PODCAST · leisure
Our Plant Stories
by Sally Flatman
The Times Newspaper described this podcast as:‘Innovative and fascinating… a deep dive into the stories about all things plant-related.’A finalist in both the Independent Podcast Awards and the Garden Media Guild Awards, 'Our Plant Stories' explores how plants often root us to a place or a person, or perhaps a time when we needed the healing power of plants in our lives.Hearing another's passion for a plant, can leave us wanting to grow it and so we always learn how to do this. So whether your passion is for flowers, trees, shrubs, vegetables or houseplants - you will find a story in this podcast.Our Plant Stories is produced and presented by a former BBC Radio Producer: Sally Flatman.If you have a plant story you would like to share, then do contact: [email protected] and take a look at the website www.ourplantstories.com This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Episodes
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Sam's Gooseberries
This week's plant story began when Sam Turner mentioned gooseberries to me and a collection of bushes that might still be hiding in the undergrowth of a long-abandoned botanical research station in the shadow of Britain's largest radio telescope at Jodrell Bank. One of the things I love most…
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Paul's Bananas
In 2017 Paul Oldroyd bought a Japanese banana plant. He got it home in the passenger seat of his car. He didn't have a lot of money to spend on plants but he had a very large space to fill. He had taken on a one acre former commercial greenhouse that was six foot deep in thistles. Find out in…
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Just Say Compost!
Try saying "compost" to gardeners and see what happens. Inspired by a recent episode - Compost Tales - that's what I did for this short 'Just Say Compost' bonus listen. I hope these stories of waste and worms will inspire you to share with us, your compost story. Old hands or newbies, head...
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The Garden Reveal
The RHS Chelsea Flower Show, opens its doors to the public today - this is one of the gardening world's great horticultural moments - drawing around 157,000 visitors to the 23 acre grounds of the Royal Hospital. First held in 1913, Chelsea has spent over a century inspiring gardeners and growers…
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Compost Tales
In this episode we are focused on compost and listen out because there will be a chance for you to get involved and tell us about your compost journey. Liz Elton is an artist whose work looks at waste and the recycling of matter. She sometimes thinks she "sees the world through her compost bin"....
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The Chair Farmer
Gavin Munro describes himself as a chair farmer. In his orchard he grows trees and meticulously shapes them into chairs. As the trees grow, their branches are carefully trained, pruned and grafted, gently guided to form a back, seat and four legs. Fullgrown is the project and passion of Gavin and...
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Jess's Buddleja
Buddleja davidii is Jess's 'spirit' plant and I think if you listen to this episode it will be obvious why. Also known as the Butterfly Bush it's the purple buddleja that you see growing in the cracks of pavements and walls, along the railway sidings. It comes from China and the first seeds…
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Missing Collector Garden Part 2
We're following the charity Plant Heritage as they take their first show garden to the RHS Chelsea flower show. This charity was formed almost 50 years ago and for those of us who are plant lovers, it is as important today, if not more important, than when it started. Plants go in and out of...
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Luke's Harakeke
For this episode we are in New Zealand. Luke Gardner wrote to me saying he had been listening to Our Plant Stories since day one and he had a plant story he wanted to share. Luke's childhood memories are of a cottage garden with roses and peonies and tulips - 'exotics' and in the garden there…
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Missing Collector Garden Part 1
Our Plant Stories has its first mini series. I love following journeys - a venture undertaken over months even years. If you are a regular listener you will know this from my return visits to the Castlefield Viaduct and the proposed Camden Highline each season. The Offshoots for the next few…
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Clematis - Searching for Miriam
In this first episode of a new series of Our Plant Stories we are searching for Miriam. To be a bit more precise since this is a podcast filled with plant stories, we are searching for Clematis 'Miriam Markham'. Our search will take us from a graveyard in Sussex to a gardener's cottage on the...
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Series 4 - Our Plant Stories
Happy New Year. The Royal Horticultural Society have just announced that this year in the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026 - the charity Plant Heritage has an All About Plants garden. It is sponsored by Project Giving Back and supported by the Shanly Foundation. Plant Heritage is the home of the...
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Treacle and Twinning
I know it is a bit of a strange title. But bear with me this is the last episode of Series 3 (Series 4 will start in February 2026) and we have a couple of loose ends to tie up and an amazing idea to share. Back in November 2024, I visited the Castlefield Viaduct in Manchester and the route of…
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Gardeners' Glees
If you find yourself in a gathering of gardeners today they are unlikely to break into a glee...a song, as their predecessors might have done. I think its a bit of a shame! As part of the Being Human Festival - the UK's national festival of the humanities , historian Francesca Murray and musician...
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Propagating at Kew Gardens
Sal Demain has her dream job and in this Offshoot episode she shares why she loves it so much. Working as the Supervisor of the Arboretum Nursery at Kew Gardens, she has many plants to look after though she does have her favourites! Her curiosity about how plants spread goes back to childhood.…
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Richard Hayden: story of the New York High Line
"If you grow plants you are inherently an optimist". I love this thought from Richard Hayden, shared as we wandered along the New York High Line, this summer. Richard is the Senior Director of Horticulture on the High Line. We talk about the magic of this garden in the sky, it's history - the...
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Natural Surroundings Offshoot
In the last episode Anne Harrap told us the story of how she came to build a series of wildlife friendly gardens on a field in Norfolk. At the heart of the plant story was a book - How to Make a Wildlife Garden by Chris Baines. In the episode she met the author for the first time and they talked...
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Anne's Natural Surroundings
Sometimes in life you come across a book that just speaks to you - you and the author are on the same page and they have articulated all the things you have been thinking. This plant story is about such a book and the influence it had on a young woman who was just starting out in business in...
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Poppy Okotcha and Adam Frost at the British Library
I think we're in for a real treat. Listening to Poppy Okotcha and Adam Frost talking about their gardens, their 'safe spaces', their connections to nature. And in the best traditions of the podcast - the stories of plants and people are entwined. This conversation was recorded at the British...
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Poppy Okotcha and Adam Frost in Conversation Trailer
Back in July I was lucky enough to host a conversation at the British Library between Poppy Okotcha and Adam Frost. Hear a trailer for the episode which will be out next Tuesday. Poppy's new book is called A Wilder Way and Adam's is called For the Love of Plants and over the course of an hour and…
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Daffodils in July with Taylors Bulbs
The joy of making this podcast is that sometimes I just get to be curious which Adam Frost says is key to our enjoyment of gardening. I know that any day now Autumn bulb catalogues will start to drop through my letterbox and garden centres will soon start to sell daffodil bulbs again but I wanted...
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Fay's Yucca Plant
In 1976 Fay Ballard had just finished her first term at university and heading home for Christmas she was looking for a gift for her father who was the author J.G. Ballard. This episode is the story of that gift! It may have started as a small Yucca pot plant but almost 50 years on - it has a…
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Trailer for a Yucca story
Did you buy a Yucca from Marks and Spencer in the 1970s or 80s...many of us did! If you still have it, it could by now be very large. This months plant story is a beautiful one about a Yucca plant that Fay bought in 1976, for her dad, who was the writer J.G. Ballard. She wasn't sure if he would...
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Exploring Garden Futures: with flatpack plant pots
In this offshoot episode of Our Plant Stories, we step into Garden Futures - Designing with Nature — an imaginative new exhibition at the V&A Dundee. With help from one of the curators, Francesca Bibby, and one of the exhibitors. Andrew Flynn, we hear about garden design from both historical and...
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Napoleon's Bald Cypress
This episode features the State Tree of Louisiana, the Bald Cypress. (Taxodium distichum). But the Bald Cypress in the plant story is not in the USA but in the Loire in France, in the grounds of a beautiful chateau. How it got there is part of the story, a gift from Napoleon Bonaparte to the...
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RHS Chelsea Hospitalfield Arts Garden
This is a special week in the horticultural calendar. It is the RHS Chelsea Flower show and over the course of the week thousands of people will visit the show and millions will watch the BBC coverage of it on television. There will be incredible show gardens, conceived months and months ago with...
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Jerry's Tulip Tree
Jerry Spencer's mum worked at Kew Gardens. As a child he would go there to meet her at lunchtime. Leaving school he trained as a gardener. However a period of living on the streets after he lost his mum and his home, erased his gardening memories. This is a beautiful and very personal plant story...
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The Accidental Seed Heroes
I think this Offshoot episode will make you pause next time you find yourself in front of a colourful wall of seed packets. As with many seemingly simple things, the story of a small seed, can in fact be a lot more fascinating and complicated than it might at first appear. So take a journey into...
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Great Uncle Eric's Old Seeds
Richard Bowman tells the story of seeds salvaged from great uncle Eric's potting shed. The shed, perched on the Yorkshire moors had been untouched for 20 years when Richard was given the task of clearing it out. These seeds, stored in Oxo tins and match boxes, sparking memories of a bygone era,...
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Kathy's Radishes - the Book.
In Rough Patch - How a year in the garden brought me back to life; Kathy Slack shares all the lessons she learned from her own story of recovery from depression. She shared her plant story with us in series 2 in an episode called Kathy's Radishes. As we sat by her veg patch she explained why it…
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Lucy and The Weed Trust
One Summer Lucy Houliston, aged just 6, set herself the mission of raising awareness of weeds as plants that deserve love and attention, just like everything else. And so The Weed Trust was born. She also had a passion for insects, she remembers having pockets full of woodlice! Adult Lucy is now...
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Emma Thick - A Snowdrop Shepherd
Imagine 1500 different snowdrops, roaming around an arboretum. Sometimes a new one joins, sometimes a group is divided, sometimes one just wanders off on its own. You need a snowdrop shepherd and at Thenford Arboretum that is Emma Thick. This is the perfect time to grow our knowledge about...
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Constance and the 9/11 Daffodils
This podcast episode delves into the inspiring story behind the Daffodil Project, a community-driven initiative that has resulted in the planting of over 12 million daffodil bulbs across New York City since its inception in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy. Sally Flatman speaks with Constance Casey…
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Trailer for series 3 of Our Plant Stories
Season 3 of Our Plant Stories will be starting on the 4th February 2025. These plant stories will once again take us all over the world. We'll be meeting gardeners, botanists and historians and along the way of course we will all learn how to grow the plants. If you have a story that you would…
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The Camden Highline
You may well have heard about the New York High Line but did you know that there are plans afoot for a Highline in London? It has got the same design team as the NY one and Piet Oudolf will be doing the planting but before we get to the plants - there's a 'bit of treacle' to wade through. Take…
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A walk on the Castlefield Viaduct
Take an audio walk through a park in the sky above Manchester. We’ll walk a route that spans 130 years of history; where once there were trains now there are plants and pedestrians. We perhaps associate the National Trust with stately homes, grand gardens and stretches of countryside but this...
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Silent Space - an Offshoot episode
Picture yourself in a garden. Do you get your phone out to take photos of the plants and send them to friends and family? Maybe a swift selfie! Perhaps like me you google the plants - wanting to identify them. Now picture a bench in the same garden but this time you and anyone else around you are...
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Strawberry Hill Flower Festival - an Offshoot episode
Some of us (I think I mean me!) buy flowers, rummage for a vase, search for the scissors and then maybe tweak them a little bit before standing back to admire our handiwork. This is lovely but it is not art. In this podcast episode we travel to Strawberry Hill flower festival where floral artists...
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Philippa's Dahlias
Have you fallen in love with dahlias this year? Perhaps you have loved them for many years. But have you ever thought of harvesting the seed from your favourite blooms and creating your own unique flowers? Listen to hear how this is exactly what Philippa Stewart has been doing for the past few...
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Standing on the shoulders of Victorian gardeners
Hill Close was a pasture until 1845 when its owner decided to divide it up into gardens. Individual plots where Victorians could rent a space to tend their plants, build a summer house, relax with their family. These were detached gardens for people who had no outdoor space where they lived but a...
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The Cactus Hunters Offshoot
Cacti are among the world's most threatened species. Jared Margulies research led him to the extraordinary illegal trade in these plants. Hear him talk about his work and his book The Cactus Hunters. Who are stealing the cacti and where are they taking them? Independent podcasts like Our Plant...
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Lindy's Disocactus x hybridus
A Disocactus x hybridus or forest cactus but in Lindy's family this particular plant is known as Sally's Cactus! It is also sometimes known by a common name: orchid cactus. In finding out about Sally who gave the original cutting we also learn how to get these cacti to bloom, what "soil' you…
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Bonus Episode: The Rebel Botanists
How's your knowledge of Latin plant names? Meet Elizabeth Richmond she loves Latin plant names and she chalks them around the plants she finds growing between pavement cracks or along kerbsides. She does also chalk the common name too! Why does she do it? And how an earth did she get started? Our...
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A GCSE in Natural History - Offshoot
"Every child needs someone to introduce them to nature" - Rachel Carson author of Silent Spring In this episode we hear how one woman came up with the idea for a GCSE in Natural History - a way for children to be introduced to nature. So where did the idea come from, what would an exam look like,...
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Janet's Saxifrage London Pride
Why is a tiny plant from Janet Hickenbottom's childhood so important? And what was the special thing that her mum Margaret shared with Janet and her brother that has stayed with her for all her life? Lee Connelly is also a bit obsessed by this thing and he's on a mission to make sure we don't…
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Offshoot A history of allotments
When we think of 'allotment history' we perhaps have images from the two world wars with the population being urged to cultivate every spare bit of land from parks to bomb craters. But to really understand our relationship with these spaces we need to go back much further in time. Lally Snow has...
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Kathy's Radishes
Kathy Slack brings us the first plant story to feature a vegetable, it is a root vegetable; a radish. They may be tiny but as you will hear in this plant story the impact of growing radish seeds was rather enormous. Kathy has a passion for vegetables so we not only discuss her journey growing…
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Bonus Dahlia episode
Philippa Steward of Justdahlias admits that her passion for dahlias has become somewhat of an obsession! So who better than Philippa to share with us that enthusiasm and love of this beautiful flower in its many shapes and colours. Philippa has a plant story for later in this series but I…
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Judith's Silver Birch tree
Judith Kleinman had a Silver Birch tree outside her bedroom window when she was growing up. She now has three beautiful Silver Birch trees outside her back door in her small courtyard garden. But to understand why these trees are her plant story you need to go back to her first student summer and…
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Monkey Puzzle Bonus
A short bonus episode in which David Gedye pieces together the story of how the Monkey Puzzle tree made its way to the UK and how it became so popular with gardeners in the country. David has been researching this tree and its links to his family for the past 68 years. He wrote a book about it,...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The Times Newspaper described this podcast as:‘Innovative and fascinating… a deep dive into the stories about all things plant-related.’A finalist in both the Independent Podcast Awards and the Garden Media Guild Awards, 'Our Plant Stories' explores how plants often root us to a place or a person, or perhaps a time when we needed the healing power of plants in our lives.Hearing another's passion for a plant, can leave us wanting to grow it and so we always learn how to do this. So whether your passion is for flowers, trees, shrubs, vegetables or houseplants - you will find a story in this podcast.Our Plant Stories is produced and presented by a former BBC Radio Producer: Sally Flatman.If you have a plant story you would like to share, then do contact: [email protected] and take a look at the website www.ourplantstories.com
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
HOSTED BY
Sally Flatman
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Our Plant Stories have?
Our Plant Stories currently has 78 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Our Plant Stories about?
The Times Newspaper described this podcast as:‘Innovative and fascinating… a deep dive into the stories about all things plant-related.’A finalist in both the Independent Podcast Awards and the Garden Media Guild Awards, 'Our Plant Stories' explores how plants often root us to a place or a person,...
How often does Our Plant Stories release new episodes?
Our Plant Stories has 78 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Our Plant Stories?
You can listen to Our Plant Stories on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Our Plant Stories?
Our Plant Stories is created and hosted by Sally Flatman.
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