldierflies and Allies Recording Scheme, and is County Moth Recorder for Berkshire.

Links

UKCEH Biological Records Centre

Hoverfly Recording Scheme

UK Hoverflies on Facebook

Buzz Club hoverfly lagoons from Sussex University

Dipterists Forum (the society for the study and conservation of flies)

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Butterflies with Peter Eeles

Patreon Membership

This week, I’m speaking to Michael Marriott about historic roses. Micheal is an expert rosarian, Chairman of the Historic Roses Group and author of the recently published book RHS ‘Roses’. We talk about what historic roses are, some of the myths surrounding them and why they’re an excellent choice for your garden, particularly if you’re looking for something a little different. I began by asking Michael about his background and how he became interested in historic roses.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Harebell Carpenters

What we cover

The Historic Roses Group and Michael’s involvement with the group

What is an historic rose? 

More common historic roses we might have come across

Disease resistance

Scent

Do they repeat flower?

Gardens in the UK where you can see historic roses

Good old rose varieties if you’re dipping your toe in the water of growing them

Links

Historic Roses Group

RHS Roses: An inspirational Guide to Choosing and Growing the Best Roses by Michael Marriott

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Pruning Roses with Richard Stubbs of David Austin

This week I’m speaking to horticultural expert Guy Deakins who amongst other things is a garden designer, historic gardens expert, consultant and author of the new book Gardener’s Guide to Protected Growing: Creating a successful, sustainable and health micro-climate in the garden. I wanted to find out a bit more about creating protected environments for plants, and about the positives and negatives and Guy’s book provides comprehensive answers all rooted in scientific research.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Fleas in the garden

What we cover

What is protected growing? 

When thinking about protecting crops, should we look to install a windbreak first of all? How do we know we’re not going to create a frost pocket or channel winds in an unfavourable way?

Does growing on a protected site mean you are usually dealing with an artificial growing medium?

If you want to automate the watering, some good alternatives to hand watering

Avoiding too much light for plants growing in a protected space

Moderating temperatures

Good examples of growing in protected spaces

About Guy Deakins

Since starting his business in 1999, Guy has gained experience in many differing environments from small courtyards and roof gardens in the heart of the city, fen gardens in rural Norfolk, windswept beach-side formal gardens, and country estates designed by twentieth century cognoscente – with just about every beautiful variation in between.

With the coming of the global climate crisis, the focus of the company is always to encourage biodiversity whilst maintaining a good design aesthetic. To this end, Guy studied neuroscience at degree level, so that he could fully understand the brain’s aesthetic pathways when looking at shapes, structures and colours.

Links

Gardener’s Guide to Protected Growing: Creating a successful, sustainable and health micro-climate in the garden by Guy Deakins - Crowood Press, 2022

www.guydeakinsgardening.com

Patreon Membership

This week I’m speaking to gardener and writer Lulah Ellender about her book Grounding: Finding Home in a Garden. Lulah’s book is about tuning into the unceasing rhythms of nature in order to live with uncertainty and how they can help us become more connected to the places in which we live. We talk about how gardens can root us in time and place, even when those roots seem tenuous and liable to break.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Sentient bugs

What we cover

The premise behind the book and the circumstances in which Lulah came to write it

How Lulah gardened differently when she thought she might lose her garden

Why the potential loss of her garden seemed such a wrench

Custodianship of gardens 

Advantages to being a temporary, more tenuous occupier of a space

How do gardens help us cope with our emotions? How do they help us make sense of cycles of life, death, birth, aging?

About Lulah Ellender

Lulah lives in Lewes, East Sussex, with her husband, four children and assorted animals. She has written for the Guardian, the Mail on Sunday’s YOU magazine, and Sussex Life among others. She was recently writer in residence at Charleston’s Festival of the Garden. Her first book Elisabeth’s Lists was published in 2018. 

Links

Grounding: Finding Home in a Garden by Lulah Ellender - Granta Books, April 2022

Patreon Membership

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode where I’m speaking to Marion Whitehead from the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden in New South Wales, Australia, part of the Royal Botanic Gardens Sydney.

I talk with Marion about one of her areas of speciality; the intersection of plants and human feelings, particularly in the context of 3 books as recommended by Marion; Enid Blyton’s ‘The Magic Faraway Tree’, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s ‘The Secret Garden’ and ‘The Overstory’ by Richard Powers.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Venom

What we cover

Enid Blyton’s ‘The Magic Faraway Tree’: the tree is the central character, but actually seems pretty inanimate. How does the magic faraway tree provoke emotion?

Is there a suggestion in Blyton’s book that wild plants are more emotionally provocative than cultivated plants?

‘The Secret Garden’: the garden heals but it seems to be healing physically as much as emotionally, is this the case?

Is the garden responding to individuals’ needs? 

Do people instinctively find or seek out what they need, emotionally, in a garden?

Do we have the language to describe our relationship to plants? 

Richard Powers’ ‘The Overstory’: are plants losing their power to connect with us emotionally, or vice versa, given our detachment from nature? 

About Marion Whitehead

Marion is Senior Horticulturalist at the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden. She has an extensive background in cool climate plant species, with a specific interest in ephemeral and heathland plants. Marion has many horticultural topics of interest from Australian plant history, to managing plant nurseries, to the emotional connection between human and fellow flowers.

Links

www.bluemountainsbotanicgarden.com

The Overstory by Richard Powers 

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett 

Patreon Membership

This week’s guests are Kenton Seth and Paul Spriggs, co-authors of a book that’s just been released called ‘The Crevice Garden: How to Make the Perfect Home for Plants from Rocky Places.’ This book is immensely detailed and if you’ve ever had an interest in crevice aka rock gardens, or indeed have not but are curious, this book provides a comprehensive overview of the types of plants suited to growing in this style of garden (there are many), the different looks you can create, how to build and maintain them, famous and successful examples and why they are good from an environmental perspective.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Flower Crab Spiders

What we cover

What is a crevice garden?

Advantages to putting plants in crevices

The sort of plants suited to growing in crevices

Installing a crevice garden

Sourcing stone you might need?

Planting into a crevice garden

Are they a purely aesthetic addition to a garden or can they be useable too?

Maintenance

About Kenton & Paul

Kenton J. Seth began his career in public horticulture and the nursery trade and is now a garden designer who specializes in crevice gardens, drought-tolerant natives, and meadows. He writes for a variety of local, national and international magazines and lectures to rock garden clubs at home in Colorado and overseas. 

Paul Spriggs has been rock gardening for 23 years and building crevice gardens for the last 16. He is a professional gardener and landscaper, and an avid plant explorer. He has a passion for all wild plants, especially miniatures, collecting and cultivating them at home in Victoria, British Columbia.

Links

The Crevice Garden: How to Make the Perfect Home for Plants from Rocky Places by Kenton Seth & Paul Spriggs - Filbert Press, April 2022

Huw on YouTube

Huw on Facebook

Huw on Instagram 

Patreon Membership

This week’s guest is veg growing expert Huw Richards. Huw grows a vast range of plants in his garden in mid-West Wales and is always trialling and experimenting with new ways of growing. He has an enormously popular YouTube channel and has authored a number of books, the latest of which is ‘The Vegetable Grower’s Handbook’ which draws on his experience as very much a thoughtful and philosophical gardener.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Flower Crab Spiders

What we cover

Gardening with a mission statement

Being organised in the garden; keeping checklists, batching jobs, planning

Some of the most surprising things Huw’s discovered on his gardening journey

Poly culture 

Intercropping

Having an odds and ends bed

Harvesting water in the garden 

The method of multisowing

New veg Huw’s trialling in 2022

On being a philosophical gardener

Links

The Veg Grower’s Handbook by Huw Richards - Dorling Kindersley Ltd, March 2022

Huw on YouTube

Huw on Facebook

Huw on Instagram 

Patreon Membership

This week’s guest is Clare Keller, a fashion designer and stylist who’s previously work at Ralph Lauren, Gucci, Pringle, Chloe and Givenchy. Clare is currently a Trustee and spokesperson for the British Iris Society, a society dedicated to promoting and preserving UK irises and providing resources to iris growers. We talk about these picturesque, perpetually popular flowers.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Organic recyclers

What we cover

How Clare became involved with the British Iris Society and interested in irises

Species of iris

Ideal iris growing conditions

Iris hardiness

Propagation of irises

Easy irises to grow

Links

The British Iris Society

On Facebook

Patreon Membership

Hello and welcome to this episode of the podcast where I’m speaking to journalist and host of the Climate Cuisine podcast, Clarissa Wei.

On her podcast, Clarissa shares the stories of the crops grown sustainably around the world. The goal is to highlight climate-centric conversations about crops and the food we eat as they become increasingly important to the resiliency and survival of our food systems.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Bumbling bees

What we cover

Clarissa's background and the idea behind her Climate Cuisine podcast

What’s wrong with the way we currently farm and consume our food?

How individuals can join the growing revolution

The importance of growing food that is specific to your climate region

How this can change the way we grow and use food

How regional food independence helps local communities

Government support (or not!)

The future of the Climate Cuisine podcast

About Clarissa Wei

Clarissa Wei is an American Taiwanese freelance journalist and video producer based in Taipei. Bylines include the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, VICE, among others. She is currently working on her first cookbook, Made In Taiwan (Simon Element).

Links

Climate Cuisine Trailer

Patreon Membership

This week I’m speaking to Bonsai expert John Hanby. John has decades of experience studying and creating bonsai trees and has just released an incredibly comprehensive guide called the Practical Art of Bonsai. We talk about selecting a plant, how to train it, and artistic methods and we finish with John’s thoughts on how bonsai techniques relate to and inform wider gardening practices.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Large bulb flies

What we cover

What is a bonsai tree?

What can you bonsai?

Indoor and outdoor trees

Overall aims of bonsai

Starting a tree from seed or a cutting

Wiring and directional pruning

Dead wood as an artistic addition to a tree

Watering bonsai trees

Specialist bonsai equipment

About John Hanby

John has been teaching bonsai for over thirty years and is owner of one of the biggest bonsai schools in Europe. He’s a long-serving member of the Yorkshire Bonsai Association committee and has previously been the secretary of the Federation of British Bonsai Societies, in addition to being a member of the Belgian Kawabe School. He gives talks and demonstrations in the UK and internationally, and has won multiple awards for his fabulous trees. He provides advice, articles and photographs for podcasts, books and magazines, and has produced a successful DVD.

Links

Practical Art of Bonsai by John Hanby - The Crowood Press, 2022

www.johnhanbybonsai.co.uk

Patreon Membership

This week’s guest is Frank Hyman, a certified mushroom forager who teaches mushroom identification to chefs, arborists, organic farmers and the general public. Frank’s latest book is called ‘How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying’ and contains guidance on mushroom identification, on your suitability for becoming a mushroom forager on which subject he writes “if you have a reputation among your friends and family for exercising poor judgement…you may not be a very good candidate”, about the sniffy attitude of the English to mushrooms versus that of mainland Europeans and a whole host of other myco-related topics that should help you in your quest to survive foraging. Despite dealing with a potentially lethal topic, both book and author are laugh out loud funny and I was delighted that Frank agreed to an interview.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Viruses

What we cover

Can you take a mushroom guide from one country or continent and use it in another?

Frank’s three different types of mushrooms

Mycophobia

Should you be careful of the soil mushrooms are growing in?

Nutritional and medicinal values

Cleaning and cooking mushrooms

About Frank Hyman

Frank is a certified mushroom forager who teaches mushroom identification to chefs, arborists, organic farmers and the general public. His writing on foraging has appeared in Forbes, Paleo Magazine and Hobby Farms. He lives in Durham, North Carolina. 

Links

How to Forage for Mushrooms Without Dying: An Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Identifying 29 Wild, Edible Mushrooms by Frank Hyman

Other episodes you might like:

Edible Mushrooms with Geoff Dann

In Search of Mycotopia with Doug Bierend

Patreon Membership

Hello and welcome to this week’s episode, where I’m speaking to plant expert and forest garden creator Alan Carter. Alan’s latest book, ‘A Food Forest in your Garden' teaches you how to grow your own seasonal food in a low maintenance, nature friendly garden that feels like a woodland glade. We talk about starting a forest garden, how to manage it, key plants and some unusual plants and growing techniques.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Common fruit flies

What we cover

What is a forest garden?

Is our UK climate suited to hosting forest gardens?

Turkish rocket

Can it be difficult and or expensive to start a forest garden given the unusual plants involved?

Sourcing plants

Acclimating your taste buds to the flavours of some of the plants in the forest garden

What plants are essential in a forest garden?

How Alan treats kale and radish plants

Links

A Food Forest in your Garden: Plan It, Grow It, Cook It by Alan Carter

www.foodforest.garden

Patreon Membership

This week I’m speaking to April Windle. April is a naturalist with a particular interest in lichens, especially those occupying our rainforest habitats along the western seaboard of the British Isles.

April works on a variety of lichen education and conservation projects and co-chairs the Education & Promotions Committee of the British Lichen Society. April talks to me about what lichen actually is, where you can find it and why it’s interesting and worth studying. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Brimstone butterflies

What we cover

What is a lichen? Might they be confused with algae, moss or fungi?

The provenance of lichens

UK species

Where you can find them

Lichen propagation 

Lichens as species or material specific

What is life like for lichen given things like development, air pollution and climate change?

Edible and medicinal uses

Where you can find out more about lichens

About April Windle

April Windle is a naturalist with a particular interest in lichens, especially those occupying our rainforest habitats along the western seaboard of the British Isles.

She is currently self-employed and involved in a variety of lichen education and conservation projects, whilst co-chairing the Education & Promotions Committee of the British Lichen Society.  Her employment history includes Plantlife International, the Natural History Museum, Exmoor National Park Authority and the RSPB. 

Links

www.britishlichensociety.org.uk 

April on Twitter: @aprilwindle

Patreon Membership

This week I’m chatting with New England-based horticultural therapist and master gardener, Erik Keller, who is also the author of the book A Therapist’s Garden: Using Plants to Revitalise Your Spirit.

Over 20 years, Erik has worked with thousands of people of all ages and types, using horticulture and therapeutic techniques to help them deal with physical, emotional and mental challenges. Erik talks about using an outdoor space as a place for therapy and learning and about the downs and ups of bringing horticulture into peoples’ lives as a way to heal. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Home grown bugs

What we cover

Erik’s background in therapeutic gardening

The most therapeutic and stimulating plant scents for people to work with 

How plants spark memories 

Establishing a connection between growing and eating plants

Techniques to stop attention wandering whilst completing a task 

Techniques you use if people are exhibiting undesirable behaviour

Lesson planning and being flexible during gardening sessions

Using your garden year round

How seasonal changes can help garden users deal with their personal issues and relate to the garden

About A Therapist’s Garden: Using Plants to Revitalise Your Spirit

The Zen of mixing mud with seniors; crafting surprising salads out of weeds; and a hidden rabbit bringing joy to girls in a juvenile detention center. These are a few of the nearly 100 stories that Erik Keller takes readers on through a journey of how interacting with plants and nature can help heal mental, emotional, and physical trauma. Through the lens of January to December in a New England landscape, discover how horticultural therapy improves the lives of those in pain including special-needs children, cancer patients, and disabled seniors. 

A Therapist’s Garden is unique in portraying how gardening, nature-based arts, plants and horticulture can revitalize the spirit of people. It encompasses over 20 years of experiences seeing the healing power of horticultural therapy. Its themes and subject material are universal in interest as different portions of this book apply to nearly anyone who likes plants or to garden, both booming activities today, as well as therapists who will find the approach interesting and of use to their client bases. 

About Erik Keller

Over the last 20 years, Erik Keller has worked with thousands of people of all ages and types using horticulture and therapeutic techniques to help them deal with physical, cognitive, social and emotional challenges. Venues have ranged from special-needs schools, to prisons, to nursing facilities to private homes. Certifications from the University of Connecticut as a Master Gardener in 2000 and the New York Botanical Garden in Horticultural Therapy in 2009 has given Keller a strong base of knowledge from which he has been able to help his clients. He is a member of the American Horticultural Therapy Association, the Northeast Horticultural Therapy Network as well as the Connecticut Master Gardeners Association. He writes extensively about the healing power of horticultural therapy on a variety of social media platforms and on his website www.grohappy.com. 

For over a decade, Keller has been running a twice-monthly horticultural therapy (HT) program at Ann’s Place, a not-for-profit facility helping those with cancer located in Danbury, CT. Since the emergence of COVID-19, Keller has developed a wide variety of virtual and hybrid HT sessions for clients. He also manages and maintains the grounds at Ann’s Place, which he designed over a decade ago to accommodate therapeutic needs of the client base. 

Keller is also a commissioner for the Ridgefield Conservation Commission, which manages and maintains over 5,800 acres of open space in Ridgefield, CT. In the past, he has run horticultural therapy programs at senior living and nursing facilities as well as run programs at Green Chimneys, a school for special-needs children in Brewster, NY. 

Earlier in Keller’s career, he spent a decade as a journalist and editor for a variety of technology- focused trade publications, a decade as a Research Fellow at Gartner, Stamford, CT (the leading technology advisory firm in the world), and another decade as a management consultant with his own firm. During that time he received many awards for editorial, writing and analytical excellence. He also wrote a well-received book for the technology community called Technology Paradise Lost (Manning Publications) in 2004. 

Keller graduated from State University of New York at Stony Brook with a Bachelor’s of Engineering degree as well as minored in English and Journalism. While at Stony Brook, he won the University’s Martin Buskin Memorial Scholarship for Journalism. 

Links

Black Rose Publishing - A Therapist’s Garden: Using Plants to Revitalise Your Spirit

www.grohappy.com

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The collection comprises over 160 varieties and includes some favourite varieties which date back to the 1800s. Jack talks about his collection, the different types of violas you might come across and how you can best grow them in your garden either in the ground or in containers.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Biodiversity Decline

What we cover

Jack’s collection of violas

How many species of viola there are

The history of violas in cultivation

Violettas 

Pruning violas

Viola growing conditions and feeding

Hardiness

Violas and scent

Viola colours

Propagation

Edible flowers

Links

www.wildegoosenursery.co.uk

Patreon Membership

This week’s guest is Dr Si Poole, founder of Mintopia, a website dedicated to mint featuring its own online reference library for the different types, the mintopaedia. Si holds one of the National Collections of mint and holds getting on for 200 different cultivars. From his plastic-free, organic nursery, he sells themed collections of mints and he’s passionate and knowledgable about every aspect of the Mentha genera, impressive given that there’s much more to this plant than mint sauce and mojitos. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Locusts

What we cover

How Si became interested in mint

The different species and cultivars of mint

The Mintopia Mint Collections

How is mint propagated?

The cultivation of mint in the garden 

Is it true that you shouldn’t allow mints of different varieties grow in the same container otherwise they all end up tasting the same? 

Mint pests and diseases

Links

Mintopia 

Patreon Membership

I stumbled across a book called The Humanure Handbook: Shit in a Nutshell and of course, I had to buy a copy. I’ve long thought that if we’re aiming towards a closed system within our gardens then our own waste needs to be factored into the equation so I was intrigued to find out what the book’s author Joseph C Jenkins had to say on the matter. What I didn’t expect was the book to be one of those that slaps you in the face with facts and makes you question the whole way you’ve lived your life, in this case in relation to loos and their contents. Not only does Joe comprehensively explain how you can take the contents of your loo and compost it along with your garden waste so that you have a clean and useful product that can be used on everything from vegetables to houseplants, he will make you wonder why you ever thought the alternative of flushing it away was a sensible, viable option. There is so much I wanted to cover with Joe and we only scratched the surface of the subject in this interview. I urge you to get the book and think about the issue of how we deal with waste, it’s a vitally important environmental issue.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Eating insects

What we cover

The background to Joe’s work on composting toilet waste and his book, The Humanure Handbook

In order to put back what we take out of the soil, we need to be reusing our waste as well as all household and garden waste - how can this work in practice?

Is a flushing toilet the holy grail of comfort and civilised living for all?

Composting and pathogens

Composting and drug residues

Compost toilets vs dry composting systems

Links

Humanure Handbook can be downloaded here

Humanure videos

Humanure videos on Youtube

Humanure research papers:

2018

2015

2013

2011

2009

Patreon Membership

The flora of Armenia is one of the most diverse and interesting in the world and includes many favourite garden plants and their relatives. This week’s guest, Tamar Galstyan, has travelled the length and breadth of the country botanising and leading guided plant tours. She’s recently published ‘A Field Guide to the Plants of Armenia’ which includes more than 1000 of the diverse range of plants found in the country and in the interview, we cover the range of habitats and climates found in Armenia, what it’s like to travel there to find plants and how the native flora is threatened by things such as climate change and grazing animals.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: UV light

What we cover

How Tamar become interested in plants

What makes Armenia so significant in terms of plants

The sorts of climates experienced in Armenia

The rarest plants you could find

Armenian wild plants that are also garden cultivars

The protection given to the native flora

How to see the plants in Armenia and the best time to visit

About Tamar Galstyan

Tamar Galstyan graduated from the University of Art and Theatre in Yerevan, Armenia. After some years she studied ecology and worked with children as an ecology teacher. Tamar began travelling regularly in Armenia, taking numerous pictures of plants and identifying them. She created a website to help her students learn about the Armenian flora and this led to her popular Facebook page 'Plants of Armenia'. In 2012 Tamar was invited to guide a botany trip in Armenia. Gradually the geographical range of her trips expanded and some are managed through her own travel company, SkyGreen. Travels in Georgia, Iran and Central Asia deepened Tamar’s love of nature as well as her plant knowledge. She learns by travelling and is passionate about sharing what she has learnt during the past nine years guiding botany trips. 

Links

A Field Guide to The Plants of Armenia by Tamar Galstyan

Patreon Membership

This week, I’m talking to Susan Young, author of the book ‘Growing Beans’. As I’ve looked further into having a sustainable diet, into growing and storing crops and into sources of plant protein, beans just seemed to tick every box, but I needed to know more. So Susan’s book ‘Growing Beans’ is exactly what I’ve been looking for, because it covers growing, harvesting and storing beans and it argues a very convincing case for a fact that many people the world over have known for centuries; that beans are good not only for you but for the planet, because they’re such a resilient, easy to grow, low carbon footprint crop.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Tobacco whitefly

What we cover

What makes beans such a good crop to grow, in terms of their eco credentials? 

The beans we commonly grow here in the UK

Beans to grow for their green pods, as fresh green beans, half dried and drying

Bean nutritional needs

Overwintering tubers of runner bean plants

Drying beans in a UK climate

Bean toxicity

Storing different types of beans

Easy beans to grow

Beans for taste and aesthetics

Preparing and cooking beans

About ‘Growing Beans: a diet for healthy people and planet' by Susan Young

Susan's new book brings together 10 years of experimentation with multiple varieties of beans. She clearly explains how to sow, grow, harvest, dry, store and cook them, and shares her six ‘must grow’ varieties. 

Beans are easy to grow and cook, help build healthy soil in the garden, and also provide a nutrient-rich diet, helping to reduce the risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer – they are good sources of protein, fibre, folate, iron and potassium. Plus, they can reduce your carbon footprint and food miles as well!

Links

'Growing Beans: a diet for healthy people and planet' by Susan Young

Beans and Herbs 

Publishers of the book, Permaculture Magazine, on Facebook 

Patreon Membership

This week’s guest is Nick Macer, plant hunter, self-taught botanist, rare species expert and owner of Pan Global Plants, a nursery based in the Severn Valley, which, to quote the website, offers “a selection of the finest, most desirable and often rarest plants capable of growing on these isles”. And that’s key - Nick hand selects plants, in the past, directly from where they were growing in the wild and brings them into cultivation. He’s renowned for choosing sublime varieties and for openly sharing his knowledge and experience. I did intend to talk to Nick a bit about his plant hunting trips, but as a stop has been put to these recently due to rules around the transportation of plant materials, the conversation went in other directions.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Mealybugs

What we cover

How Nick got into plant hunting

How plants make the grade for inclusion into your nursery catalogue

Rare plants - hardy or non hardy?

Propagating rare plants

Using rare plants in the garden

About Nick Macer

Coincidentally connected to last week’s episode on Georgian gardens, Nick Macer rented land at Painswick Rococo Garden before moving to Frampton-on-Severn to set up Pan-Global Plants, which specialises in rare and unusual plants, many of which are well-suited to growing in a UK climate.

Nick trained at Merrist Wood and went on to have placements at Westonbirt Arboretum and the Sir Harold Hillier Gardens. He’s travelled the globe to find the most beautiful specimens to bring into cultivation and continues to work at the nursery and to share his knowledge in person and in the media.

Links

www.panglobalplants.com

Patreon Membership

I’m speaking to Dr Cathryn Spence this week, about Thomas Robins, a painter who documented the country estates of the Georgian gentry in all their Rococo splendour. Robins captured images of this flamboyant age of outdoor design where gardens were laden with symbolism and crammed full of Chinoiserie, follies ruins and the latest imports of exotic animals and plants. Follow the story of Robins as he moves from jobbing fan painter to star of his own paintings, the development of the floral borders around his canvases, for which he’s famed, and the evolution of the Georgian garden and what remains of this style today. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Fig wasps

What we cover

The artist Thomas Robins and when and where he worked

What gardens looked like at the time Robins was painting

What is a Rococo garden?

Why Robins painted floral borders around his paintings

How exotic species came to be included in these frames

In the book, Cathryn references “the Rococo’s requirement of asymmetry”. How did this manifest in Robins’ artworks and in gardens? 

Political themes in Georgian gardens

Robins’ botanical art

How contemporary painters painted entire estates on one canvas

Remaining examples of rococo gardens

About ‘Nature’s Favourite Child – Thomas Robins and the Art of the Georgian Garden’

Thomas Robins the Elder (1716–1770) recorded the country estates of the Georgian gentry—their orchards, Rococo gardens, and potagers—like no other, with both topographical accuracy and delightful artistry, often bordering his gouaches with entrancing tendrils, shells, leaves, and birds. Robins's skill was honed by the delicacy required for his early career as a fan painter and is shown too in his exquisite paintings of butterflies, flowers, and birds. This ravishing and scholarly study emerges from many years’ research by Dr Cathryn Spence, the curator and archivist at Bowood House who has also worked for the V&A, the Bath Preservation Trust, and the National Trust. This is the first full study of Thomas Robins since John Harris’s Gardens of Delight, published in two volumes in 1978; Harris, in fact, made over all his research notes to Spence in 2005 when she embarked on her work. Chinoiserie is everywhere—a wooden bridge over the Thames, delicious kiosks in a garden, a view of Bath with sampans, and Chinese fishermen on the river. There are also fascinating views of Sudeley Castle and other great houses that incorporated more or less ruined monastic structures, destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Spence has tracked down many previously unknown paintings by Robins and sets his elusive life and work in the framework of his patrons. More detective story than art historical monograph, this lavish study delights in Robins’s astonishing proficiency as a topographical, botanical, entomological and naturalist artist. 

About Cathryn Spence

Dr Cathryn Spence is a museum professional, lecturer and historic gardens and buildings consultant. After a career in London and Bath museums, including the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Building of Bath Museum, she is now Lord Lansdowne’s consultant Archivist and Curator at Bowood House, Wiltshire. She has published several books on the architectural and social history of Bath, most recently The Story of Bath (2016). Her study of Thomas Robins is the culmination of over fifteen years research.  Cathryn has worked with the team at Painswick Rococo Garden, a site restored using Robins’s paintings from 1984, for the last 5 years advising on the continuing heritage and conservation of the garden. 

Links

Nature’s Favourite Child – Thomas Robins and the Art of the Georgian Garden by Cathryn Spence is available from John Sandoe Books or directly from the author. Email thomasrobinselder@gmail.com (£45 to include p&p to a UK address, for RoW postage contact Cathryn on the above email for quote).

Painswick Rococo Garden

Patreon Membership

This week, I’m talking to Joyce Veheary about her fantastic Lend and Tend project, which aims to match garden owners who perhaps don’t have the time, experience, desire or means to tend their garden with gardenless gardeners keen to employ their green fingers, 

pairing up people who are local to each other, then sending them on their merry way in the hopes they will have a long and happy garden sharing relationship. Joyce talks about why she felt the need to begin the project, how it works, what happens when it succeeds and why the idea is of benefit to whole communities, as well as the individuals involved.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Indoor houseplant bugs

What we cover

Lend and Tend and how it came about

How likely are you to find someone on Lend and Tend who shares the same view of what a garden can and should be? 

Some of the keys to having a mutually beneficial relationship between lender and tender

What about tools?

Practical considerations such as insurance and references

The social element of Lend and Tend and how it benefits the community

Where to find out more and get involved

About Joyce Veheary

Joyce is the founder of Lend and Tend and is a self-taught gardener with a passion for sharing skills and experiences. She is particularly interested in growing her own produce to cook with and she’s a keen forager too. 

Joyce is always looking for ways to look after the environment and to promote social justice. Her aim with Lend and Tend is to democratise access to growing space, which she rightly views as an act of horticultural rebellion.

She’s also a film and TV actor and her latest role is in Zack Snyder’s Justice League where she plays a Gotham cop. Talk about multi-talented!

Links

www.lendandtend.com

Lend and Tend on Facebook 

Twitter 

Instagram 

Patreon Membership

P.s. for those expecting exotic plants and sunny climes as promised last week, apologies! The course of podcasting never did run smooth - hopefully next week!

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Overwintering moths

What we cover

Brown Envelope Seeds and how Madeline started the company

Why organic seeds? Why open-pollinated?

On the Brown Envelope Seeds website, Madeline writes that open pollinated seeds “are naturally pollinated - by insects or wind; not enforced pollination or in-breeding”. She expands on what she means by this.

Food plant biodiversity

Why you should try to buy seeds from a seed producer in your region or from one who has similar growing conditions

Saving our own seeds

If we save seeds each year, are the resulting plants are getting better and better?

What to look for when saving seed

Potential problems with seed crops that can affect the quality of the seed

The situation globally with seed production and seed sellers?

About Madeline McKeever

Madeline began Brown Envelope Seeds in 2004 with 25 varieties. Since then, the company has grown, along with the amount of varieties offered (especially tomatoes!) to a family business supplying organic and open-pollinated vegetable seeds to Irish growers. 

Madeline’s mission statement is to enable people to grow their own food and she believes producing and saving seeds is a vital part of that. She is doing her part to preserve and safeguard the future of food diversity in Ireland and by sharing her knowledge and expertise, is helping this happen on a global scale. 

Links

www.brownenvelopeseeds.com

www.seedie.ie

Other episodes you might like:

Episode 12 - Esiah Levy’s SeedsShare Project 

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This year’s first guest is organic vegetable grower Anna Greenland. Anna has supplied produce to some of the UK’s top chefs, including Raymond Blanc and Jamie Oliver, has created gardens at Soho Farmhouse, Kew Gardens and the Huntington Botanical Gardens in LA. She is currently establishing a market garden and gardening school in Suffolk and has just released a book called ‘Grow Easy’. Anna talks about working with the best chefs in the best kitchens and catering to their clientele, about producing pristine veg organically, about growing food in different climates and the fundamentals of veg garden success.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Overwintering fruit & vegetable bugs

What we cover

Anna’s background

How Anna begins to plan a veg garden from scratch

What makes a good site

The chefs Anna has worked with 

Growing food for a professional kitchen

Keeping a veg garden in a public space looking good all year round

The biggest challenges for new veg gardeners and how they can be overcome

About Anna Greenland

Anna was working as a model when she moved to Cornwall and began working at Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen Cornwall. Bitten by the veg growing bug, she took on a job at The Lost Gardens of Heligan and began supplying produce to Jamie’s restaurant. From there, she moved to LA to study Ecological Horticulture and set up a food growing garden at Huntington Botanical Gardens. 

After moving back to the UK, she worked at Soho Farmhouse, Le Manoir Aux Quat’Saisons for Raymond Blanc and has set up a productive area at Kew Gardens. She won gold and Best in Show for her ‘Herbs and Preserves’ garden at RHS Hampton Court Flower Show in 2018 and has just released a book, ‘Grow Easy’. She now lives in Suffolk where she is setting up a market garden and gardening school.

Links

www.annagreenland.co.uk

Anna on Instagram 

Grow Easy: Organic crops for pots and small plots - October 2021, Octopus Publishing

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Welcome to this pre-Christmas episode of the podcast, the final one of 2021. And what a year this has been! In this episode, I talk about what’s been happening at Roots and All and look back over some of the favourite episodes from this year. 

Thank you for supporting the podcast this year and a Merry Christmas to you!

What I cover

The redesigned Roots and All website and the bookshop

Episode 94 - Wild Gardens with Jo McKerr

Episode 99 - Pollinators & Pollination with Prof Jeff Ollerton

Episode 108 - Dr Glynn Percival of Bartlett Tree Research

Episode 125 - Modern Plant Hunters with Dr Sandy Primrose

Episode 136 - The View from Federal Twist with James Golden

Patreon Membership

This week’s guest is Dr Jude Piesse. Jude’s book ‘The Ghost in the Garden’ is essentially about Charles Darwin’s largely forgotten garden in Shrewsbury but the book turned out to be much more than a study of the garden, its history and the man himself. In fact, these aspects are almost incidental to the other characters in the book and this makes it an amazing narrative where many aspects are hung together on the framework of the garden. In the interview, Jude tells us about how the book developed, the characters that animated the garden and how it fed into Charles Darwin’s work and life. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Winter Bumblebees

Please don’t forget to rate, review and share the podcast!

What we cover

How Jude first came across Charles Darwin’s garden and what was it about the garden that interested her

Jude says the book is more a collective biography and memoir than just the story of Darwin and it incorporates a whole host of characters. She talks about whether this was intentional.

When the garden was built and what the contemporary horticultural world was like 

How might the change from landscape gardens to the collectors’ gardens with their array of exotic species have contributed to scientific discoveries at that time?

Whilst he was on The Beagle, the correspondence between Darwin and his family seems to have been set against the backdrop of seasonal events in the garden. Was this merely a common topic of conversation or were these updates of a deeper significance? 

Who were the Darwins’ gardeners and what role did they play in shaping the garden and Darwin’s work? 

How much did the garden feed into his work? 

Did Darwin love the garden or was it a laboratory? 

What is the condition of the garden now?

Whose ghost is it in the garden? 

About Dr Jude Piesse

Jude Piesse is an academic and writer. She holds an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and a PhD in English Literature from the University of Exeter. She has published widely on nineteenth-century literature and culture, including her book about emigration literature, British Settler Emigration in Print, 1832–1877 (OUP, 2016). Though she grew up in Shropshire, she did not discover Darwin’s childhood garden until she moved to Shrewsbury with her young family to take up her first lectureship. She now works as a lecturer in English Literature at Liverpool John Moores University. https://scribepublications.co.uk/books-authors/books/the-ghost-in-the-garden-9781913348052

Links

The Ghost in the Garden by Jude Piesse - Scribe Publications, 2021 

This episode features garden designer, grower, speaker and writer Andrew Sankey. Andrew specialises in English cottage gardens and has meticulously researched the subject for decades, becoming an expert on this style of gardening. He’s recently released a book called The English Cottage Garden and in the interview, we talk about what defines a cottage garden, both in the past and now, the plants and features most commonly found in one and tips if you’re looking to create your own. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Ivy Mining Bees

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What we cover

What was a cottage garden historically and what is it now?

How big is a cottage garden?

What hard landscaping elements characterise a cottage garden?

Which planting techniques stand out as most cottage garden-like?

Where does the winter interest come from in a cottage garden?

Using plants as supports for other plants

Cottage gardens and wildlife

Andrew’s 3 essential plants

Edibles in a modern cottage garden

About Andrew Sankey

Andrew left teaching (Head of Graphics/Design) in 1989 to start a Garden Design & Landscaping business in Lincolnshire. He discovered it was very difficult to obtain plants required for designs so started a specialist nursery stocking plants for dry shade/ dry sun.

He went on to organise Plant Fairs in Lincolnshire, Cambs and Norfolk & produced a booklet called the Plant Fair Guide for a number of years.

Andrew moved to a cottage near Woodhall Spa, Lincs in 1992 and created a cottage garden which was opened twice a year for the NGS and other groups.

He became Chairman of the Lincolnshire branch of the Cottage Garden Society and began lecturing on cottage gardens and related subjects (including lecture tours to Minnesota and Wisconsin in the USA).

He’s written booklets on Companion Planting, Cottage Favourites and Sayings and Superstitions and he continues to design gardens and lecture widely on a range of gardening topics.

Links

The English Cottage Garden by Andrew Sankey - The Crowood Press Ltd, 2021 

Episode 62 - The Living Jigsaw with Val Bourne 

The Cottage Garden Society 

Hello and thank you for joining me this week, as I talk to Wade Muggleton, permaculturist, tree expert and author of The Orchard Book, a book about incorporating fruit trees into your garden, however big or small your space. Wade is my favourite type of guest in that he’s written a book based on 20 years of solid experience and he’s busted a few myths along the way, not least the received wisdom around fruit tree pollination. So if you’d like to find out what makes an orchard, when to prune your trees, what types of tree to select, how to underplant your trees, creative tree training, what is a pitcher and what is a chequer, then listen on!

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Ear wigglers

Please don’t forget to rate, review and share the podcast!

What we cover

What is an orchard? 

What types of tree might one contain?

Underplanting orchard trees

Keeping the costs down when establishing an orchard

Have you heard of chequers?

Grafting and over grafting

Pitchers

Pollination and the need for multiple trees of the same pollination group

Creating step overs and fruit tree arches

Pruning in summer instead of winter

Top types of tree

About Wade Muggleton

“Wade Muggleton lives in Shropshire with his partner and two children, where their plot, Station Road Permaculture Garden, is a demonstration site for permaculture and opens under the National Open Gardens Scheme. In 2013, he acquired a field and now has a collection of over 130 fruit trees and was featured on BBC Gardeners’ World in 2018.” https://www.chelseagreen.com/writer/wade-muggleton/

Links

The Orchard Book: Plan, Plant and Maintain Fruit from Garden to Field by Wade Muggleton - 2021, Permanent Publications

Welcome to this week’s episode, where I’m talking water-wise gardening with Janet Manning. Janet undertook a three year project with the RHS and Cranfield University where she looked at strategies and techniques currently available to gardeners to help them both conserve and manage water in a way that reduces waste and protects the environment. We talk about why there’s a need to be water-wise in wet countries like the UK, what we can do to help and why gardens are an important part of the bigger environmental picture.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Harvestmen

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What we cover

Janet’s work with Cranfield University and the RHS

How we gardeners can conserve water in our gardens

How we can contribute towards rainwater management

Drought tolerant plants 

The fabled moist, well-drained soil!

Using swales and hugelkultur beds

Long term meteorological predictions

About Janet Manning

Janet has just completed a three year water management knowledge transfer partnership between Cranfield University and the RHS. As a graduate of Cranfield with an MSc in process engineering, and after a 17 year career as a scientist in the water industry, she followed her passion for the natural environment into horticulture where she worked on a production nursery producing hardy ornamentals. Having worked 'both ends of the hose' she was well placed to take up the role at the RHS as the first garden water scientist. She has contributed to the water neutral targets set within the RHS's new sustainability strategy and has written the first water road map for Wisley as a plan implement the strategy. A gardener since she was big enough to pick up a trowel, the combination of practical gardening experience and scientific knowledge, she has recently left the Environmental Horticulture Team at Wisley but with a legacy that will continue through the sustainability strategy.

Links

www.mains2rains.co.uk

RHS advice for water management 

RHS Neutral Water Targets 

This week’s episode features James Golden, talking about the naturalistic garden he’s built around his home in New Jersey. James’s garden has been created intuitively over time and sits perfectly within the landscape, in fact is a landscape in its own right. Sometimes baffling, sometimes threatening and without utilitarian purpose, the garden is nonetheless life-affirming, vital and dramatically beautiful in different ways from one moment to the next.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Harlequins

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What we cover

About the garden at Federal Twist

Would the garden be as successful from a horticultural and aesthetic standpoint if James had plotted the garden on paper, particularly the planting?

Visitors often seem to get lost in the space and can’t find a route through it - so who did James design the garden for, himself or was it always meant to be shared with visitors? 

James’s stone circle, which serves no purpose other than an aesthetic one

James on being a fearless and philosophical gardener

How long is long enough to make a garden?

How do you create a garden which varies so dramatically from one season to the next?

What inspired the garden

About James Golden 

“James Golden’s garden design has been featured in national and international magazines, in The New York Times, and in several books on garden design. He has been the recipient of national awards and is widely known in the gardening world through his garden blog View from Federal Twist (www.federaltwist.com). James’ Federal Twist garden regularly appears on tours of the Garden Conservancy, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the Hardy Plant Society, and on numerous private tours. Recently retired, he has started a garden design practice.” https://federaltwistdesign.org/about

Links

The View from Federal Twist: A New Way of Thinking About Gardens, Nature and Ourselves by James Golden - Filbert Press, 2021 

The View From Federal Twist 

Federal Twist on Instagram 

This week’s guest in Simon Morley, a British artist and art historian. Simon is the author of several books on modern and contemporary art and is a keen rose gardener. Simon’s latest book was released a few weeks ago and is called ‘By Any Other Name: A Cultural History of the Rose’. During the interview I ask Simon about the cultural significance of roses throughout history, their symbolism, their origins and what how we use roses in gardens today says about us as a society.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Cluster flies

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What we cover

Why the rose is a meme 

Why the rose has been so enduringly beloved by humans 

The origins of Valentine’s Day and why roses are intrinsically linked to it

Why roses in religious symbology fell out of favour during protestantism 

Of all the concepts or beliefs that the rose signifies, which most resonates with Simon

Which nations were the most important players in the development of the rose varieties we know today? 

Simon writes "aesthetic horticultural considerations were often coupled with a theoretical component, and the selection and arrangement of plants were determined by the botanical theory of the period, which in its turn reflected the way the world was perceived to be ordered”. What does Simon think the way we use roses today tell us about how we perceive the world to be ordered? 

The lack of a role for roses in movements such as rewilding and the new perennial movement

About Simon Morley

Simon Morley is a British artist and art historian. He is the author of several books on modern and contemporary art, and has contributed reviews and essays to a number of publications. His artworks have been exhibited internationally. He is currently writing a new history of modern painting, to be published in 2023. Simon lives in France and South Korea, where he teaches at Dankook University. He is also a keen rose gardener.

Links

By Any Other Name: A Cultural History of the Rose by Simon Morley - Oneworld Publications, 2021 

Simon’s website 

Simon on Instagram 

This week’s guest is my second ever returning guest, Fiona Edmond of Green Island Gardens a garden and nursery in Essex. Fiona holds National Plant Collection status for her range of camellias, which includes winter/spring flowering varieties, but also the sometimes overlooked autumn flowering varieties, unjustly so as they offer colour in the garden when little else is happening. This episode tells you everything you need to know about successfully growing camellias. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Spanish slugs

Please don’t forget to rate, review and share the podcast!

What we cover

Autumn and spring flowering varieties

The need for acidic soil when growing camellias

Cultivation

Feeding

Some of Fiona’s favourite varieties for the garden

Pests and diseases

About Fiona Edmond

Links

wwwgreenislandgardens.co.uk

The Green Island Nursery 

On Instagram 

On Twitter 

On Facebook 

This week’s guest is Harriet Carty. Harriet is the Charity Director & Beautiful Burial Ground Project Manager at Caring for God’s Acre, an organisation which works nationally to support groups and individuals to investigate, care for, and enjoy burial grounds and graveyards. These sites are refuges for wildlife, veteran trees and plants. They’re community assets which need protecting and preserving for us and for future generations and I was fascinated to find out more about what’s being done to look after these local treasures.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Overwintering butterflies

Please don’t forget to rate, review and share the podcast!

What we cover

About Caring For God’s Acre

Why it’s so important to protect burial grounds and the wildlife and plants that call then home

Burial grounds as important historical sites and as a link to the past

Veteran trees and ancient yews in burial grounds

Biodiversity in burial sites

How you can get involved with recording wildlife

How to check if your local church is involved

About Caring for God’s Acre

“Caring for God’s Acre works nationally to support groups and individuals to investigate, care for, and enjoy burial grounds and graveyards. There are over 20,000 burial grounds in England and Wales, ranging from small rural medieval churchyards to large Victorian city cemeteries, spanning different cultures, religions and centuries. Appealing to many who are interested in local history and the natural world, burial grounds encapsulate the history of communities whilst offering refuge for our native wildlife.” https://www.caringforgodsacre.org.uk

Links

www.caringforgodsacre.org.uk

On Twitter 

On Facebook 

This week’s guest is Philip Oostenbrink, Head Gardener at Walmer Castle and Gardens, Collections Coordinator for Plant Heritage in Kent, Plant Trials committee member for the RHS and self-confessed jungle plant nut. Philip has just published a new book titled ‘The Jungle Garden’ and in this interview, I talk to him about what a jungle garden is, whether they can work in shady and sunny aspects, easy jungle plants, rarer ones, plant hardiness, seasonal and winter interest and where to get plants. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Black vine weevil

Please don’t forget to rate, review and share the podcast!

What we cover

What sparked Philip’s interest in jungle plants

How the jungle influences his design aesthetic

The importance of seasonal changes and how do you can highlight these in a jungle garden scheme

How much did writing the book make Philip examine what is an instinctual talent for grouping plants?

Can jungle plants mix with more traditional cottage style plants? 

Mixing exotic plants from different continents or eco regions

Winter interest in a jungle garden

Jungle gardens in full sunshine

Good jungle garden climbers

Trees for a small space but big impact

Easy to look after starter plants 

Rarer plants to wow your friends

About Philip Oostenbrink

“My name is Philip Oostenbrink and I am Head Gardener at Walmer Castle and Gardens in East Kent. Apart from my full-time job I am Collections Coordinator for Plant Heritage in Kent and Plant Trials committee member for the RHS. I am also a horticultural speaker for any groups who are interested in gardening and/or history.

I have been a plant collector all my life. I have a passion for jungle gardening and I have four National Plant Collections: Aspidistra elatior & sichuanensis, Variegated and Yellow-leaved Convallaria, Hakonechloa macra and Ophiopogon japonicus. I have a love for variegated plants.” https://myplants.me

Links

The Jungle Garden by Philip Oostenbrink - Filbert Press, October 2021 

Philip’s Blog - ‘Thoughts of a plant nut.” 

Philip on Instagram - mr.plantaholic 

This week I’m speaking to gardener, TV presenter, author, government adviser and wildlife and environment advocate, Chris Baines. Chris designed the first ever wildlife garden at the Chelsea Flower Show in 1985, which was swiftly followed by his bestselling book ‘How to Make a Wildlife Garden’ so I thought it would be a perfect time to speak to Chris, given the continuing interest in wild gardens that we witnessed again at this year’s Chelsea.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Carrot root flies

Please don’t forget to rate, review and share the podcast!

What we cover

How Chris thinks things have changed since the 1980s with regard to the plight of wildlife

Why a wildlife garden which mimics a woodland edge is desirable

Planting a wildflower strip next to a mixed native hedge, how could you go about starting this type of strip and what plants you might use

How you can identify the wildlife in your garden

Is Chris hopeful for the future and are things changing quickly enough? 

Documenting your garden wildlife, in order to help protect habitats threatened by developments

About Chris Baines

"Chris Baines is one of the UK’s leading environmental campaigners, an award-winning writer and broadcaster and an experienced speaker at national and international conferences. His particular garden-related expertise lies in wildlife gardening, community participation and trees in towns. Specilaist subjects: industry and environment, wildlife gardening, community participation, habitat creation, sustainable water management." https://www.gardenmediaguild.co.uk/guild-members/directory/profile/Chris-Baines/15

My guest this week is Jonathan Sheppard, a political lobbyist who somehow fell into becoming the holder of 2 national plant collections; hollyhocks and cosmos. Jonathan talks about how to grow hollyhocks and cosmos, what you can, or can’t do about rust, good varieties to try and what to look out for in the coming year in terms of new varieties and colours.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Dragonflies

Please don’t forget to rate, review and share the podcast!

What we cover

Hollyhocks and rust

When to sow hollyhocks

Are they biennial or perennial?

The best places to grow hollyhocks

Some of the best varieties

New colours 

The cultivation of Cosmos

Links

British Hollyhocks

Jonathan Sheppard on Twitter 

This week I’m speaking to social media sensation and veg grower Gerald Stratford about growing big veg - do they taste better, how do you avoid pests and diseases, what growing media is best and what you can do with your big veg once you’ve grown it? Gerald’s new book Big Veg has recently been published and his star continues to ascend. Gerald spoke to me from his shed, with his wonderful wife Liz and cat Jet in attendance.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Woodlice

This episode is brought to you by Horti:couture, a conference exploring the influence of plants and gardens on the fashion world and featuring some of the industry’s leading academics and influencers. For more information visit the LCGD website LCGD.org.uk or their Eventbrite page. The conference will take place on the 9th October and tickets start at just £59 and the day will be streamed online as well as in person at Kew Gardens. 

Please don’t forget to rate, review and share the podcast!

What we cover

How Gerald got started on social media

Why would you want to grow big veg and is big always best for taste?

What type of soil you need to grow big veg

Avoiding blight on tomatoes and potatoes

And rust on onions

Using the trench system for runner beans

What Gerald is doing on his plot right now 

About Gerald Stratford

Gerald’s book of tips and tricks, 'BIG VEG', is accessible for beginners and those interested in grow-your-own veg. This gentle guide distils years of knowledge, including the top 10 vegetables to begin with, how to ‘supersize’ them and a month-by-month breakdown to sowing, planting and harvesting.

Aged 72, Gerald rose to fame later in life, gaining over 308k followers after sharing pictures of his potatoes at the height of lockdown in May 2020. He has been hailed the ‘Veg King’ by the press and is passionate about sharing the benefits of mindful gardening at any age and cultivating your own food. After becoming a social media sensation, he continues to go viral with his wholesome allotment content.  

Illustrated with photos throughout, Big Veg is encouraging, full of wisdom and dry humour, much like lovely Gerald himself. In the spirit of bringing joy, please enjoy Gerald as the star of GUCCI’s latest campaign!

Links

Gerald Stratford on Twitter 

'Big Veg' by Gerald Stratford

Get your tickets for Horti:couture from Eventbrite 

In this episode, I’m speaking to award-winning writer Catherine Mack about getting a gardening book published. Catherine talks about why you might want to write a book, the process of getting your ideas onto paper and how to get published. Plus, she addresses the most important issue of whether or not you’ll make your fortune! If you’ve ever harboured dreams of writing a book, listen on and be inspired by Catherine’s advice and encouragement.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Red Admirals

This episode is brought to you by Horti:couture, a conference exploring the influence of plants and gardens on the fashion world and featuring some of the industry’s leading academics and influencers. For more information visit the LCGD website LCGD.org.uk or their Eventbrite page. The conference will take place on the 9th October and tickets start at just £59 and the day will be streamed online as well as in person at Kew Gardens. 

Please don’t forget to rate, review and share the podcast!

What we cover

Good reasons for writing a book

How do you know if it will be of interest to readers?

How to check someone hasn’t already written something similar and does it matter if they have?

Your options if you’re looking to get published

Getting published in a magazine

What you need in order to approach potential publishers or crowdfunders

Traditional publisher vs. alternatives

Are you likely to make any money?!

About Catherine Mack

Catherine is an award-winning travel writer specialising in sustainable and ethical tourism. Storytelling and sustainability go hand in hand for Catherine, who engages with people just as much as place on her travels. As Covid clipped her wings she started to focus on journeys that people took closer to home. In other words, to their allotments. She is delighted that The Allotmenteers, Profiles of a Growing Community - has now been commissioned by Unbound, an award-winning crowdfunding publisher. 

Catherine has always sought to understand why people journey and is keen to capture what people gain from travelling this short distance from urban to rural, from home to allotment, as well as the growing and personal journeys they take while being allotmenteers. Catherine doesn’t have an allotment and, as it is considered such a private world by those who maintain them, she is able to offer an objective eye in her interviews and subsequent essays, helping the reader feel as if they too are privileged to enter this private world.

Read more about The Allotmenteers, and do please pledge to help have this book hit its crowdfunding target. You can also follow Catherine on Twitter and Instagram. 

Links

The Allotmenteers on Unbound

Catherine Mack on Twitter 

Catherine Mack on Instagram 

Get your tickets for Horti:couture from Eventbrite 

This week, I’m speaking to Gwendolyn van Paaschen about the legendary garden designer John Brookes. Gwendolyn is the owner of Denmans Garden and chairman of the John Brookes-Denmans Foundation. Gwendolyn’s new book ‘How to Design a Garden’ brings together a collection of John’s works from across his lengthy career, disseminating the fundamental principles which underpinned his design work, in a way that is useful to both professionals and home gardeners. Gwendolyn is carrying on John’s work at Denmans by opening the garden to the public and as she puts in at the end of the interview, keeping his conversation going. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: House Spiders

Please don’t forget to rate, review and share the podcast!

What we cover

Who was John Brookes and what are some of the highlights he accomplished during his long career?

The importance of designing in the vernacular and John expressed this through his designs

 How John’s design style and interests evolved during his career 

Garden designers today who particularly embody the work of John Brookes

His influence on garden design over the past 50 years

The long term effect of John's design in the realms of amateur gardening

About Gwendolyn van Paasschen

Gwendolyn van Paasschen, a garden designer and writer, worked with landscape designer John Brookes MBE and helped write his memoir, A Landscape Legacy (Pimpernel Press, 2018). Chairman of the John Brookes-Denmans Foundation, she owns Denmans Garden. Currently writing a book about Denmans, she also writes about garden design.

Links

How to Design a Garden By John Brookes MBE. Edited and introduction by Gwendolyn van Paasschen. Preface by Andrew Duff Released 7th October

www.denmans.org

This week’s guest, Marlow Renton, is the co-founder of Wild Food UK. Marlow talks about why we should all go out foraging, especially children, about how we can overcome our fear of wild food (particularly mushrooms!), what to look out for, when to do it and where to do it responsibly and how to get help if, like me, you’re a bit of a wild food wuss.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Cabbage Root Flies

Please don’t forget to rate, review and share the podcast!

What we cover

How Marlow learnt to forage

How easy is it to forage?

Why it’s important to take children foraging

What to be careful of when foraging

Foraging responsibly

How scared should we be of mushrooms?

Helpful resources if you’re unsure where to start

About Wild Food UK

“Wild Food UK was formed a few years ago by Marlow and Eric driven by a desire to expand peoples experience of nature into a practical source of enjoyment. Since then the company has grown in course leaders and course locations, covering most of the UK. Our aim is to educate people about tasty edible wild plants, mushrooms, fruits, roots and flowers that we think everyone should be able to identify, pick and eat with confidence.

We’re extremely lucky in Britain to have a climate that provides us plenty of food all year round, all you need to know is how to find it. We teach these “skills for life”; and we believe that with the skills we teach, every life will be enhanced. Not only is foraging fun and interesting; you never know when being able to pick your own food might come in genuinely useful or even life saving!” https://www.wildfooduk.com/about-us/

Links

www.wildfooduk.com

This week, I’m speaking with Dr Sandy Primrose about his brilliant book Modern Plant Hunters, which tells the stories of plant hunting in more recent times; who’s doing it, why and what are they looking for. Find out about the challenges plant hunters past and present have faced, whether you can do it in somewhere like the UK and the kind of qualities and personal traits you might need if you want to start - spoiler, it’s not for the faint-hearted!

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Mosquitoes

Thanks to Betakut for sponsoring this episode - visit https://www.betakut.co.uk/shop to find out more - enter the code ROOTS20 to get 20% off until the end of August.

What we cover

Why do people go on plant hunting expeditions in this day and age?

Some of the difficulties they face

The prominent plant hunters today

The CITES treaty and the Nagoya protocol

The extent to which politics, funding issues, international relations etc have interfered with the work of plant hunters

Plant hunting in the UK

Advice for anyone interested in plant hunting

About Dr Sandy Primrose

Dr Sandy Primrose MBE PhD has spent his professional life as a biologist in academia and industry, as well as working with various government agencies on food fraud and related topics. He is a keen gardener and passionate teacher and lectures extensively on plant-related topics. - https://olympiapublishers.com/authors/sandy-primrose/

Links

Modern Plant Hunters by Dr Sandy Primrose - Pimpernel Press Ltd. 

This week, I visited Golden Hill Nurseries to interview Roger Butler, Find out about the different species in cultivation, the best way to prune hydrangeas, what and when to feed them and of course, the all important information about whether your flowers will be pink or blue and what, if anything, you can do about it!

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Horse Chestnut moth

Thanks to Betakut for sponsoring this episode - visit https://www.betakut.co.uk/shop to find out more - enter the code ROOTS20 to get 20% off until the end of August.

What we cover

Where hydrangeas originate from

Their preferred growing conditions

The main species in cultivation

Why are some hydrangeas blue and some pink? Can blue hydrangeas turn pink and what can we do if we want blue hydrangeas but can only seem to grow pink ones? 

The colour range of hydrangea flowers

How and when should to prune hydrangeas

How many months off the year can we expect hydrangeas to bloom? 

Particularly good species

Pests and diseases, or lack thereof!

About Roger Butler

Roger is the owner of Golden Hill Nurseries, a plant centre based in Kent, specialising in hydrangeas, hedging plants, Japanese maples and larger shrubs. Roger has made many appearances in the media sharing his expertise about hydrangeas and regularly gives talks on the subject. The nursery has won multiple medals at RHS shows for their plant displays and you can catch up with them at one of the RHS shows this year, or order from them online.

Links

www.goldenhillplants.com

Signature Hydrangeas

Signature Plants

Signature Shrubs

This week’s guest is Annika Zetterman, a Swedish garden designer teacher and author of New Nordic Gardens. Annika works internationally designing visually beautiful gardens which encompass sustainability, respect for the local environment and aesthetic and which exemplify all the best aspects of Scandinavian design. In this episode, Annika talks about the ethos behind Scandinavian design as it’s expressed in a landscape setting and decodes why the gardens featured in her book are so downright stunning.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Grasshoppers

Thanks to Betakut for sponsoring this episode - visit https://www.betakut.co.uk/shop to find out more. 

What we cover

When talking about Nordic gardens, which countries Annika includes in her book

The importance of light in Nordic gardens and what effect this has on the colours and materials designers choose

Nordic design can be thought of as pared back, uncluttered, clean - where does this aesthetic come from?

Sustainability and how it underlies outdoor design in Nordic countries

Attention to detail and the meticulous selection of hard landscaping materials

The weather and how this is coped with in gardens

Trends emerging in contemporary Nordic gardens

About Annika Zetterman

“Annika Zetterman is the founder and designer at Zetterman Garden Design, creating gardens with Scandinavian ethos throughout the Nordics and beyond, with projects in Sweden, Spain, France, Switzerland and in the UK. She arrived back to her homeland, Stockholm, Sweden 2010, after living abroad, in Hawaii, USA and 10 years in London, UK. 

Annika is the author of the book ‘New Nordic Garden, Scandinavian Landscape Design’ published in 2017 and in 2021 (Thames & Hudson), with a Danish translation 2018. Her projects have been featured in books and publications, nationally as well as internationally. Annika was teaching garden design in Stockholm for seven years and lectures on the subject both in Sweden and abroad. 

Annika is driven by creating aesthetically pleasing and sustainable expressions, with respect to surrounding landscapes and architecture, while maintaining a positive contribution to future generations and to the Scandinavian design heritage." http://www.annikazetterman.com/indexENG.html

Links

New Nordic Gardens by Annika Zetterman 

www.annikazetterman.com 

Annika on Instagram 

This episode I’m speaking to permaculture designer, teacher, author Anna Locke. Anna is my favourite type of gardener, in that she walks the walk and has a wealth of experience in growing edible plants. Anna has recently published a book called The Forager’s Garden, and in the interview, we talk about how to create an easy to look after yet productive space.

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Crab spiders

Thanks to Betakut for sponsoring this episode - visit https://www.betakut.co.uk/shop to find out more. 

What we cover

A forest garden is "a project to dip into and out of as time, money and opportunity comes along” (The Forager’s Garden). Can a garden really be that little work? 

Guild planting

Grafting fruit trees onto wild hawthorns and blackthorn

The theory behind Anna’s 'keep it for now' policy

Hugelkultur beds

Ollas

Advice for anyone starting a forager’s garden from scratch

How to ID the plants you have

About Anna Locke

Anna is a permaculture designer and teacher based in Hastings. She is also a community development project manger. With a solid background as a gardener, specialising in forager’s gardens, she offers a bespoke design service or consultancy. She has planted over 50 forager’s gardens of varying sizes, including a large ongoing project in Hornshurt Wood and in her own small-scale permaculture farm, both in East Sussex. She regularly holds workshops to empower people to plant their own, look out for- ‘How to Plant a Forager’s Garden’ on her instant courses website. 

Links

www.annalockepermaculture.co.uk 

The Forager’s Garden by Anna Locke 

This week, I’m talking Head Gardeners with Ambra Edwards; why she chose the ones she did to feature in her book of that name, the diverse range of tasks they undertake and what makes a good one. I ask Ambra what prompted her to write a book about some of the legendary and some of the unsung heroes of the horticultural world and if she could swap places with one, whose boots would she choose to fill. 

Dr Ian Bedford’s Bug of the Week: Gooseberry sawfly

This episode is sponsored by gardencourses.com. gardencourses.com offers online horticultural training for those looking to develop their own, home gardens. The lasted course to be added is Create Your Garden Sanctuary - you can go to gardencourses.com to find out more. 

What we cover

How Ambra chose the head gardeners included in the book

Is there any such thing as a typical head gardener?

Some of the unexpected roles the gardeners in the book have to perform

How much gardens are expressions of the personality of the head gardener

Is it stifling for a head gardener to stick to historical plans/designs and not inject their own creativity into a space? 

What makes a great head gardener? 

Gardening as a profession 

About Ambra Edwards

Ambra Edwards is a journalist with a special interest in garden history, and the people, passions and often surprising stories that lie behind our gardens. Three times voted the Garden Media Guild's Garden Journalist of the Year  (2006, 2009 and 2015), she is a regular contributor to the Guardian, the Telegraph, Gardens Illustrated, Hortus and Country Living. Her most recent book is The Story of the English Garden (Pavilion, 2018). She lives in Dorset. https://www.pimpernelpress.com/ambra-edwards

Links

www.ambra-edwards.com

https://www.pimpernelpress.com/head-gardeners-2

www.gardencourses.com