The Cut Flower Podcast

CREATING STUNNING COMBINATIONS WITH JAMIE BUTTERWORTH

• Roz Chandler • Season 1 • Episode 136

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Text Agony Aunt Roz with your Cutflower Questions.

In this engaging conversation, Jamie Butterworth shares his journey from a young gardener to a successful horticulturist and author. He discusses the inspiration behind his book 'What Grows Together', his unique approach to gardening, and the importance of plant combinations. Jamie also reflects on the challenges of running a gardening business, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, and emphasizes the significance of teamwork. He shares insights from his experience working with Monty Don at the Chelsea Flower Show and concludes with a fun quick-fire round about his favorite plants and gardening tools.

Takeaways
Jamie Butterworth is a passionate gardener and horticulturist.
His book 'What Grows Together' aims to simplify gardening for beginners.
Gardening can be daunting, but it should be enjoyable and accessible.
Plant combinations are key to creating beautiful gardens.
The importance of teamwork in running a successful gardening business.
Working with Monty Don was a dream come true for Jamie.
Chelsea Flower Show is the pinnacle of gardening events.
Plants do die, and it's important to learn from failures.
Gardening trends are influenced by social media and public interest.

You can follow Jamie on Instagram here

You can get your copy of his amazing new book here

First Tunnels, leaders in domestic and commercial product tunnels. 


Roz (00:00)
I'd love to welcome Jamie, Jamie Butterworth over to our podcast today and many many congratulations. First of all a recent wedding I can't believe that you've only just got married and that you're talking to me and just got back from your honeymoon and that you have just released your book which we will be talking about and a little secret, gonna have a little preview to you all that nobody knows anything about later on. So he's known as Plantsman

underscore Jamie on Instagram so do go and give him a follow and that will also be in the show notes as will all the details about Jamie's book. So Jamie for listeners who may not know you yet, how would you describe what you do?

Jamie (00:40)
Ooh, that's a great question. Thank you for such an amazing introduction as well. I'm a gardener. I'm a plantsman. I'm a horticulturalist. And I think that in itself means I wear many, many hats. But primarily, I own a business called Form Plants, where we grow everything from 12-meter trees to three-liter perennials. And we mostly work with garden designers and landscape architects and landscapers in supplying them with hopefully the very best plants to make the very best gardens.

I also do a little bit of TV presenting on Gardener's World. I've just written a book, as you very kindly mentioned. ⁓ But fundamentally, I'm a gardener. I love growing plants. I love playing with plants. I love being out in the garden.

Roz (01:17)
You have.

So it all started a long time ago. So can you take us back to that nine year old? I can't believe this. I mean, I think when I was nine, I was collecting rose petals from the front of our garden. We lived in a new town, so it was all very new, not much garden. Collecting rose petals and making perfume was about as close as I got to gardening. But you discovered gardeners world at that point and you became hooked. Nine, that's a young age to get hooked.

Jamie (01:30)
Thank you.

Most nine-year-olds are watching Gardeners World, aren't they? I'm sure I can't have been the only one. I don't know why I was watching it. I was probably flicking through the channels. I came across the dulcet tones of Monty Don and he was sowing some seeds at the time and I still remember...

Roz (01:51)
Nice. ⁓

Jamie (02:05)
to this day sort of saying to my mum could I could I give that a go that looks really fun and she went off to Asda and got some seeds and some pots and some compost and it was only something as simple as a cornflower but that real life magic watching that seed germinate and grow and flower I thought wow this is I was hooked I still it's quite sad but I still find that real life magic I it

Roz (02:19)
at least.

So do I. 15 years later, I'm still running out to see whether they've germinated, you know.

Jamie (02:34)
It's from a cornflower or fruit to an oak tree that in that acorn has got the genetic information to grow a majestic oak tree. I just think he's incredible. And I genuinely think I've got the best job in the world. And what was, I think, probably quite funny in hindsight was being probably, I think I've always been a bit entrepreneurial and probably being a bit, well, not a bit, quite Northern. I read the back of the packet of the seeds and it said there's a thousand

seeds in this pack and I thought wow if I can grow all of these and germinate them all and sell each one for a pound I'm gonna be a millionaire by the time I'm 10 and I'm still trying to do that today at 31 years old I'm still trying to grow plants from seeds

Roz (03:19)
It's true.

It's true. Because actually, I spoke to a team yesterday, we're gonna have a plant sale next year, because their comment was, you know, in each of the packets was there were too many seeds for us to want to grow. And I know the seed production companies do that, because it's easier for them to do that rather than weigh it out too tiny. So and the cost of sale, the cost of the seeds is quite small. So you get 1000s of the things, but you are never going to grow. I mean, even on a commercial scale, like we do, we are never going to go 5000 cornflours. So

Yeah, plant sale is a good way to go. Maybe I'll be a millionaire if I do a plant sale and then a pound to to pot.

Jamie (03:52)
We could both give it a go.

It hasn't worked out so far for me yet, I must tell you that. But that... I don't know. this time next year, Rodney. Yeah, we'll...

Roz (03:58)
It's gonna be the book. It's gonna be the book.

There's always another year isn't there? That's the thing about gardening, there's always another year. ⁓

Jamie (04:11)
Exactly. There's always another year. And I'm a dreamer

as well. think that's why I love gardening so much as well, because I'm always like this time of year as well, I'm fantasizing about what I'm going to grow for next year, what we're going to stock in the nursery, what I'm going to plant in the garden, we're going to plant in people's gardens, seeing gaps in borders and working out what we plug them with, looking at how the plants are sitting together already in the borders and going, I want to change this and add this. that's what it's I.

I think as a dreamer that's my favourite bit about gardening actually. yeah, exactly. Exactly. But I love my job. think I've got the best job in the world and

Roz (04:40)
Well, it never ends, does it? It never ends. ⁓

Jamie (04:47)
Yeah, starting from nine, it's just sort of grown and grown from there really. When I was 14, I went, I realized I've always been very competitive, but always really rubbish at sports. My brother sort of was always much better at me than tennis and football and everything else. So I decided to try and get some trophies through gardening. And I went into exhibition vegetable growing. I joined the NVS, the National Vegetable Society, and I go to their meetings in Headingley on the first

every month and I loved it and when I was 14 I grew the longest carrot in Wakefield and that's my biggest claim to fame so far I Yeah and I think that sort of set the scene then when I realized that...

Roz (05:26)
that's better than winning the 25 meters in the Olympics? It's all relative, isn't it?

Jamie (05:37)
Even in gardening, could sort of bridge that competitive streak with something that I love so much. that's, think, then stemmed into ⁓ Chelsea Flower Show and everything else that I do as well. But I love my job. I think I've got the best job in the world, maybe after you.

Roz (05:49)
Yeah, I do too. I do. I think I've got the

best job in the world. So but it's challenging. Flower farming is challenging. I don't say that but it is the best job in the world. So your new book, What Grows Together came out in September, this month, September 25. So congratulations on that. What made you what inspired you to do something about what grows together?

Jamie (05:57)
It is.

Thank you.

The inspiration for the book actually came from reading Jamie Oliver's Five Ingredients book about five or six years ago and as somebody that's very time poor but loves to cook I found that book really

really interesting and a bit of a game changer for me in the kitchen because it was just it demystified everything it was so simple if you take these ingredients and do this this is what you'll get and then you can add to it and change it and whatever but actually you've got the base plate there to make something really quick really easy and really delicious i thought do you know what there's so much synergy between cooking and gardening in that we're a nation of gardeners everybody wants to have a nice garden but it can be quite daunting though to know where to start and in the same way

Roz (06:27)
Yeah, me too.

Jamie (06:56)
I go to a supermarket, never quite know what ingredients I'm buying. So to have somebody rather than a big long list of ingredients, and I think it's the same with gardening, rather than going, you need this, this and this, strip all that back. If you take these plans and do this, this is what it'll look like. And I thought.

there's gotta be something in this. And I want to try and in the same way Jamie's done with cooking, inspire as many people to get out in the garden and give it a go. And I think even just a trip to a garden center can sometimes be really overwhelming. And I think many people have, I've been in that position actually myself and I only know should you go in best intentions and a plant in my garden this weekend or a pot or a hanging basket or whatever it is. And.

you get overwhelmed by the thousands of different sort of scary names and scary growing requirements. And ultimately you end up buying what the garden centre that wants you to buy, think a lot of the time, which is tends to be what's in flower at the end of an aisle. And ultimately then they all just flower at the same time and odd. They might not look good together or worse. They might actually die. And that can be really off putting. So I wanted to give people the starting point and the confidence to go any one of these combinations in this book.

Roz (07:40)
Yeah.

Jamie (08:07)
there's 64 of them.

will look good in your garden. You can choose which one but also personalise it if you want to but more so just give that a go, have some success with it and that will give you hopefully the confidence to expand and develop and get the bug in the same way you and I have done and become gardeners. I think it's the same with any hobby. I took up fishing last year and I thought it would be as simple as going out and buying a rod and dangling it in the water and I'd catch loads of fish. I still haven't caught the fish yet and I went into the shop

and there was about a hundred different rods and a thousand different lines and a million different baits. ⁓ This is quite overwhelming, quite scary and quite off-putting and I guess once you get into it it's really good and really relaxing but it's the same with gardening and I just want to try and break down any barriers to doing it and I think by going down Jamie Oliver's approach we've created something that's...

I'm sure every author says this, but unique and very different to any other gardening book. I've never seen a gardening book. I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but...

Roz (09:09)
Yeah, no, it definitely is.

No, no, no, it's

not. mean, even as a flower farmer, I'm sitting on my desk as we speak, you know, I know a lot about flowers. Of course I do. But I only know the ones that I want to cut and are commercially viable. So that's very different from the borders in your garden. Now the borders in my garden are very neglected because I tend to only cut from them. I've got no ego. I cut from them if I need the stuff. But.

Jamie (09:28)
Yeah.

Roz (09:37)
actually looking at this it was quite interesting to see it's a lot bigger than that you know and and it and if you just follow the steps that you've laid out you know on texture and color and time of year because you know you can do that you can have you know let's say you just buy all spring then by the time the summer comes you've got nothing and then it's looking very very and then what do you do about the winter you know what you're to put in there that produces some sort of attraction in the winter so i thought it was interesting i thought it was a really really good approach actually

Jamie (10:06)
Thank you.

Roz (10:07)
But you're

focusing on plant combinations. know, it's quite powerful for everybody, isn't it? It's basically putting them together and working out what goes with what.

Jamie (10:16)
What's quite interesting is I pitched the book five or six years ago. So once I'd read Jamie's book, I first pitched it to a lovely chap called Chris Young and he worked with the publishers DK and he sort of helped find people that they could publish their books for. But I knew Chris anyway and I went to him with a pitch and said, I really want to do this. And it was pretty much exactly what we've created was that initial pitch. But he read my proposal and said, go away and learn how to spell and come back to

me and so I did do that and came back with a proposal and that took a few years to sort of go because it is so different to sort of I think get the confidence with the publishers because they didn't have any sales data on whether this would do well or not ⁓ and it was a bit of a risk there and to do something so different and eventually we got that over the line and they've been incredible throughout this whole thing.

but then also to do it in the way we've done it, we needed a full year to shoot it. This wasn't going to be a book that you can just shoot in gardens anywhere at any time of year. Obviously the beauty of a cooking book is you could probably do the whole book in a week if you needed to, because you could cook each recipe in 20 minutes. needed... Yeah, it really is. And you are so at the mercy of the seasons and the weather, obviously, as well. And...

Roz (11:30)
Yeah, a year is a long time writing and doing a book.

Jamie (11:41)
There's been a few combination books in the past that have maybe taken pictures of gardens and looked at closeups of flower combinations on this gym and the salvia and you're sort of looking at the flower head side by side, which are brilliant and they're really good books, but we wanted to do something really different and show the whole combination. So we built a stage in one of my poly tunnels and it was this vast, huge page.

Roz (12:04)
I was gonna... Right.

Jamie (12:07)
And in the middle of the stage we had a hall, and the hall was about a metre by metre, and we planted up all of our combinations into these metre by metre pots, weighed a ton, but we'd lift them in and out each time, dress around them. So you could have the scale of actually seeing how the combinations look side by side, but at maturity we'd let them grow rather than just getting a few plants from a garden centre and dropping them in and going, making it feel a bit false. So that took a lot of time as well. actually, so any combination that's made it into the book.

has a been tried and tested by me but as that's that is genuinely what it looks like as well and having the stage gave us sort of that neutral consistent background of a cookbook as well which I think really helps with the flow throughout the book

During this period of sort of from me going, I really want to do this. I love playing with plants. I want to help people put plants together in their garden and understand what looks good and what might not look good and give them the accessibility to do so. Plant combinations has become a really popular thing and there's quite a lot of mainstream.

big gardening companies now really leaning into that. And we've been watching them for the last 18 months, knowing that this book's coming out and going, I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but we know they definitely can't replicate what we've been doing, because we've had to shoot it over a year. But it's come out at a really good time, actually, as well, think. I think in the world of social media, where Instagram is at the moment, in a world where people actually more than ever want to go out the garden and give it a go, but don't know where to start.

Roz (13:15)
I don't understand.

take too long.

Jamie (13:39)
It's actually, think plant combinations is a big thing at the moment. And I don't think I'd ever imagined it would be as big as it is, but I'm really glad it is.

Roz (13:43)
No.

No, amazing, amazing, amazing. So can you share one of your favourite fail-safe pairings from the book? What would you, if we had one or two, how many are we allowing? ⁓

Jamie (13:56)
I'll tell you mine if you tell me yours because I'd love to know what yours is as a flower farmer

Mine's actually a really simple one in there. It's I can't I can't remember which number it is, but it's I've got two actually but it's a it's a hydrangea

Roz (14:12)
Yep.

Jamie (14:12)
and an agastache

and actually I think sometimes the simplest the the simplest combinations can often be the very best and a hydrangea limelight and an agastache black adder are two brilliant plants they will grow fantastically well in most gardens as long as they've got enough water they'll grow well in a pot they'll go well in the ground but fundamentally they look brilliant together and actually if you're just going to give two plants a go actually sometimes sometimes too much is never enough but also actually if you're just

getting going.

get those two plants, put them in your border or in a pot and they'll look great and that'll give you the confidence that actually I could add to this or I could start to introduce some grasses to it or some spring flower and bulbs and layer from there and actually I could mix another combination in with that and the other combination I really like and it's sort of it's very best at this time of year is Callicampus aphrodite which is the shrub with these most beautiful deep sort of wine red flowers and they flower

from mid-June through till now and they'll keep going until the frosts and I've paired that with a penstemon which is quite an old traditional plant that people might throw on the pond but actually the plum of that penstemon against the flower of that is really beautiful and then we've used ⁓ just Japanese forest grass underneath and around it to sort of soften it and three brilliant plants alone but put together makes this really sophisticated.

I

don't know if you can use that. Styling of plants and I know, but to be honest, I love them all in there. To get it down to those 64 was really challenging because we did well over 100 and that's what we actually grew and I wanted to do way more than that anyway, but there was a realism behind how big the book could be and how many words we could do and maybe we can get a second book out there at some point.

Roz (15:45)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

was just

about to say maybe a second book's coming there yet. Now you've been filming filmed it all. I mean, my favourite would be something I mean, I grow lots of salvias for lots of different reasons. I thought I can use them as a cut flower. I've got no ego here when they're in the borders. So it's great. And I'd like to grow them and you've got them with the ringium in your book, which I love too. So salvias, ringium together is interesting because you probably wouldn't have put them together. Yeah, really interesting. I mean, do you

Jamie (16:13)
Thanks

Okay, yep.

Yeah, another problem.

Yeah.

Yep.

Roz (16:38)
Do you tend to go for a color mix? you turn, where does color come into it? Cause I know some people are going, yeah, I'm to make all my borders all white or I'm going to make more blue or I'm going to, I don't do that. My borders are very mixed. ⁓

Jamie (16:47)
I think

it's subjective and you can do exactly what you want to do and I think it's important to say I've never trained as a garden designer, I've never been through any of the courses or anything like that where it's hey it tells you yeah. Do you know what I think so I think whenever I do Chelsea Flower Show I approach it as a gardener, whenever I do a garden I approach it as a gardener, as a plant man, I could tell you nothing about hard landscaping but actually everything I do is led by

Roz (17:02)
It's probably better.

Jamie (17:17)
right place and then putting them together and seeing what they do and trying to make people smile by putting plants together. But I don't have a science as such behind you must do this, this or this or actually you must go with the colour wheel and pair this with that. Because actually I've had the privilege of meeting Paul Smith a few times now, the fashion designer, and actually he says the same thing.

Roz (17:45)
Who's my husband's favourite, by

the way.

Jamie (17:47)
he is but he is very

good but actually you there isn't a single color combination that hasn't already been replicated by nature at some point we think we're being brilliantly ingenious in coming up with putting this and that together but actually that's already been done and it's taken inspiration from nature but no one will never beat it so actually just having some fun and playing and if you want to put reds and yellows and whatever together brilliant do it your garden have fun they're only plants at the end of the day if it doesn't look good you can change it next year

Roz (18:16)
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And there's something about getting wrapped up in trends as well. I mean, we do it as flower farmers, we get a bit wrapped up in it.

you know once the blooming Pantone colour of the year has been announced we know that the bride of the year is going to want that colour and next year it happens to be that horrible brownie mocha chocolate and I'm thinking how can we work with that but it was this year of sort of apricot and so everything had apricot in it and you kind of go yeah it's weird it's almost like it follows the fashion trend so you know without exception I'd say 90 % of the brides want apricot well it's never been that before it's weird

Jamie (18:39)
I love it.

I think we, Dev, did we have quite a lot of apricot at our wedding?

More blush pinks. I'll do a bit of apricot.

Roz (18:56)
Yeah, blush pink's always a winner. We'll go blush

pinks, always.

Jamie (19:01)
I've never

paid much attention to weddings before my own, to be honest. Probably a good thing. But yeah, I was amazed at how much goes in. Because we worked with the most brilliant florist and had the most brilliant cut flowers. And we layered into sort of all these hydrangeas. But I didn't quite realize that we were probably subconsciously following a trend, even though that's sort of what I do today. We're probably being led a bit by that as well.

Roz (19:04)
Thank

Jamie (19:31)
And I now love weddings

Roz (19:33)
Yeah, me too. Me too. mean, we're still doing it. And people, flower farmers come into weddings and go out of weddings because they're tough. They are tough. They're physically tough and they're tough in terms of having the right stuff at the right time and all that. And a little bit stressful, but I love them. I love them. We've probably done 500 and I still love them. So it's fine.

Jamie (19:40)
Yeah.

I think there's probably a lot of synergy between what you do with that and what we do with like Chelsea Flower Show, although we only do that once a year, but it's trying to make sure everything's in flower at the right time and looking it's very best for the 21st of May. But we've got a whole year run up to that one event and you're probably doing two or three weddings a month. don't know. ⁓ And that's a lot.

Roz (20:09)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I know it's also

almost you go around like I did yesterday around the farm where you almost with a brown label and saying, right, OK, we've got a wedding this weekend, which is predominantly white with some hints of purple, which is actually fabulous for this time of year. So you basically go around and go, OK, well, we're not touching any of that because we're going to we need that for that. And you're kind of reserving it all. You're making sure you've got enough of it. But I suppose experience tells me, have I got enough? When is it coming in? And ⁓ yeah, so.

Jamie (20:18)
Yes.

But it's addictive as

well, isn't it? The joy of making people smile and I guess there's nothing better than, a wedding is so much, Chelsea Flower Show is amazing and I love it, but a wedding is so much bigger in so many ways. It is the biggest day of that person's life. And the flowers are one of the most important bits of that day. So no pressure.

Roz (20:41)
completely.

Yes.

Yeah.

When you do a family one, which I am doing in October, a pretty big one up in Shropshire, I met my nephew last night and we're just talking it all through. That's more stressful. That's much more stressful because you've got to sit there and look at it all day, number one.

Jamie (21:09)
Yeah, I can, can, right.

that I felt that for my own wedding I had the conversation we got married at the most beautiful venue called Ascombe Hall up in the Lake District and it's already naturally a beautiful place and I said I can either do nothing because this is what I do for a living I can either sort of park it and not be involved at all or it's got to be some of my best work and

up until about a month before I was adamant I wasn't going do anything. And then I had a bit of a brain shift and went, actually no, I can't do that, I've got to do a lot. then I felt the pressure, because obviously it's for my best friend, I want it to be the most amazing day for her. And then sort of just built the pressure repping up and up and we ended up sending four lorries of trees and shrubs up there and it all got a bit silly in the end.

⁓ I can relate to what you're saying in that I was sat there going, shit, I hope she likes this. Sorry for the swearing.

Roz (22:01)
So, you get it.

Exactly, exactly that. know, like

his is really big. He'd been planning this wedding for two years. They know exactly what they want and it's big and the venue is beautiful. They could do nothing. Same thing. But the pressure's on. It'll be fine. It'll be fine. We haven't let anyone down yet. So I don't intend to do it on my nephew, but yeah.

Jamie (22:14)
Yeah.

I love it.

You'll nail it. sure. Yeah. Have fun.

Well I hope it goes really well for you.

Roz (22:34)
you'll probably see it on Instagram.

So where can our listeners buy your book? Because I've got a copy here and I'm very lucky to have a copy in front of me.

Jamie (22:43)
All good bookstores, I think is the appropriate answer to that. It's everywhere. It's on Amazon. a lot of people don't like Amazon and it's in all...

Roz (22:46)
Yes. ⁓ So it's everywhere. You can get in anywhere.

Jamie (22:57)
local bookstores, it's in Waterstones, there's an online bookshop, bookshop.org I think and that interconnects a lot of local smaller bookshops and that's a really nice place to buy from. ⁓ I think because it's...

because it's doing quite well at the moment, which I don't think I'd expect to the author. If I'd have sold five copies, I'd have been really happy. It's no cheaper to get it from Amazon than it is to get it from a local bookshop. So if you can get it from a local bookshop, then that would be a really nice thing to do. But yeah, I don't think people have got any issues finding it. it's already done way better than I hoped for imagined it ever would do. It was in the Sunday time.

Times

bestselling list last week. ⁓ We were sixth last week. Jamie Oliver was first in our category and this week we're fifth. And that's an exclusive because I only had that phone call about half an hour ago. And we think it might only be the second ⁓ gardening book to stay in the Sunday Times bestselling list for two weeks in a row.

Roz (23:42)
which is amazing.

climbing.

And it's hard this time of year, end of September, because you've got all

the Christmas launches coming in.

Jamie (24:11)
I haven't really paid much attention to it. It's a world that I don't really understand, but as soon as there was an ounce of competitiveness thrown into it, I got quite interested. How many do I need to sell? And then we realised that of all the people on all the days Jamie Oliver brought his new book out on the same day we brought mine. So I actually wrote to him and said, just so you're aware.

Roz (24:18)
Put back to that carrot again. I'm gonna win. I'm gonna win.

Can you take the book out? ⁓

Jamie (24:41)
Just so you're aware this book is being inspired by you, and I think you're brilliant I think you're a great guy and Here's a copy. I really hope you like it and best of luck with your book and he and he sent a really lovely message back as well saying you thought it was really interesting and Best of luck with it, which I thought was really lovely It's really not everybody I've ever met has only had the very best things to say about that man, and I love that as well. He's

Roz (24:58)
Yeah, that's really nice.

Yeah,

yeah, because you expect, don't you, would expect to hear something else but you don't, if when you don't you start to think, hold on, he's pretty good at this.

Jamie (25:13)
Yeah, he's just a properly genuinely nice bloke and fortunately we both made it into the Sunday Times Best Selling List. But how incredible is that? I mean, it's just been the most... I'm really worried that this whole year has been this big fever dream and I'm gonna wake up at some point and it'll be the first of January and I've got to do this all again or it won't have happened because I've built a garden at Chelsea with Monte Don, I've got married, my books just come out, it's in a Sunday Times Best Selling List. I know.

Roz (25:39)
I know, you're gonna wake up on the first of January

and think, what was that?

Jamie (25:43)
I presented at Chelsea Flower Show, I'm presenting in the garden world well. These are all things that, everything that's happened this year is sort of being, every time something's happened I've gone, okay, I'm not gonna be able to beat that moment. That's so special. And then something else comes along, I'm like, oh my God. I don't know what's happening, it's really weird.

Roz (26:01)
and then to put out a book and then get married and go on honeymoon and then come back. It's like.

Jamie (26:06)
It's been quite an,

you know, I feel quite tired actually. I, yeah, it's in the space of three weeks we've got married and the book came out and we've been on honeymoon or actually Devon keeps Devon's my wife and she keeps calling it a mini moon. So we're embracing for what the actual honeymoon will be. I've never heard of a mini moon before.

Roz (26:25)
Yeah, no,

no, no. Well, it's quite, it's quite cool and trendy to have a mini moon. A mini moon is a small European getaway or a small UK one, but that's not your real honeymoon. Cause your real honeymoon has to be somewhere that you probably would never go again. So that has to be your Japan or your South America or your Galapagos Islands or something really, really over the top.

Jamie (26:30)
You sir.

Okay, well.

Who's it playing this?

I hope she can't hear you because Galapagos Islands would probably be high. ⁓

Roz (26:53)
Ha

They are wonderful. My daughter went on a world expedition thing. So, you

know, she's 18 and she's going off on a world expedition to Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. I'm thinking, where did I go wrong? So, and it was amazing. And it is all very much Charles Darwin and the origin species and all of that. And it is on my bucket list. So actually, I think that's a really good idea because you would only go once.

Jamie (27:04)
wow.

reason. Yeah.

Well.

That's what she was on the flight back from Venice last night. That's what she was explaining to me that this was a mini moon But we're gonna go somewhere a bit further away for the main honeymoon Which should be fun I Don't you know what I I don't I don't travel much it's probably one of the things that I probably should do a lot more of that I don't because I Love being at home. I love being in the garden. I love being at the nursery and you'll probably be related, but actually I get such

Roz (27:28)
Sorry, but I'm in agreement.

Yes.

Jamie (27:47)
FOMO and panic when I'm not at the nursery because I'm worried that everything's suddenly died or there's been a hailstorm or whatever's happened. And so actually it takes me a while to sort of adjust to that anxiety of not being at the nursery. maybe I need, Dev and my wife love travelling so I'm probably going to need to work that one out.

Roz (27:54)
Anyway.

your

game, up your game. Right time of year, although there really isn't a right time of year. As a cut flower farm, I've worked that out, there isn't a right time of year. But I have a team now and I just go. You know, having just gone two weeks in September is probably not the best time ever to go. But then, you you sort of think, when is? Well, December, not really. Okay, well, we're moving into January. Okay, January is probably your only month.

Jamie (28:17)
Yeah, that's the key. That's the key.

Roz (28:31)
because by then you're back into seed production and everything for the spring and so on. So January is your window. That's it.

Jamie (28:38)
Yeah, I'm with you there. We're very limited and restricted to the jobs that we do, but we love our job so it's fine. But you just touched upon it then.

I can do more of this now because I've got the most brilliant, incredible team around me who are there all the time. And actually it's really good in a lot of ways and really bad actually in a really selfish way that they get to do all the fun jobs now and get to do all of the sowing and the propagating and the growing and the loading of all the stuff that sort of I love the most sort of as the company's growing and the spawn plants are growing. I now push paper around in an office and...

Roz (29:05)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jamie (29:18)
and do

all the stuff that actually I hate doing. So I probably need to address that at some point, but it does make me more of a god.

Roz (29:25)
But it's true, if you've

got a really good team.

It can carry on without you. you know, like yesterday I went out, you know, I have to go out and have a look, see what's going on every day, of course. And they were creating leaf mould, which was amazing. And then they're more compost and they were being very strict about what goes where. And I was like, all right then. And then they start and seed sowing for the hardy annuals for the winter and so on. And I think they're all in control. They don't need me. They really don't need me. So it's a good thing. I mean, last year when I was ill and I took a lot of the year out, it was our best year we'd ever had.

So does that tell you that sitting on the sofa being ill and just doing lots of admin makes it more successful or does it, you know, or is it building an amazing team?

Jamie (30:06)
It's building the amazing team and it's one thing that I've struggled with as well. It's the same with you. When I started, I was potting every plant, was growing every plant, I was taking every order, I was loading it, was delivering it, and I loved it. But actually, for the business to grow and scale and do well, you need to start...

Roz (30:19)
Yeah.

Jamie (30:26)
diverging responsibility, surrounding yourself with the very best people and surround yourself with people that are much better than you at what they do as well and I've managed to sort of bit by bit take stuff away from me and I really struggle doing that actually it's a really hard thing really.

Roz (30:45)
Thank you.

Jamie (30:47)
when it's your business and you own it and you feel like you know everything about it you do and it's your baby it's challenging to go okay well you do that and actually the best thing you can do is I'm not going to get too involved I'm going to let you do your job and I'm here if you need anything from me and let's check in all the time but fundamentally that's your job now and you own it.

Roz (31:01)
it.

Yeah, I just, when they're not here

at the weekend, because the farm is part of our house, when they're not here at the weekend, I can go and play, you know, I can sit under the trees that they sit in during the week and plot up some seeds, or I can do some pricking out, or I can just choose what I'm going to do.

Jamie (31:21)
Do you find yourself

getting in the way? Because I find that actually when I'm at work during the week that actually I go and do something and actually, but I'm probably interfering with stuff.

Roz (31:30)
yeah, yeah and we've got this WhatsApp

group and they'll put on it that what I've done wrong. Don't you know?

Jamie (31:34)
Well, there's a WhatsApp group that I'm not allowed to be part of it for.

Roz (31:39)
Yeah, no, I'm allowed

in mine, but they do tell me if I do something wrong, like I've over watered something or I haven't propagated it properly or it's, know, actually the tip of that is too soft, Rose or whatever happens to be. It's like, right. Okay. I mean, I love propagating. It's what I really love doing because I love getting plants for free. mean, that's fundamentally what I like doing. And it makes me feel it's like going back to a child again that you've got something for nothing. and, but I'm not allowed to do too much of it because they take, they like that too. So.

Jamie (31:48)
Hey!

Yes.

Roz (32:09)
it's like, yeah. But it's interesting, isn't it, how you build business.

Jamie (32:13)
It is. the other thing is, and I don't know your background as much, but I've never studied business. I'm a gardener, I'm a plant-sman. I've learned the business side of things as I've gone and I started off doing it because it was something that I really enjoyed and loved. But I've sort of learned that I've a hell of a lot of mistakes.

Roz (32:36)
Yeah, me too.

Jamie (32:38)
as well, but actually you can't teach how to own and run a business. You've just sort of got to find something to go with it and run with it and see what happens.

Roz (32:45)
Go Gatsby.

Yeah, I'm the opposite.

Actually, I was not a horticulturalist at all. I was all self taught. I've never done an RHS course. I've never done anything, you know, done courses, but not studied as such. I've been doing it 15 years. So I kind of learned a lot about it. But basically my background is business. So I was a marketing sales director. So I came the other way into horticulture, which is quite rare.

Jamie (32:52)
Okay.

Good.

Much better way doing it.

So you'd know how to do cash flow forecasts and ⁓ profit and loss and all of those things that I had no idea about. ⁓

Roz (33:17)
Yeah.

Yeah, unfortunately, yeah. I mean, I

set my first business up in 2020, so 25 years ago. It wasn't in this at all, it in Horts Culture. And I've had seven businesses. yeah, so I approached it very differently. I've approached it from a, well, if you want to have a successful business, got to do all this.

Jamie (33:29)
what?

well.

Mm.

Roz (33:39)
And

I actually, hand on heart, as a cut flower farmer, think that 80 % of it's in the marketing and 20 % is in the growing. Now I wouldn't say that too loudly, but it's the truth of a cut flower farmer, because unless you've got somewhere a market to sell it to, or unless you've got end users, unless, those flowers are a depreciating product. So your tulip has come up in April the 15th, and if you haven't sold it by April the 20th, you've had it.

Jamie (34:02)
Hmm.

Roz (34:02)
So

there's no point putting in 10,000 bulbs and not thinking where you're going to sell them to. So kind of I've approached it from that way around and teach flower farmers how to make money fundamentally, because unfortunately it's a very easy way of being a flower farmer is to lose money. It's really easy to do that. Really, really easy to do that because it's like you can spend all your time growing and you spend all your time choosing and then you have this field of plants with no one to sell them to. So that's the biggest issue.

Jamie (34:20)
Yeah.

Yeah, ⁓

I think there's a lot of synergy between cut flower farming and nursery production as well because we've got to be able to shift those plants. They've all got ⁓ a lifespan in the pot. We can't have ⁓ a potted plant on our nursery for longer than three or four months or you've lost all value in the space is a premium and there's value to that.

Roz (34:51)
Yeah, it's an asset. Space

is an asset. You've got to know that.

Jamie (34:53)
Basically.

And fundamentally, that's where it's a really hard balance to find actually in growing plants that people want ⁓ and people use all the time, but actually doing the exciting stuff as well, but risking not selling that, but that actually draws people in for the slightly more exciting jobs that we want to do. a bit of it's a loss leader in a way to sort of have exciting plants. Show me your exciting plants.

Roz (35:14)
Yes.

Jamie (35:23)
but nobody would ever phone us up and ask for a, I don't know, three meter tall, ⁓ whatever, X, Y, or Zed, but actually if you come down to the nursery and you see it, you might go, yeah, that's great. So it's a really hard balance to find, and obviously as a plantsman I just wanna do the really exciting stuff.

Roz (35:44)
Yeah, of course you do. Yeah, and it's the same thing for us. You know, we want to grow chocolate cosmos, but you know,

seven pound fifty for four seeds wholesale. That is and it's a tender perennial. So actually you lose it during the winter. It's actually not viable. OK, it's not commercial and it's not going to work. But it is quite nice to do. So you just, you know, I'm allowed a little bit of that, but not too much.

Jamie (35:52)
Really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Roz (36:08)
you know, we know what sells well and what to move. And we know what the trends are doing next year. And that's also quite exciting. We know we've already got our planting list for whole of next year. We know what we're doing. We know how much of everything we're doing. We know how many stems we grow. So you've got to know how many stems you grow to how much each one sells for to how much money you're going to make. It's basically as fundamental as that. So I spend a lot of time on spreadsheets, which is very boring.

Jamie (36:28)
Yep.

I do love a spreadsheet actually. I do really love a spreadsheet. But I guess what you've done in sort of as you're talking about trends and markets and what will people buy influences what you grow. Actually by doing what you've done in creating the social media following that you have you're influencing that in your own way as well which is genius.

Roz (36:56)
Yeah, I've created

this business which is madness, but anyway, I don't know how it happened. That's another one that happened by mistake. So form plants has grown, hasn't it, you formed it in 2020? Obviously you did it just before COVID. That was probably... Okay, what was the most challenging then? I mean, did you still have a market? Did you still manage to get it out there?

Jamie (37:11)
a week before Kairabrid we launched it. ⁓

Yeah, well we survived that bit and actually I think longer term COVID in the very beginning bit and I think it was the same for every business, no matter your sector, was almost blind panic of we've never been through one those before, we don't know what's happening, we don't know what to do, we don't know what to expect. As it happened...

Roz (37:38)
Yeah.

Jamie (37:43)
Gardens and gardening was one of the best sectors to be in because it was one of the only things that people could still do so people needed plants and garden centers could open and We were eased out of it quite quickly, which was very lucky so there was a period of I don't know a few weeks or maybe a few months at the beginning of it where fortunately it was just me and I had my mate Danny who started it with me and He just went back up north for a bit. We've got no money. We've got no income

I've got bit of savings I'll keep going at this for a bit and I just tended to the plants and then started phoning up garden designers and saying that I've got these plants I've grown them do you want them and then every plant that we sold

I'd make a couple of quid on and then I'd bank that money and buy more plants and completely where you're saying yours is quite sort of data driven and you know what you're doing. I had no clue. I just grew plants that I liked, that I thought designers might quite like. And fundamentally the whole premise of form stemmed from having worked in the nursery trade for my whole life pretty much when I was a teenager. started working in nurseries and always have done.

I spent a few years just before.

setting up form, just doing soft landscaping, so going around and planting up people's gardens in London and the South East and wherever they wanted me to go to. And I just found it really frustrating getting what I wanted, where I wanted it, when I wanted it. And it just felt like such a fundamental basic sort of like, I'm a customer, I would like to buy this. I don't really care how much it is at the moment. My client's going to pay that as long as they're comfortable with it. That's fine. I don't need to get too involved. But what do you mean I can't have it in on Thursday in three weeks time? You can

only

have it on a Wednesday. was like, why? I don't get it. anyway, and most nurseries are brilliant, but some of the ones I was dealing with and they were the big ones. And I was like, this is, this is unnecessarily painful. And as somebody that loves growing plants and love supplying people plants, I found it really quite sort of disheartening that it was becoming quite. ⁓

It was probably a bit too of businessy for me and I wanted to try and make it just a bit more enjoyable, which I see possibly where I get a lot wrong actually. And thought, do you know what? I've always loved growing plants, I've always loved doing it. I managed to get a bit of land just outside Windsor, a place called Dorney in an old herb nursery. And they gave me one tunnel, these Spanish tunnels that would sort of collapse at the first sign of wind.

Roz (40:13)
Yeah.

Jamie (40:14)
and not brilliant and just started from there and I think by that point a few people in the industry sort of knew who I was so I wasn't a completely unknown entity I'd been I worked at other nurseries and knew these designers and picked up the phone to them and said if I could grow it, yeah how can we work together this is what I do this is what I want to do and let's take it from there and it's then sort of grown organically from there

Roz (40:33)
Yeah, right. ⁓

Jamie (40:44)
And now we've got ⁓ an eight acre site in Chertsey, which is sort of, it's a hybrid between a nursery and a showroom. Cause that's the other thing I really wanted to do is in the same way I've done with the book, I wanted to do the same with the nursery itself. And I've been so many nurseries where you can wander around them for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, not seeing anybody. And then somebody comes out quite grumpy and goes, what do you want? What you want? So we've built, we've built the other way around with sort of

Roz (41:08)
Yeah.

Jamie (41:13)
built a showroom is how we like to sort of describe it in that you arrive and you can't not see anybody. If you want to wander around by yourself that's absolutely great but we've ⁓ quite cheaply built these shipping containers and clad them in charred scaffolding boards. They look quite good and inside we've plastered it and decorated it all out quite nicely but then all the trees are laid out in a way that

shows you how to plant them, how to grow them, what goes well with what, what certain areas and there'll be somebody always to sort of take you around and hold your hand. Because actually, whether you're doing it for the first time or whether you're a garden designer that's been doing it for 20, 30 years, there's always something to learn. Nobody knows everything. So it's sort of we add the

What I wanted to try and do was create this center of excellence. We are the experts in this particular field. We know very little about everything else, but actually if you want to know what tree to plant there or what plants to go with it or how to put plants together, we can help you with that. And it's sort of grown from there really. yeah, so from the sort of growing a few hundred plants in a Spanish polytunnel on the herb farm to today, it's only been five years and it's...

Roz (42:23)
Yeah, I know. That's

Jamie (42:24)
A lot's happened

Roz (42:25)
massive.

Jamie (42:26)
and that's one of my hairlines receding. A lot. ⁓ But I still love it and I love it.

Roz (42:31)
In five years, that's

amazing. Is it open to wholesale and retail then in Chertsey? Yeah.

Jamie (42:36)
Yeah,

we're just about to take over our second site as well, will be perennials only, which will be 10 minutes down the road, but enables us to, that's one of the other things I've learned actually. I want to do everything. I want to grow everything. And I still try to do that, even though I know it's not the right thing to do. But where we had real struggles was actually,

doing big trees and small plants on the same site. They're two very different products. They need complete different amounts of water, fertilizer, nurturing, and also a different type of people to look after them, which sounds a bit weird, but typically the guys that are looking after the trees are a bit more sort of like they like the big machinery and they like moving it around. And then the people that are growing the perennials, probably a bit more sort of softer, more nurturing gardeners. And both are brilliant and I employ both.

I love them both to pieces, but actually you need two sets of different people to do that. So actually on the on our current site, we'll just do 50 litre up and then on our new site we'll do 50 litre down and as a quite a nice balance down as well.

Roz (43:34)
Yeah.

It's interesting with

perennials, we are encouraging all of our cut flower farmers to grow more and more perennials and more and more drought resistant because perennials are more drought resistant than annuals anyway. But, and the ones that will survive will be your perennials. And I actually categorically, if you took your whole plot, I would say you need at least 65 % of it to be perennials. Where historically, I think flower farmers have grown loads of annuals and obviously you need foliage.

Jamie (44:04)
Thanks.

Roz (44:10)
but there's a lot of time and effort goes into producing annuals. And of course you still need to do them because everybody loves the cosmos, we get that. But unless you've got a main backbone of perennials, I think it's pretty challenging. And that perennial will keep giving and giving and giving. So value wise is much better. And if you get your perennial right, I really believe that it's about 65 % of your stock. you know, you've got to start buying them, getting them in, you've got to start growing them.

Jamie (44:35)
I love doing, for us it's sort of, it's the same but also the other way around in that, perennials, I love grey and it's probably the bit that gives me the most joy but probably makes up 20 or 30 % of our sales because the value of them is much lower than the other sales. Ironically, 60 % of our sales comes from hedging which bores me to pieces. I shouldn't say that, it's great and it's brilliant.

Roz (44:55)
Yes.

Petty's loving,

Laura who loves her lawn, everybody loves their lawn.

Jamie (45:04)
Hedging is brilliant, love it.

But nobody ever buys one hedging plant. You buy 20, 30, 40, 50 meters of hedging. so that actually helps us to pay for the bit that I really enjoy doing, which is the perennials. But you have to sell a lot of perennials at five quid each to get an 80 quid hedging unit. And even then you're going to be buying several of those.

Roz (45:11)
Yes.

You do.

You get a flower farmer to spend a fortune on perennials, which is currently what I add to my perennials all the time.

Jamie (45:37)
You must do bare root and that sort of stuff. And

of course you can lift and divide and I guess, but I guess it's getting that stuff going to start with.

Roz (45:43)
You don't do that.

Yeah, loads of, yeah, you've got to start the stock, haven't you? And you've got to get it in the ground and you've got to know that, you know, you're not dividing it for two or three years. So you've got to.

you've got to invest in the perennials which is the hardest bit but you've got to do it early enough to make it and foliage I mean a good foliage plant we wouldn't be cutting it for three years but then you come 10 years later if you look at a Pfizer Carpus or a Cotinus or a Viburnum Tinus now which are very common foliage plants for cut flower farmers they're enormous I mean our Pfizer Carpus is probably eight foot

Jamie (46:06)
Yeah.

Really.

Roz (46:21)
So you you're doing lots of arch and you know, you've got to get it in early enough. Like the first thing you do is get it in and then, so you've got to invest in it.

Jamie (46:25)
Yeah.

As I say, with gardening as a whole though, isn't it as well, I guess, and it's probably why we love it. In fact, it's that forward, you have to forward plan when you're doing a garden. It's never an instantaneous moment in time sort of thing. You've got to, you've got, yeah. And that goes back to the dreaming thing as well, actually. I love to dream and plan and plot and work out what I'm going to do. And obviously what we're discussing now is very much on a commercial scale, but if you've got a pot in your front garden, it's the same thing.

Roz (46:32)
Yeah, yeah.

No, looks very, gotta do the work.

Same thing. I always say it's the same

thing. So you've achieved a goal at Chelsea and worked with designers at the very high level. You've done the Place to Be Garden in 2022, which I know was a huge project.

In 2023, you project managed a letter from a million years past. That was quite interesting. How different was that? And can you tell us about the dog friendly garden? We all heard about the dog. I mean, that was a big thing, wasn't it? With Monty Don The dog friendly garden was interesting.

Jamie (47:26)
Yeah, well Monty's the reason I got into gardening and they say you shouldn't work with your hero but I built a Chelsea garden with mine and I think if your hero is Monty Don I can't recommend it enough, he's brilliant and we just, just in the garden at Hampton Court last year

in 2024 and it was fun but as with any show gone it was quite challenging and I think the day after we finished the breakdown I got back to the office and my team were all really tired and I think a bit beaten up by everything and I said look I promise you we won't do shows next year and they said ⁓ that's great thanks very much and at four o'clock that afternoon I got a phone call from the most amazing lady who's called Hayley at the RHS and she's the director

actually comes there and I love Hayley to pieces she's she's brilliant and she's got this ability to ⁓ I can't say no to her ever because she's so lovely and she phoned me up and she said would you be interested in doing Chelsea next year and I said hey Hayley look I'm really sorry to have to do this to you but I have to promise my team I can't I can't do it she said well just hear me out for a moment first because you might be interested it's it's a dog garden and went ooh

I do really like dogs that they are that that would really interest me actually but no I'm sorry I can't do it she said it's it's with Monty Don right

Roz (48:50)
Right.

Jamie (48:53)
Well, this is slightly different. said, he has specifically asked for you by name. I was like, oh my God, that's mental. I said, okay, well, that's a lot to think about. She said, well, just wait a second, because actually, Joe Wiley and the whole of BBC Radio 2 are going to be the media partners for it. So it's going to probably get quite a lot of exposure. It's Europe's biggest radio station. And Joe's going to be really pushing it. And I really like Joe. Joe's been a friend of mine for the last five years. I was like, oh my God, that's really challenging.

And she went, oh, and the Queen's involved. I was like, OK, great. Well, yeah, sign us up then. Fine, let's do it. And I had to go and explain to my team that we were going to do it. But what was really hard was I couldn't tell them. At that point, was sort of like in the media, NDA, obviously, because of who it was and the people involved, there was a huge sort of worry that it might leak out to the press. Obviously, Monty is of sort of a lot of interest, especially when you're dogs and everything else.

Roz (49:31)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I was gonna say, these dogs, yeah.

Jamie (49:53)
So yeah, yeah

exactly I couldn't tell anybody for ages. I called Devon and I got permission to do that because I was like I need to tell somebody and then had the most incredible experience working with Monty and the one thing everybody asks me.

is did Monty actually design the garden? And he genuinely did. He designed that garden completely and he was one of the very best people I've ever worked with on any project ever because he had such attention to detail. think he really...

Roz (50:16)
Yeah.

Jamie (50:29)
I think A, he didn't need to do this. He really didn't need to do this. I remember, said, why are you doing this? Because actually you've got everything to lose and not a lot to gain from doing this. If this goes wrong.

then actually you could tarnish quite a brilliant reputation in one fell swoop. He said, well, we won't get it wrong, but also I want to do this. I remember him saying to me actually, one of the main reasons he's never done one, because he'd never been asked to do one. I thought, you know what, actually, that's bizarre, isn't it? You just assume that he'd get asked all the time. But because of who he is, he'd never get asked.

Roz (50:43)
Yeah.

that is asked all the time.

Jamie (51:08)
He took it on and he wanted to do it and gave it a go and put everything he had into it What was really great actually? I've worked with many like sort of sighted a few gardens I've done at Chelsea my place to be one which I did but working with Ji Hei Huang and she's she's the most incredible landscape designer and she did all these plans and everything and everything was considered to the nth Monty

is obviously a writer. He is one of the very best garden writers that has ever lived. And his way of describing what he wanted the garden to look and feel like was to write a short story. Essentially, he wrote a thousand words, think, 1,500 words, sort of narrating the garden before it existed. And the detail in it was just incredible. said, the building will be open-fronted, hit-roofed, brick-floored, peeling-lined render, clad in oak. When you're in there, there'll be a sofa.

with torn leather and the stuffing will just be coming out of it. There'll be a blanket strewn across it and dog slobber down one side and that's exactly what was there. And so he'd sort of a year out written the short story about it and we pulled it back up at Chelsea and went, I wonder how true it is and it was. that's sort of what I worked from then to create the garden to...

Roz (52:25)
later.

Jamie (52:26)
to sort of know what plants he wanted. There were some plants he really wanted in there, like alliums and stuff like that, that were real sort of mainstay, long meadow plants that he really loved. But mostly it was sort of a feeling. And then my job was to work with him to go, okay, well, let's do, what about if we did this and what about if we did that? And then he'd come up to Chelsea and mostly, think, because we're both quite visual people, although we planned a lot, a lot of it we left ourselves the luxury to make decisions at the show ground.

which scares people hugely when you do that.

Roz (52:59)
Yeah, I won't ask you what you're doing in 2026. I think it's show Gardens.

No, I said I won't ask you if you're doing one in 2026.

Jamie (53:08)
no,

I'm not, I'm not, I'm not, I promise, I promise everybody I'm not doing one in 2020, so... This... Yeah.

Roz (53:12)
It's such hard work, such hard work, the commitment, yeah, you've got

to really be prepared for it.

Jamie (53:19)
And it's been such a big year that actually, my team have been incredible throughout because obviously it's, yes, it's very draining for me and I put my all into it, but so did they And they work longer hours, they work weekends, they don't see their wives, their children, their families, their partners. They sacrifice a huge amount and they enjoy it, but it's not fair to put the hunger and pressure every year and actually to have done what we did with Chelsea and then also.

Roz (53:41)
No, every year. No.

Jamie (53:48)
They were all very heavily involved in the wedding and the book launch. I'm quite nervous to go back. I think they've all been quite glad that I've been away for the last week because they've been able to sort of not have me go. Okay, how do we get week two of the Sunday Times? Go on holiday, Jamie. Leave us alone. Let's do our jobs. But no, we

Roz (54:03)
Yeah, exactly.

Jamie (54:10)
next year and also I don't know whether they'll have me back or not but I one thing that I really enjoyed at Chelsea this year and I'm probably tentative by saying that I really enjoyed it but I really enjoyed doing the presenting there as well and actually going and seeing it from that side of things as well and that perspective and meeting the designers and chatting to them about their garden and actually

Roz (54:23)
Yes.

Yeah.

Jamie (54:32)
talking to the nation that the British public about what I like about it what what I think they should know about it I really really enjoyed that and I'd love to do a bit more of that next year as well and I think if you do a garden there or you're quite heavily involved it's yeah this it was really hard this year to do the garden and to do the presenting but Monty properly took me under his wing and obviously he did both and not just and I had like my I don't know 20 seconds a night or ever and he had his

Roz (54:47)
difficult to do it.

Jamie (55:01)
40 minutes a night or whatever he did but and so income there's no comparison at all but he really helped me sort of navigate how to do filming and television and and really helped me into which was really lovely so it was just the whole thing was incredible but yeah no we won't be at Chelsea in 26th

Roz (55:20)
So

just to finish up today, because we could talk forever, couldn't we? Let's, I know, let's have a quick fire fun round. First of all, what's your favorite plant right now? Today? Is it? I would say that was one of mine. Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ we're growing a lot actually now. And that I think is on trend. Yeah, florists are asking for it all the time.

Jamie (55:23)
Sorry, we have.

Sangasaka. Yeah. Love a sangasaka. Isn't it? Which one?

Is it ⁓ good

That's interesting I've been growing it forever. I love it, and I bet I think it has seen so I love the tall like canshan cranberry or blackthorn or something like that Yeah

Roz (55:53)
and a different trend.

The cranberry, the cranberry, yeah

definitely. I tell you, it's high, it's structure, it's just different to anything else you can grow. Mark my words, you'll be selling loads of those. Sanctus Orbis. There you go. And one garden tool you wouldn't live without.

Jamie (56:13)
garden tool secateurs I guess that's that's my go-to they're on my person wherever I go yeah and you know what I've never really got involved with the hori hori knives I've I know I they're brilliant I have one ⁓ but maybe it's quite different because I'm growing stuff in pots I guess I don't use them as much ⁓

Roz (56:19)
or Hori

Yeah, probably. Yeah, it just has lots of functions.

Yeah.

Jamie (56:37)
Although

one of my guys on my team has one and he sharpened it to the nth degree and it's lethal. He uses it for everything.

Roz (56:43)
yeah

Chelsea's Flower Show or Hampton Court which one do you prefer? Do you?

Jamie (56:48)
Chelsea.

Yeah. Hampton's lovely. It's got a lovely vibe to it, nothing. It's much more relaxed.

Roz (56:55)
Hampton's more relaxed. Hampton's more a day out

and down by the river and drinking your Pimms, isn't it? It's a gorgeous day out.

Jamie (57:01)
It is.

Chelsea is the World Cup. It's the Olympics of gardens It is. It's it's it was listed one of the fifth greatest events in the world just behind the carnival in Rio. It's it's people flock from across the world to see it. It's.

Roz (57:05)
Chelsea's phonetic.

really?

Jamie (57:19)
If you have any desire about gardening or if you enjoy plants in the slightest, it's Mecca. And for me, it always has, since I first went to when I was 16, the smells, the sights, the people, everything about it is horribly addictive. It really would be cheaper to take up drugs, I think, than do Chelsea Flower.

Roz (57:40)
Yes,

a tea break in the potting shed or a glass of wine in the garden.

Jamie (57:48)
I love a cup of tea in the potting shed ⁓ and you know what I'm probably still hungover from from my trip so I'm gonna go a cup of tea at the moment or ask me in a few hours and we glass of wine

Roz (57:58)
Hahaha

And if you could grow only three plants in your own garden, what would they be?

It's almost like Desert Island Discs, isn't it? You've got to your three favourite children.

Jamie (58:10)
⁓ that's nice.

You know, they sent me these questions before, but I didn't read them because I didn't I didn't want to. I didn't want to have any recursive. And now I'm wishing I had no columns. Who's my favorite tree? Because it gives you year round interest, but not in a evergreen sort of like NAF way. It gives you the most amazing flowers in the spring. I've had them in every Chelsea Garden I've ever done and every Hampton Garden I've ever done and Chatsworth and everything else. So sort of shows how good they are.

Roz (58:17)
No, no, that's always better.

Right, definite one,

yeah.

Jamie (58:39)
Yeah,

they've then got the berries in the autumn and the foliage changes, but if you get a really nice multi-stem shape, then they're going to add character into the winter even though they've lost their leaves. I love deciduous stuff. I love to be able to look out and right now and go, it's autumn, everything's changing. It's winter, it's cold. I don't need stuff to do everything all year round. ⁓ I...

Roz (58:55)
Yeah.

Jamie (59:04)
I live without a Hakuna-Kloa, I think. That's probably a bit, might be a bit boring, but actually as just a brilliant do-gooder plant that just looks great in any garden, pretty much. It's Japanese forest grass. It naturally wants to grow in a more sort of woodlandy position, but I grow it in the sun and it's fine. I grow it in pots and it's fine. I grow it in the ground and it's brilliant. If you get it right, it's quite magical because it billows out more than you sort of ever really see it.

amazing autumn foliage and then what was my third plant gonna be tell you what you brought it up earlier we you said salvia i'll go with salvia can't beat a salvia let's let's throw a salvia in there but maybe yeah and that's huge at the moment it's huge for you it's huge for me it's huge for every garden in the country and i'm sure you've you're in a very similar boat but

Roz (59:44)
Yeah, yeah, because it's to be drought tolerant, isn't it going forward, we've got to really think about that going forward.

Jamie (59:59)
We don't know exactly what the next 10 years is going to bring in terms of what plants will adapt and won't adapt and grow or not grow. And that's scary and exciting in equal measures.

Roz (1:00:06)
I

Yeah, I read something that said by 2050, so we're not, talking 25 years, by 2050 we will in the UK have the, we will have the climate of Barcelona. So if that's the case, you know, we will have some wet springs, but we will have very, very hot summers and quite mild winters.

Jamie (1:00:28)
Yeah, the trouble is, in the summer we very much have that sort of Mediterranean or Barcelona, Spanish sort of summers, but increasingly we're getting the wetter, and I obviously do get that over there, but possibly not to the extreme that we're not getting the proper winters that we used to get.

Roz (1:00:45)
Yeah, yeah,

Jamie (1:00:49)
And a lot of the research I've been looking at is trying to sort of match those hot summers with wet winters and the weather extremes. And they're looking at places like Azerbaijan and going that our climate might end up being more akin to somewhere in the Far East of Europe. And so there's a lot of research going on right now as to what grows there. Is that what will be growing here? Because actually, obviously in Barcelona, you've got orange trees and rosemaries and all that sort of stuff. But actually, none of those would survive through the winters that we've been getting.

Roz (1:01:02)
I like it.

Now

Jamie (1:01:19)
And we're getting sort like the worst of both worlds in that sense. It's plants that need absolute drought resistance during the summer, but obviously those plants don't want to sit wet during the winter and that's exactly what's happening. So it's really hard and the honest truth is we, quite knows exactly what the future brings. And I think genuinely in a generation people will look back at this time just as we look back on sort of like Victorian years of gardening or there's sort of always been periods through the sort of history and

in trends and plants. think people will look back on this as quite a pivotal time as to what did we do, how did we do it, what could we grow, what do we grow now and see what happens.

Roz (1:01:55)
Yeah.

Certainly

when you're investing in trees and you're putting trees in that are going to be around for a long time, you know, they're going to go past our lifetime. You know, what does that tree look like?

Jamie (1:02:04)
Yeah, sure, I'm with it.

Exactly, and we know birch isn't a good tree anymore. We know some of the main ones, but we're not quite sure exactly what the replacements are. There's some really good ones like Sephora and Gladiaceas and plants that just do well and they're a bit more resilient. mostly we sell bigger trees. So our best selling thing is a tree is a three and a half, four meter tree that's going to give you instant character.

Roz (1:02:20)
Yeah.

Now,

instant, yeah.

Jamie (1:02:37)
in character

now, but they're 15, 20 years old. Somebody's got to be planting that today for us to sell it in 15, 20 years. So we, and we don't know what those trees are. So it's not like baked beans where you can just go and pick a load more off a shelf. Somebody's got to be looking at this really carefully right now. And actually the King's really heavily involved in that at the moment. He's got a real interest in sort of what those trees are and this sort of working with everybody on that, which is quite interesting.

Roz (1:02:44)
Yes.

challenging.

Yeah,

that's really interesting to follow that research and see what comes out. Because you're right, what we're planting today is there 25 years. It's almost the same as a peony. I almost say a peony is a bit like a donkey. Because the thing about peony is it lasts as long as a donkey. It's 50 years or so a peony can be in the ground and still keep producing. Yeah, it's mad,

Jamie (1:03:06)
Good.

Roz (1:03:25)
And the thing about a peony, and I suppose it has to do that because it's only got three or four weeks of flowering and therefore we would never plant it if we didn't think we were going to get it every year for the next 50 years. But yeah, they're a legacy plant. But so it's whatever you plant today, you're hoping is going to be around in 25 years time, but nobody knows whether it will.

Jamie (1:03:40)
Yeah.

Nobody

knows. I think, and one thing that I keep telling, saying to everybody is actually, plants do die. And that's, and you're dealing with a live material and actually they don't always follow the rule book and it might not always work, but when they don't just take it as an opportunity to plant something else and change it up.

Roz (1:03:54)
Yes.

Yeah.

Move on, move on.

Jamie (1:04:06)
move on exactly that it's

Roz (1:04:07)
Yeah.

Jamie (1:04:07)
okay I hope if if I stop gardening every time a plant died I yeah I would have killed a lot of plants

Roz (1:04:16)
So do I. Well, Jamie, it's been a pleasure having you. I am so thrilled that your book is doing so well. What grows together.

and we'll be putting it in the show notes by Jamie Butterworth. Do go and have a look for it. Your failsafe plant combinations for every garden is the answer. So keep us posted on that one and we'll be looking out for book number two actually to see the other 40 that you haven't already done and see what 2026 holds for you. So yeah, do give Jamie a follow on Instagram and thank you very much for joining us. It's been amazing. I've really enjoyed it.

Jamie (1:04:51)
Thank you so much for having me, I really appreciate it.