HortWeek Podcast

Sean Higgs, of Floralive, is the foremost authority on peat-free cultivation of carnivorous plants. In this HortWeek Podcast he discusses his path growing peat-free plants which grow in peat in the wild,and the future of the houseplant market.After the bounce delived by the John Lewis 2023 Christmas venus flytrap advert he relates how that has continued to make the plant dominant in the market, the challenges of fulfilling demand with UK one-stop houseplant shop HortiHouse and how CITES rules have affected imports.

New HTA president Will Armitage started his career at The Barton Grange Group at Woodford Garden Centre before joining family business Armitage & Sons (Seeds) where he eventually became joint managing director.He was chair of the Garden Centre Association from 2014 to 2016 and says the big difference between now and then are the costs of employing people, which have risen 10% again he believes thanks to the Autumn Budget's changes to National Living Wage and employers' National Insurance Contributions. This means the industry will struggle to grow and could mean price rises, he says.Armitage has been on both sides of the fence, with supplier Mulch and running garden centres. His former Pennine centre has since been owned by Wyevale and now Dobbies has it for sale and Armitage says the private equity sale and leaseback model is proving to be unsustainable.He looks forward to a better weather year, with high hopes for 2025 helped by more industry Business Improvement Schemes and increased lobbying at Westminster.

Chris Hull, one of the stars of BBC One's Garden Rescue, is a rising gardening star, working with Charlie Dimmock and Alan Titchmarsh as the new face of garden makeovers.He got his first gardening job was when he was 15 at a country house hotel in Devon, and studied at Duchy College and for a garden design degree at Sparsholt College. Hull believes schools' thinking about horticulture as a trade is moving on from being somewhere where students are funnelled when they're "not doing so well" into being seen as a worthwhile career which generates billions of pounds for the country. He sees clear pathways through diploma or a degree or RHS courses for everyone.The Garden Rescue job came about through an advert at the Society of Garden Designers "and I thought why not?" He's just finished filming season 10 for broadcast in May 2025.He says long-time presenter Charlie Dimmock is "really, really amazing because she's just really fun and just knows everything". He's also been filming with her former Groundforce co-star Alan Titchmarsh on Love Your Weekend but can't choose who he prefers, joking: "I'll have one of them hitting me over the head with a shovel!"His inspiration for TV designs comes from the strong briefs he is given, for instance for someone with a disability who has not got great access into the garden: "We're making gardens on a real budget, and you've got to be creative with a way that you use very cheap materials to still deliver like quite interesting and bespoke design. So it's hard, but it's good fun, and hopefully it teaches people at home different ideas and how they can use materials."Hull recognises the show "can get a bit of hate from the landscapers in the industry because they believe it's misleading, which I understand. But the client's budget paid for by the BBC is £6,000 for materials only, with labour not included. There's a disclaimer, which he recognises is sometimes missed.He worked with Sid Hill and won a gold at Chelsea in 2024 on a garden, having been friends since they were about 14. Managing budgets with London logistics was tough but the experience was "really, really fun overall".Hull has no plans for another show garden but if he does another he'd like to make a mental health-themed garden because his father is a paranoid schizophrenic and an ambassador for the Rethink Mental Illness charity which works to break down the stigma around mental illness. Other industry experience includes working with JPL Landscape Architects and also Agrumi, on the nursery, and helping at 2021 Chelsea Flower Show when the Hampshire business exhibited with a New Forest theme.Looking ahead, with primetime garden makeover shows such as Love Your Garden no longer on, "there's probably a gap in the market. Garden Rescue remains well liked because everybody adores Charlie and it shows people how to do projects on a budget...and also it's quite lighthearted."What's really good about garden makeover shows generally, like a lot of the home 'reno' shows, is that they're quite repeatable. So I think they're always going to be picked up and kept on TV. I think there should be more to come. Any newer ones might move in more of a direction of maybe they're recycled gardens or upcycling or more sustainability-focused."

Crop technician Ross Dyke has a new project called Get Children Growing. He's a Plant Pod host and works at Bonterre CIC alternative education establishment near Worcester, teaching horticulture skills. An unassuming networker, he is also studying at Pershore College and is a Colegrave Seabrook and IPPS scholar.He left school at 14 and worked in various jobs before moving to Webbs Garden Centres and becoming a horticulture industry lover.To get Get Children Growing off the ground, to bring sunflower grow kits to children in schools across the UK, Dyke has worked with Amy Stubbs from British Garden Centres and Skinny Jean gardener Lee Connolly and with help from Mr Fothergill's, Westland, New Leaf Plants and Webbs Garden Centres.He said: "I believe every school should have a garden and it should teach children where food comes from and even where cut flowers come from. Because you go into these garden centres, you see the flowers in the pots and if you're a child, you don't know where they've come from, you don't know how they've been grown, you don't know how they've been nurtured. So I just want to educate the younger generation and you never know, it might inspire some to say, do know what, I want to do that for a living."For more Get Children Growing details, see www.theplantpod.co.uk

In the hot summer of 2022, RBG Kew lost more than 400 trees. By July 2024, Kew announced that it believed over 50% of its trees could be at risk by 2090 due to environmental changes due to climate change.This week's guest is Kevin Martin, head of tree collections at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew and he joined the HortWeek Podcast to relate the research Kew has done that led it to such a stark conclusion."What we started to look at first was mortality data, but we soon realized that that's a really unstable data set. can't always know why a tree or a plant has died in the landscape. It's not always due to environmental factors."We then started looking at climate modeling...and using species observation data to start building a better picture of the impact of climate change on the living landscape here at Kew.Perhaps surprisingly, the focus was not on identifying vulnerable species, but "the provenance of the seed".Kew studied its own environment, located as it is in "an urban heat island" on the edge of Greater London with relatively thin and poor soil, "so the effect of climate change is always exaggerated". To understand the plants that suited this environment, they found themselves in the Romanian steppe which proved a good match.His next trip will take him to Georgia to find more species that might thrive at Kew.Rather than building more and more glasshouses to create the right condition for plant collections, with their huge energy bills, botanic gardens must play to their strengths and grow the plants that fit their ecosystem and climate profile."And the native, the English native one is a really interesting question. "You've got Quercus robur, they all have a large distribution range. So we're now looking at their dryest range to understand how those trees have adapted...they will grow right up to the edge of Azerbaijan, right on the dryest edge of their range. So we're selecting seed from those areas to bring them back to Kew to understand how they've adapted."And the change needs to translate to all green spaces and gardens, large and public as well as domestic and small."A lot of the plants that we all go to the garden centre to put in our own private gardens, those trees have been selected for us realistically by the Victorians. A lot of those plants are available in commercial nurseries, they're all from the original plant collectors from the Victorian era especially, and they're the same cloned material that's just passed round."So it's really not just changing the planting palette within Botanic Gardens...This is a change of planting palette... and that does need support and investment in further research from government in order to support the commercial nurseries as well."I do think it's going to be the biggest shift we've seen since the start of the organisation back in the 1840s". 

Kate Ashbrook is an author and has been the general secretary of the Open Spaces Society for 40 years and counting, but she is first and foremost, a campaigner.On this week's HortWeek Podcast she recounts some of the best changes she has seen during her tenure - "the greater awareness of the importance of open spaces for the public and the greater awareness among the public of the importance to them of open spaces, paths, getting out there, enjoying the countryside and green spaces in towns.And the worst... "After 40 years, open spaces, commons and paths are still very much under threat. We haven't made that step change, which means that governments, local authorities recognise that actually open spaces and paths are so important that we need to invest in them fully. They may say they're important, but they don't actually put the money and the resources in."Current focuses include closing the "green space gap" in the current National Planning Policy Framework:"We don't see in the consultation, governments giving prime importance to green spaces. We think they should be at the core of all planning policies, thinking about the wider public and what people need and then framing the development around that... we shall be making suggestions of how government can give greater priority to green spaces." Rachael and Kate also discuss biodiversity net gain and how that interacts with the society's goals and wider issues.With a new Government in place she talks about her hopes for policy change and support for offering greater access to land and protection of common land that has always been at the core of the OSS's mission.She outlines the Open Spaces Society's long history - from its foundation in 1965 - which is bound up with the creation of the National Trust. And she recounts some of her own, fascinating career path and what motivates her."I really want to help people to campaign. 50 years ago, I got into campaigning because I met a wonderful person called Sylvia Sayre on Dartmoor and she was 50 years [older than me] and ]encouraged me and helped me and gave me opportunities. And I am thinking, well, I'm now the age that she was when I met her and it's my turn to kind of pass the baton to the younger generation. And I'm out there looking for people to talk to and to learn from and to help."Find out more at https://www.oss.org.uk/

HortWeek presents The End of Peat, a new four-part podcast series that will hear from leading horticulturists and garden retailers as they navigate a transition to peat-free that is piling pressure on a sector facing stresses on all sides.Over the four episodes, Christina Taylor explores the story of the UK peat ban, how the horticulture industry is facing up to the challenge, and how it might shape the future of the sector.In Episode 3: The cost of trial and error, Christina explores the two particular challenges faced by UK horticultural growers.Where peat-free might cause an amateur gardener to lose a batch of lettuce seedlings, professional growers face the loss of entire crops as many attempt to trial new, and quite alien, growing media mixes.Professional growers tell us their stories of trial and error, what they have learned in the process and discuss the fears that some plants and specialist nurseries will be lost to the UK for good.Series writer, producer and presenter is Christina Taylor

HortWeek presents The End of Peat, a new four-part podcast series that will hear from leading horticulturists and garden retailers as they navigate a transition to peat-free that is piling pressure on a sector facing stresses on all sides.Peat is one of the most popular and reliable types of growing media for plants, but peatlands are also a valuable store for carbon and as the UK Government tries to meet net zero targets, a peat ban is on the agenda.Over the four episodes, Christina Taylor explores the story of the UK peat ban, how the horticulture industry is facing up to the challenge, and how it might shape the future of the sector.Christina asks:Do we need a peat ban?Why is the transition to peat-free causing so much division and proving so difficult?And as the sector navigates the numerous challenges, she asks what is needed for the sector to survive, if and when peat ban legislation actually comes into effect.In Episode 2: From multi-purpose to pick 'n' mix, Christina explores the two particular challenges faced by garden centres. The first is the transition from selling peat-based compost to peat-free mixes. Challenges here include the variable quality of peat-free compost mixes, fears over supply of new ingredients, the higher price of these mixes and how they can help educate amateur gardeners learn to grow their plants. Many have found difficulties in germinating seeds prompting fears that thousands of customers, particularly those trying to Grow-Your-Own fruit and veg, may give up, costing garden centres valuable customers in the process.We hear about the initiatives from thought leaders in the industry on how these challenges can and should be addressed.The second challenge relates to the sourcing of plants that have been grown in peat-free compost. This is where the interests of retailers intersect with the growers as peat-free adds to cost pressures. Ways to grow so-called tricky plants continue to be elusive prompting fears that we may lose the ability to buy whole categories of plants in the UK.