Roots and All - Gardening Podcast

Latest Episodes:

Episode 253: The Lost Gardens of Loughrigg Sep 04, 2023

Show notes

Several years ago, Penn Allen inherited a collection of diaries that had been meticulously maintained by her great grandmother. Penn discovered the diaries documented the building of her great grandmother and grandfather's Arts and Crafts house and the development of the garden that followed. She uncovered an untold story of her family, of plant hunting and of rock gardens - one that has significance to the wider world of horticultural history and in fact, goes some way to rewriting it.

Dr Ian Bedford's Bug of the Week: Buddleias and Butterfly Tongues

What We Talk About

What the book is about and why Penn felt it was important to write it

How the garden helped heal; through providing a space to contemplate, a space to communicate, a distraction…

Alpines and rock gardening

Plant hunters

Reginald Farrer

Will Purdom

What became of house and garden

About Penn Allen

Having spent most of my life in the UK, I moved permanently to the beautiful Lot region in SW France with my husband around fifteen years ago. I have a passion for my garden and the outdoors and can generally be found either striding over a windswept hillside or upside down in my flower beds, always with a Labrador or two by my side. The Lost Garden of Loughrigg is my first story, though hopefully not my last!

Links

The Lost Gardens of Loughrigg by Penn Allen

Tickets to see Penn Allen at the Kendal Mountain Book Festival

Twitter @PennAllenwrites

Instagram penn.allen

www.modicagardens.com

Episode 251: Green Roofs & City Wildlife Aug 21, 2023

Show notes

This episode, my guest is green roof guru, urban designer, photographer, birdwatcher, punk ideologist and all-round straight talker Dusty Gedge. We talk about green infrastructure, encouraging species back into landscapes, how to maintain landscapes for habitat value and what's being and can be done to up the green value of public spaces.

Dr Ian Bedford's Bug of the Week: Woodlice

What We Talk About

Brownfield gardening

Biodiversity in decline

The problems faced by birds in urban environments

What initiatives Dusty is most excited by

What happens if biodiversity starts causing a problem?

Maintaining green roofs as habitats

Links

Collecting the Love 1

Collecting the Love 2

Other episodes if you liked this one:

The Botanical Mind

Public Green Spaces

Patreon

Episode 252: Aromatic Gardening Aug 21, 2023

Show notes

My guest this week is Amy Anthony, a certified clinical Aromatherapist and Aromatic Gardener. In addition to that, Amy is an aromatherapy educator, podcaster, herbalist, certified master composter, and artisanal distiller and is one of New York's top aromatherapy practitioners. We talk about the importance of connecting with nature through scent, how aromatherapy can support wellness and vitality and how you can become an aromatic gardening practitioner yourself.

Dr Ian Bedford's Bug of the Week: Rosemary Leaf Beetles

What We Talk About

What is aromatherapy?

What is aromatic gardening?

What's the difference between plant aromatics and synthetics?

What are best essential oils for supporting wellness and vitality?

Do you need to be careful with any aromatic oils? What are safe and practical approaches to aromatherapy?

How are you connected to plants from your culture?

"Aromatherapy is not a consumptive exercise." Why? What can we do about this in our own gardens?

How is aromatherapy linked to the moon?

Where to find out more

About Amy Anthony

Amy is a certified clinical Aromatherapist and Aromatic Gardner who left her career in marketing research to pursue what is closest to her heart: working with plants. As a certified aromatherapist, aromatherapy educator, herbalist, gardener, certified master composter, and artisanal distiller, Amy is one of NYC's top aromatherapy practitioners.

Host of the Essential Aromatica podcast, Amy also tends her own aromatic garden on the North Fork of Long Island where she distills her unique products.

Listed as one of America's most influential aromatherapists, Amy Anthony is currently the New York State representative for the Alliance of International Aromatherapists and has her private practice called NYC Aromatica which includes one-on-one customized aromatherapy sessions, online class offerings, corporate consulting and article writing.

Links

Essential Aromatica Podcast

NYC Aromatica

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Scent Magic with Isabel Bannerman

Gardening for Your Senses

Patreon

Episode 250: The Human Garden Aug 14, 2023

Show notes

This episode is an interview with environmental landscape artist, TED Speaker and art21 Educator Tobacco Brown. Tobacco connects art and environmental justice and is a visual artist, digital storyteller, master gardener, social practitioner, cultural historian and intuitive environmental advocate. We talk about community green spaces, how humans connect with the land and why it's so important that we do.

Dr Ian Bedford's Bug of the Week: Beewolf

What We Talk About

What can gardens teach us about ourselves?

Lessons we can learn from a garden that help us live our lives well

Are there lessons we can take from life that will help us be better gardeners?

Wisdom residing in the soil

Land justice

Communication blight remediation

How gardens grow with you as you go through life

About Tobacco Brown

Links

Email tobaccobrownartist@gmail.com

Tobacco Brown

What Gardening Taught Me About Life - Tobacco Brown's TED Talk

On Instagram

art21

Other episodes if you liked this one:

The Botanical Mind

Public Green Spaces

Patreon

Episode 249: Designing Responsibly Built Environments Aug 07, 2023

Show notes

My guest this week is Blanche Cameron, who leads UCL Bartlett School of Architecture's Environmental Design and Greening Cities modules, and is an urban green infrastructure advocate who works closely with industry and the government on urban greening issues. To say our towns and cities are not always good examples of environmentally sound design and biodiversity would be quite the understatement, but Blanche is one of a group of outspoken advocates for nature inclusive design who are are working towards better outcomes in this regard.

Dr Ian Bedford's Bug of the Week: Dagger flies

What We Talk About

The built environment and biodiversity collapse

Landscaping in towns and cities

How good design can help mitigate biodiversity loss and climate change

Vertical planting and green roofs

Do we need a coherent plan or is it up to individuals to start changing their landscapes?

"Productising" and the construction industry's need for homogeneity

Where does technologically fit in?

About Blanche Cameron

Blanche leads UCL Bartlett School of Architecture's Environmental Design and Greening Cities modules and contributes to other modules and programmes, including the Landscape Architecture and Sustainable Heritage MSc.She coordinated the Living Landscape Strategy for UCL's £1Bn UCL East development, and sits on UCL's campus greening 'Wild Bloomsbury' steering group. Blanche is an urban green infrastructure advocate, working closely with industry and government, bringing practitioners into the heart of teaching, including John Little, biodiverse landscapes innovator, and Dusty Gedge, living roofs expert and founder in 2004 of the independent advisory organisation, Livingroofs.org. Blanche edited the GLA's 2019 10-year update report on the impact of a decade of urban greening since the London Plan's Green Roofs and Walls 2008 policy, co-written by Dusty Gedge and Gary Grant.

Links

Blanche on LinkedIn

www.naturalgrower.co.uk

www.veteransgrowth.org

Other episodes if you liked this one:

John Little

Green Roofs with Dr Anna Zakrisson

Patreon

Episode 248: The Container Victory Garden Jul 31, 2023

Show notes

This episode I'm speaking with author and expert gardener Maggie Stuckey about growing food in containers. We talk about growing a container garden of vegetabhttps://rootsandall.co.uk/podcast/episode-52-grow-fruit-vegetables-in-pots-with-aaron-bertelsen/les, herbs, and edible flowers and the inspirational history of wartime Victory Gardens and their legacy for today's gardeners.

Dr Ian Bedford's Bug of the Week: Painted Lady Butterflies

What We Talk About

Victory gardens

Growing food in containers

With container space at a premium, how can you choose what to grow?

Essential equipment

Cool season and warm season plants

Maggie's neat trick for planting garlic cloves

Root vegetables in containers

Should you try to focus on one type of plant or can you grow a mixture of things?

Succession planting

About Maggie Stuckey

Bestselling author Maggie Stuckey is an expert in the art of growing good things to eat in containers. For more than twenty years, Maggie has been enjoying vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers grown in her own container garden — and inspiring others to transform even the tiniest spaces into vibrant personal foodways.

In her book The Container Victory Garden, Maggie shares practical and comprehensive tips and techniques for container gardening alongside the rich history of the original wartime Victory Gardens, which date back to 1917.

Links

The Container Victory Garden: A Beginner's Guide to Growing Your Own Groceries by Maggie Stuckey - HarperCollins Focus, April 2023

Move with Adele

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Fruits and Vegetables in Pots

Container Planting with Harriet Rycroft

Patreon

Episode 247: Botanical Education Jul 24, 2023

Show notes

This episode I'm speaking with Seb Stroud. Seb is based at Leeds University and is part of the Ecology & Evolution Group, where his research looks at many different topics including botany, freshwater ecology, ecosystem structures and urban landscapes. He recently co-authored a research paper which looks at the state of botanical education and that's what I was particularly interested in chatting about today.

Dr Ian Bedford's Bug of the Week: Woolly Aphids

What We Talk About

What is the extinction of botanical education? Why is it happening?

The effects of losing our tradition of botanical education

Plant blindness

The UN's sustainable development goals and future funding

The impact of botanical education extinction on climate change, food security and our economy

What is actually being done about it?

Natural history GCSE

Equity and accessibility in environmental education

The UK as a nation of gardeners and nature lovers…?

About Sebastian Stroud

Links

Botanical education paper

Seb Stroud on Twitter

Botanical University Challenge

Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

RBGE's PropaGate Learning - Online Courses

BSBI

Kew's Grow Wild

Botanists are Disappearing with Seb Stroud - The Conversation, July 2022

CW Studio

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Modern Plant Hunters

The State of Horticulture

Patreon

Episode 246: Urban Smallholding Jul 17, 2023

Show notes

My guest this episode is urban smallholder Sara Ward. Sara runs Hen Corner, a backyard smallholding in London. Her website Hen Corner has a wealth of information on growing and making food, she runs courses, sells products from her bakery and has just published a book 'Living the Good Life in the City'. I began by asking Sara what prompted her to follow in the wellieprints of Barbara Good.

Dr Ian Bedford's Bug of the Week: Gardening for Nature

What We Talk About

What prompted Sara to set up Hen Corner

How much can you grow in your average urban garden?

Keeping animals

Getting rid of waste from the garden

Preserving food

Looking after things when you're away

About Living the Good Life in the City

Sara Ward has transformed her Victorian terraced house in London into an urban smallholding, 'Hen Corner', and in Living the Good Life in the City she shares some of the ways she and her family have brought city and country together, and shows that you, too, can make a difference to how you live and the food you eat.

Divided into sections covering Make, Grow, Preserve, Keep and Celebrate, Living the Good Life in the City is packed full of recipes, stories, tips and tricks including baking

bread, making your own jam, pasta, sausages and cheese, keeping bees and livestock, preserving, foraging, harvesting and celebrating with food.

Links

Living the Good Life in the City by Sara Ward - Pimpernel Press, July 2023

www.hencorner.com

Digital Fuse

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Huw Richards on Veg Growing

Food Forest in Your Garden with Alan Carter

Patreon

Episode 245: The Language of Trees Jul 10, 2023

Show notes

My guest this episode is artist and activist Katie Holten. Katie has just released a book called The Language of Trees, a collection of literary and scientific works by people like Robin Wall Kimmerer, Ursula le Guin, and Ross Gay. Using her Alphabet of Trees, the book is underpinned by the Katie's art and asks us to examine our relationship with trees by pulling together wide-reaching strands and demonstrating in one place, just how connected we are to them.

Dr Ian Bedford's Bug of the Week: Asian Hornets

What We Talk About

The idea behind the Language of Trees

The Tree Alphabet

Themes behind the essays

Inspiring Tree People

About The Language of Trees

In this beautifully illustrated collection, artist Katie Holten gifts readers her visual Tree Alphabet and uses it to masterfully translate and illuminate pieces from some of the world's most exciting writers and artists, activists and ecologists.

Holten guides us on a journey from prehistoric cave paintings and creation myths to the death of a 3,500 year-old cypress tree, from Tree Clocks in Mongolia and forest fragments in the Amazon to the language of fossil poetry. In doing so, she unearths a new way of seeing the natural beauty that surrounds us and creates an urgent reminder of what could happen if we allow it to slip away.

Links

The Language of Trees by Katie Holten - Elliott & Thompson, June 2023

www.katieholten.com

Starcroft Farm Cabins

Other episodes if you liked this one:

Plants and People

The Botanical Mind

Patreon

Episode 244: The Biodiversity Gardener Jul 03, 2023

Show notes

My guest this week is wildlife author and photographer Paul Sterry. Paul has written many books on wildlife but his latest, The Biodiversity Gardener, pulls together his decades of knowledge and the result is a wildlife gardening manual with real-life examples taken from Paul's Hampshire wildlife friendly space.

Dr Ian Bedford's Bug of the Week: Dark Edged Bee Flies

What We Talk About

Can small gardens really make a difference to our declining biodiversity? Won't they become unsupportable islands of life?

How to start wildlife gardening

Butterfly caterpillars and when to safely cut the grass/meadow/hedges

Weeding and cutting back and species that use certain plants as larval hosts

Is scrub good and how can you incorporate it in your garden? Do you need to manage it to avoid it becoming woodland?

Advice for anyone looking to transition away from a conventional to a wildlife garden

The Nature Conservancy Council!

About Paul Sterry

Links

The Biodiversity Gardener by Paul Sterry - Princeton University Press, June 2023