Horticulture Week Podcast

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.

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'. 

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."

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.

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 businessThey 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. 

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.

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.

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

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 NurseriesConnie's story highlights that anyone, at any age can make a move into the horticultural industry.