Stay ConnectedIf you could create your dream garden from pieces of all of your favourite places, and if you could grow any plants in the world, what would you choose? Who would you have as your imaginary head gardener, or garden designer?
In Talking Gardens, the podcast from the team behind Gardens Illustrated, host Stephanie Mahon asks the great and the good of the gardening world to construct their ultimate fantasy growing space.
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In this episode, cook, food writer and passionate home gardener Nigel Slater talks to Stephanie Mahon about what he would include in his dream garden, from the inspirational spaces of Japan to the stars in the sky, and from soft green moss to bright bronze azaleas. Find out how he stole his front garden, how he went to war with foxes and lost, and the reason that fairies and soft serve ice-cream would have to be part of his fantasy garden. Discover how he managed to get Dan Pearson and Monty Don to design his own back garden, and the one gardening trend that really winds him up.
Talking Gardens is created by the team at Gardens Illustrated magazine. Find lots more great garden inspiration and planting ideas, and subscribe, at www.gardensillustrated.com
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Harry Holding is creating his first-ever show garden at Chelsea this year for School Food Matters in the All About Plants category, and chats to us about how his design is both beautiful and edible, and should encourage children to take an interest in where their food comes from. We hear how he got his start while still at school himself by launching a food-growing business; we learn what an ‘edimental’ is; and how Harry is losing sleep over the construction and transport of some challenging, curved, rammed-earth walls.
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Designer Chris Beardshaw talks about his show garden for Myeloma UK at the 2023 Chelsea Flower Show, which comprises a formal English border and a curated woodland garden of eternal spring with two temples. He reveals some shocking truths about his first-ever Chelsea show garden 25 years ago, involving a cloud of whitefly, trusses of tomatoes and the King; reflects on how the show has changed since then; and champions the specialist nurseries behind the scenes who really make everything happen.
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Designer Tom Massey talks about his 2023 Chelsea show garden for the Royal Entomological Society, which he hopes will show how important people and their gardens are to insects. Tom discusses the design, which will include an outdoor laboratory with curving roof inspired by the shape of an insect’s eye; as well as what brownfield gardening is, why we don’t use the term ‘pest’ anymore, and which insect is his all-time favourite.
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Designer Charlotte Harris talks about the garden she and Hugo Bugg are creating at the 2023 RHS Chelsea Flower Show for Horatio’s Garden, the charity that makes gardens at NHS spinal injury centres. It will be the first main avenue show garden to focus on accessibility, and Charlotte discusses developing the design by speaking with patients. She also talks about how this is the most technical garden they have ever created, including inventing a brand-new, permeable, cement-free paving material for the paths.
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In this episode of the Talking Gardens podcast, Cleve West talks about his design for the Centrepoint Garden at the 2023 RHS Chelsea Flower Show, which will feature a fallen tree and the remains of a demolished house, representing the idea of homelessness, as well as self-seeding plants, ‘weeds’ and pioneer species. We also hear about what veganic gardening involves, and Cleve’s advice for first-time Chelsea designers.
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In the final episode of the series, award-winning garden designer and Gardens Illustrated contributing editor Sarah Price constructs her fantasy garden. From the biodiversity of the alpine meadows in northern Spain to the Heem Parks of the Netherlands, Sarah chooses elements of the natural world to create her dream space. We hear about her upcoming Chelsea Flower Show Garden, why she couldn’t live without bulbs and how children make a garden.
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In this episode, Charlie Harpur, head gardener of Knepp Castle’s newly rewilded Walled Garden in Sussex, constructs his dream garden. Choosing the nostalgia and sense of exploration from the gardens of his childhood to the feeling of adventure that he found while working at Villa Boccanegra in Italy, he also admits to being a plant nerd about alpines, reveals how things are progressing at the experimental Knepp project and reflects on how gardening saved his life.
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In this episode, renowned nurserywoman and herb grower Jekka McVicar constructs her fantasy garden. She talks about bucking the trend by adopting organic and peat-free early on, and the challenges of growing plants for the Chelsea Flower Show. Jekka explains her love of Chinese garden design features such as moon gates and discusses the influence of the cookbooks her grandmother wrote. Unsurprisingly, Jekka’s imaginary Eden would be filled to the brim with herbs, but she would never allow a leylandii hedge.
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In this episode, head gardener Troy Scott Smith talks about his ultimate imaginary garden, drawing inspiration from some of the places he has worked, including Iford Manor Gardens in Wiltshire and Bodnant in North Wales. He chats about the legacy of Sissinghurst and reveals why they won’t be watering the borders there in summer anymore. Tune in to find out who inspired him to change his approach, why Troy would always have visitors to his fantasy garden and what he hates about variegated plants.
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