HortWeek Podcast

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 chose...

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. This week Neville Stein speaks to plant pathologist, Laura...

Fargro managing director Richard Hopkins speaks to HortWeek about spring optimism, the upcoming general election and peat, water, border inspections and crop protection. He says growers should talk to policymakers using policy asks from the HTA, AIC and NFU. Key issues are peat, plant health, plant protection products and water. On crop protection he says there is still no National Action Pla...

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 chose...

ICL's Sam Rivers discusses the key issue of water quality with HortWeek editor Matt Appleby. We discover why water quality is so important and what characteristics you look at to determine water quality. Sam gives vital information on how you determine your water chemical properties and why is conductivity so important. He also relays important insight about pH, including the main differences...

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 i...

Four Oaks Trade Show 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 ou...

The Youth Environmental Service, which is backed by the National Heritage Lottery Fund, has won backing for a 'national service' for the environment. Dubbed a "green jobs guarantee" for a post-secondary school-age young people. Programme director Billy Knowles explains: "The Youth Environmental Service is an organisation that we set up with the idea that what would happen if every young person had...

Vine Weevil control is one of the biggest issues for many growers and ICL deals with many queries about the pest. In this podcast, ICL's Sam Rivers explains what vine weevil is, what the pest's life cycle is and what plants they feed on. He highlights their effect on heuchera, primula and Portugese laurel. Control options start with cultural control. Products available for vine weevil control...

Veteran, and very proud 'Parkie' Paul Rabbitts (currently working at Norwich City Council) fell into parks work after qualifying as a "really bad" landscape architect. Finding "everything was going down the route of being computer aided design and CAD - that sent a cold shiver down my back" he thought "I don't want to do this...which is one of the reasons why I moved into managing parks. Thank God...

The requirement for developers to implement minimum Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG) standards became law on 12 February , and having already worked on projects this week's Horticulture Week Podcast guest already has considerable experience in the field. Although Alexandra Steed was speaking from Vancouver for the podcast recording, her landscape practice is based in London and South East England. High...

Former corporate lobbyist/political adviser Jonathan Shepherd is tentatively "proud to be called a bit of a horticulturist". But horticulturist he very much is. The National Plant Collection holder is a veteran of Hampton Court Palace Flower Show in 2022 and 2023 where he won silver gilt for his Cosmos collection display (he also has a hollyhock national collection). In 2024, he makes hi...

Lee Stiles,  Lea Valley Growers' Association  secretary, has been outspoken about the state of the UK protected salads sector, which saw market failure in 2023, with empty supermarket shelves and reduction in UK production. Stiles sees energy, labour and prices as the big three problems facing UK tomato and cucumber growers. Until recent years energy and labour were more controllable, he...

Garden designer and professional gardener Alan Mason was a founder member of the Professional Gardeners’ Guild. He became chairman 45 years later, taking over from Tony Arnold in September 2022. "I avoided being chairman for as long as possible", he says. " I was vice chairman. I had been treasurer. I had been secretary, but it was never my desire to become chairman. It just happened." He has...

Annabelle Padwick is a professional gardener, well-being practitioner and founder of Life at No.27. Her first experience of horticulture was growing on her allotment in 2015. She was having psychotherapy at the time and "hoping that I could learn some new skills, but also [hoping] it might help with my mental health at the same time".  She soon quit her marketing career and founded her social...

Landscape industry veteran of 53 years, there's little Alan Sargent hasn't seen when it comes to landscape and garden projects. And now he's decided to write some of the more curious, humourous and even scandalous ones in his latest book, "Confessions of a Landscape Gardener". With a career spanning 5 decades, he reflects on how his stories take readers back to a time pre-internet, pre mobiles, ev...

Garden designer Lee Burkhill - better known as the Garden Ninja - is a career changer (from law in an IT setting). After a part-time RHS garden design course (which he thought of as a passtime), couple of competitions and RHS shows later, his career took off, "like being strapped to a rocket! "I suppose it has been incredibly rapid compared to people that maybe went to horticultural college o...

Sue Beesley is owner of Bluebell Cottage Gardens and nursery in Cheshire. She grows and propagates 700 different perennials at the nursery which she took over in 2007. From an IT background Sue came into horticulture "as a complete amateur" at the age of 45. "I think one of the great things about horticulture is it's a fabulous industry for people to come into as a second, third or even fourt...

HortWeek is delighted to present the Cultivate Your Future podcast, in partnership with the Colegrave Seabrook Foundation. 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. This week HortWeek writer and business consultant Neville Stein interviews Scott S...

HortWeek is delighted to present the Cultivate Your Future podcast, in partnership with the Colegrave Seabrook Foundation. 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...

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  Steve Barrow,  plantarea manager...

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. Business consultant and HortWeek writer Neville...

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. HortWeek writer and business consultant Neville...

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 i...

HortWeek is delighted to present the Cultivate Your Future podcast, in partnership with the Colegrave Seabrook Foundation. 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. We hear from people who have found their way into their chosen care...