Plant Stories in your pocket
The Monkey Puzzle tree at Anglesey Abbey
“I tend to listen on my home from work on the tube. It’s a great tonic after a busy day.” Maribel
“Usually on a Friday when I’m driving home from work. It’s the perfect length for my commute!” Jo
“In the morning, on my morning walk before work.” Safiyah
Last week on this blog and on Instagram, I did a very unscientific bit of audience research, asking people when they listen to Our Plant Stories. If you are reading this on your email and want to add a comment, just click here, and scroll to the bottom of the page. I’d love to hear from you about your listening habit. When I was first pondering when to release podcast episodes, my thought process went along the lines that…we take to our gardens at the weekend so that is a good time to have a podcast to accompany us. But actually what if the time we want to think about our gardens, is when we aren’t in them…on the tube, on our commute, in our cars? I know that when I was commuting to work on the tube, I often read a garden book or garden magazine. I had a note on my phone to which I added ideas for a garden podcast. For me the journey went faster when my head was in a green space rather than squished in a tube carriage!
So I am going to tweak things a little. The next Our Plant Stories episode called Andrea’s Monkey Puzzle Tree will be released next Tuesday morning at 8am (GMT). So if, like me, you want to be thinking ‘all things plant’, planning for when you will be back in your garden - I hope you will enjoy the podcast during a part of your working week. If you want to listen in this way you can of course subscribe to the podcast on your podcast app and it will automatically download. I have written a blog post about how to do this.
This weekly blog will continue to go out on a Friday morning. So if you listen to the podcast by clicking on the link I post in the blog, you will still be able to do that. The blog will continue to be a place to tell you what is coming up in the podcast. For example this evening I have been having a conversation about vegetables. For the first time in Our Plant Stories history words like radish, courgette and cucumber are being tossed around the podcast! Or I might remind you of an older episode Emma’s Magnolia that you might enjoy - I have been admiring these trees coming into bloom in London and this week Bridget sent me a photograph of the Magnolia Stellata she has planted as a result of that episode.
Next week’s episode on the Monkey Puzzle tree does touch on what happens when you move house and along with the bricks and mortar, find yourself the owner of a sizeable tree. The former owner gives you pictures of the tree when it was first planted and in subsequent years as it grew from a toddler to a teenager. It may, like the frilly shower curtains, not be to your taste but it’s harder to take down than the shower curtains. Since making this episode I seem to be stumbling across Monkey Puzzle trees a lot. There is a lovely one at Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire (photo above) and I saw another one in a front garden when I was driving to Keswick in the Lake District. A friend Colette sent me a photograph of a magnificent one today from a garden she had been visiting. My cousin Helen tells me her partner Tim once climbed one! In Andrea’s Monkey Puzzle tree episode we are in conversation with a Chilean botanist who reveals it’s the National tree of Chile and dinosaurs probably once grazed around it.
I hope I have wetted your appetite for this forthcoming episode wherever you may listen to it, but do listen to the end of the episode - ie how to grow it, before you rush out to buy one.
Have a lovely week, wherever and whenever you listen.
Sally