Fig Tree Off-Shoot
Nick Stewart Smith with a copy of his new book The Thousand Year Old Garden
When I began to make these podcasts I quickly realised that one plant story leads to another. So discussing this with a friend - Andrea, we came up with the idea of Off-Shoots. I recall we had huge sheets of paper stuck all across her windows as we brainstormed ideas!
This week sees the first Off-Shoot. When I put out the episode about Figs, Nick Stewart Smith contacted me. He had looked after the 500 year old Fig tree at Lambeth Palace, where he had been the head gardener for 7 years.
I was immediately intrigued. I had never seen Lambeth Palace gardens - 10 acres of walled gardens just across the river from the Palace of Westminster. Added to this Nick had written his first book called The 1000 Year Old Garden - Inside The Secret Garden at Lambeth Palace.
So it was that I found myself a couple of weeks ago, having a wonderful tour of the gardens and then sitting chatting to Nick. His love of these gardens shines through as does his commitment to working with nature. His love of nature was inspired by Sir David Attenborough. Nick says: I think my whole career has been working in nature and around nature, around plants and I think if it hadn't been through seeing his programmes as a child I may well not have gone in that direction but it opened up doors and windows and everything for me of a world where there was green, there were plants, there were living things, there were insects, there were fascinating creatures to be found in the undergrowth. How perfect then that Nick gave a cutting of that 500 year old Fig tree to Sir David Attenborough when he visited the gardens in 2020.
These Off-Shoots episodes will go out on the first Friday of every month between now and the second series of Plant Stories. I hope it’s a way to deepen our knowledge about the plants and people that we have been introduced to by the stories.
I am also starting work on the second series of Our Plant Stories so if you have one you would like me to look into - just email me sally@ourplantstories.com
I also wanted to take the opportunity to recommend a podcast that I came across this week: Haptic & Hue Cloth like plants can tell us many many stories about people and places and they are told very beautifully in this podcast.