Take an audio walk through a park in the sky above Manchester. We’ll walk a route that spans 130 years of history; where once there were trains now there are plants and pedestrians. We perhaps associate the National Trust with stately homes, grand gardens and stretches of countryside but this episode may make you think again. And how does the Castlefield viaduct link with an iconic structure in a famous British seaside town? Kate Picker from the National Trust is our guide. Our Plant...

Picture yourself in a garden. Do you get your phone out to take photos of the plants and send them to friends and family? Maybe a swift selfie! Perhaps like me you google the plants - wanting to identify them. Now picture a bench in the same garden but this time you and anyone else around you are just sitting, not a phone in sight. You're in the equivalent of the 'quiet carriage on the train' - and as you sit, you start to experience the garden in a different way. Welcome to Silent Space...

Some of us (I think I mean me!) buy flowers, rummage for a vase, search for the scissors and then maybe tweak them a little bit before standing back to admire our handiwork. This is lovely but it is not art. In this podcast episode we travel to Strawberry Hill flower festival where floral artists take British grown flowers to a whole new level and they do create art. Follow up and down the stairs of this small gothic mansion, as it is transformed for one weekend into a feast of flowers. ...

Have you fallen in love with dahlias this year? Perhaps you have loved them for many years. But have you ever thought of harvesting the seed from your favourite blooms and creating your own unique flowers? Listen to hear how this is exactly what Philippa Stewart has been doing for the past few years. We also learn about the relationship between the grower and the floral designer as Philippa in conversation with Leigh Chappell, describes how they work together to produce stunning...

Hill Close was a pasture until 1845 when its owner decided to divide it up into gardens. Individual plots where Victorians could rent a space to tend their plants, build a summer house, relax with their family. These were detached gardens for people who had no outdoor space where they lived but a little bit of money to rent one nearby. Once there were many such gardens in the UK. Where did they go? Why did Hill Close survive? And who were the people who gardened here? Our Plant...

Cacti are among the world's most threatened species. Jared Margulies research led him to the extraordinary illegal trade in these plants. Hear him talk about his work and his book The Cactus Hunters. Who are stealing the cacti and where are they taking them? You can click the Buy Me A Coffee link here or on the website to buy a virtual coffee and join the crew and get a shout out. Everyone shares their stories for free and I make it because I love it but there are costs like the...

A Disocactus x hybridus or forest cactus but in Lindy's family this particular plant is known as Sally's Cactus! It is also sometimes known by a common name: orchid cactus. In finding out about Sally who gave the original cutting we also learn how to get these cacti to bloom, what "soil' you should use to pot them up and where you should put them. This is all thanks to Sarah Gerrard Jones who is also known as The Plant Rescuer, who says: “I just think there is something so......

How's your knowledge of Latin plant names? Meet Elizabeth Richmond she loves Latin plant names and she chalks them around the plants she finds growing between pavement cracks or along kerbsides. She does also chalk the common name too! Why does she do it? And how an earth did she get started? Our Plant Stories is presented and produced by Sally Flatman The music is Fade to Black by Howard Levy You can click the Buy Me A Coffee link here or on the website to buy a virtual coffee and join...

"Every child needs someone to introduce them to nature" - Rachel Carson author of Silent Spring In this episode we hear how one woman came up with the idea for a GCSE in Natural History - a way for children to be introduced to nature. So where did the idea come from, what would an exam look like, and how far has she got? She had the idea in 2011. In this episode we learn what it takes to introduce a new exam and the reasons that despite many setbacks, Mary Colwell is not giving up,...

Why is a tiny plant from Janet Hickenbottom's childhood so important? And what was the special thing that her mum Margaret shared with Janet and her brother that has stayed with her for all her life? Lee Connelly is also a bit obsessed by this thing and he's on a mission to make sure we don't miss out on it....and even if we weren't given it as children, like Janet was, he promises we can still get it. And learn to grow a plant that you can literally fit anywhere - it only requires the...

When we think of 'allotment history' we perhaps have images from the two world wars with the population being urged to cultivate every spare bit of land from parks to bomb craters. But to really understand our relationship with these spaces we need to go back much further in time. Lally Snow has written a book called My Family and Other Seedlings and in this episode she tells us how she has woven this history into her own experiences of growing food on an allotment with the aid of 3 under...

Kathy Slack brings us the first plant story to feature a vegetable, it is a root vegetable; a radish. They may be tiny but as you will hear in this plant story the impact of growing radish seeds was rather enormous. Kathy has a passion for vegetables so we not only discuss her journey growing them but other questions too - if you were to come back as a vegetable what would it be? Spoiler alert she seems to favour being a broad bean not a radish! Hear her in conversation with Lally Snow, ...

Philippa Steward of Justdahlias admits that her passion for dahlias has become somewhat of an obsession! So who better than Philippa to share with us that enthusiasm and love of this beautiful flower in its many shapes and colours. Philippa has a plant story for later in this series but I couldn't resist talking to her about dahlias now so we could all share her excitement and plant some for this summer. In this bonus episode we learn about planting tubers, she shares how to select your...

Judith Kleinman had a Silver Birch tree outside her bedroom window when she was growing up. She now has three beautiful Silver Birch trees outside her back door in her small courtyard garden. But to understand why these trees are her plant story you need to go back to her first student summer and a terrible traffic accident that left her in a spinal injuries unit. She tells her story and returns to the hospital to see a garden that has been built by the charity Horatio's Garden and meet...

A short bonus episode in which David Gedye pieces together the story of how the Monkey Puzzle tree made its way to the UK and how it became so popular with gardeners in the country. David has been researching this tree and its links to his family for the past 68 years. He wrote a book about it, sadly sold out but luckily for us he shares his knowledge here. Our Plant Stories is presented and produced by Sally Flatman The music is Fade to Black by Howard Levy Can I dig into more plant...

David Gedye's mum told him a plant story when he was just 10 years old. It involved a very famous Monkey Puzzle tree and his great great grandfather, a head gardener. That story has led him on a lifetime trail, 68 years so far, to learn more about head gardener Philip Frost and to find out about that tree. Could the story be true - did his great great grandfather carry Monkey Puzzle seed in a tin in his waistcoat pocket and plant the famous Dropmore Monkey Puzzle tree? He shares his...

When Andrea moved to a new home, 12 years ago, there was a Monkey Puzzle tree in the front garden. She wasn't keen, it was marked down to go but it is still there. Find out why in this Monkey Puzzle Plant Story. These trees first came to the UK in 1795 but they didn't really start to become popular till the 1850s. Queen Victoria saw the tree and wanted one for Prince Albert. We have a Chilean botanist in the podcast to help us understand the tree, learn how to grow it and unravel that...

Who were the celebrity gardeners of the 1850's and why were they important to a fledgling charity? The charity still exists today, Mona Abboud (Ep 3 Mona's Corokia) has decided to leave her garden to it - it's called Perennial. It's dedicated to looking after people working in horticulture and their families, at any stage of life. The charity's roots go back almost 200 years and garden historian, Francesca Murray has, for her Phd, spent many hours in its archive. She shares a fascinating...

Never say to Mona Abboud - "this plant is only for trade". This is a wonderful story of one woman's hunt for a plant, there's detective work, there's blackmail! The result is a beautiful New Zealand garden in North London created by a woman who has never set foot in New Zealand. Mona is on a one woman mission to get us all to love corokia - see if she can persuade you too, aided by Fiona Eadie, the author of 100 best native plants for New Zealand gardens. As always this is the podcast...

"What is a Purdom" by Vicky Aspin's own admission this was her first reaction to being sent to the Purdom bed in Holehird gardens. Then her curiosity was aroused by a name plaque on a bench: For Three Native Lakeland Gardeners, William Purdom and sons William and Harry and from that her hunt began...who was William Purdom? Her searches before the era of the internet, led her eventually to China and the Purdom Memorial Forest Park and you can hear the story of her search and Purdom's life in...

Season 2 of Our Plant Stories is here! And we begin with a very beautiful story from Penn Allen, a listener to the podcast who contacted me with a plant story that takes us to the Lake District. Diaries from Penn's Great Grandmother Alice Hough and her husband Harry reveal a garden built with love in the midst of loss and a friendship with Will Purdom that spanned years and continents leading to plants from China being planted on a rock overlooking Windermere. To understand more about...

Our Plant Stories is back for a second season and once again the plant stories are going to take us all over the world. To follow and dig into the stories we'll be meeting gardeners, botanists and historians and along the way of course we will learn how to grow the plants. Season 2 starts 12th January 2024. If you have a story that you would like me to follow up in this new series you can email me - [email protected] To find out about the plants featured in all the episodes just go...

Welcome to a bumper crop of plant stories! I'm looking back over some moments from this years episodes but I also invited 3 other plant podcasters to do the same with their podcasts - hence the 'friends'. We've all picked some clips from the past year that we hope you will enjoy. So thanks to Jane Perrone from On the Ledge, Sarah Wilson from Roots and All and M.T. O'Donnell of Scotland Grows. There are conversations about spiders and sacrificial lambs (well hostas actually), difficult...

I'd like to transport you to Levens Hall and a garden that was created in 1694 when topiary was the height of fashion and taste. Over the intervening 329 years this Lake District garden has had only 10 Head Gardeners and each has cared for and clipped that topiary. We first met the current head gardener, Chris Crowder, in Episode 8 in conversation with Diana Boston about the slow nature of gardening with topiary. You can of course listen to that Plant Story and its Offshoot. Hearing...