Roots and All - Gardening Podcast

Hello and welcome to this week's episode where my guest is poet and scholar Camille Dungy. Camille has documented how she diversified her garden to reflect her heritage in her book 'Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden'. We talk about the politics of gardening, planting a nature garden and how nature writing has influenced our gardens in the past and how it can shape the way we do so in the...

This week's episode, my guest is writer Victoria Bennett, author of'All My Wild Mothers – motherhood, loss and an apothecary garden'. The book weaves memoir and herbal folklore and is a story of re-wilding our wastelands, and the transformation that can happen when we do. Daisy, for resilience. Dandelion, for strength against adversity. Borage, to bring hope in dark and difficult times… Dr Ian Bed...

My guest   this episode is author and activist Ellen Miles. Ellen is the founder of Nature is a Human Right, she runs Dream Green, a social enterprise that helps people get guerrilla gardening with guides, grants, and workshops and has a book that will be released this Thursday the 8th of June, Get Guerrilla Gardening: A handbook for planting in public places. Dr Ian Bedford's Bug of the Week: Spi...

My guest this week is gardener Benny Hawksbee. Benny has a background in biology and gardens with one eye on biodiversity. His projects include the Eden Nature Garden, a community garden designed to be a haven for people and wildlife, and John Little's garden in Essex.   We talk about how Benny brings biology and ecology into his work, what we can all do to garden for wildlife whilst reducing our...

This episode goes out in celebration of The Chelsea Fringe. The Fringe is an annual event which runs concurrently to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show and celebrates everything alternative in horticulture. And this episode is certainly alternative! It was intended to be an AMA (Ask Me Anything) episode but quickly evolved into a general chat with my host this week, Jake Rayson. We then moved on to talk...

This episode features writer, garden historian and returning guest Caroline Ball. In eighteenth-century Bavaria a prosperous apothecary, Johann Wilhelm Weinmann began an extraordinary project, the compilation of an A to Z of plants, meticulously documented, and lavishly illustrated by botanical artists using the latest colour-printing methods of the time. He aimed to include thousands of plants fr...

This week, my guest is Dr Neil Bell, bryologist at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and author of The Hidden World of Mosses, which takes a look into the minute and fascinating world of bryophytes.   If you've ever wanted to know how these plants live and reproduce, whether you can cultivate moss indoors or outdoors, what that green stuff is you find on the surface of potted plant's compost and...

My guest this week is Ben Raskin, the Soil Association's Head of Horticulture and Agroforestry. Ben is the author of several books on gardening, including Zero-Waste Garden and The Community Gardening Handbook. His latest book is 'The Woodchip Handbook', which I was very excited to read and even more excited to speak with Ben about, because I've long been a fan of using wood chip in the garden.  ...

This week's episode, I'm speaking to holistic funeral director, Holly Lyon-Hawk. It's not easy for most of us to talk about end of life, death and funeral arrangements and yet it's such an important thing to prepare for, it's unavoidable, it needn't be frightening or taboo, and it is something we can make easier for ourselves and our loved ones if we start a conversation around it whilst we still...

This week's episode I'm speaking to horticulturist, journalist, host of the On the Ledge podcast and author of a new book 'Legends of the Leaf', Jane Perrone. Have you ever wondered why the leaves of the Swiss cheese plant have holes? How aloe vera came to be harnessed as a medicinal powerhouse? Or why – despite your best efforts – you can't keep your Venus flytrap alive? If you're familiar with t...

My guest this week is Shawn Maestretti of Studio Petrichor, a design studio working out of California. Shawn's personal mission is to reconnect with the natural world, tread lightly on the land, nurture biodiversity, protect water, and bring people together. We speak about how Studio Petrichor designs with these values in mind and the systems and techniques that are used to achieve these goals. Dr...

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Roots and All where I'm speaking to both of the Seeds Sistas, Fiona Heckels and Kazzla Goodweather about their latest book 'Poison Prescriptions'. The book takes a look at three key plants; datura, henbane and belladonna aka the power plants. Steeped in political history, the mysterious past of our native power plants calls to us somewhere deep within. T...

Hello and welcome to this week's episode, where in recognition of World Autism Acceptance Week, I'm speaking about Sensory Gardens, with a focus on design for people with autism. I have three guests; Camellia Taylor who's designed The Natural Affinity Garden, which will be at the Chelsea Flower Show in May, after which time it will be relocated to Kent, to the charity Aspens where it will be used...

This week I'm speaking to Dr Anne Karpf. Anne is Professor of Life Writing and Culture at London Metropolitan University and is a writer, sociologist and award-winning journalist. In 2021 she released the book 'How Women Can Save the Planet', where she looks at how there is gender inequality across the board from how we experience the climate crisis to our ability to effect change. Dr Ian Bedford'...

This week my guest is Tim Richardson, who, amongst many other things, is a garden writer, historian and founder of the Chelsea Fringe. The Fringe is an annual event which is a collection of all things horticultural, the quirkier the better, and it runs concurrent to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show each May. Events are held around the world and are an opportunity to celebrate horticulture in an alterna...

My guest this week is Dr Ana Attlee, co-founder of the company Seedball. The idea for Seedball started to germinate in 2010 when Ana and her fellow PhD student Emily Lambert were looking into ways to successful start wildflowers from seed in order to encourage pollinators. 13 years later, Seedballs are stocked in respectable horticultural establishments all over the country and their range continu...

This week, I am delighted to welcome back champion of the soil food web, Jeff Lowenfels. Jeff is the author of the Teaming With series of books which look at what goes on at a micro level in the soil beneath our feet. His new title 'Teaming with Bacteria' lifts the lid on new findings about how plants use and interact with bacteria and he's here to give us the lowdown on this amazing relationship....

My guest this week is Hilary Collins who runs Hardy Eucalyptus at Grafton Nursery. Hilary researches the best way to grow Eucalyptus trees in the UK and also Europe. At the nursery, they run all manner of trials and Hilary writes papers and articles on Eucalyptus plus she has a book called Cut Foliage Eucalyptus – Fantastic Foliage and How to Farm it. She consults all over the world, and also work...

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Roots and All, where my guest is garden designer, TV personality and Trustee of the Gardening with Disabilities Trust Mark Lane. Mark talks about the various types of challenges people can face that might impede their activity in the garden, and how gardens and gardening can be adapted to enable people to carry on with these activities. He gives some exc...

This week's guest is Roger Hirons, a horticultural expert and speaker, who's been in the industry for over 35 years. Roger has just released a really excellent book called the Gardener's Guide to Hedges and Living Boundaries, which covers preparation and design advice for establishing a new living boundary; advice on dealing with existing boundaries in need of restoration or extension; planting fo...

Hello and welcome to this episode of Roots and All. This week, I'm speaking to landscape architect Sally Bower. Sally has just been awarded the main RHS prize for her Bursary Report titled 'Nature Rising from the Rubble' which looks at gravel and recycled aggregate gardens in Essex and London. Specifically, Sally looked at John Little's Hilldrop garden, RHS Hyde Hall, Beth Chatto's gravel garden,...

My guest this episode is the super-talented and creative gardener and designer Brent Purtell and we're talking about the Capitaspring Rooftop Garden in Singapore, which shares the '2nd highest' building ranking along with 3 other buildings, all the same height. There are 3 gardens on the building, covering an area of 10,000 square feet and containing a mixture of ornamentals and edibles, all growi...

To book-end the winter break, I'm sort of picking up where we left off by talking about a way to mark the passing of the year and the seasons and to ground yourself and your gardening endeavours in the natural patterns that govern them. My guest is Lia Leendertz, author of the annual The Almanac: A Seasonal Guide and she starts by talking about the origins of her almanac. Dr Ian Bedford's Bug of t...