HortWeek Podcast

Fargro managing director Richard Hopkins discusses the environmental footprint of growing, focusing on sustainability and challenges in the field of crop protection and renewals of active ingredients.

He sums up changes at the business, which has supported growers for more than 75 years, and speaks frankly about challenges presented by increased energy costs the industry is seeing.

Finally, he looks at what the future looks like fo the sector.

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Lifelong horticulturist Adrian Evans left Britain a little over 20 years ago to make a life in Finland.

Evans tells the Horticulture Week podcast about his journey from trying to plant sausages at the age of four to becoming Finland's 'British gardener', horticulturist, columnist and TV gardening personality in the Nordics and beyond.

He talks about adapting to gardening in a cold climate, with a five-month summer growing season followed by seven months under snow and soil that freezes well below a metre underground.

His also reflects on his fascinating professional gardening life which started in Ripley Castle gardens at the age of 14, via Askham Bryan College, medals won at the Chelsea Flower Show and a garden restoration project at Hazlewood Castle and breeding willows and poplars for renewable energy.

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Wildflower Turf founder James Hewetson Brown tells HortWeek editor Matthew Appleby about the soilless growing system that has transformed the concept of turf growing.

He outlines all the ways to establish wildflowers and how they help to boost species diversity in our green spaces and the other functions they help deliver. These include health and well-being, low maintenance, soil stability, carbon sequestration, pollution (air and water) mitigation as well as the speed and reliability of wildflowers compared with trees.

The role of native perennials for our wildlife in the UK is examined, as are the regulatory requirements wildflowers help fulfil, such as National Ecosystems Assessment, Biodiversity Net Gain, Sustainable Farming Incentive, Sustainable Drainage Systems and UK Biodiversity Action Plan.

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Louisa Mansfield is project manager for Future Gardeners, which works to give participants the skills needed to start a career in horticulture, particularly young people and those who might not have qualifications. 

Mansfield tells the Horticulture Week Podcast where she believes the industry can help overcome the skills shortage in horticulture, from raising salaries and offer more training, to careers advisors at schools explaining the opportunities within the industry. 

She outlines details of Future Gardeners training courses, work experience placements, how the course is diversifying the industry, and what some of the students have gone on to do. 

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ICL's Sam Rivers and Andrew Wilson talk vine weevils, a timely topic since the withdrawal of Exemptor with its active ingredient thiacloprid in 2021 means there are fewer options for growers to get rid of this destructive pest. 

They give us an introduction to vine weevil and its life cycle and Wilson explains why the pest is becoming more of a problem.

Solutions for controlling vine weevil such as Pitcher GR and using a plant health planner are also aired, while advice is given on Nematodes and how to build an IPM plan.

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Landscape architect, broadcaster and writer Bunny Guinness is one of the best-known names in horticulture.

After taking to YouTube to speak out in support of the use of peat as the Government seeks to ban it, she tells the podcast "most people don't understand the proper argument and we must get the facts out there" and offers an alternative solution to the ban.

"I do think Monty Don is bad on peat. I'm glad he's getting the nation gardening but wish he'd learn a bit more about the peat argument," she adds.

Guinness also addresses the RHS's "ridiculous" change of opinion on calling slugs pests, talks about her illustrious career as a RHS Chelsea Flower Show designer and how the RHS needs to use more women as judges at Chelsea Flower Show.

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Belvoir Castle garden show organiser Andy Tudbury knows a thing or two about garden shows having completed 28 in his career.

He set up the Belvoir show four years ago and has been advised by shows expert Stephen Bennett to keep the quality high including, he jokes, running the "garden show with the cleanest toilets in Britain".

The 2022 show is on 16-17 July and is the longest continuous garden show in UK having traded through the pandemic. Tudbury explains how the "jigsaw" of stands, ticket sales and attractions add up to make the event viable.

Tudbury's expects a bumper year with a record number of applications (42) for garden designs will be showcased at the event. And though some growers turned to online sales and away from shows during lockdown the atmosphere will be like "letting a cork out of a bottle of Prosecco".

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Watson talks about his journey from working on the glue that holds Boeing aircraft together to the numerous successes he had as managing director at Ground Control including achieving carbon neutrality four years earlier than they expected to.

A personal passion for Watson, he sees the fight against climate change as a logical extension of the work of Ground Control in the environment. He talks about the Evergreen Fund which dedicates 5% of Ground Control’s annual net profits to a £5m Impact Venture Fund which looks to invest in ventures focussed on carbon reduction, sustainability and environmental protection.

Despite admitting some disappointment in COP26, he remains optimistic and ambitious for Ground Control: "Now we're hoping we can reach net zero as a business by 2025." and he continues to "bang the drum" with his work on the Climate change committee for the CBI.

He says: "businesses that put sustainablility and the environment front and centre of what they're about actually grow better" citing trends such as a reduction in fossil fuel investment.

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As part of a new series of podcasts for 2022, Sam and ICL's Andrew Wilson are returning to the topic of growing with peat-free compost, probably the hottest topic in the sector.

The pair discuss what's available for growers and who is asking for what, the raw materials available, differences in nutrition, and other products which may need to be added to help boost plant quality.

They give us the low down on the situation regarding professional growing media and reveal how is the industry responding to market changes.

They discuss the challenges growers see with peat-free and peat-reduced growing media, meeting demand and the ingredients required to do that, as well as the nutrition in the mixes.

Andrew WIlson flags up how to design irrigation systems to deal with issues of dryness while Sam Rivers discusses how the components of a peat-free mix fit together to form a growing media mix.

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This week's podcast was recorded at British Sugar Topsoil's plant at WIssington in Norfolk where they prepare topsoil for the landscaping and sports turf markets.

Guest Andy Spetch reveals how the British Sugar brand goes beyond just creating 1.5m tonnes of sweetness a year, to produce power for the National Grid and for glasshouses, fuel (bioethanol), animal feed - and, of particular interest to horticulture, topsoil.

The company creates the product from around 250,000-270,000 tonnes annually from soil cleaned of sugar beet roots.

He says: "It would be criminal if it was just dumped, and what would you do with it? So we recycle everything we can. ...We were able to grow the market and now everything we get, we sell."

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