HortWeek Podcast

HortWeek is delighted to present the Cultivate Your Future podcast, in partnership with the Colegrave Seabrook Foundation.

At a time when horticulture needs to encourage a new wave of young people to come into the industry, this podcast is designed to highlight the multiple and varied career opportunities available.

We hear from people who have found their way into their chosen career through different paths, what their job involves and what it means to them.

Every two weeks, for the next two months, we will be releasing two episodes covering a particular job area.

This week we focus on plant breeding and horticulture consultant Neville Stein interviews Tim Kerley, plant breeder at Kerley & Co.

Hear about what the world of plant breeding offers, what the opportunities are and the skillset required. In a world that is facing significant climate change challenges, the need for plants that can adapt to heat, drought and other abiotic stresses has never been more important, and the work of plant breeders is in high demand.

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Head gardener Scott Smith is one of a growing number of horticulturists-turned TV stars as co-presenter Beechgrove Garden for the BBC.

Smith explains how the show works and the challenges of keeping the garden shipshape around the filming schedule for the show, which includes the 'Back to Basics' feature helping gardeners demystify some of the projects shown on TV shows and to produce features in their own garden.

"You don't actually see [on garden makeover shows] how they do it...the thing I love most is to go into the 'who, what, why, when, where' - and really explain a topic, even if it's something simple", he says. He hopes the approach will help encourage more people to take up gardening and even enter the industry.

Smith discusses his route into horticulture - which was not direct - and he says there should be more promotion of careers in horticulture at school to showcase options to school leavers. He studied cyber security before finding his first gardening role at the job centre. He got the job at National Trust Scotland Kellie Castle "because nobody else showed up to interview!

"And my boss at the time, who's still a horticultural hero to this day, Mark Arber, he's still the head gardener there - he really made me see that horticulture is a career path... he was so passionate and enthusiastic and funny and I actually really looked forward to going to work...and that was me well and truly bitten by the horticultural bug and stuck in ever since."

If horticulture is to attract and keep people, it must be more highly valued by society and crucially, better paid, he says: "Sadly I've known a couple of people who have been horticultural students and have done their full apprenticeship, and because they need the money, they've actually left horticulture and going into selling cars and things like this."

By way of example he explains the range of tasks, skills and knowledge needed to do his job and but he adds "I always feel for those people in production horticulture because there must be so much pressure on them...I'm vastly reliant on production horticulture specialists because you know if I don't have them I don't have plants. It's a very, very skilled, area for sure."

He talks about climate change and using peat free growing media which he has found to be "very unpredictable". 

"The B&Q Verve range is very different to MiracleGro, which is very different to Sylvagrow, which is different to the next one. And none of them seem to have a standardised recipe. And you can find that even between batches of the very same brand, it can be different as well."

He feels the pressure on growers to go peat-free is too high, that more research is needed: "You can't expect, as a government, to click your fingers and say 'right everybody's peat free in two years' - it's such an ill-educated way of looking at it, I think."

Though one of his favourite phrases - "What's for you won't go past you" - implies a touch of fatalism, his best advice for those looking to make a success of horticulture is more positive: "It's by saying yes to things that you'll suddenly find it opens another vista, another door opens and you'll say yes to that. And then another avenue opens; you'll say yes to that. Before you know it, you're miles away from where you were at the beginning."

His other mantra is to keep learning and pushing yourself: "Horticulture is so vast, you're never gonna know everything".

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Landscape architect and trustee of Brogdale Collections Tom La Dell discovered very early in his career, a passion for, and conviction in the importance of ecology in landscape architecture schemes.

Brought up with artistic background, he was more interested in breeding plants and after a botany degree did his post graduate in landscape architecture which enabled him to combine his interest in ecology and design:

"Particularly now, we're in a sort of 'disaster zone' of biodiversity and possibly even of human survival if that's not repaired very quickly".

He discusses his extensive professional history in local authorities where he had a hand in planting extensive woodland areas that he is proud to be able to see on Google Earth:

"Because the approach we took started to create much higher land values, everybody left us alone of course!"

Tom reflects on developments in the landscape architecture sector and standing of the profession. He argues that biodiversity and ecological considerations need to be "completely integrated into the design process...but as far as I can see, its sort of talked about but it doesn't really seem to be" and instead reduced to a "box-ticking exercise".

"There should be a complete integration of ecology and design in most projects."

His involvement in the National Fruit Collection in Kent at Brogdale Farm in Kent started 30 years ago when he designed a series of gardens to tell the story of fruit in their historical context. 

Big developments are afoot - the whole farm (of which a third is the National Fruit Collection) is up for sale. Defra has a long-lease on the land so, depending on the new landlords, "the collection should be secure - particularly as it's got international status with the FAO".

Brogdale is fundraising for a visitor information and learning centre and to help to keep the centre going. It remains the only fruiting collecton open to the public with 4,000 cultivars including apples, pears, plums, cherries, quince, medlars and wine-making grapes.

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Sam Rivers of ICL talks to HortWeek editor Matt Appleby about new vine weevil control product Lalguard. They discuss how Lalguard works, what its ingredients are, and how to use the product. Lalguard works in an IPM plan and Rivers details how to include the product in integrated pest management and what plan support ICL has available.

Vine weevils are one of the most problematic pests ornamentals growers face and since the withdrawal of Exemptor, many growers have relied on nematodes to control the insect. Rivers says the armoury is now better for growers thanks to Lalguard.

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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 (along with liverworts and hornworts).

This year is a big year for the bryophyte world: the British Bryology Society celebrates its centenary and in tandem Neil has published his book, The Hidden World of Mosses (published by RGB Edinburgh) which, with the help of exquisite photography, he hopes will open people's eyes and minds to the topic:

"People see moss as a substance, as almost as a sort of amorphous green stuff, which is growing on top of the wall, they tend to have a negative approach to it. Because they're not seeing the difference between the individual plants, they're not seeing how interesting and actually how beautiful they are."

A biologist and taxonomist, Neil is also editor-in-chief of the Journal of Bryology and in this podcast he relates exactly why he finds bryophytes so fascinating, including the role they play in peat creation and carbon capture:

"Certain bryophyte-rich ecosystems represent massive carbon sinks.

"[Peat] is basically undecomposed organic matter. It's undecomposed moss. And on the top layer... is a layer of living sphagnum moss. Sphagnum species are adapted to maintain this habitat in this particular state and prevent decomposition of the peat underneath which would lead to the release of this carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It creates a sort of wet blanket over the soil. It also keeps it very acidic, which prevents decomposition.

"About 20% of the carbon stored on land in natural habitats is actually in the form of peat, so it's really quite a huge amount. So it's really important that we maintain peatland ecosystems."

He outlines the role mossy habitats can play in flooding mitigation:

"All these bryophytes, when it rains, are very quickly ...absorbing a lot of this water and keeping it in their tissues, and then over then a space of days gradually releasing again into the rivers. It just basically means that the flow of water through that habitat is slowed down and buffered and thus flooding is less likely than it would be otherwise." 

Neil has a particular fascination for the habitats in Scotland - including a richly biodiverse temperate rain forest - which hosts extremely rare, even unique species. And there is much much more to discover:

"Once you discover that diversity is there, and it's not something you ever heard about before, it's sort of like another world opens up, a veil is taken away from what was previously a completely hidden area of biodiversity."

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There are a few well-known Edwardian lady gardeners - Gertrude Jekyll, Ellen Wilmot are two. They tended to be wealthy and able to forge their trade in their own large gardens.

"Less well known are the professional gardeners and particularly women professional gardeners", says Fiona Davison, the head of libraries and exhibitions at the RHS.

While looking for stories of gardeners at RHS Garden Wisley, she "uncovered a bundle of letters in the Lindley Library... [telling of a woman] claiming a scholarship which was the prize for coming top in the RHS's professional exam in 1898. And the letter said you can't have the scholarship because you're a woman and the scholarship was to train at the RHS garden at Chiswick, and Chiswick didn't train women."

Her curiosity piqued, she set out to uncover this fascinating and hidden history and has compiled her findings in her book, An Almost Impossible Thing, The Radical Lives of Britain's Pioneering Women Gardeners. 

The book captures stories from the 1890s to the First World War, "when this kind of little golden moment, this boom in women wanting to start careers in gardening happened".

She documents reaction to these women at the time: "There was a big, strong, negative pushback from the horticultural establishment... most male gardeners were not receptive to this idea at all. And there's some absolutely corking letters in Gardener's Chronicle and in the Journal of Horticulture... lots and lots of outraged letters."

The discussion covers the social context of those pre-war years but moves to reflect on present day concerns regarding opportunities for women in horticulture: "There's a kind of common pattern that women do child care and go part-time and that does make it harder to progress to the very top of professions."

Reflecting on the lack of female Gold award-winners at RHS Chelsea Flower Show, she says: "There is a kind of conservatism with the little scene that you recognise and reward what you're familiar with. If a sponsor is sponsoring a big garden they want a gold medal at the end of it, almost guaranteed.

So what do they do? They look around it in the past: Who's won a gold medal? And so it becomes self-perpetuating," but with women heading up the NFU, the Landscape Institute, the RHS and Defra she agrees, "it is changing and it will change more".

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This week Rachael Forsyth speaks to Borde Hill's managing director Jay Goddard, and head of horticulture Harry Baldwin.

Borde Hill, a country garden set with in 383 acres of heritage-listed parkland in West Sussex is celebrating its 130th anniversary.

Jay is the fifth generation of the Stevenson-Clark familly and she spent an her childhood in that idyllic setting. After a period away during which she developed a career in corporate PR and marketing, she has moved back to the estate with her young family to take care of the gardens, first established in 1893 by Colonel Clark.

Harry brings experience from Kew background with specialism in trees and history. He speaks about the extensive Borde Hill archive which has artefacts, drawings, photos and letters from plant hunters writing to the Colonel. It "keeps everyone on their toes...telling us more and more about our special garden", Harry says.

And there are still plants hidden to be discovered: 

"Every now and again, we're finding new old garden diaries which are detailing plant names, some of which, these plants no longer are sadly with us, but there are plants still hidden away in those crevices waiting to be found, which of course then informs us about propagation and then sharing that material with other important gardens."

The garden recently drew the attention of Adam Frost who came to explore some of that plant history to be featured on BBC Gardeners' World and BBC Radio 4's Gardener's Question Time also paid a visit yielding questions on more contemporary gardening preoccupations.

Jay explains how she plans to carry forward the legacy of her parents (who collaborated with Chris Beardshaw and Sophie Walker) to try and "connect communities more closely with nature ... there's so much written now and so much research that shows the mental and physical benefits of being outdoors in nature" which forms part of the "hugely ambitious" Reinventing Borde Hill project, supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.

A key part of this involves opening up the South Lodge entrance which will  that will enable people to walk or cycle from Hayward's Heath station [the largest commuter rail station in the South East] to Borde Hill.

"It will make Borde hill one of the few Sussex Gardens that will be accessible via green transport in terms of foot or bicycle", Harry explains.

Enhancements to the heritage-listed landscape must be sensitively implemented and include improving existing paths and building an 'eco lodge as a community hub offering swimming, yoga, walking trails and other mindful activities. Younger visitors can also enjoy the well-being and educational benefits of enjoying the great outdoors via a dedicated learning space in Dinosaur Wood.

"What I really want to get across to the visitor is there's always so much more than just a flower or ornamental value. There's a whole back story about how these plants came into cultivation and have been used medicinally, they've been used ethnopotentically for so many, many years.

As a tree specialist, Harry is excited about the work preserve and propagate the champion trees. He tells the tale of the coveted Emonopteris henryi,  first brought back from China by Ernest Wilson. But the tree did not flower for 3 generations: "It actually flowered almost 100 years later in 2011, which is a real curiosity. No one really knows why it's taken so long to flower in a British climate."

The tree was selected as the emblem for Borde Hill "as a demonstration of celebrating that heritage, but really thinking about how we stay fresh and relevant for the future", and it is central to one of the garden's missions to preserve rare species for future generations.

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This week we welcome Blenheim Palace head gardener Andy Mills to the Horticulture Week Podcast.

A year into the role, Andy says he is still getting his bearings with the garden: "A place as diverse as Blenheim takes quite a while to get your head around - ask me the same question in about 3-5 years!"

Andy is merging hands-on gardening with garden history in his role at Blenheim, with plans to restore and transform the Formal Gardens, which aims to reinstate many of features and elements which have disappeared across the last three centuries.

"It would be really nice to go back through 300 years of history and speak to every single Duke and the designers and say 'Why? When? How?'" he says. 

The 10-year-plus project will be the biggest change to its 90 acres of gardens in over 100 years and Andy has been told the Oxfordshire gardens "have been in aspic for the last 40 years...it is time for a change". 

But with changing climate conditions, the updates to the garden will involve a degree of evolution: "Gardeners have always had to roll with it and evolve with it. Blenheim is such a big influential property, what we do here, hopefully echoes what other people do, because it always has."

He waxes lyrical about the hundreds of charming details he is discovering daily as he wanders the estate: "I'm finding new interesting details all the time"

But as well as delighting in hidden wonders, Andy has discovered that what would have been an "amazing plant collection...has slowly disappeared" and species he would expect to see "are just not there".

Andy talks about how he is reviving a "rewilding" approach at Blenheim, and has left some 60 acres of the grass uncut rather than "mowing it tight as a billiard table". He is making the Secret Garden "more secret", refining the hedges in the Italian Garden which currently look like "office carpet", introducing some "big drifts" of plants in the borders inspired by his work at the National Trust's Packwood House.

Longer term Andy hopes his work will elevate the gardens on the world stage:

"I'd see Blenheim very firmly established on the world gardening map...I mean this is the English Versailles!

He adds: "I'd like to see not just Blenheim Palace but Blenheim Palace and Garden...because the garden is way more important!"

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The guest on this week's Horticulture Week Podcast is Andy Baxter of outdoor furniture supplier, Maze.

Managing director since early 2021, Andy has had to navigate the firm through a particularly tumultuous time with containers prices hitting record highs and lockdowns in China halting supply.

Sterling "has been a challenge", Andy says. "At the moment, it's looking quite good. Not necessarily on the strength of the pound, more the weakness of the dollar. But yeah, it's looking positive, which in turn helps us going into 2024. I would like that to stay where it is or improve, because that is a big influencing factor on the cost prices to bring items in from the Far East."

Now amid a prolongued cost-of-living crisis, the dramatic fall in container costs means being able to pass on price cuts but "people have more places, more avenues to spend their discretionary money now" Andy says. 

But he's optimistic about stocking for 2023 going into 2024:

"I think the opportunity will be to bring more products in early before the season next year to make sure that everyone's geared up in advance with the stocks ready to sell, rather than holding off for the season, waiting for the dollar to be right or the shipping containers to be right."

Maze has much to celebrate after being included in the Growth 100 Index - reflecting its phenomenal period of growth - as well as a listing in the Top 25 Retail businesses in the UK.

Trends-wise, we have reached 'peat rattan', Andy says: "there's a lot more neutrals and natural colours coming through, especially mixed materials...a lot more wood and the rope weave coming through as well.

Though online is a growth area, Andy recognises the limitations and difficulties of persuading people to make big ticket purchases on higher end products and garden centres are key in offering a place for consumers to see the product for themselves. But Andy says, garden centres need to embrace the new styles coming through:

"Our team are trying to get across and trying to incentivize people to take the plunge ...to go for these newer products, which there is demand [for] out there. I think people just need to be able to see it and touch it. "

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This week RBG Kew's director of gardens Richard Barley and arboretum supervisor Rebecca Lane join the Horticulture Week Podcast.

Kew has changed a lot over the last 10 years, including the introducing the Great Broadwalk Borders, the Children's Garden, Agius Evolution Garden, "reinvigorating" the Kitchen and Winter gardens, plus and the restoration of the Temperate House.

These days a visitor coming to Kew today might say "there's a bit more obvious horticulture and perhaps a bit more of an eye for design on the site", Richard says.

The staff culture at Kew has also changed, says Rebecca, "giving more autonomy with the view of improving design and I think that's made a really big difference to how people are looking after their areas and the drive within the teams has really improved as a result of that". 

Kew recently achieved Plant Healthy certification (only the third garden in the UK to receive it) and Richard explains why it was so important to Kew:

"Plant health and biosecurity are incredibly important for this country and for any country because the risk and cost that arises from accidental introduction of pathogens and pests and diseases as everyone knows can be horrendous - not only monetary cost, but costs to the landscape.

"We are really focused [on this] and we need to be because our collections are hugely important, but also as we feel it's our responsibility to set that example for other organisations as well."

Faced with the vagueries of climate change for its outdoor collections, Kew is undertaking research on future climate conditions 2050 to 2100 in the London area and whether its plant stock will be suited to them. Strikingly, "By 2050 approximately a quarter of what we are growing currently will be out of its range of comfortable growing conditions", Richard says. "So our gaze shifts to parts of the world which have conditions that are better matched to the future climate in this part the country, and that's where we look to find species that we can substitute into the landscape for the future". Rebecca explains how they are working to monitor individual species, relocating them where necessary so as not to lose collections.

Visitor numbers have bounced back strongly since Covid but Kew is continuing work on its diversity agenda to reach all communities within the UK and overseas and they discuss developments on the educational front.

As for the future, fundraising will be key with significant developments in the pipeline. Chief among these is a "carbon-neutral Palm House", an expansion of the Mediterranean Garden and a "'Carbon Garden' or possibly a 'Climate Change Garden', we're still debating the name of it" where the connection between carbon and nature can be explored.

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