Our Plant Stories

Sometimes in life you come across a book that just speaks to you - you and the author are on the same page and they have articulated all the things you have been thinking.

This plant story is about su…

I think we're in for a real treat. Listening to Poppy Okotcha and Adam Frost talking about their gardens, their 'safe spaces', their connections to nature. And in the best traditions of the podca…

Back in July I was lucky enough to host a conversation at the British Library between Poppy Okotcha and Adam Frost.

Hear a trailer for the episode which will be out next Tuesday.

Poppy's new book i…

The joy of making this podcast is that sometimes I just get to be curious which Adam Frost says is key to our enjoyment of gardening.

I know that any day now Autumn bulb catalogues will start to dro…

In 1976 Fay Ballard had just finished her first term at university and heading home for Christmas she was looking for a gift for her father who was the author J.G. Ballard. This episode is the story…

Did you buy a Yucca from Marks and Spencer in the 1970s or 80s...many of us did!

If you still have it, it could by now be very large. This months plant story is a beautiful one about a Yucca plant t…

In this offshoot episode of Our Plant Stories, we step into Garden Futures - Designing with Nature — an imaginative new exhibition at the V&A Dundee.

With help from one of the curators, Francesca Bi…

This episode features the State Tree of Louisiana, the Bald Cypress. (Taxodium distichum). But the Bald Cypress in the plant story is not in the USA but in the Loire in France, in the grounds of a …

This is a special week in the horticultural calendar. It is the RHS Chelsea Flower show and over the course of the week thousands of people will visit the show and millions will watch the BBC covera…

Jerry Spencer's mum worked at Kew Gardens. As a child he would go there to meet her at lunchtime. Leaving school he trained as a gardener. However a period of living on the streets after he lost h…

I think this Offshoot episode will make you pause next time you find yourself in front of a colourful wall of seed packets. As with many seemingly simple things, the story of a small seed, can in f…

Richard Bowman tells the story of seeds salvaged from great uncle Eric's potting shed. The shed, perched on the Yorkshire moors had been untouched for 20 years when Richard was given the task of clea…

In Rough Patch - How a year in the garden brought me back to life; Kathy Slack shares all the lessons she learned from her own story of recovery from depression.

She shared her plant story with us i…

One Summer Lucy Houliston, aged just 6, set herself the mission of raising awareness of weeds as plants that deserve love and attention, just like everything else. And so The Weed Trust was born.

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Imagine 1500 different snowdrops, roaming around an arboretum. Sometimes a new one joins, sometimes a group is divided, sometimes one just wanders off on its own. You need a snowdrop shepherd and …

This podcast episode delves into the inspiring story behind the Daffodil Project, a community-driven initiative that has resulted in the planting of over 12 million daffodil bulbs across New York Cit…

Season 3 of Our Plant Stories will be starting on the 4th February 2025.

These plant stories will once again take us all over the world. We'll be meeting gardeners, botanists and historians and alon…

You may well have heard about the New York High Line but did you know that there are plans afoot for a Highline in London? It has got the same design team as the NY one and Piet Oudolf will be doin…

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 assoc…

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 i…