I thought this week I would share some ‘behind the scenes’ of the podcast. I begin the week with a ‘to do’ list. It reads:

Edit Natural History GCSE episode

Find a cacti expert

Finish entry for Independent Podcast Awards

Write piece for Garden Folk magazine

Editing the GCSE episode proves pretty straight forward. My interviewee for this Offshoot episode which will publish on Tuesday, is so passionate about her subject. She first came up with the idea for a GCSE in Natural History back in 2011. She has been pushing and fighting for it ever since and how lucky we are, that she hasn’t given up in that time, despite set-backs, delays and worse. As so often with Offshoots, the story emerged when I was making the Plant Story. If you haven’t yet listened to Janet’s story of the tiny alpine ‘London Pride’ do take a listen, it takes us into the question of how knowledge is shared or sadly not shared, through the generations. In May, I was discussing this question with some teachers, who were tending to pupils and school gardens, at the RHS Malvern show. They were very excited to tell me about the proposed GCSE and said you must speak to Mary Colwell, she’s the woman behind it. So I have.

The cacti expert has proved a little more tricky. I found a wonderful woman exhibiting at Malvern and Chelsea but time and technology are against us. If you have ever wondered what it is like to exhibit at one of these shows listen to this episode from the last series, with Hosta grower Vicky - it is hectic! So I turned to the British Cactus and Succulent Society. I had the most lovely conversation with Peter, the Society Secretary. He got his first cacti as a 10 year old, he is now 83 years old. The first plants came from an aunt who said if he promised to look after them, she would give him cuttings from her collection of cacti and succulents. He successfully grew all 20 cuttings. Since 1972, Peter has only missed 2 of the monthly Manchester branch meetings of the society, so he knows a lot about cacti. ** I sent him a photograph of the cactus in the forthcoming plant story and he put me on the trail of Epiphyllum cacti - starting with the name. Epiphytic comes from the Greek, from epi meaning ‘in addition’ and phyton meaning ‘plant’. It means any plant that grows upon another, not parasitically but using the host plants structure for support.

So now I am googling Epiphyllum or orchid cactus and I find that San Diego zoo has a Epiphyllum trail with over 600 of these plants. WOW! And they are maintained with the help of the San Diego Epiphyllum Society. So by now you have probably guessed where this is heading! I have emailed them, fingers crossed. Let me know if anyone has any contacts with the zoo.

Next to the Independent Podcast Awards. Even if you don’t get nominated I have realised that this is a very useful process to go through. It makes you gather all kinds of information in one place; downloads, streams, follows, open rates on blog posts, listen averages for episodes. Those ratings and reviews on podcast apps become crucial and those lovely words from those of you who have joined the Coffee Crew to support the podcast, prove that people are growing the plants. I think there will be many, many entries in the category of ‘Education’, sadly there isn’t a category for nature or hobbies (or even gardening!), however fingers crossed …again.

And finally to a piece for The Garden Folk magazine. I came across this online magazine and emailed them to ask if they ever feature podcasts and they replied yes and was I interested in writing a piece about Our Plant Stories? They wanted a bit about the inspiration and the process. This is the first paragraph of the piece I have sent them: “I’m thinking about October.  I have just had two wonderful conversations with young people working for the charity City of Trees in Manchester and I am pondering how their different plant stories might work on a podcast episode in the Autumn.  We’d need to record it in September just as they are getting in the young whips to plant and before October when they get really busy, planting the trees.”  So my fingers are crossed again that the Garden Folk will like it and Our Plant Stories might feature in one of their future editions.

I’ll keep you posted on San Diego cacti, the Garden Folk magazine and the podcast awards. I hope you are inspired by Mary Colwell’s story next week. I am going ask people listening to it to think about taking a couple of minutes, if they listen on a podcast app, to rate and review, I know that if you rate and review, the algorithms get to work and recommend the podcast to people who like similar content and I really feel if we can play a small part in making people more aware of the GCSE, supporting this crucial initiative - it can only be to the good.

Have a lovely weekend.

Sally

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 ** Yes I was wondering the same - is it cactus or cacti….so here’s a snippet from Grammarist:

Cacti is the Latin plural of cactus, and it is often the more popular usage among English speakers. On the other hand, cactuses is the plural form that follows standard English grammatical rules. Dictionaries recognise both versions as correct, leaving it up to the individual to decide which form they prefer to use.