Soil is the backbone of our gardens. A healthy soil means happier plants, higher crop yields, and greater biodiversity. So, this week, as we begin laying out our deliciously rich compost with fervour, we’ve decided to dive deep into what makes for top-notch, productive soil. We’re starting with a masterclass on composting in colder months. Then, we’re turning to the science of eco-acoustics – and how the sounds worms and other invertebrates make can give us insight into the state of our soil health. And finally, we’re myth-busting! Electroculture gardening is everywhere on social media these days, but is it actually worth your while?

Links:

How to care for your soil

Composting through the winter

Earthworms

Soil types

With the release of Fiona Davison’s new book – An Almost Impossible Thing: The Radical Lives of Britain’s Pioneering Women Gardeners – we decided to dedicate this week’s show week’s show to women in the garden. And in that vein, we’re exploring the potential for gardens to be empowering, educational, equalising, and radical spaces. Fiona shares a story from her book about two women from over 100 years ago who show that the roots of ecological gardening run further back then we may realise. Psychotherapist, writer, and gardener Marchelle Farrell reveals how her English country garden helped her get to the core of a question that had troubled her throughout her life: What is home? And finally, garden historian Twigs Way joins us again to give the inside scoop on an early and influential gardening school for women. But, If you’re looking for more advice-oriented content – fear not! Throughout the programme, we’re giving story-specific gardening tips. 

An Almost Impossible Thing: The Radical Lives of Britain’s Pioneering Women Gardeners

Uprooting: From the Caribbean to the Countryside – Finding Home in an English Country Garden

Vine Weevils

Autumn-interest shrubs

Study & Learn at the RHS

Now that it’s September, we’ve officially entered bulb-planting season. It’s time to get things like daffodils, alliums, crocuses and hyacinths into the ground. So, with that in mind, we’ve put together a bulb deep dive – with a strong emphasis on those golden classics, narcissi. In the episode, we travel to Lindley Library to get the backstory of daffodils’ long history of cultivation, chat with TV horticulturist and daff-lover Camilla Bassett-Smith about her favourite varieties, catch a tutorial on naturalising narcissi in the landscape, and then finally, check in with Michael Perry (aka Mr Plant Geek) on all that’s trending with bulbs this year.

Links:

Visit the RHS Lindley Library

A Host of Golden Daffodils: The story of a springtime favourite

How to grow daffodils

Bulbs: naturalising

Perhaps nowhere do we face the realities of life and death more frequently and intimately than we do within the garden. We witness a cycle of growth, dieback, and rebirth on a seasonal, weekly, and even daily basis. And so, as we once again inch closer to a new season – to autumn, a time of abundance, growth, but also, let’s face it, decay – we’ve decided to take a deeper look at what gardens and our beloved flora can reveal about both life and death. We’ll hear from Dr. Ross Cameron about his 2023 release How Plants Can Save Your Life, get a behind-the-scenes peek at the field of forensic botany, travel to The Poison Garden in Alnwick to learn about their pernicious new addition, and finally, take a second look at the life cycle of wasps.

Warning: This episode contains a story about police investigations into death, murder and suicide. Listener discretion is advised.

Links:

Gardening for Health and Wellbeing

How Plants Can Save Your Life

Murder Most Florid: Inside the Mind of a Forensic Botanist

Mark Spencer's Lindley Late Lecture

The Alnwick Garden

Endless Forms: Why We Should Love Wasps

With autumn drawing closer and closer, we’re exploring late summer gardens – with all their lushness, colour, and vibrancy — and considering what we can get up to in the garden now to set us up well for the next year. We visit RHS Garden Wisley to take a look at their seed collection process – and get their tips for how to replicate this all at home. We chat with kitchen gardener and food writer Kathy Slack about how we can get the best out of the fruit and veg we’ve grown this summer. And finally, garden historian Twigs Way joins us again to share the second part of her allotment series all about their history from the early 1900s until today. 

Links:

RHS Members’ Seed Scheme

RHS Grow Your Own

From the Veg Patch

Tales from the Veg Patch Newsletter

Festival of Flavours

Allotments

Today’s show focuses on specific ways we can rewild gardens. We’re exploring how we can intervene in space spaces to create dynamic habitats – without using herds of free-roaming animals. Isabella Tree, co-author of The Book of Wilding and one of the foremost rewilding experts in the UK, chats about her own experiences rewilding her estate and her top tips for getting into a wilder mindset. We’re then shifting gears a bit – turning away from specific practices, to look at some of the fauna pivotal to our natural ecosystems. We visit RHS Garden Wisley to hear the curious case of the roman snail colony there. And finally, we catch up with Lloyd of the Flies Creator Matt Walker and RHS Entomologist Andy Salisbury to learn about the new family-friendly insect trails across all of our gardens. 

Links:

The Book of Wilding

Roman Snails at Wisley

Summer holiday fun at RHS Gardens

It’s National Allotment Week – a time to celebrate our country’s vast network of allotment plots and re-invest in our own dedication to growing fruit and veg. So for this week’s show, we’re taking a wander through a variety of allotments, getting a behind-the-scenes look at the techniques growers use to get the best out of their crops and examining the ways allotments help us better connect to the food we eat. We return to RHS Chief Horticulturist Guy Barter’s allotment in Surrey, where he shares this season’s successes and failures. We stop by RHS Garden Wisley’s Student and Community allotments to have a look at the different approaches taken there. And finally, we get the history of how allotments became commonplace here in the UK from garden historian and writer Twigs Way.

Links:

Allotment: getting started

Grow Your Own Advice

Tomato blight

Allotments by Twigs Way

With the grand opening of Wisley’s Orchid House this past month and the publication of The Orchid Review – our annual orchid yearbook – within reach, we thought it the perfect time for another Orchid Special. In this week’s show, we chat with Julian Shaw, who heads the International Orchid Register, Reshma Lobo, a London-based jewel orchid grower, Art Chadwick who breeds the cattleyas named for American First Ladies, and Kevin Wigley, who’s transformed a room in his house into an orchid sanctuary.

Links:

The Orchid Review

The International Orchid Register

Ugly Plantling

Chadwick & Sons

The Orchid Committee

Now that it’s late July and the whole family’s around, we thought it the perfect time to explore gardening with kids and to reflect on our own memories of growing up in gardens, allotments, and parks. We visit the Hitchin Youth Allotment – Paul Dee, the founder, will share the story of the project as well as his top tips for growing fruit and veg with kids. Afterwards Fiona Davison, RHS Head of Libraries and Exhibitions, recounts the constantly evolving history of the role that children have played in our gardens – and how this relates to societal and cultural shifts. And finally Roy Lancaster, renowned plantsman and broadcaster, divulges the tale of the epic plant discovery he made as a young boy in Lancashire. A discovery that propelled him into the world of horticulture. 

Links:

RHS Campaign for School Gardening

The Garden Magazine

Hitchin Youth Allotment

Growing Up in the Garden Exhibition

RHS Flower Show Tatton Park is finally here! And we’re taking you on a tour of some of the highlights. We’re speaking with young designers like Camellia Hayes and Nathan Webster, exploring the new Sensory Long Border displays, and taking in the extraordinary RHS Nocturnal Pollinator Experience. But that’s not all! Because it’s the final flower show we’re covering on the podcast this summer, we’re putting all the emerging trends we’ve noticed at Tatton in context with themes from the other shows we’ve covered this year. 

Links:

Discover RHS Flower Show Tatton Park

Seeking Resilience Garden

Sensory Long Borders

RHS Nocturnal Pollinator Experience

Off the Grid Garden