Roots and All

This week, I’m speaking to Jo Ferguson and we’re talking about bats. As with most of our wildlife, population trends show a decline in bats in the UK in recent times. Loss of habitat, human activities including nighttime lighting and construction and lack of food are all contributing factors. In this episode, Jo talks about what bats need in order to thrive and how we can make small changes that will make big contributions to our bat populations.

This week, Sarah is talking edible mushrooms with Geoff Dann. Geoff is a Hastings based forager with a vast and by the sounds of it, pretty unique understanding of the mushrooms that grow in our landscape. He’s also the author of Edible Mushrooms.

This week, I’m talking garden birds with Kate Risely, Garden BirdWatch Organiser at the British Trust for Ornithology. Kate talks us through the trends that have occurred in our garden bird populations over the past 40 years, what and when to feed them, diseases that are on the rise and how you can attract more birds in your garden. Plus, Kate answers my question; are magpies vandals, living off the fat of our songbirds?

This week, Sarah is talking Peonies with Alec White of Primrose Hall Peonies. If you attended this year’s Chelsea Flower Show, you probably saw the amazing, gold-winning stand Alec put together in the floral marquee - it was the one with the bath, peonies spilling everywhere and the semi-nude model painted all over with peonies. It certainly caused a stir and rightly so, because it was stunning.

ust how free are we to walk around our cities and countryside? Who owns our parks and public spaces and who makes the decision what you can and can’t do in them and when they can be closed for ticketed events? What can you do to make sure our green spaces stay open and accessible to all? These are all questions I asked Neil Sinden, the Director of the London branch of the CPRE (Campaign for Rural England).

Sarah talks to garden designer and author Benjamin Vogt about his book A New Garden Ethic: Cultivating Defiant Compassion for an Uncertain Future. Benjamin writes in his book how it’s imperative that we take up a new style of gardening, a new garden ethic, and that we do so fast. Benjamin explains what it means for him to garden with every species in mind and what happens when we separate ourselves from the rest of our garden’s community.

Sarah speaks to Dr Glenn H Shepard about his life and work in the Amazon, specifically with psychoactive plants. Glenn leads a fascinating life, he’s like a real-life movie character. Although the episode is specifically about psychoactive plants, Sarah also wanted to find out a little more about what led Glenn to be living and working in Brazil alongside the indigenous people of the Amazon forest.

In this episode, I’m speaking to Jan Billington of Maddocks Farm Organics, a flower farm in Devon growing and selling organic edible flowers. We talk about the easiest and tastiest flowers you can grow, colour trends, some more unusual edible flowers and how you can use edible flowers for your own special event. The episode starts with Jan telling us about her farm and why she feels her business needs to give something back. 

Alyson Mowat runs her studio out of Shoreditch in London and has been creating botanical masterpieces for the past 5 years. She works with indoor and outdoor plants to make visually stunning green displays and specialises in terrariums, jarrariums, aquascapes and kokedama to stage plants in unique ways.  We talk about using plants to create visual statements, finding sources of inspiration and how you can try some of these techniques for yourself.

This week I’m speaking to Dr Wilson Wall of Bewdley Orchids. Dr Wall is also the co-author of How to Grow Native Orchids in Gardens Large and Small and is a foremost expert on UK native orchids. In this episode, he talks about growing orchids in lawns, borders, containers…they’re much more versatile than you might expect! Not only are they beautiful and versatile, if you grow them, you’ll be doing your bit to conserve these plants as their numbers in the wild diminish.

Sarah chats with Penny Hearn about a new app that's been launched to track bees and pestcide use The Bee Watch App is useful for beekeepers, but also for the general public who may locate swarms and are not sure who to call. It's also a great way to track pesticide use in your local area, plus register any spraying that you yourself may be carrying out.

This week I’m speaking to John Little. John founded the Grass Roof Company in 1998 and for the past 20 years, he’s been designing and implementing gardens in public spaces that work for people, for plants and for wildlife. Often working in urban locations, he installs wildlife habitats and planting in some unusual places including on roofs and structures such as cycle shelters. He also includes many edible plants in his schemes in order to create beautiful and useful spaces that engage the community.

Sarah invites you to join her on a walk around her garden. Plus, a quick chat about the garden media.

This week I’m speaking to Alex Mitchell, aka the Edible Gardener. Alex is the gardening columnist for the Evening Standard and author of five books on gardening, including her latest ‘Crops in Tight Spots’.

This week I chat to Olivia Kirk about low allergen planting. Olivia works on both public and private gardens and has a number of show gardens under her belt, including a gold medal winning garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower show. She specialises in healing gardens and has worked on a number of projects such as hospice gardens, where the effect the garden can have on a person’s physical health is of paramount importance.