Episoder
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Alan Down is a gardening broadcaster and writer and current HTA president, shortly to be replaced by Will Armitage after two eventful years.
He studied at Cannington and Pershore College of Horticulture and after a spell working Germany, he developed and managed Hillier Nurseries' container grown and seed propagation nurseries for nine years.
For the following 35 years, Alan built up Cleeve Nursery and Garden Centre, near Bristol and alongside hi wife Felicity, co-presented the long-standing ‘Garden Calendar’ TV programme.
On the podcast Alan talks about his role at the HTA including presiding over changes in structure and strategy.
He discusses his desire to shift the terminology and emphasis of production horticulture from 'ornamental' to 'environmental' horticulture which runs alongside the topics the HTA engages with, including with the Government. These topics include the issues of trade and border checks, "the extra costs [growers] incur... and we continue to apply pressure to try and resolve the issues that are there. We also have huge concern about the few inspections that there are, which means that we are a threat in terms of importing pests and diseases which could be harmful to our industry and indeed to the country as a whole".
He discusses the on-going shift away from peat. In the absence of official figures (since 2022) he estimates garden centre use of peat-based growing media is down to around 10%, but the picture with growers is more complex.
"Some have been growing peat-free for quite some time. Others are still trialling and finding out what medium works for them and how to handle growing plants in peat -free compost and others may not have even started. But we are there to support our members in this transition and we'll continue to do that."
He and HortWeek editor Matt Appleby discuss the Lords Parliamentary horticultural inquiry of 2023 and the impact, if any, it has had since on the sector, which has partly been disrupted by the arrival of a new Government, Alan points out.
But. Alan says, he believes the HTA is well-placed to influence the new administration as an institution which represents growers, landscapers and retailers. He talks about initiatives such as inviting MPs to visit growers on site and the opportunity exhibiting at Chelsea gives the HTA to meet them in a "in a more relaxed mood'.
Matt and Alan talk about the health of horticulture shows including collaborations with GIMA, Alan's enthusiasm for more regional events and the HTA's own conference taking place on September 25 at the International Conference Centre in Birmingham.
And as he celebrates his 50th wedding anniversary, he contemplates life after the HTA and what it might hold as well as his latest Desert Island plant.
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A Sussex native, Susan Raikes, the new director of Wakehurst, Kew's wild botanic garden in West Sussex (she joined in June) was familier with the garden since childhood.
"We're Kew's younger, bigger and wilder sister and very much a botanic garden with a purpose...a site of horticultural and scientific excellence and a living laboratory where groundbreaking science projects are taking place as well. So lots of beautiful gardens, beautiful spots to come and visit, but some really important science and horticultural work going on as well."
After Kew released a report detailing risks to over half of its 11,000 trees, Wakehurst will carry out a similar exercise next year: "it's a different challenge, but absolutely we're thinking about the resilience of the planting".
She talks about the effects of climate change on the garden, with respect not just to plants, but impacts for visitors and scientists working at the centre.
Related to this, Wakehurst has been "championing meadows" via it's Meadowland feature this summer (until September 10) and has a focus on threatened and rare UK habitats which have been combined with newly commissioned pieces of contemporary art to enhance the ecological and educational aspects.
Wakehurst is home to Kew's Millennium Seed Bank, which houses more than 2.4 billion seeds from around the world and which will celebrate its 25th birthday next year.
Among research programs currently live at the garden Sue highlights Nature Unlocked, "which is helping us to use Wakehurst as a living laboratory, looking at it as an ecosystem observatory. We're looking at pollinators and carbon, but also well-being and the different kinds of landscapes and environments that people get the most benefit from".
The research project will be reflected in features in visitor areas such as the children's garden which will house a bee bank, a rebuilt mud kitchen and edible meadow.
Next year will also see the 60th anniversary of Kew's presence at Wakehurst and the garden plans to bring "to life that story of being a living laboratory so that visitors really know that they are visiting somewhere that is really making a difference in terms of all of the work we need to do around climate change and habitat loss as well."
Previously Sue was director of learning at the Science Museum Group and before that you were head of learning and national partnerships at the British Museum and is familiar with "taking sometimes quite complicated and specialist content and then working with that in a variety of different ways to bring it to as many people as possible" and she plans to bring these skills to bear at Wakehurst.
Wakehurst has enlisted two champions, TV GP Dr. Amir Khan and BBC Springwatch presenter Megan McCubbin to help "amplify our message and spread the word about this incredible wild botanic garden that we have." Local resident and A-list actor Cate Blanchett has made a promotional video for the garden and it is hoped she will have more involvement in the future.
The aim is to build on the 400,000 visitors Wakehurst receives every year and hopes to "reach people who might not know about us" through access schemes and community work.
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GroundsFest 2024 takes place on the 10 and the 11 of September at Stoneleigh Park, in Warwickshire. The free annual event is a must-attend for grounds staff, greenkeepers, landscapers, designers & architects, gardeners, local authorities, estate managers and contractors.
It combines indoor business and education opportunities with outdoor demonstrations and on the evening of the 10 September there is a live music festival for visitors to network and unwind.
HortWeek senior reporter Rachael Forsyth speaks with Chris Bassett, event director at GroundsFest about what to expect from this year's show, as well as exhibitors Wayne Grills chief executive at BALI, and Ian Graham chairman of Amenity Forum about the benefits of attending and exhibiting.
2023 was the show’s inaugural year, but its success has meant additional space has been added both indoor and outdoors. Bassett explains that the success also accelerated the goal of reinvesting profits from GroundsFest back into the industry to support education through the GroundsFest Education Fund.
Grills explains that he attended as a seminal panellist and visitor last year which encouraged him to have a BALI presence at the event this year, with the association hosting its AGM at the show. Graham describes why Complete Weed Control was drawn back to the world of exhibitions through GroundsFest, as well as what visitors can expect from Amenity Forum at the event.
See: www.groundsfest.com
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HortWeek is delighted to present the Cultivate Your Future podcast, in partnership with the Colegrave Seabrook Foundation and sponsors MorePeople.
This episode was recorded on location at Ball Colegrave where the great and the good from the horticultural industry gathered to celebrate 30 years of the Colegrave Foundation. In this episode Neville Stein talks to seasoned professionals as well as recent recipients of a bursary from the foundation and discusses the sense of community that makes the industry such a great one to work in.
Make sure you never miss a Horticulture Week podcast! Subscribe to or Follow Horticulture Week podcasts via Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your preferred podcast platform.
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This week's guest is Angus Soft Fruits' breeding program director, Lucy Wilkins.
Angus Soft Fruits sells to the major multiples in UK, food service and wholesale and also exports fruit around the world to Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Angus is launching two revolutionary raspberry varieties: AVA™ Monet and AVA™ Dali - so named because they are, “works of art!” Lucy explains how they represent a "significant breakthrough in raspberry cultivation".
With UK growers squeezed between increased challenges for UK growers due to production and labour costs and ever-rising demands from supermarkets, the higher yield and high quality of the new breeds will "enable [Angus's growers] to sell the fruit at a higher price".
She discusses trends in customer tastes and their expectations and how Angus Soft Fruits breeding program is aiming to meet these for strawberries, blackberries, raspberries and blueberries.
Health, wellness and nutrition are big areas of interest as well as environmental impact of food and ethical farming practices, she says, which need to be balanced against demands for cheap, large, tasty fruits available all year round.
She discusses how the season, relative production performance for fruits has gone in 2024.
"We're also looking internationally to see how our varieties can perform in other climates. So we've got trials in Southern Europe and Morocco to sort of see how these varieties could perform in an import perspective, which would obviously allow for year-round production of our Ava berries, which is really exciting and it's a fantastic opportunity for growers around Europe as well as the UK", she says.
This year is Angus Soft Fruits 30th anniversary which will be celebrated in its annual conference held in November in Scotland which will feature talks from people from across the industry sharing their insights, updates and tech and what is driving innovation in the industry. "It's just a fantastic opportunity to get the whole team together, all of our growers and just celebrate 30 fantastic years."
Lucy discusses her route to her current role, why Tayside is so good for soft fruit growing and what Angus is doing on sustainability, coping with climate change and improving disease resistance and tolerance to help reduce pesticide use.
"Our Scottish growers have been working with AgriCalc to measure their carbon footprints on their farms since 2023 and they've already reduced their carbon emissions per kilogram of fruit by 28% which is just fantastic" she says, highlighting changes to lighting, and food waste among other measures towards net zero goals.
As the new Government continues to bed in, Lucy talks about her support for the six priority areas outlined by the British Berry Growers Association which include measures for seasonal labour, planning, exports and hopes for a 'grower charter'.
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Edwin Meijer from Green Solutions speaks about the dos and don'ts of loyalty programmes for garden retailers.
Edwin speaks about the role of smartphones in loyalty campaigns as the older generation uses social media more.
Research from KPMG showed that more than 80% of the consumers expect a mobile-based loyalty programme. If you retired aged 65 in 2020, you spent over 20 years with computers.
Edwin says there are a lot of misunderstandings. Some UK customer are mobile-only and that works really well. This is not about who your current customers are, but who your ideal future customer is. The solution is also to integrate iOS and Android wallets to make it mobile-based
He also gives tip about chasing inactive customers and how to get 40% of them back in-store in two weeks using interaction, inspiration and information.
Edwin also speaks about Green Solutions/Haymarket's acquisition of Garden Connect, what Green Solutions does and what we've seen with shofts from loyalty printed vouchers to emails/apps.
He says personalisation, weather-dependent campaigns and using AI can all help loyalty programmes.
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Matthew Bent of Bents Garden and Home and Plants for Europe's Graham Spencer speak to HortWeek about the visitor experience at Four Oaks Trade Show.
Four Oaks is the UK’s leading international exhibition for the whole of commercial horticulture. From production to point-of-sale, the breadth of exhibits on display is the show’s strength, attracting a broad visitor base. The event takes place on a 23-acre nursery site in Cheshire UK, close to the Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope, covering an area of 13,000m² under glass with additional outdoor areas. The 52nd show takes place this September 3rd & 4th and organisers urge potential exhibitors to contact them about space ASAP because they expect to sell out.
Bent and Spencer reveal they have both been attending the show for more than 20 years each and find it offers plants and products they can't find anywhere else.
They share top tips for getting the most out of visiting the show and say what makes the event so unique and important to the industry as a whole.
See https://www.fouroaks-tradeshow.com/
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Sales development executive at Collier Turf Care Sally Jarrett is not a football fan but as stories of divot-strewn pitches she has sympathy for grounds keepers under the spotlight during the Euros tournament held in Germany last June.
"When football pitches are getting ready for big tournaments, they undergo a lot of work...it could be that some of that weather has either stopped work being able to be done. Or the work that was done had to be redone because maybe it was ruined with the torrential rain that we had."
"It's really difficult because there's such a large expectation on turf managers and there's nothing they can do about the weather...as a turf manager, that's your pride and joy. That's your pitch and you've got it on the world stage...it must be devastating for some of those turf managers to be looking at some of the pitches and getting the comments that are coming back to them."
She discusses the impact of climate change and and extreme weather that is making a the tricky job of turf managers more challenging still with an increase in pest and diseases another side effect.
Time was when turf managers would cure everything with a liberal spray of chemicals but "things have changed" Sally explains and the new way is an "integrated method" to help prevent or mitigate pests and diseases including environmental measures, air regulation, cutting heights and feed programmes.
As with other sectors "the staff levels are getting worrying" as replacing those retiring can prove difficult she says. She echos calls for more discussion of horticulture in schools to help boost the sector's profile.
Sally welcomes new technology as robotic mowers and automated irrigation systems can help free staff up to carry out other tasks.
She also talks through the challenges of those notorious turf foes, chafer grubs and leatherjackets.
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This week's podcast guests are leaders in the UK fruit growing sector: Alana Deakin, the new chair of the NextGen Fruit Group and head of operations at Hall Hunter and Oli Pascall, MD of Clockhouse Farm and the NextGen past president.
They talk about their key takeaways from a recent visit to the USA including ag-tech, driven in part by scarcity and the high cost of labour, and where "they are definitely ahead of where we are in the UK" but also efficient water use, spearheaded in water-scarce California but also the use of branding and competition between large fruit brands.
Alana explains the aims of fruit farming group NextGen which despite its focus on the next generation of fruit farmers, is "not limited to that because we need the industry experts to come and teach the next generation".
The group unites people from across the various fruit-growing sectors to provide "cross-industry information that can be very, very useful" through networking events and farm visits.
"I think it's also good to solidify that with some proper scientific learning. So I'd like to introduce a few technical days" says Alana, who also has ambitions of creating the UK's first conference for fruit growers.
The group went to California to see how the US growers are coping with labour challenges.
The UK seasonal worker scheme is among the issues Oli and Alana want to see the new Labour Government address as well as industry funding and food and environmental policy.
After a particularly wet growing season in 2024, they reflect on how their crops have fared with blueberries enjoying the conditions in particular, a crop they both agree has significant potential for growth.
On strawberries, Oli says:
"I think, fair to say, prices over the past few years have been challenging, growth returns have been challenging as the industry has regularly reported. It's still challenging but it's a lot more manageable than it has been for the past couple of years. So we need to see continued increase in returns for the industry to be sustainable and get back to where it was a few years ago.
"I think we are going to see shortages of product throughout the season at certain points. And I know some of our customers are importing throughout the season as well. So that is showing a weakening of British supply throughout what has traditionally been a season fully catered for with local production."
Water supply is a major concern, says Oli who began a plan to build a reservoir a year three years ago with two more to go as part of his plan to ensure water security for his business. He is also aiming for Net Zero for 2040:
"As far as on-the-ground changes at the moment, I think we need to build growing structures that are suitable for changing climates. So we need to be ready for more variation in temperature, colder winters, hotter summers, and more set weather patterns."
As for the future, technology and innovation will play a large part, says Alana who has just installed a new grader with AI.
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The author of The Ethical Carnivore, Louise Gray takes a journalistic approach to questioning trusims about fruit and veg being better for you and the planet.
Mike Berners-Lee wrote about the carbon footprint of 100 things in 2010's How Bad Are Bananas. As many businesses attempt to go carbon neutral, ethical and environmental sourcing is more of an issue than ever.
In her book, Louise interviews banana, potato and avocado experts, adds some history and scientific references plus some personal worries related to her own baby in an attempt to bring clarity to the dilemma many consumers face when choosing what to eat.
Louise discusses the use of avocados, beloved of millenials and vegetarians, and long used by anti-vegetarian campaigners as a stick to tell them they are being bad for the planet. She talks about how much less carbon is produced importing avocados from abroad compared to producing beef in Britain. Avocados are a lot less bad than meat and airfreighted asparagus, but are worse than UK-grown potatoes, she says.
For apples, English Apples and Pears' Ali Capper is the interviewee and Louise discusses how the loss of apple biodiversity is a cause for anxiety.
She concludes that the perfect diet does not exist and that food stories (the growing and selling of plants) are 'complex'.
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Tayshan Hayden-Smith's Wikipedia entry tells you he is a professional footballer from Ladbroke Grove, London. Nicknamed the "English Neymar" Tayshan had a burgeoning international career underway until the Grenfell Fire in 2017 took 72 lives from his local community. A quest for healing led him into the world of horticulture and his non-profit organisation Grow to Know was born with the aim of addressing societal and environmental inequality. Its activities earned Tayshan a new name as the "Grenfell guerilla gardener" and he helped create a Grenfell garden from leftover nursery plants.
Fast-forward 7 years and he has partnered with The Black Gardener Danny Clarke to take the Hands Off Mangrove garden to Chelsea Flower Show, become and RHS ambassador, appeared on Your Garden Made Perfect (BBC1) and Alan Titchmarsh's Gardening Club (ITVX).
Talking to senior reporter Rachael Forsyth on the podcast, they first discuss the Peter Rabbit-inspired community garden that Grow to Know worked on in partnership with publisher Penguin Random House that typifies Tayshan's philosophy as a gardener.
"It was otherwise an unused bit of land in the school and now it's one of the most used bits of the school where the kids, at every opportunity, just try to be in that space.
"[It's] just to see how magical that is for the children ... threading in those ideas around kind of food security and growing our own food and biodiversity and the importance of wildlife in, especially in, urban space.
Though Tayshan clearly seeks and finds solace and beauty in plants, the driver behind his career is activism, but he says he's not expecting any Government to respond to lobbying to support horticulture for education, well-being or the environment:
"I'm kind of tired of asking now and I think we just got to do, so, I'd like to think that we're leading by example of what we're doing... I think it's for the people and for the local organisations and grassroots organisations to show the way rather than relying on those who clearly just can't deliver."
He queries why for more than a century RHS Chelsea Flower Show has "existed on the more affluent side of the borough, but has never had any impacts on North Kensington.
"In North Kensington, you can expect to live on average 20 years less than someone who lives in South Kensington.... that stark bit of data really inspires the need to build that bridge to a place that is filled with resource, filled with beauty, filled with magic, filled with nature, yet there are people who are suffering on the outside of those boundaries.
"It is very political and I think we have to understand that from the very get-go and through that lens...When I tell you that people are living 20 years less and a big influencing factor of that is nature access, then it should be taken seriously.
Tayshan Hayden-Smith's book, Small Space Revolution, Planting Seeds of Change in Your Community, is "an amalgamation of my experiences, my insights, my thoughts, but also the thoughts, experiences and insights of many other people around the world. And so there's case studies in the book, there's ideas and thoughts, there's interviews, there's how-tos. And so hopefully you can open a book at any page and take some inspiration...I guess it will hopefully activate the activism within [readers].
"Our intention is to bring gardening, horticulture, nature, to the fore to the people that could really do with it, the people in survival mode on the 10th floor of tower blocks... For me if we can engage those people then we can engage anyone."
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This week's guest on the Horticulture Week Podcast is Glendale head of development, estate services, Deric Newman,
The podcast was recorded shortly after the Perennial Quiz in February. HortWeek editor Matt Appleby and Deric, both on the 'Horticulture Geeks' team, discuss how they fared.
Deric talks about his role and about Glendale's current business focus as it seeks to diversify and expand its commercial offering.
He discusses the differences between private and council work in terms of client expectations and time pressure and how much competition Glendale faces in the sector.
As the firm looks to expand its commercial business (it currently accounts for 10% of Glendale's revenue) Deric talks about the challenges of staffing and attracting people into the landscape maintenance and contracting sector.
This brings him to the work Glendale is doing with His Majesty's Prison Service as part of the New Futures Network initiative "which is basically around trying to get together employers and ex-offenders in order to offer employment on release. What is known is that if a prisoner leaves prison and they have accommodation and they have employment, the chances or the likelihood of them re -offending reduces significantly.
"So it seemed fairly straightforward to us at Glendale that it was the right thing to do...It's not our place to judge these people about why they've been in prison. That's been done... They've done their time. They are now out of prison as an ex-offender and just a member of society. And if we want our society to be improved, which is sort of what Glendale's about )you know, we're about improving green spaces that we live in and enjoy) then it's right that we're doing these sorts of things for members of society.
"The other thing, commercially, what was appealing about it is that the prison population is a ready supplier of labour. Most of the people coming out find themselves in need of a job and they actually get really good experience."
He talks about his background and the formative role played by his father who set up Civic Trees in the 1960s which was part of the post-war drive to plant trees and who was an innovator who developed pioneering technology and techniques to enable trees to be moved, rather than cut down.
Deric retains a strong connection to trees to this day. He talks about his ongoing interest in tree nurseries and reveals, as all our podcast guests do, his Desert Island Plant.
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This episode we hear from Peter Wessel and Shaun Herdsman from Modiform.
Modiform offers solutions in the field of growing, transport, and packaging systems for the horticultural sector based on recycled raw materials.
As one of the first horti-packaging companies to start looking into the recycling of plastic, Peter and Shaun talk about how and why they started the business
They discuss how the horticulture sector will be affected by plastic taxes such as the 'Plastic Packaging Tax' (PPT), 'Packaging Recovery Notes' (PRNs) and 'Extended Producer Responsibility' (EPR).
They discuss how the sector can go further in making packaging more sustainable and whether the UK could implement a reusable transport trays scheme, as Europe is doing with the European Transport Tray.
Modiform has just entered the online retail sector with your plant delivery packaging and why they have chosen to use moulded fibre only.
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Former Defra secretary of state George Eustice says there should be a new generation of UK fresh produce glasshouse production post-election, with a Defra strategy to support that.
The retiring Conservative MP believes more can also be done on labour shortages. He supports a needs-based policy so sectors with shortages have sector-specific visas, and a 10-year plus seasonal worker scheme maintained at current worker levels.
After standing down ahead of the July 4 general election, Eustice formed the Penbroath environmental and agricultural consultancy. He discusses his political legacy from his nine-year stint as a Defra minister, including almost three as secretary of state until 2022; they include the Environment, Agriculture and Fishery Acts and the transition from EU subsidies to new schemes. He also reflects on working through a "turbulent time" with Brexit, Covid and Ukraine happening during his tenure.
On plant imports, he argues the UK has been "incredibly generous" to the EU on plant imports and that has not been reciprocated with UK exports to the EU. Importers may find BCPs frustrating, but they should be buying from British nurseries where they know the health status of plants he says. Eustice does admit he would have timed the implementation better (delayed due to Covid, the Ukraine war and having to re-recruit border staff). Despite "teething problems" he maintains BCPs are the most proportionate and risk-based approach to stopping plant pests and diseases entering the UK.
On peat, he expresses frustration that his successor at Defra ,Therese Coffey, brough forward peat ban plans without a legislative vehicle. The consequent "uncertainty" was a "terrible mistake". Eustice wanted to ban garden centre bagged sales but to delay commercial peat bans on growers until 2030, with veg module bans not implemented until 2035-40. He wants to see a return to that approach.
He discusses how the new Government, be it Tory or Labour, could bring elements of the peat ban into force including using secondary regulation to restrict sales under the Environment Act's 'protecting resources' section, though the current the Government did not think that would work. A ban on all retail sales would get round how to make sure imports grown in peat do not undercut the UK market.
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Trees, arguably, have never been so popular and Sarah Lom, chief executive of the Tree Council is enjoying their moment in the sun.
Applications to the Tree Council's small grants fund [under £500] have doubled in the last 12 months. National Tree Week at the end of 2023 reached an estimated 30 million people and a schools programme is helping engage younger people, helping ease their 'eco-anxiety' along the way:
"We even got to deliver a lesson at Number 10 [Downing Street] ...which was a fabulous opportunity for the pupils to see the garden there, the beautiful London plane trees."
Tree Council relies upon a network of volunteer tree wardens around the UK, has a £2m program funding108 different projects with Network Rail.
The organisation encourages community groups to use local or their own nurseries for a supply of "bio-secure trees". And this community activity may have more benefits than one might imagine:
"There is evidence that trees planted with love and care do better. We're five years into a hedge planting trial with Network Rail at Hadley Wood in North London...and five years in, the hedges planted by the volunteers are four meters tall and have 96% survival rate, whereas those planted by the contractors are two meters tall - that's half - and a 64% survival rate," all of which is a boon to the well-documented benefits of trees - pollution mitigation, urban cooling, flood mitigation, well-being uplift and so on. A full report on the findings is to be produced in due course.
But climate change and changes to previously dependable seasonal patterns has led her to wonder whether National Tree Week (which encourages people to plant trees in their communities), shoudl be made later.
"The warmer autumns means the trees become dormant later, the early spring brings them back to life sooner."
As concern grows over the UK's ability to meet Government tree planting targets, Lom says: "They didn't meet their targets, but the good news is that the nation did plant 40% more trees last season than they did the season before. And the aim is that will escalate year on year on year, but it takes time and everyone has to play their part. I know when I've spoken to nursery, they've said, we need time to be able to generate the stock."
As local authorities wrestle with extreme pressure on council budgets Lom insists that having a tree strategy should be a priority:
On plans for 2024 Lom says the schools programme will continue, tree survival studies and work with DEFRA looking at establishing a methodology for tree survival and tree establishment will all figure.
Tree Council is also collaborating with Oxford University on a mistletoe mapping project, a keystone species with complex interactions with trees.
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HortWeek is delighted to present the Cultivate Your Future podcast, in partnership with the Colegrave Seabrook Foundation and sponsors MorePeople.
At a time when horticulture needs to encourage a new wave of young people to come into the industry, this podcast is designed to highlight the multiple and varied career opportunities available.
Hear from people who have found their way into their chosen career through different paths, what their job involves and what it means to them.
Neal Ritson began his career in the music industry but having discovered horticulture he is now a grower of ornamental bedding plants, pots and baskets for a large scale nursery in West Lancashire.
In this podcast Neal talks about his journey in horticulture and provides some wise advice for anyone considering a career change
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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HortWeek is delighted to present the Cultivate Your Future podcast, in partnership with the Colegrave Seabrook Foundation and sponsors MorePeople.
At a time when horticulture needs to encourage a new wave of young people to come into the industry, this podcast is designed to highlight the multiple and varied career opportunities available.
Hear from people who have found their way into their chosen career through different paths, what their job involves and what it means to them.
In this episode ex professional cyclist, Connie Hudson describes her journey from cycling to horticulture.
Connie describes what her life was like in the cycling world and discusses the career change she has to train as a gardener at John Massey's garden at Ashwood Nurseries
Connie's story highlights that anyone, at any age can make a move into the horticultural industry.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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Renowned plantswoman Claire Austin, who has recently written a book called Peonies, a personal collection of 350 species, has revealed the secrets behind growing the increasingly popular herbaceous, intersectional and tree peonies.
Austin, who owns the only retail nursery that also has a pub on site, in Sarn, mid-Wales, talks about the appeal of peonies, peony growing tips for gardeners and professionals, her favourite peonies, her famous family and how her nursery business coped during lockdown. It saw x6 times mail order growth overnight in April 2020.
She explains why she has retired from shows and is critical of Government policy towards retail nurseries. Austin also tells us what plants she is breeding and what the future is for growers and plant breeders like herself.
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HortWeek editor Matt Appleby speaks with ICL's Andrew Wilson, Matthew Miller, Steven Chapman and Sam Rivers to preview Hort Science Live.
ICL Hort Science Live explore the latest technologies and management practices growers need to produce quality resilient plants in sustainable media.
Wilson will lead the ‘How to rethink plant nutrition’workstation, taking growers through ICL’s 2024 peat-free Osmocote 5 trials, exploring different rates and longevities. He will highlight the specific nutrition challenges of peat-free growing media and explain how the latest generation of water soluble and CRFs can address any issues.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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HortWeek is delighted to present the Cultivate Your Future podcast, in partnership with the Colegrave Seabrook Foundation and sponsors MorePeople.
At a time when horticulture needs to encourage a new wave of young people to come into the industry, this podcast is designed to highlight the multiple and varied career opportunities available.
Hear from people who have found their way into their chosen career through different paths, what their job involves and what it means to them.
In this podcast from the Colegrave Seabrook Foundation, trustee Neville Stein hosts a discussion with Level 2 Horticulture students from Sparsholt College in Hampshire.
Sparsholt College teamed up with The Colegrave Seabrook Foundation to create Sparsholt’s 2024 RHS Chelsea Flower Show Discovery entry display entitled ‘Plants, Routes & Branches’.
We hear from Chloe, Hayden, Jessica and Joshua as they prepare to build and promote their Chelsea Flower Show exhibit.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- Se mer
