Our Plant Stories

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 his mum and his home, erased his gardening memories. This is a beautiful and very personal plant story of the journey back to Kew and one special tree that played an important role in that journey. Plants...

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 fact be a lot more fascinating and complicated than it might at first appear. So take a journey into the history and science of seeds. We'll ponder the Portuguese, spreading pepper seeds around the world...

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 clearing it out. These seeds, stored in Oxo tins and match boxes, sparking memories of a bygone era, lead to a conversation with the Seed Detective, Adam Alexander, who discusses their potential for germin...

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 in series 2 in an episode called Kathy's Radishes. As we sat by her veg patch she explained why it was so powerful to see life in the soil and discover its potential to grow food. In the conversation in...

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. She also had a passion for insects, she remembers having pockets full of woodlice! Adult Lucy is now working in urban ecology and she shares the story of The Weed Trust and where it has led her. We went t...

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 at Thenford Arboretum that is Emma Thick. This is the perfect time to grow our knowledge about snowdrops and I think I have found the perfect person, a galanthophile, to help us. If you know the podcast w...

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 City since its inception in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy. Sally Flatman speaks with Constance Casey who was working for the New York Parks Department when the gift of one million daffodil bulbs , was give...

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 along the way of course we will all learn how to grow the plants. If you have a story that you would like me to follow up in this new series you can email me - sally@ourplantstories.com To find out about th...

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 doing the planting but before we get to the plants - there's a ' bit of treacle' to wade through. Take this audio tour so you can start to become familiar with this incredibly exciting venture and hear about...

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...

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' - an...

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...

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 con...

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...

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? Independent podcasts like Our Plant Stories depend on their listeners for help with the costs of making the podcast such as the hosting platf...

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 a...

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 Ind...

"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 introduc...

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 ge...

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...

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...

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...

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 t...

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 produ...

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...