HortWeek Podcast

On this week’s HortWeek Podcast Stuart Mackley, head of grounds for Fulham Football Club's home ground at Motspur Park, explains how he found a career in groundscare through a love of football. 

As well as explaining what it is like at Fulham in the lead up to matches, Mackley relates what the team get up to in the off season which he says is “our busiest period…the most important”.

The weather a significant impact on football matches and the condition of pitches – with high rainfall, high winds, extreme heat, and intense cold; Mackley explains what Fulham has in place to try and mitigate these challenges and how it has changed the way they work. Mackley also talks through some of the new systems he is keeping an eye on.

Sustainability is of high importance at Fulham Football Club, but Mackley explains its not just a case of replacing all the petrol equipment with battery powered - and that it cannot happen overnight. Mackley talks about the challenges of retrofitting the club as it stands which Mackley hopes can be brought in when a new training ground is built.

Mackley also talks through some of the new technology he has got his eye on, how he got into the industry and learnt everything from “arguably one of the best grounds people we’ve had in the industry”, Steve Braddock, as well as how Fulham attracts new talent.

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Cosmos and hollyhocks national collection holder Jonathan Sheppard and dahlia and sweet pea grower Darren Everest discuss whether flower show judges should reward homegrown, sustainable plants, rather than give medals for uniformity.

Everest said at RHS shows you compete for medals and not against other growers as you would at a sweet pea show. But the public "want to see perfection" and not "leaves that have been eaten by slugs". Getting the balance right between best practice and what the public wants to view is the key.

Sheppard disagreed, saying the public "don't want plant perfection at any cost" and rust-free hollyhocks would need a lot of chemical use, so he will not exhibit them. If he did the judges would mark them down for having any rust on them. What's more, perfection gives the public an unrealistic idea of what plants will look like at home.

Everest argued that plants that do not look their best will not sell.

Sheppard recently proposed in HortWeekthat there should be a 'Green Medal' for growers. He said we have seen some movement with awards for show gardens, but nothing as yet for growers.

Sheppard added that some exhibitors have perfect plants but "the reality is you can purchase your flowers" for exhibiting and have "nothing to do with the growing of them whatsoever, have them flown in, have them grown using pesticides and preservatives, arriving in a plethora of single-use plastic, and because you arrange them nicely, walk away with a gold medal".

Everest agreed that you should grow your own at shows.

• In October 2024 Jonathan and Darren discussed whether we should we ban peat in horticulture.

Presenter: HortWeek editor Matthew Appleby

Producer: Digital content manager Christina Taylor

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Ben raskin and Andy Dibben have written Silvohorticulture, A Grower's Guide To Integrating Trees Into Crops published in January 2025 by Chelsea Green Publishing.

Raskin is head of horticulture and agroforestry for the Soil Association and Dibben is head grower at Abbey Home Farms in Gloucestershire.

They say interactions between trees and crops is an under-investigated area and that trees can offer many benefits for food growers.

The foreword is by Stockfree Organic farmer Iain Tolhurst who calls this "agroforestry at its finest" and says which trees to choose is "no longer an act of faith".

There are negative impacts from planting the trees in the shade, but many crops do not actually need full sun all day.

Abbey Home Farms in Cirencester is a 650ha acre mixed organic farm, intercropping into 6ha of veg production with mixed top fruit tree, coppice species for wood chip, as well as peach trees in the glasshouses. 

Also featured in the book are:

• Eastbrook Farm in Wiltshire – 200 acre silvopastural system (trialing almonds, apricots, berries and other fruits into a 25year business plan)
• Shillingford Farm in Devon – 420 acre fruit and veg farm using alley cropping systems 
• Troed-y-Rhiw Farm in Wales – 23 acre mixed organic farm growing top fruit and bush fruit, but outside and in tunnels 

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Having been in the landscape industry for over 53 years Alan Sargent is regularly commissioned to either take part in, or organise job interviews and recruit new senior and head gardeners.

On this week’s HortWeek Podcast Sargent takes us through some real life questions produced by himself for a recent interview for a head gardener. Beginning with advice on what to wear and bring to an interview Sargent examines interview questions, breaking down why they are being asked and how best to respond. 

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Sean Higgs, of Floralive, is the foremost authority on peat-free cultivation of carnivorous plants. 

In this HortWeek Podcast he discusses his path growing peat-free plants which grow in peat in the wild,and the future of the houseplant market.

After the bounce delived by the John Lewis 2023 Christmas venus flytrap advert he relates how that has continued to make the plant dominant in the market, the challenges of fulfilling demand with UK one-stop houseplant shop HortiHouse and how CITES rules have affected imports.

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New HTA president Will Armitage started his career at The Barton Grange Group at Woodford Garden Centre before joining family business Armitage & Sons (Seeds) where he eventually became joint managing director.

He was chair of the Garden Centre Association from 2014 to 2016 and says the big difference between now and then are the costs of employing people, which have risen 10% again he believes thanks to the Autumn Budget's changes to National Living Wage and employers' National Insurance Contributions. This means the industry will struggle to grow and could mean price rises, he says.

Armitage has been on both sides of the fence, with supplier Mulch and running garden centres. His former Pennine centre has since been owned by Wyevale and now Dobbies has it for sale and Armitage says the private equity sale and leaseback model is proving to be unsustainable.

He looks forward to a better weather year, with high hopes for 2025 helped by more industry Business Improvement Schemes and increased lobbying at Westminster.

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Chris Hull, one of the stars of BBC One's Garden Rescue, is a rising gardening star, working with Charlie Dimmock and Alan Titchmarsh as the new face of garden makeovers.

He got his first gardening job was when he was 15 at a country house hotel in Devon, and studied at Duchy College and for a garden design degree at Sparsholt College. 

Hull believes schools' thinking about horticulture as a trade is moving on from being somewhere where students are funnelled when they're "not doing so well" into being seen as a worthwhile career which generates billions of pounds for the country. He sees clear pathways through diploma or a degree or RHS courses for everyone.

The Garden Rescue job came about through an advert at the Society of Garden Designers "and I thought why not?" He's just finished filming season 10 for broadcast in May 2025.

He says long-time presenter Charlie Dimmock is "really, really amazing because she's just really fun and just knows everything". He's also been filming with her former Groundforce co-star Alan Titchmarsh on Love Your Weekend but can't choose who he prefers, joking: "I'll have one of them hitting me over the head with a shovel!"

His inspiration for TV designs comes from the strong briefs he is given, for instance for someone with a disability who has not got great access into the garden: "We're making gardens on a real budget, and you've got to be creative with a way that you use very cheap materials to still deliver like quite interesting and bespoke design. So it's hard, but it's good fun, and hopefully it teaches people at home different ideas and how they can use materials."

Hull recognises the show "can get a bit of hate from the landscapers in the industry because they believe it's misleading, which I understand. But the client's budget paid for by the BBC is £6,000 for materials only, with labour not included. There's a disclaimer, which he recognises is sometimes missed.

He worked with Sid Hill and won a gold at Chelsea in 2024 on a garden, having been friends since they were about 14. Managing budgets with London logistics was tough but the experience was "really, really fun overall".

Hull has no plans for another show garden but if he does another he'd like to make a mental health-themed garden because his father is a paranoid schizophrenic and an ambassador for the Rethink Mental Illness charity which works to break down the stigma around mental illness. 

Other industry experience includes working with JPL Landscape Architects and also Agrumi, on the nursery, and helping at 2021 Chelsea Flower Show when the Hampshire business exhibited with a New Forest theme.

Looking ahead, with primetime garden makeover shows such as Love Your Garden no longer on, "there's probably a gap in the market. Garden Rescue remains well liked because everybody adores Charlie and it shows people how to do projects on a budget...and also it's quite lighthearted.

"What's really good about garden makeover shows generally, like a lot of the home 'reno' shows, is that they're quite repeatable. So I think they're always going to be picked up and kept on TV. I think there should be more to come. Any newer ones might move in more of a direction of maybe they're recycled gardens or upcycling or more sustainability-focused."

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Crop technician Ross Dyke has a new project called Get Children Growing. He's a Plant Pod host and works at Bonterre CIC alternative education establishment near Worcester, teaching horticulture skills. An unassuming networker, he is also studying at Pershore College and is a Colegrave Seabrook and IPPS scholar.

He left school at 14 and worked in various jobs before moving to Webbs Garden Centres and becoming a horticulture industry lover.

To get Get Children Growing off the ground, to bring sunflower grow kits to children in schools across the UK, Dyke has worked with Amy Stubbs from British Garden Centres and Skinny Jean gardener Lee Connolly and with help from Mr Fothergill's, Westland, New Leaf Plants and Webbs Garden Centres.

He said: "I believe every school should have a garden and it should teach children where food comes from and even where cut flowers come from. Because you go into these garden centres, you see the flowers in the pots and if you're a child, you don't know where they've come from, you don't know how they've been grown, you don't know how they've been nurtured. So I just want to educate the younger generation and you never know, it might inspire some to say, do know what, I want to do that for a living."

For more Get Children Growing details, see www.theplantpod.co.uk

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In the hot summer of 2022, RBG Kew lost more than 400 trees. By July 2024, Kew announced that it believed over 50% of its trees could be at risk by 2090 due to environmental changes due to climate change.

This week's guest is Kevin Martin, head of tree collections at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and he joined the HortWeek Podcast to relate the research Kew has done that led it to such a stark conclusion.

"What we started to look at first was mortality data, but we soon realized that that's a really unstable data set. can't always know why a tree or a plant has died in the landscape. It's not always due to environmental factors.

"We then started looking at climate modeling...and using species observation data to start building a better picture of the impact of climate change on the living landscape here at Kew.

Perhaps surprisingly, the focus was not on identifying vulnerable species, but "the provenance of the seed".

Kew studied its own environment, located as it is in "an urban heat island" on the edge of Greater London with relatively thin and poor soil, "so the effect of climate change is always exaggerated". 

To understand the plants that suited this environment, they found themselves in the Romanian steppe which proved a good match.

His next trip will take him to Georgia to find more species that might thrive at Kew.

Rather than building more and more glasshouses to create the right condition for plant collections, with their huge energy bills, botanic gardens must play to their strengths and grow the plants that fit their ecosystem and climate profile.

"And the native, the English native one is a really interesting question. 

"You've got Quercus robur, they all have a large distribution range. So we're now looking at their dryest range to understand how those trees have adapted...they will grow right up to the edge of Azerbaijan, right on the dryest edge of their range. So we're selecting seed from those areas to bring them back to Kew to understand how they've adapted."

And the change needs to translate to all green spaces and gardens, large and public as well as domestic and small.

"A lot of the plants that we all go to the garden centre to put in our own private gardens, those trees have been selected for us realistically by the Victorians. A lot of those plants are available in commercial nurseries, they're all from the original plant collectors from the Victorian era especially, and they're the same cloned material that's just passed round.

"So it's really not just changing the planting palette within Botanic Gardens...This is a change of planting palette... and that does need support and investment in further research from government in order to support the commercial nurseries as well.

"I do think it's going to be the biggest shift we've seen since the start of the organisation back in the 1840s". 

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Kate Ashbrook is an author and has been the general secretary of the Open Spaces Society for 40 years and counting, but she is first and foremost, a campaigner.

On this week's HortWeek Podcast she recounts some of the best changes she has seen during her tenure - "the greater awareness of the importance of open spaces for the public and the greater awareness among the public of the importance to them of open spaces, paths, getting out there, enjoying the countryside and green spaces in towns.

And the worst... "After 40 years, open spaces, commons and paths are still very much under threat. We haven't made that step change, which means that governments, local authorities recognise that actually open spaces and paths are so important that we need to invest in them fully. They may say they're important, but they don't actually put the money and the resources in."

Current focuses include closing the "green space gap" in the current National Planning Policy Framework:

"We don't see in the consultation, governments giving prime importance to green spaces. We think they should be at the core of all planning policies, thinking about the wider public and what people need and then framing the development around that... we shall be making suggestions of how government can give greater priority to green spaces." 

Rachael and Kate also discuss biodiversity net gain and how that interacts with the society's goals and wider issues.

With a new Government in place she talks about her hopes for policy change and support for offering greater access to land and protection of common land that has always been at the core of the OSS's mission.

She outlines the Open Spaces Society's long history - from its foundation in 1965 - which is bound up with the creation of the National Trust. And she recounts some of her own, fascinating career path and what motivates her.

"I really want to help people to campaign. 50 years ago, I got into campaigning because I met a wonderful person called Sylvia Sayre on Dartmoor and she was 50 years [older than me] and ]encouraged me and helped me and gave me opportunities. And I am thinking, well, I'm now the age that she was when I met her and it's my turn to kind of pass the baton to the younger generation. And I'm out there looking for people to talk to and to learn from and to help."

Find out more at https://www.oss.org.uk/

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