This Easter weekend we are celebrating Our Plant Stories first birthday! A whole year of podcasting. We started with peonies but since then we’ve learned about passion flowers, figs, mint, Peasgood’s nonsuch apple trees, willow trees, hostas, topiary, plant tattoos, camellias, magnolias, spider plants, viburnum, corokia and Monkey Puzzle trees! I know that some of you have bought and planted several of the above plants and that is very exciting. I love hearing about this. I’m really proud of the fact that we also learn how we can grow some of these in pots because not everyone has access to a garden but there is still lots you can grow in a pot.

I have also just downloaded my ‘coffees’ and a really BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has donated a coffee. As promised I will not be buying plants because you have funded 9 months of the podcast hosting platform which enables me to share Our Plant Stories with all the podcasting apps. If you have enjoyed the plant stories and are able and want to contribute towards the other 3 months, this is the link. One coffee is £5. (It would be fun if you could customise this wouldn’t it - we’d be much happier buying a plant!)

An update on the Banksy artwork that I wrote about last week. First it was in the news because someone had daubed white paint on part of it. Now it is back in the news because the council have put a plywood frame around it and perspex over it and hoarding along the railings so it is harder to see from the street. I haven’t personally been to look - I will but it seems so sad. Now it will be noticed but not for the reasons originally intended.

On a lighter note, the Monkey Puzzle offshoot episode is now live and it is a really great story. I wanted to share some of the comments from listeners so far.

Penn Allen: “Listened to this last night Sally and thought it absolutely fascinating, what a trail.”

Gardening Gavin: “What another great episode. I really enjoyed listening to it this morning.”

Janet Hickinbottom: “It is a really fascinating and intriguing tale and David deserves congratulations for his patient research over so many years.”

Winterling: “A wonderful episode. David is a great storyteller! Very enjoyable, thank you.”

So over this Easter weekend if you are driving or cooking or gazing out the window at the predicted rain (!) do give this half hour episode a listen. The first time David Gedye heard ‘his plant story’ he was just 10 years old, looking at a Monkey Puzzle tree, at home in Scotland with his mum. Seeing his interest in the tree she told him that his great great grandfather - Philip Frost, head gardener at Dropmore had been the first person in the country to grow a Monkey Puzzle tree from seed which he carried around in a tin, in his waistcoat pocket. David’s 10 year old self took it as fact, as you would at that age. But through painstaking research over 68 years, looking at maps and books and magazines and visiting archives and indeed Dropmore home of this the most famous Monkey Puzzle tree of the 19th Century, he has unravelled that story and it is not quite as told to him by his mum. Do take a look at the episode page because it has the photograph of David’s great great grandfather, at Dropmore, in his top hat, standing at the foot of the most enormous and stunning Monkey Puzzle tree. The photograph was David’s inheritance from his grandmother and it is priceless.

So thank you for coming on this podcast journey of the past year. We reached 11,000 downloads and there are 26 plant stories or offshoots to listen to. I wanted to share some hopes and ambitions for next year. I hope to continue to find stories from across the UK and beyond, I’d love to find some stories further afield. I’d like to grow the audience and everytime you talk about it or share it with family, friends and fellow gardeners there is the potential to add a new listener. I would also love to grow the number of subscribers to this blog because a very high percentage of you open it each Friday and it’s a great way to tell people about the upcoming episodes, so again if you are happy to tell friends about it that would be amazing.

When I very first had this idea two years ago I was hoping that this would become a podcast that could give back to gardening in someway and I do have an idea that I will share with you soon about how that could happen. I have always hoped that by sharing our plant stories we could perhaps make a difference in some small corner of gardening for those who haven’t been lucky enough to have plants as a part of their story.

Have a great Easter break and I hope that the forecast for the UK is wrong and we will be planting….

thanks

sally