HortWeek Podcast

Kew's Joe Richomme on popularising botanical words, career changing, how to get into the industry, what peonies and alternative grasses to plant, 

Richomme is a botanical horticulturist based at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Working primarily with temperate plants, he is responsible for Kew’s living collections of grasses and peonies.

With Emma Townshend, he has written Kew - Plant Words: A book of 250 curious words for plant lovers  "exploring everything from arboreta to the wood-wide web...delving into the roots, meaning and compelling stories of 250 botanical words".

He explains what the wood wide web is and why basic botany is important.

Navigating the challenges of job changing from working for the London Symphony Orchestra to horticulture have included volunteering at Chelsea Physic Garden and other London gardens, which have helped him develop his career.

Richomme talks about his Kew Specialist Certificate in Kitchen Garden Production and how well (or badly) plant proteins grow in the UK, and 2019 study tour to New York.

He discusses adding tropical grasses to turf mixes to create a more drought-resistant lawn and his favourite peonies and plans for the collection.

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Signify's commercial leader horticulture UK and Ireland Nathanael Dannenberg talks about coping with the energy crisis and how to use light strategy to keep lights shining when prices are at their lowest.

Signify, formerly known as Philips Lighting, says growers who go with innovation will thrive more. Government funds and grants are explained as more and more growers are seeing that extending their season or indeed growing year-round has significant benefits to them. Also, aside from the obvious of increasing yield per square metre, against a backdrop of labour shortages, growers can offer permanent work to highly skilled staff which has significant benefits for them operationally.

The future of horticulture lighting is examined with a focus around controls, data and ways to make lighting work harder for customers as the switch from High Pressure Sodium (HPS) to LED is accelerated. 

Dannenberg says there’s no denying the energy prices are causing major issues across the industry. The reality is that many growers are deciding against planting over the winter as it is not economically sustainable in certain instances. Where we have been able to help some of our customers is developing energy saving lighting strategies that walk the tightrope between lower lighting hours to save energy while not compromising yield too much.

LED offers growers a flexible, lower energy alternative to conventional light sources – and the best bit is we continue to innovate and refine spectrum in order to help growers further maximise the impact of their investments. The growth/shift witnessed in the market is a testimony to this.

He adds that glasshouse demand is definitely still the dominant sub-segment for us (around 85%) but the number of larger scale vertical farms is increasing year on year so we expect that to form a larger part of the business in coming years. 

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Horticulturist and garden writer Barbara Segall, editor of The Horticulturist, the quarterly journal of The Chartered Institute of Horticulture and a well-known gardening author, is the guest on this HortWeek podcast.

Segall talks about the importance of networking, particularly post-lockdown.

She discusses her new book Secret Gardens of the South East and what her approach is to find interesting gardens.

A prolific visitor of these gardens, Segall talks about her highlights including one designed as a church grown over 30 years: "It's got two storeys, it's got doors windows and buttress and this summer [the gardener designer's] daughter got married in it!...I think that's what I've discovered - that gardeners are amazing!"

The herb expert selects her favourites and chats about gardening in Suffolk and her South African background.

She talks about her Chartered Institute of Horticulture journal editing role and a forthcoming article on Project Giving Back as well as the role of the Garden Media Guild, of which she is a long-standing member.

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Having grown up exploring the Scottish countryside, Carol Adams’ interest in forestry grew into a horticulture qualification. Around eight years ago, this brought her to Trentham, a 725 acres estate in Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire. 

With influence from Capability Brown, the gardens have seen many evolutions over the years, most recently, the likes of Tom Stuart-Smith, Piet Oudolf, and Nigel Dunnett who have created a sustainable and contemporary planting scheme, with sometimes accidental biodiverse benefits. 

[They] “hadn’t originally intended to create the biodiversity and the ecosystem service that we have but it transpires that it has achieved that and the way that has changed the way we look at the estate and how visitors interact the estate. It's not purely about us being a beautiful contemporary garden [...] it's become more than that", Adams explains.

The River Trent corridor gives the garden both benefits and challenges; it allows otters to establish, but also Japanese Knotweed. But ultimately, creating the biodiversity at Trentham has been a collaborative effort, and Carol has been working with local groups and organisations as well as students to help identify species. 

One such species is the water vole, which the garden recently introduced. “There weren’t water voles regionally to repopulate at Trentham. [...] it wasn’t going to naturally happen. It needed an intervention, so we committed a business spend and we had to look at it as a business case. Why would we reintroduce water voles to Trentham? What were the pros and cons?”

Adams also gives advice about where to start when rewilding a garden or even a cityscape.

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Provender Nurseries MD Richard McKenna has more than 20 years expereince supplying nursery stock to landscapers.

After a couple of rollercoaster years he looks into his crystal ball to predict trade in 2023.

On the big issue of biosecurity, he worries that the Government is becoming more detached from the industry and he wonders why nurseries aren;t given compensation when they have to destroy stock which is found with pests and diseases, something he says is happening under the radar at several places UK-wide. The accredited nurseries are bearing too much of the blame, he says, while retailers and internet importers, as well as the public, are a bigger risk to biosecurity.

McKenna also reflects on the lessons learned after the ravages of the pandemic:

"We learned everybody reverted back to nature, back to the garden. Everybody appreciated how important it was to be surrounded in green.

"Gardens don't judge. It's a space that's safe, its' green it recharges the mind, it recharges the soul."

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Julian Ives, of Dragonfli, supplier of natural pest control, pollination and microbial based horticultural products to retail, amenity and professional horticulture, has written a new book Biologocal Pest Control, published by Crowood, taking his profeessional knowledge and giving it to the consumer.

Ives, formerly of Koppert, talks about the efficacy of naturals, application, bespoke programmes for use in botanic gardens and amenity horticulture and latest regulations.

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Horticulture charity Perennial - the UK's only charity dedicated to helping all those working in or retired from horticulture and their families - has released the latest of its ever-popular Naked Gardening Calendar, back after a two-year hiatus. Two of its 'stars' join Rachael Forsyth on this week's podcast.

Baring all for the cause is Paul Greenyer, a landscaper based in West Sussex, a mediator and he is also training to be an expert witness with HortWeek's own Alan Sargent.

Fellow 'Grubby Gardener' is Gareth Wilson, expert witness, mediator, landscaping lecturer, mentor, and occasionally builds gardens for RHS at Chelsea and Hampton Court.

Partnership manager Kate Cooney who acts as an interface between business and trade associations and Perennial itself and she talks about how funds generated from the calendar supports the charity's work.

This week's innuendo-laden episode features hilarious tales of the 'making of' the calendar but also poignant reminders of the reasons Paul and Gareth were glad to overcome their inhibitions and "give something back" to the charity.

All profits from the sale of each calendar, will help Perennial to reach and support more people in the wonderful horticultural industry.

To find out more about the calendar and the work that Perennial does, please visit www.perennial.org.uk

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Nick Hamilton, of Barnsdale Gardens in Rutland, has written an autobiography, The Right Genes, about his relationship with his father Geoff Hamiton, the pioneer in peat-free organic gardening, who presented BBC Gardeners World for 17 years.

They worked together for several years before Geoff’s untimely death in 1996. Nick talks about why Geoff is still recalled so fondly and how and why they are so similar.

Bankruptcy and hard times hit the Hamiltons when he was a teen, before Geoff's big break into garden journalism and TV. Nick recounts this as well as his experience training at Writtle College, Darby Nursery Stock and Raveningham Hall, the home of Sir Nicholas Bacon, and going into business father at Barnsdale Gardens.

Geoff's organic and peat-free ethos was ahead of its time and Nick mulls over a feud between Geoff and the late Peter Seabrook about their different gardening philosophies,

Meanwhile, Barnsdale Gardens, where Adam Frost started work, is under threat from a solar farm and Nick talks about his concerns.

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Sam Rivers of ICL and Sean Loakes of Syngenta talk to HortWeek editor Matthew Appleby about the new launch Mainspring, a broad spectrum insecticide for the ornamentals industry.

They describe what this major new product is, the pests it controls, considerations for use and how to build Mainspring into an IPM programme.

The insecticide has proven effective against both caterpillars and thrips which are both capable of inflicting a huge amount of damage to crops.

Mainspring has been formulated for spray application specifically for use on container-grown protected ornamentals.

Once ingested, cyantraniliprole targets a specific receptor in an insect’s muscles, resulting in paralysis. Feeding stops within two hours of the crop being sprayed, preventing the pest from inflicting any further plant damage.

After application, cyantraniliprole is readily absorbed into the leaf’s waxy cuticle and passes into the leaf tissue. This translaminar activity means it encounters insects feeding on the underside of the leaf where it’s typically harder for sprays to target.

Podcast produced in partnership with ICL UK

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Rose expert Daniel Myhill is treasurer of the 350-member Rose Society and national collection holder for persica roses. Unusually for a HortWeek podcast, he's not a professional horticulturist, but he is an example of a new passion for roses among younger people.

The geotechnical engineer says myths about roses being difficult to look after need scotching.

One of his mentors, Chris Warner, is an example of a breeder of modern healthy roses.

"His mantra is breeding 'healthy roses' - he'll look at the plant overall. If there's a disease on the leaf, that's it, he'll bin it because it doesn't meet his high standards. And that mantra and that ethos has done wonders for breeding healthy which require less intervention."

But Myhill is critical of some other roses named after celebrities, which he says may not be of the best quality and could put people off long-term.

The YPHA member has a burgeoning side career doing talks. He highlights striped and other novelties as trends and maintains that healthier roses and, of course, the persica, are the future.

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