S2:E9 The Great Garden Show Question Time

On Saturday 16 May, we welcomed renowned gardening experts Alan Titchmarsh, Marian Boswall, Charles Dowding, Tony Kirkham and Matthew Pottage to field questions from visitors inside the Story of Gardening.

Recorded in front of a live audience at The Great Garden Show 2026, this special episode is hosted by our very own head gardener, Harry Baldwin, who leads a fascinating and wide-ranging conversation with five of the UK’s most respected horticultural voices.

From practical gardening advice and planting philosophies to reflections on nature, design, and the gardens they nurture themselves, this lively discussion is packed with insight, humour, and personal stories for gardeners of every level.

The Newt Podcast is created by the team at The Newt in Somerset and produced by Harry Coade at Sound Matters. If you enjoyed this episode, follow The Newt Podcast to enjoy more walks and talks across the estate, or better still become a Newt Member to visit our estate yourself, stay the night, or shop The Newt online. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_13 0:21

Welcome back to the Newt Podcast. With me, Arthur Cole. Join us for a walk through the estate with our invited guests to the backdrop of the Somerset landscape and its wildlife residence. This week, we welcome a host of horticultural voices to the estate to participate in the inaugural Great Garden Show. Join us to hear the panel of garden gurus answer questions from the audience. Recorded live from the Newt's Museum of Gardening. We feature glamorous garden designer and friend of the podcast, Marion Boswell, No Dig King, Newt Neighbour, and another friend of the podcast, Charles Dowding. Hugh's former head of Arboretum and Titan of Trees, Tony Kirkham. Royal Parks and Gardens, head of horticulture and strategy, and BBC Gardener's Question Time, Matthew Pottage. And to top it off, the gentle tones of Gardening National Treasure, Alan Titchmarsh. Let's jump straight in.

SPEAKER_06 1:48

Okay, good morning everybody. Welcome. It's finally here, the great garden show. Question time!

SPEAKER_03 1:57

Woo!

SPEAKER_06 2:00

It's fantastic to have so many people here today in the story of gardening. And it looks like we have lots of gardeners that you can shake your rake at, which is really exciting. My name's Harry, I'm the head gardener here at the nude, and I'm joined by our stellar panel. We have Marianne Boswell, we have Tony Kirkham, Matthew Pottage, Anne Titchmarsh, and Charles Dowding. Tony Kirkham, former head of Q's Arboretum and Gardens, where he spent more than 40 years becoming one of the country's best-known tree experts. Even if he doesn't know it, then quite frankly, we're stuffed. Charles Dowding, renowned horticulturist, author, educator, and best known for pioneering the no-dig method, quietly saving gardeners backs and needless digging for decades. Matthew Pottedge, former curator of RHS Whisley and now head of horticulture and landscape strategy at the Royal Parks, a great lover of plants in all forms. The more variegated, the more coniferous, the better. Marion Boswell, award-winning designer and champion of regenerative gardening, proven that working with nature is often far more successful than arguing with it. An Alan Titchmarsh, who needs little introduction, who has inspired generations of gardeners across the country and somehow still manages to make it all look wonderfully calm. Okay, so have your questions armed at the ready. Let's also make sure that we keep our phones on silent. Please do take photos and do take videos, but let's just keep noise to a minimum. We will pass the microphone down. So when has when someone has that burning question, just wait till you get to the microphone and keep it just like this. That's how I should be doing it now. So keep it nice and close to your mouth. Just so we can capture that on our new podcasts, but also importantly, making sure that everybody can hear the question. Okay, so we have one hour. We'll try our best to get through to as many questions as possible. And now, just before we get started, I want to make things just a little bit more interesting. It had a bit of competitive spirit amongst the audience. Tony has very kindly brought his new book, The Tree Manual, and it's been signed today by all of the panelists. So the book will go to the person who has asked the question that stimulates our panelists the most, which I'm sure you'll agree may be quite a challenge. So in a moment we'll open up the floor for questions, but myself being at the front, and of course being the head gardener, I've got to get my question in first. So let's just think about the weather. Us gardeners are always thinking, what's going on with the weather? And looking back this year, over the winter, we've had a really wet, also mild winter. April, really dry, actually quite warm. May, it's out there today, it's cold, you know, a little more than 12 degrees. And quite often we're always taught, let's keep planting for drought tolerance. You know, but actually, do we need to start thinking more about planting for the wet as well? You know, how do we go about that? I wanted to pick on Matthew Pottage to begin with. Matt, you've just opened the amazing new garden, uh, the Queen Elizabeth Garden, and I think the planting there maybe is quite a nod to this subject. Do you want to kick us off, please?

SPEAKER_05 5:31

Uh thank you. Oh, that's loud. Um, yeah, so we have created a new two-acre garden at the Regents Park, and we've used lots of building waste because it was a brownfield site, crushed up loads of concrete, and we've planted into that. And going to your question or kind of your point, Harry, the problem here is it's not just about planting drought-tolerant plants because our winters are getting wetter. And my goodness, it felt like it rained for six months constantly. Regents Park is on really heavy clay soil, it's the most revolting London clay. You can make bricks from the stuff. So if we were just planting all those med plants into that clay soil, bless you, for the last and the winter rain, I think, would have finished off quite a lot of those plants. And then, you know, the west side of the country is actually forecast and predicted to get wetter in the winter. So it's not just about drought tolerance, it's about resilience of waterlogging and then resilience with winter dry, sorry, summer drought. So it's really, really challenging.

SPEAKER_06 6:32

Tony, your new book, The Tree Manual, you've got some great chapters in there. Um, what do you say about you know now planting for the future?

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Well, yeah, uh following on from what Matt said, we've got these wet, warm winters, uh, and then believe it or not, the last 10 years of A the last 10 years, April has been drought, no rain, and this year's following on, no rain in April. Um, and then hot summers. And our our climate, predicted climate for 2050 in this part of the world, our summers will be like Barcelona. So, you know, temperatures peaking 40 degrees, which is going to be really hot. And a lot of the trees that we have planted now, and a lot of the trees that are in our landscape, and especially a lot of the native trees, just aren't going to hack that. Even last year, driving down the M4 or the 303, the M3, all along the verges, you have birches browning, Scots pines, browning, really, really struggling with that weather. So, what we're gonna do, Harry, is start thinking outside the box. Uh, we're gonna have a non-native climate by 2050, so we've got to start looking at non-native trees and integrate natives and non-natives, so not stop planting natives, but they're gonna need some support, and we're gonna need canopy cover, so we're gonna need at least 30% canopy cover by 2050. That's a real tough call, and particularly in urban situations. So, we need what we call shade trees, so trees that are gonna make big trees with broad canopies that are gonna give us that um canopy cover and and protection from those high UV levels by 2050. So, mixing natives with non-natives, don't be afraid, and uh and we we will have a tree scape by 2050. If we don't, we won't. Thank you, Tony. Marianne.

SPEAKER_09 8:32

Yeah, well, I would echo that we need a canopy, but I think we also have to think about what's going on underground and vary the size of the roots underground. So I think to have a really resilient garden to cope with wet and dry, we need some plants which have really big taproots which are going to go down and source the water and source all the different minerals, but water particularly. And then we need some of the plants which have side creeping roots, which are going to take advantage of the soil and hold on to the soil in times of rain. So, really, it's the layers which are most important to make sure that we have plenty of coolness. So when you like dandelions, we've seen a whole host, anybody got a mass of dandelions in their garden? They cool your soil to begin with, because they've got these lovely broad leaves, fantastically useful plant. So I think if we can think of what's happening underground as well as what's above ground, it's really important for resilience.

SPEAKER_06 9:24

And Charles, I'm just going to come to you now, because I know recently you wrote an article and you said think of your soil as a living organism, which I think is so true. Can you just explain a bit more about what you mean by that?

SPEAKER_14 9:36

Yeah, well, it's clearly full of life, and if we can favour the life in the soil, that actually helps the soil to enable plants to survive a lot of these difficult conditions that we're talking about. The old saying the answer lies in the soil is very true. And I think it can sometimes lead you a bit down a blind alley to worry too much about uh current conditions, which is weather, and predictions of future conditions, which is climate, but we don't know what what it's going to do actually. And we can still have, you know, maybe it's going to get a bit warmer generally, but we still have really cold weather. So my approach is based on getting the soil really healthy, free draining. Um, I'm on quite a clay soil, but I didn't have any problems from that in the winter we've just had. And likewise, in really dry conditions with no dig particularly, and uh plenty of organic matter, your soil can hold on to the moisture that is there from the winter. So, yeah, go for it in the soil and you'll be alright, it's my view.

SPEAKER_06 10:40

Now, Alan, I know you've just about to move house and you've got a lovely new garden. We're not calling it the B-word, it's a lower story property. What are you what are you going to be planting in your garden now thinking about our changing climate?

SPEAKER_04 10:56

Well, um I'm I'm being broad-based, but I've been 45 years on uh alkaline chalk downland uh in my last two gardens, and I've moved only a matter of seven or eight miles across the border. I lived in Hampshire, and they used to say about living in Hampshire, living in Hampshire means never having to say you're sorry. And I just moved to Surrey. However, I'm on acid sand, and having had almost 50 years of not being able to grow rhododendrons, Camellia's Azalea's peer is acid lovers, I now can. So it's given me a shot in the arm, just in terms of looking at a flora that is more appropriate. And that's exciting. I love that. But I'm I'm totally with almost everything the panel said, particularly with Charles's. So we must learn to differentiate between climate and weather. Um and there's always a danger. I'm not in any way a climate change denier, it is clearly happening, but there's always a danger in extrapolation. If this keeps happening at this rate for that length of time, this is what will happen. But it never does, does it? It goes up and down and up and down. And although there is this increase, exactly what Tony says, we need to be, thinking outside the box, call it what you will, expanding what we grow. And this is one of the dangers of people promulgating rewilding as being the answer to all our ills. We need to be helping wildlife by rewilding, only using British native plants. If you are, you'll be reducing and you'll be introducing an ever-decreasing number, because a lot of them are. As Tony says, birch trees are disappearing. We need to be future-proofing our gardens for ourselves and for wildlife. Bees are not remotely fussy on the country of origin of a plant as nectar and pollen. They're really quite grateful it's there. And we're gardeners. We're not being irresponsible by introducing things. Japanese knotweed, tricky. Ground elder, tricky. But but by broadening what we grow, we're ensuring a better climate in the end, better, you know, conditions in our gardens for everything and everybody. So do not feel embarrassed about broadening what you grow. If you'd like French marigolds, grow them. You know, don't be don't be a plant snob. Um, it it means broadening what you grow, widening uh the list of what you do, and not being hidebound by things like no mow may. What happens in June to those poor little things when you cut it all off? Have some areas of your garden where the grass stays long till autumn, then mow it, and other areas which are mown have stripes if you want, because the blackbirds, the thrushes, the starlings, and all those close mown feeders will thank you. End of rant.

SPEAKER_06 13:50

Lovely, thank you, panellists. Right, I want to open up the room to a question. Please, who wants to put their hand up first? Let me just pass you the microphone, please.

SPEAKER_12 14:01

Hello, it's lovely to talk to you all, and um I would like to ask you all what drives you to continue to teach, to continue to garden, and to continue to write your books and all that knowledge you've gained over the years and direct it rightly at me and others.

SPEAKER_04 14:20

It's a question to Alan. Oh, I've just said enough, but I'll say a bit more then, but briefly. Passion. Passion, enthusiasm, love for what's out there, the walk from the house to here today. It's like going to the National Gallery and looking at absolutely every pl every picture. You get to the end of it, the exhibition you're meant to be going to, and you're exhausted by what you've seen already. Um, the richness of what we can grow, the excitement of growing new things, and knowing, I always think of gardening as being the sharp end of conservation. We gardeners don't get enough credit for looking after the planet. We just get it in the neck when we're using a hose pipe, when there's a hose pipe, bam, when 20% of water is lost by leaks. You know, we do our bit and we need to be more respected, I think, not just as individuals, but as a race, it should be acknowledged what gardeners are achieving and all those little patches that join together, doing their bit for the good of this little pattern of islands. Um, and the reason I'm sure the others will say the same is we don't assume this interest in the in the interest of making a living. You know, you're talking here about five people who are absolutely ridiculously passionate about what they do, and when we get together, you can't shut us up because we're comparing notes there all the time. It's it's the best thing there, isn't it? It's far better than stamp collecting.

SPEAKER_06 15:43

Brilliant, thank you. Yes.

SPEAKER_08 15:47

Yeah, grassroots PR, hi. Um, I think it's important that we should encourage the youngsters, the youth and youngsters of today to keep your passion going. Um, how do you suggest we can do that? Is it something we can do through schools or talks? What what can we do to make sure that we are handing the baton over to the younger generation?

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Yeah, shall I um it's a very good point, actually. And what we're finding is that fewer and fewer people are coming into horticulture and we're struggling to do recruitment exercises, recruitment drives. Uh, I'd like to think we're at the turning point and it and it's turning round, and that we will start to see more people come into it. But I think it's we've got to get in schools. That's where that's where it starts. And actually, I've got a two and a half-year-old grandson, and I was babysitting last weekend, which is harder than gardening, actually. Um, but I gave him the horsepipe and asked him to water the garden, and he spent an hour watering the garden. And I showed Alan the video, you know, he he while he was watering, he was looking around to see what was next, and he and he didn't miss anything. He'll never forget that. And I hope that that rubs off and it and he goes into gardening. And then last night uh I was I was writing letters. I had a school in Birmingham uh that were doing uh an environmental project, and they wrote to me as uh an environmental endeavor, um, which I found amazing. Um, and these children just wrote and said that they were planting trees in their playing field. What more could they do to make the environment better? And I wrote back to all, I and every letter, I didn't just cut and paste the same letter because they're all from the same school and they're gonna swap and see what I said, but I wrote letters back to all of those children, and I think we just have to catch them at an early age, you know. Um, I when I was at school, I I wanted to work with trees. I knew that from the age of 10. And when I went for my careers lesson, and I think these the careers teachers are the ones we've got to capture. I I was doing woodwork, I was in a technical school, and uh and the careers teacher said, What do you want to do when you leave school, Tony? I said, I'd like to work with trees. And he he flicked over about three sheets of paper on his clipboard and he said, Woodwork teacher. Um, and there's a lot, I said, You've got the wrong end of the stick, and I ignored him, looked, yeah, and I and that's what I did. So I think it's capturing children at an early age and giving them encouragement so that you know they can see what they're achieving and and and doing and and then and giving them encouragement and not selling horticulture as a dead end job, because we've all done well from it, we love it, like Alan said, uh, um, we'll keep doing it. We'll probably dig our own graves, I think.

SPEAKER_04 18:39

Well, still can, but I'm not sure how long that'll go on then. I think giving them a comfortableness with being outside is is a big thing, making it a place they love to be. And and you can add on all the other bits later, but your little little grandson there with his oceboat, does he travel? Because I've got a lot of watering on my sandy soil.

SPEAKER_05 18:58

Matt, I want to just yeah, go. Yeah, one of the things that attracted me to work in public parks actually was the impact we can have through exciting plants and exciting horticulture. And I think you can you can tell people to care, you can tell people what they should do and what they should think, but people need to have a moment themselves. And I think there's a phenomena called plant blindness, where people who aren't connected to nature or gardens, they don't see plants, they don't read them, they just see greenery. And I think how do you get people to stop in their tracks and notice something? Because the moment they notice it and start to engage, they might take a photo, they might put it on their social media, you're then starting that thought process and that journey into what is that and why is it important? And what I'm passionate about in the parks in London is a wider range of plants we can grow because not everybody likes the same thing. And it's really interesting what age groups will stop and photograph different types of plants. And we're seeing a we see a very young audience, a big social media audience, come in to photograph themselves with cherry blossom. And you know, some people get very cross about that. Oh, the influences are here having their selfies with a cherry blossom. But brilliant, they're they've come to a park to interact with a tree, and they're struck by the beauty of it, and then they're putting it on their social media networks. So brilliant. So I think you need to capture people. Beauty is a really strong thing, and you can't tell people what they should or shouldn't find attractive, even though some people like to try. But I think give them a wide range of beautiful plants and landscapes, and it might just capture people's imagination. I didn't have any horticultural training at school, it was never on the curriculum. But what got me was my grandma showing me different cactus plants, and it was just that was what inspired me, and then that then I started to collect them. So, you know, you'd never know what impact you're having on a young person if just by exposing them to something interesting, and it might just, you know, plant a seed. Marianne, I can see you nodding there.

SPEAKER_09 20:52

Oh yes, well, I the grandmothers and grandfathers. Also, I don't think don't underestimate your own impact on on any age of person. It doesn't, it's not just children we're after. If you can plant the seed into a child, then I believe it always comes back. And there's a story which I've told too many times to retell it about my grandmother and I. It's in the beginning of my book, it's on YouTube. It's beautiful because of her. But I think all of us can also plant the seed in any of our friends. And just having an acceptance that yes, I would love to hug a tree. Would you like to come and hug a tree with me? Isn't that a lovely thing to do? Isn't that kind of cooler than looking at something? Maybe even looking at the thing on YouTube I've just mentioned. There's a 1655 tree in these grounds. It's got a plaque on it, it's near the bee uh centre. How venerable is that? I mean, if we all just went and took some of the energy from that tree and passed it around our friendship groups, whatever age we are, that's magical.

unknown 21:52

Thank you.

SPEAKER_14 21:53

Yeah, we're we're we're finding a massive interest amongst children in uh both nodig and growing their own food. And we've started a Future Gardeners newsletter where we every month we publish that and feature stories from around the country, anybody who wants to be in it. And it's no struggle to find find people, children who want to talk about what they're doing, or grown-ups who want to talk about what they're doing. And it's definitely no dig really helps because kids like not having to work too hard or do lots of weeding, which can become a chore. And it brought it home to me when on Instagram a couple of years ago, suddenly I got a direct message from a little boy who's only eight years old, and he calls himself the No Dig Kid. And he's Alby, and he's created a beautiful no-dig garden, and he's really proud of that, and he wants to go out there and teach lots of other children. So I'm really encouraging that. I've written a book called No Dig Gardening for Children, and on the cover, the publishers wanted to put an image which had the child holding a dirty radish, but he had a glove on. And I said, No, no, it should be bare skin, because that's another really important part of it is children's health and getting their them involved in something dirty like soil. It turns out the soil biome is really valuable to everybody's gut. So making those links as well. Alan says, just being outside is a big step in the right direction. So yeah, we're we're we're doing a lot and finding, I mean, lockdown really helped. That got the ball rolling. And now it's certainly moving.

SPEAKER_04 23:29

I had a lady say to me once, what can I do about my little boy eating soil? And I said, make sure he gets enough.

SPEAKER_06 23:39

It's all about the uh the microbiome now in your gut. Um, just to quickly touch on this before I pass the microphone to the audience, I think there's two things here. I think there's one thing about getting more people into the industry, but there's also something to say for the skills that we're losing in the industry as well. There's an enormous amount of skill uh within certain professions with the industry, such as propagation, and that isn't being passed down. And I know there's now some efforts now to make sure that we we keep that going. Um, and what was really nice to hear is earlier this week at the Great Garden Show, we hosted a group of new horts. We're calling them new, not young, because we have a number of career changes that do like to then come into the industry. And we had uh a large number coming, and what was really nice, we had again a seller panel asking questions, but it was always it was all about helping them develop and direct them into the next part of the industry and showcasing how much is available to young horticulturists. I mean, there isn't another industry like it. You know, we've got bursaries, you know, huge amounts of money that can support young horticulturists to travel the world and see plants in their natural habitats, or even connecting with other horticulturists worldwide, and they'll always help you out without even knowing you just because you're in that small industry, and I think it's absolutely fantastic. Right, we're now going to pass uh the microphone again to the audience. Please show me your hands for some uh burning questions, please. Yes, the gentleman at the front.

SPEAKER_10 25:05

Good morning. I'm quite interested in companion planting. Um and uh we've got a couple of books um about sort of vegetable planting, but I'd be quite interested to find out how that can transpose into other areas of planting, whether that be trees, shrubs, um, particularly when it comes to drought, pestilence, um, and other such topics, because we've got um varying areas of woodland and formal garden, and um as we sort of move forward, I'd like the panel's um input on or ideas of how we could actually look after those diverse areas. Charles, do you want to kick us off?

SPEAKER_14 25:56

Yeah, I'd love to. I mean, uh, because that is the subject of my new book, Grow Together, which is all about exactly this topic and how plants I find it with vegetables, but uh ornamental ones too. They very few plants, when you put them in the ground, like to be a long way away from their neighbouring plants. You know, they're a bit like children like that, they just love company. So I'm I'm very much advocating starting new seedlings, for example, very close to existing plants, as long as I know they're going to finish within about a month or so. So that's that's about timing. I mean, for example, at the moment I'm planting celeria between spinach or beetroot between garlic, for example. And then in the broader sense, I'd just put in a word for um have any of you heard of the mother tree, which is um by Suzanne Simar. There's a book about that, and and it how in a forest you you can often have one tree she that she's good at identifying that kind of looks after all the others. And plants, again, that thing of how they love to have they have relationship. So that you know that's kind of what companion planting is. It's not so much about one plant likes another plant, it's more that they all like each other, as long as they have enough space to grow and moisture and light.

SPEAKER_06 27:11

I think that's really, really interesting, and I think we can look at so many different plant palettes. I want to just actually just very quickly touch on roses. Roses, you know, people always plant a monocrop of one group of plants like roses and don't think about companion planting and then are using you know awful chemicals to keep them looking healthy and keep pests off them. But actually, if we just introduce other plants with it, we're gonna get natural predators to help keep on top of the aphid, etc. etc. Matt, I want to just bring this to you quickly about roses at the raw parks.

SPEAKER_05 27:44

Yeah, it is a challenge. So growing anything as a monoculture is never particularly helpful. If there's any pest or disease and everything's growing in the same conditions, chances are it's gonna run through. Same if there's you know problems with the soil and if it's attacking one plant and you've got all the same. So definitely diversity is key. But another thing I think when I was listening to your question there was if in doubt, look up how a plant grows in the wild. What does it do naturally? Does it have really you know high light levels? Does it have lots of plants around it? Does it need good airflow? Does it grow as an understory plant? Because sometimes we're quite good at popping a plant where we think it looks nice in that moment, but actually, does it want to be there and what is its natural habitat? I mean, to quote, I love this from Christine Walkden. She always says, remember the plants don't read the books. So sometimes, you know, the book tells you what it should like or shouldn't like, but when you look it up online and see how it grows naturally, that can tell you so much more.

SPEAKER_06 28:39

Thank you, Matt.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

And and leading on from that, talking about trees, if you if you imagine where trees come from woodlands, uh, very rarely do you see a tree growing as an isolated specimen, and if it is, it's it's remnant from a remnant woodland. So trees like to be together, they're quite social beings actually, they communicate together. Um, so I'm not a lover of planting a single birch in the middle of a lawn that's weed-killed and mown. If I'm going to plant trees today, then I plant them in groups together and and try and link the tree circles up. Um, and then it's down to good uh horticulture, good soil, encouraging mycorrhizae. So, you know, all trees have have fungi in the root system, mycorrhizal fungi, that forms a symbiotic relationship between the two. And actually, most trees, the water that trees take up is taken up by the mycorrhiza, not by tree roots. Um, and and they the the mycorrhizal fungi, in exchange for the tree being a host, gives the tree water and gets sugar back from the uh from the tree. So compan planting trees together and and different species diversity and getting those layers as well. So that your canopy trees and subcanopy.

SPEAKER_05 29:54

And I do sorry, just to chime in on that, I think Great Dixter is a really great masterclass of lots of layering, lots of companion plants. And as Charles said, things just need a bit of space. So get used to pruning for definition. It might just be a little bit of secretaire work when something's just growing into something else's space, just to give light and air. Lots of things can live cheap by jarl if you've got your eye in and you're doing regular pruning for definition. Uh, but Dixter is such a masterclass of seeing that.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

I like that, Matt. Pruning for definition. I say it a lot.

SPEAKER_05 30:24

I always use it. So when and with shrubberies, this is one of my pet hates, and I'll try not to dominate the next half an hour. But people plant shrubberies and then they just let everything grow into everything else. There's no crown lifting, there's no showing off the bark, there's no just bringing the height of that down a little bit. You go to the RHS dictionary, you see what pruning group it's in, and you might do that, but no one does pruning for definition, that aesthetic pruning, where you just, it's like looking at people in a family photograph. You want to see everyone's shoulders and head, and there's their space around them to appreciate them, and that's how it should be when you look at a border, unless you're just rewilding and you're letting everything grow into everything else, but and that's a different look and feel. But yeah, I love the pruning for definition thing.

SPEAKER_09 31:05

I think if you were being regenerative, then you'd go come one step back from rewilding and one step forward from the pruning for aesthetics, and you'd say that you are the grazing animals. So, as humans, we are the people who are allowed to go into our gardens and take a nibble of this and a nibble of that. And actually, we can go a step further and say, well, if we're looking at a natural ecosystem, if we look outside here, we've got the height of the oaks, then we come down to the to the nuts, we might have a few nettles which are fantastic for bringing up nitrogen. You might have some spindles, uranium. So we've got that lovely sort of shape, and the Dixta borders are a complete emulation of that shape. You've got your U hedges, then you've got your cotiness, then you've got your herbaceous coming down. But we're always trying to create that sort of ecosystem of all the different layers, and we are part of that ecosystem. So when we're going out to do a bit of pruning, actually we can listen to what's good for us as well. So if I'm thinking, right, I'm really stressed today, then I might go out and do a bit of pruning, not roses, because you might end up with no rose. But you know, you might go out and do some weeding, you might go and do something that's really good for you. And on a final note with roses, I grow my roses up trees. They look after each other, they flower, I don't have to worry about them, and they look exquisite and they look like they do in Bhutan.

SPEAKER_06 32:20

Fantastic. Lovely.

SPEAKER_00 32:25

We are part of the ecosystem. On the other hand, there are wars all over the world that uh we can't bring fertilizers. Have you heard of pea used as a fertilizer? Human pee. Urea.

SPEAKER_09 32:46

I well, we have four men in the audience. I I don't more than that in the audience.

SPEAKER_04 32:53

It's a very good fox deterrent on your hedge roll.

SPEAKER_09 32:59

I don't pee on my compost, but that's just because it's up here. It's quite impractical. But I invite all my male guests to pee on my compost.

SPEAKER_14 33:09

In my garden I have a compost toilet, and so I'm you're always looking for ways to do this because it's such a waste resource otherwise. And it really pains me to actually go to a normal water closet and flush all that beautiful goodness away. So if if any of you need to use the toilet on your way home, there's a compost toilet at homemakers. We're just two miles up the road. And in in that we don't tell me attempted to do it off the bridge. That'd be exciting. There's a bed of hay or straw, and you pee into that, and then we put that on the compost heap. So it kind of has a certain period of time. It's a way of recycling urine very nicely. Um, I don't know if I should go into the the bigger topic, perhaps I'll leave that for now.

SPEAKER_09 33:52

In all serious, Thomas Crapper has got a lot to answer for. He was the guy that invented the flushing toilet, and we now use clean treated water to flush our loos. It's madness. We should all have a compost loo. If you have size in your garden for a compost loo, invest in one, they're brilliant. Cleans our rivers, keeps our rivers clean. Yeah, that's the future.

SPEAKER_05 34:12

Just do it in your own garden, not here, please, ladies and gentlemen. I must say though, uh, if you look up videos online with Bob Flowerjew, who's a GQT panelist, Bob loves uh urinating all over the place. And he's got some very good videos of what he does with it, how he processes it in his garden, and uh probably everything you need to know. Uh I'm very overlooked in my London garden, so I tend to use be old-fashioned and use the loo. But um, yes, uh, in a more rural setting, I think everyone has different uh levels of acceptance.

SPEAKER_06 34:41

Thank you, panellists. Right, it's time for our next question. Yes.

SPEAKER_11 34:45

What sort of work are you doing to work with the government to keep the gardens and growing going? Because I notice local councils are closing allotments and selling them off to build on. All the new builds are bare empty houses with no wildlife. I struggle to even get uh birds in my garden. And most of our food seems to be imported nowadays and covered in chemicals. So, what sort of work are we doing to battle the government to keep this going? It feels like we're in a uphill battle.

SPEAKER_06 35:12

Um just to kick off on this one. So we've now seen in the northeast of England north northeast of England, over 25% of front gardens are being paved over, which I think is is terrible in so many ways. We're losing habitat, we're losing wildlife, um, it's bad for us mentally, which we certainly know now physically, uh, pollution, runoff, etc. Um, Tony, I want to come to you firstly about this.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

Yeah, well, last week I was at a I was uh spent the whole day in the XL centre in um in Canary Wharf, well out of my comfort zone. No windows. By two o'clock I was going to sleep, and someone said, Oh yeah, all the oxygen's gone out of the hull. But this is future build, and I mean I I would have I would said that 99% of the stands there and talks were about house building, retrofit, sustainability, you name it. So pretty boring, pretty dull for me. However, I was there to encourage builders to look at leaving a garden with these new house builds, and rather than four or six paving slabs, a lawn, and a and a full fence, which is what we're seeing today, at least have one tree in each garden. At the same time, I I'm on council at the RHS and we are lobbying the house builders and the government to create a specification for these 1.5 million houses that are going to be built, that there will at least be some form of garden left rather than just uh a barren site. So there are quite a few organizations are pr pushing the government to um to do something about it. I can assure you of that.

SPEAKER_05 36:56

I think that RHS State of Gardening report that was launched, I think, only six months, a year ago, is really, really powerful. There's loads of takeaways in that. But I think everyone needs to own that. If we all understand gardening and nature and horticulture, we all need to try and do our bit uh and do have a look at that report. It's got a really powerful summary of what the RHS is trying to push for, and all everyone in this room needs to help support it. But it's really brilliant what they put together.

SPEAKER_09 37:22

I I did a uh symposium, a workshop at Beth Chateau Gardens last year with a lot of the local developers. And the funny thing is when we say who who are we lobbying to, who who is they? Because we had these developers in in the room and we were explaining to them the importance of soil and how to turn rubble gardens into either to keep them as rubble gardens or to bring in good soil and to create good soil, they all had good intentions at their heart. So who is the they? You know, how how do we suddenly turn to um understanding or to thinking that there's somebody else who's going to take charge of this? What I want to see is a grading for every house, like a fridge grading. So when you buy your garden, it can be an A-grade garden, a B-grade garden, or a C grade garden, depending on how much good it's doing for the environment, and you'd have a reduction in rates because of it. So that's what we at the SLF, that's what we've been pushing for.

SPEAKER_06 38:20

Last comment from the panelists.

SPEAKER_14 38:21

Yeah, just quickly um I'd put in a word for the soil here again, because uh when we talk about biodiversity and encouraging nature, often the soil gets forgotten, and in fact, at least half of the nature is under our feet. And looking after soil, you can massively increase biodiversity just by doing that. And and then you will find that plants will grow more easily as well, so that's the bonus as well. Thank you.

SPEAKER_06 38:45

Alan, any any closing comments for this subject?

SPEAKER_04 38:48

It's just trying to get local authorities in particular to do joined up thinking. And so often, in terms of economy, the first thing to go are public parks and open spaces because they're concentrating on lawn order, education, uh, health. Little joining up, thinking, well, public spaces affect all those things. It's a place of let off steam, mental health, you know, fresh air, getting out there. Lawn order calms people down, and yet they take away the one thing which is contributing most to people's well-being, mental and physical, because they think it's the easiest thing to go. And that's really sad. And it's just making, it's keeping on, keeping on nagging, making a noise as individuals. Um, and you know, remembering that line of Piniella Pi Keith, you know, in the good life. Who do you think you are, madam? I am the silent majority I am. You know, we do need to keep going on about it. But as individuals with our gardens, I can just hang on to that for me because for a second, because I'm just going to um my nose isn't running. I just want to get out. Me ankey. Um because it's clean, it's all right. Because that space is all a car needs to park in a front garden. That's the space occupied by four parked tyres. One, two, three, four. A quarter of an ankey is a tyre, and yet the entire thing is paved or gravelled over. No, that's all you need to stand it on. Do some low planting underneath it. Better for water runoff, it absorbs it, better for butterflies, bees, birds, insects. It's just getting people to connect and to think of consequences. And we're not very good at that. Certainly, we have successive governments who are not good at it. But goodness me, I don't start me on rant number two. Thank you.

SPEAKER_06 40:33

Thank you, panelists. Okay, we're going to a gentleman at the back for our next question.

unknown 40:41

Cheers.

SPEAKER_01 40:42

Yeah. So I think sometimes the gardening's got a bit hijacked by worthiness and wildlife and climate change. But and that's great, not against that, but I think it's also about celebration and magic and artistry. So I would I was just going to ask you, maybe each of you could bring us if you took us back to your garden this afternoon. Can you share one triumph uh celebratory plant, maybe, or part of your garden that you you would love to boast about if we let you boast right now?

SPEAKER_06 41:16

Great question, thank you. Alan, let's go straight to you.

SPEAKER_04 41:20

Me? Well, I'm just leaving the one I've made lovely and gone to another one.

SPEAKER_06 41:25

I heard you had a Fotinia red robin in your front.

SPEAKER_04 41:28

Oh, yeah. Now here's the thing. Well, yes, you see photinia hands up, honest. Who has got a photinia red robin or a hedge of don't pretend you haven't. Anybody out there? A hedge of fotinia red robin or a single red robin? Hands out the room. Right. Now, hands down, now hands up if you like it. You're the most honest people in this room. Now, in it, it's got a bit of a reputation in horticulture for being common. And in this new garden, in the front drive, there is one, and it's a specimen that big, and it's very healthy. Damn it. It's very good for bees. No, it hasn't got anything on it. No, it's good for bees. It's got thank you very much, and I'm glad about uh but at the other end of the drive, there is a massive Peerrisse forest flame. Such a classy plant with red leaves. There's no difference between the two. They both have red leaves, and yet we're we like one because it's classy and the other one's horrible. Uh no, sir. I was teasing, I said, I'm staying the axe at the moment and telling myself there's nothing wrong with it, and it's good for bees. I've got an excuse now. Um triumphs. The old garden, which I'm just leaving, I am thrilled and delighted to leave behind what was, as well as the garden, two acres of the neighbouring farmer's field, which until I bought it at enormous expense about 15 years ago, was not organic. It was growing arable crops, it was either oil seed rape or barley or whatever, and it's a big L. And 15 years ago I said, Can I buy that? That's fine. Oh gosh. And I planted a country hedge, a mixed hedge around it, hawthorn, blackthorn, dog roses, spindle tree. The hedge is now 10 feet tall. And I sowed this meadow, I just got them to harrow the land. They say, take off the topsoil for a wildflower meadow. If you'll pardon the horticultural expression, bugger that. Two acres worth of topsoil, take it. No, it's sacred soil. I left it. I got them to harrow it, and I sowed by hand a chalk downland mixture from Emmorsgate called the Cricklade mix. And I sewed it by hand. It took quite a while. And on the top, in autumn, that's the best time to sow wildflowers. They get vernalized, they get frozen thawed frozen, and then they germinate in spring. Fifteen years on, we start in March with a rash of cowslips. It follows on then through the vetches, through the scaling. Through the napweed to marjoram in autumn, and I now have, particularly in May and June, orchids. I've had bee orchids in there, early purples, purple spotted. And my great belief in life is that however small your patch of ground, if you leave it in better heart than when you came, which is what you're talking about, you've paid rent for your time on earth. Now I'm moving out of that, but I'm leaving it there and open to goodness that nobody sells it to build houses on. But I've given it 15 years and I've changed the piece of ground which was quite sterile and only grew arable crops, into this wonderful mixture. Tony's been and seen it. It is the most I just moan rides through it, and that's all I do, and then we cut it once a year in September where most of the seeds have fallen, but before it's too wet and gets churned up. Take it off, that's key, take off the hay, and that's all we do with it. And it has been a delight, and I so agree with you that we are allowed to grow things which give us pleasure. And if they have that double-edged sword of also encouraging a healthy environment, wildlife, whatever, around it, then it's really worthwhile. So that would be my bit, would be the bit that's wild, uh, rather than all the stuff I have to prune consequently constantly.

SPEAKER_06 45:16

And Matt, sorry, we're gonna go to you next. But is it a house plant, is it variegated, or is it a conifer?

SPEAKER_05 45:22

None of the above, actually. Okay. None of the above. Are you surprised? Uh it's a plastic plant. No. So we talk loads about right plant, right place, resilient plants, all that. In my own garden, that all goes out the window because you get a kick, I think, as a gardener, with having a bit of a challenge. You always want to grow something that probably doesn't really want to grow in your garden, so you press on anyway. And one of my favourite plants is the national flower of Chile, and it's Lapageria, the Chilean bellflower. It's a complete swine to please, and I've killed so many of them.

SPEAKER_04 45:56

Sorry? Mealybugs. It gets everything.

SPEAKER_05 45:59

It gets everything, you name it, and Lapageria gets it. So I don't know how this thing isn't extinct. But anyway, I've got one really happy now in my London garden, growing through in a Kuba. It flowers really heavily in the autumn through the winter. There's a couple of out-of-season flowers on it at the moment. Big, waxy, uh red, pinky flowers. It's absolutely stunning. Just hands up, who knows it? A few people. Oh, not enough. So look it up, the National Flower of Chile. And if you've got lots of time and money to waste, try one. I think mine's number eight and it's flourishing. But yeah.

SPEAKER_04 46:34

But it's only hardy outside in London where you've got city heat. It won't, it's not hardy, is it?

SPEAKER_05 46:38

It doesn't want to go below about minus five. So I mean, if you're on the if it just needs so many requirements. But it's very good fun. And if you can flower it, send me a picture.

SPEAKER_02 46:48

Matt Matt, I I have one growing behind my shed, and I wee on it every uh fortnight. And it's doing really well.

SPEAKER_05 46:58

Picking down the back of the shed every day.

SPEAKER_06 47:01

Must smell lovely around there. What is this tree, Tony?

SPEAKER_02 47:08

Oh well, you know, my so my garden uh is in Suburbia, Twickenham, uh, average uh semi-detached size garden, uh, and it's full of trees. All my favourite trees, and all everything I plant uh has to have a meaning. So I've either stolen it from somewhere or I bought it from a fair like today or uh from Chelsea Physic Garden from Kew. Um and one of my favorites is uh it's um is it Pseudopanx? Um Chainsaw, it's called. Love it. It's so sharp, lives up to its name. But I I think my uh claim what I'm really proud of is I'm a I'm classed as a woody, uh, and I trample herbaceous to get to trees, and that's what I'm renowned for. But I've been gardening since I retired in the last five years, I've been gardening, and and I've been planting lots of herbaceous, playing around with uh epimediums, birginias, um, and and alliums, and and uh it it just looks wonderful now. And uh I even planted Salvia Hotlips uh from Hampton Court, flower show. So I I yeah experimenting with herbaceous now, but um the main part is the the the tree framework, and I my son flew a drone over the other day and did a film, and it's it's quite an amazing block, it's like a Chelsea flower show garden that's been just positioned into into Twickenham, and next doors is a lawn, next doors is a lawn, and then my paradise in the middle. So, you know, a real hot spot for biodiversity. I've got a wren nest in, a robin nesting, blue tit nesting. The the robins hatched yesterday, so that was a highlight of the family. So, yeah, um it's just getting that green oasis that I love going out to sit on my gaze brevel bench and having a coffee.

SPEAKER_06 49:00

Lovely, right? We'll come to you, Charles and Marianne, then we're gonna shoot for one last question. Marianne, over to you.

SPEAKER_09 49:07

Um, so mine can also be seen from Google Earth, I was told recently. So in my garden I had a large lawn, and uh together with Sasha, who is a fantastic guy, very DIY who works with me, we about five years ago, we took the lawn mower to the middle of the lawn and we put a bamboo stick sticking out of the side of it, and we started in the middle of the lawn and we mowed a circle and a circle and a circle just before lockdown. And I now have a beautiful mown labyrinth of wildflower. And the reason it's so important is it's the edges of things, the liminal things where magic happens. So by having low-cut grass and this high wildflower in lots of different spaces, you get so many creatures there. Um just a spider alert, anybody who's afraid of spiders, we now have the amazing wasp spider, which I first saw at NEP. And by taking Dixter screwing, so I'm very close to Dixter, we now have orchids. And I have large um hornbeam sentinels to act as standing stones, and it's a real energy point, this this labyrinth. And people come and stand in the middle. Um, my team use it as a meditation spiral, my dog uses it as a racetrack. But if you stand in the middle, you can really feel an energy lift in the centre, and so it's a really key point to the garden. And because it's wildflower, of course, it's been scientifically proven, as though we needed the scientists to tell us that it makes me happy every day.

SPEAKER_14 50:34

Thank you, Marianne. And Charles? Yeah, I'd put in a word for the humble lettuce. Because I find in vegetable gardening, there's pretty much every month of the year there's a one vegetable that really stands out, you know, like in March, it might be leeks or whatever. But at the moment, the lettuce are just looking so amazing, and they have a kind of energy that draws you in and beautiful colours, you can plant different ones together. So I like to make a kind of mosaic pattern in my lettuce beds, and we keep picking the same plants successively every week for up to 10 or 12 weeks, so they're there for quite a long time, actually. And it really adds something to a garden to have uh productive plants that are also really beautiful. So up the lettuce.

SPEAKER_04 51:16

I love the fact that we all get so excited about different things. I heard a very, very sad story a couple of days ago. There's a family, and they said that mum's not very well, um, and the dog's being treated for depression. Oh lord, is the dogs being treated for depression? We are in a battery, aren't we? They said, No, it's quite interesting, really. We discovered that the dog has the same drug for depression as mum has. Oh dear. So I think we need to get them a garden, I think that's the answer.

SPEAKER_06 51:42

Lovely, thank you. Right, we have one more question, and just remember we've got this book for the best stimulating question for the panelists. So have a little think. Please put your hands up. Any other questions? Come on, throw throw your hands up.

unknown 51:59

Pete free can't be.

SPEAKER_06 52:00

Oh, right, Pete Free, right. Come on, lots of hands, anybody? Right.

SPEAKER_07 52:07

I look at this panel and you seem to represent the recent paradigm shift in the approach to gardening and wildlife. And I wondered if you look into the future, what do you think the next significant paradigm shift is going to be in our approach to gardening or imagine it might be?

SPEAKER_05 52:28

I I can I chime in because I think we're understanding much more about the joy and pleasure and well-being that we can get from gardening. And I think the scale's gone a little bit far for me, demonizing people who have got fine-cut loans, or still like to do some bedding plants, or still like a hanging basket. And I think we just need to slide the dial back a little bit and say if that brings you joy and you enjoy going out and edging your lawn and moving around your bedding plants, that's okay. And you should be allowed to do that and not be made to feel bad for it. So I think we just need to dial it back a little bit and let people just rejoice. And if that's what they find beautiful and that brings them pleasure, let it be. That's okay, I think.

SPEAKER_14 53:11

Yeah, I I would say bringing the human, the gardener, back into the centre, rather along those lines. Um, we're really important as well. And maybe we've been made to feel a bit guilty of, you know, rewilding. There's not much mention of people in that. It's just letting nature do everything, which is fine as far as it goes. But it's we're ultimately the people who who are kind of holding the strings, you could say. And and I I loved making, say, a vegetable garden really beautiful. Uh that's not often mentioned, you know, vegetables are beautiful plants, and you can have real fun. Uh every month it's different. So I think bringing people into it, and then also with food growing, I think that will grow even more because there's increasing awareness about how you can get so much great health from growing your own plants and eating them.

SPEAKER_04 54:01

There is so much talk nowadays about mental health. We hear the phrase several times during the course of a day. The greatest possible antidote to mental health is resilience. And you think what our parents and grandparents went through during the war. My wife's mother in the Blitz, sitting down in a cellar in London, she said, All I can remember is laughing. Because they found a way of getting through it. Everybody finds their own way. There are so many different temptations nowadays that mental health is I don't know whether there is more of it, uh ill mental ill health, uh, or whether we just talk about it more. But I remember talking hearing of a meeting where this was all being talked about, and and one of the members at the meeting slammed her hand on the table, and she was a psychiatrist, and she said, Can we start talking about resilience rather than mental health? And we are at the forefront of offering people resilience by virtue of connecting with things that grow and growing them. You know how you feel when you're out in the garden. It does us all good. Yes, there are frustrations, growing lapegyrias. You know, it can't be good for your mental health, can it?

SPEAKER_05 55:10

Well, it's made me very ill.

SPEAKER_04 55:12

Yes. That much is evident. Knowing well. Um build on that and spread the word that this is the way forward. The solution is lying in front of us. Get out there, be in it, interfere, grow. We are in the beauty business, we are in the good health business by virtue of just growing a plant and being among it when it grows. And that, I hope, will be the way forward is letting the scales fall away from people's eyes, and it's down to all of us, to let them realize what they could get out of a garden instead of worrying about it. Get out and be in it. Fantastic. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 56:11

And what we're entitled to, that you know, everybody, everybody should um have access to green space for their resilience. And I'm gonna stop saying mental well-being now and say resilience, Alan. And watch watch out for this new strategy that's coming in that's been adopted on the continent in Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia, uh, Canada, USA. It's the 33300 rule. Uh and we're just sort of bringing it into this country, and hopefully it will bite, and it will also help with gardens and and new builds. So three, everybody should be able to see three trees from their house. 30, everybody should have 30% uh canopy cover, and three hundred, everybody should be within three hundred metres of a green space, and that will be good for resilience. And I think we're gonna see more and more of that retrosp retrofitted to our existing landscape, but also in new builds. I think Tony.

SPEAKER_09 57:19

Um I'm very excited by what I see as a growing consciousness in people to understand what plants really are telling us. I don't know if anybody has heard of uh well, we've had Suzanne Simard, we have Monica Galliano, we there's a new study in Tenev University just come out which has shown that plants speak to bees and bees speak to plants. And if we listen, plants can speak to us. And it I don't know if any of you have ever used dowsing rots, but if you go and sing to a tree and measure its aura, if you sing to a tree, the aura grows bigger. Just in the way that if you give love to somebody, you can see them blossoming and thriving. So our attention to the tree is just as important as what we do in the garden. When we breathe out, the tree breathes in. And that's what I'm seeing, and that's what I'm really excited about in the future is more and more people, there's more and more papers of people studying this kind of thing in the scientific world. The scientists are catching up with us gardeners. We always knew, we always knew, and I think that's really coming to the fore.

SPEAKER_06 58:33

And Matt, do you want to finish off with that last question?

unknown 58:37

Did you start?

SPEAKER_06 58:38

Oh, did you start? Sorry. Right, so now I a bit like Desert Island Discs, I want to ask the panelists a question. Um and I think let's go with what gardening habit should we be abandoning? You know, what should we be getting rid of and actually, you know, just abandoning completely?

SPEAKER_09 58:55

Reading the to-do lists in magazines.

SPEAKER_05 59:01

Um I quite l like leaving leaves because it's the first step for improving soil health. So and if you walked through Hyde Park last autumn, you would have seen leaves blowing everywhere and probably thought the staff are on strike. But the soil health isn't good enough, so we are doing a lot of leaving leaves around, not being too tidy. Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 59:20

Stop using pesticides. Anything inorganic, don't do it. If it worked, you'd only have to do it once. Slob pellets. Why do we have to use it? Don't do it. Mix up going back to what we said earlier, mix up your crops, mix up everything, and then it's it's a good mixture, it all helps one another. I know it's irritating when you see green flower and your roses, but the blue tits will take them off if there's enough there to for them to get out there. I haven't used pesticides now for nearly 40 years. Uh or herbicides. And and I have a garden which looks cultivated. The natural cycle builds up. You've got to give it a few years to do it, but don't be paranoid about it. Just cultivate your soil well, as Charles says, give them everything they need and they will survive on their own.

unknown 1:00:05

Agreed.

SPEAKER_14 1:00:06

Yeah, to that actually I'd really agree, and I'd add synthetic fertilizers. There's quite a lot of research coming out now pointing a finger at uh nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus made in a factory, and how using them on plants can actually depress soil life because the microbes are suddenly redundant. Uh they're still there, but most of them go dormant. And so you're you're getting yourself hooked onto a treadmill of needing to use fertilizers again and again as you go forward. Uh, we don't hear enough about that. And so that I'm just put a little word in for that one. And you know, feed feed your soil, not your plants, and and the soil then takes care of plants with all these beautiful microbes and everything.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:44

Stop weing behind the shed. Unless you want a nice lapygeria. Um I'm I'm basically going to agree with the rest of the panel, and one of the things I like this um clip and and leave, so chop them, chop and drop. That's what it's called. So that's what I do to my epimediums in the garden and alliums. So I leave it there, and uh and I also um uh in autumn I go down the uh the road collecting all the leaves and bringing them back, composting them, and actually putting them in my front garden as a mulch raw. I'm not frightened of mulching raw, and the hedgehogs uh absolutely love it.

SPEAKER_09 1:01:23

Can I just extend that to ground elder as well? If you chop and drop with ground elder, it's the the duty of ground elder is to bring the calcium up. So if you leave the leaves, then it will it will tell the ground elder it's no longer needed because it's got the calcium there. It's a brilliant way of getting rid of ground elder if you have too much.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:39

Great. Wow, I think we could keep going every day for school day. No, it totally is. Um Right, before we finish up, I think it's really important that we give this this giveaway to one of the most stimulating questions in the room. Right then, panelists. Let's have a moment.

SPEAKER_03 1:02:03

Yeah, I thought that was a good one. Or was that right?

SPEAKER_06 1:02:21

It's a tough one. It is a tough one. But there was one that really got the uh the audience reflecting on their gardens at home. It was the chap with the stripy top asking, what was your uh what is it in your garden that you loved the most? I mean, what fun have we had? I mean, that hour has absolutely just flown past. Um I just think we need to put our hands together for our fantastic panelists. Please give it up. Charles Dowden, Alan Tittsman, Matthew Poffitt, Tony Garkin, and Marianne Bartwall. And of course, a big thank you to all of you coming to the Story of Garden today and coming to the Great Garden Show. You know, we're starting to build up to this big crescendo, which is today. So please make your way around the gardens. We've got the laburnum and flower of the four seasons, we've got the bustling plant show as well on hand, uh, and various tours going on this afternoon. So go and explore. It's not raining, have fun. But um, thank you so much for coming. And just to note thank you to Harry and Alyssa and all these amazing. Thank you, everybody. Story of Garden is being closed for half an hour until they can rearrange the space. But thank you again, and we'll see you again throughout the garden, but also importantly at our next great garden show. Thank you.

SPEAKER_13 1:04:12

Thank you for listening. Subscribe and tune in for more episodes from the estate every month. See you next time.