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Horticulture Week Podcast


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  • 30. Careers in the landscape industries with industry heavyweight and APL general manager, Phil Tremayne

    18:51
    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.This week Neville Stein speaks to Phil Tremayne is the general manager of The Association of Professional Landscapers with more than three decades in the horticultural industry. Trained as a grower, Phil has moved through many aspects of the industry, but has spent the last 10 years with HTA and eight of those managing The Association of Professional Landscapers. In this podcast Phil describes the landscaping industry and discusses what opportunities are available in this exciting sector.

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  • 29. ICL - all about water quality

    13:46
    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 between growing media pH and water pH.Sam gives us the lowdown on the main considerations when using hard water and any options for people who have it. He also discusses the main considerations when using soft water and options for people using that more preferable type of water.
  • 28. Careers in the landscape industries with APL WorldSkills gold medal-winning landscaper Anna Mcloughlin

    16:15
    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.This week Neville Stein speaks to Anna Mcloughlin, a recent graduate from the College of Agriculture Food & Rural Enterprise (CAFRE) in Northern Ireland.Anna took home the Gold award at APL WorldSkills national finals which took place in November 2023 in Oldham, Greater Manchester. Very recently Anna has also been recognised by the Association of Professional Landscapers as a 'rising star' in the sector.  
  • 27. Leading growers Stefano Sogni of Zelari and Kyle Ross of Wyevale Nurseries on the Four Oaks Trade Show 2024

    17:01
    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 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.HortWeek editor Matt Appleby talks to Zelari Piante's Stefano Sogni and Wyevale Nurseries' Kyle Ross about the benefits of participating at the Four Oaks Trade Show, what exhibiting entails as an overseas exhibitor and a UK nursery, and their top tips for getting the most out of the show.They give recommendations for logistics, marketing, restaurants (Stefano reveals he's a big fan of British food) and accommodation. Kyle tells a story about a top footballer he met at the show.The nurserymen talk about their plans for Four Oaks 2024, to be held at Lower Withington, Cheshire on 3-4 September 2024. https://www.fouroaks-tradeshow.com/
  • 26. The future of green jobs with Billy Knowles of the Youth Environmental Service

    18:11
    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 the opportunity to do a year of paid environmental work."It's a great way to give something back, it's a great way to develop skills, and it's a great way to build connections to all of the other young people who are also worrying about the same problems [climate change, nature degradation and biodiversity collapse].After more than two and half years of campaigning, delegates at a Royal Parks Guild Annual Discovery Day voted 48-6 in favour of the idea of a green jobs guarantee. Knowles acknowledged some do not like the idea of national service because they think it would be mandatory, but he said it would be volunteer-based and would pay living wage for a year's work. The first pilot New To Nature pilot helped 97 young people into work and a new pilot will focus on the North West.One of horticulture's key challenges, Billy says, is improving access and diversity:"Sometimes we aren't sensitive enough to the variety of different needs and challenges there might be. A great example of this is physical access. If you're a young person who's grown up living in a city, and you might come from a sort of socioeconomically disadvantaged background, parents haven't got a huge amount of money to spend there, you might not have your access to your own form of transport, you might be used to taking public transport. How are you then going to go out and work in a sort of fairly rural role and an opportunity that would be fantastic otherwise, but you just can't physically get to?"The scheme aims to create "10,000 paid opportunities per year for young people working across nature, net zero and circular economy organisations and the Labour Party has already shown support for the plan. But Billy says "neither party has any real clear idea on how they're going to do that. What we offer is the answer to that question, how you create those green jobs and you start building that workforce."The policy isn't to fund every single one of the 10,000 jobs, it's to fund a small number and to create the framework around which other organisations are able to create their own."We're not building something that we want to last for two years, we want this to last for 50 years, and so what we need to do is have a really strong base and a strong foundation from which we can do that. And we need champions within parliament. We need champions within the civil service who can help us make that happen."Find out more at www.youthenvironmentalservice.co.uk. 
  • 25. ICL on vine weevil control

    16:30
    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 include nematodes and Lalguard. Rivers explains how these work and gives tips and advice on application.
  • 24. Make Parks Sexy Again! - the joy of parks with Paul Rabbitts

    30:02
    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!"His latest tome, People's Parks: the Design and Development of Victorian Parks in Britain, continues where the late parks historian Hazel Conway's People's Parks left off. It explores parks "beyond the Victorian era, right, through the Garden Cities movement, right up through austerity, Covid" and on."I just felt it was timely to bring what she'd done up to date but also kind of reinvigorate...interest in the kind of history and heritage of parks and why we have them, why we enjoy them and why they're so important".Among the fascinating facts unearthed during the research of the book was the vast difference in staffing of parks, with hundreds of qualified gardeners and park keepers employed in the days of London County Council. He also explores "Parkitecture" over the years, the marked change in the number and design of children's play areas, changes in parks management, tendering, and of course, funding leading to "a decline and eroding of what we do in parks." As ever on the Horticulture Week Podcast, the issue of labour shortages arises: "How is it you will attract somebody to work in parks these days? There's no pathway like they used to be. No career pathway at all...We're not getting the applications and where we are getting them, the quality is not very good."He speaks with characteristic passion about his love for the work he does and the work being done by Parks Management Association, APSE and other organisations to "make parks sexy again!" He also discusses severe local authority budget cuts and financial constraints which have forced some, such as Birmingham, into bankrupcy plus the myriad of pressures post Covid and arising from the 'cost of living crisis'. The logical consequence of all this is, he says, "there is going to be a greater emphasis on the third sector and on volunteers" and a "greater emphasis on commercialization".So, times are hard, he says, "but actually there's some really good stuff going on out there. I mean, the number of friends groups that we've got across the country are just incredible.As a Green Flag awards judge, Paul gets to see the best of parks and sometimes the most curious, like a bear pit "in the middle of the Wirral"There are plenty of reasons to be cheerful as some local authorities are "really making a difference".