The Potting Shed Crew

Thanks to Hilary for the loan of her potting shed.

There’s a small group of people who are rather key to this venture.  They are aged between 21 and 94 and I call them ‘The Potting Shed Crew’.   Perhaps in other spheres they would be called a focus group but I don’t really see them that way.  I see them as friends, as listeners, as critical listeners, charged with the ask of giving really honest feedback.

I realised I needed them as soon as I had made the first pilot but how to find them.   In the beginning of this journey I prefaced conversations about this podcast with the phrase, it may not happen!  So hard to ask someone to listen to something that ‘may not happen’!

One of the first into the Potting Shed was lovely Bill in America.  Back in the early 80’s, he and his wife Jane, had hosted my husband for just one night in New York as Andrew was passing through en route to California.   Decades later, friendship has been shared across the generations.  Bill’s advice when I told him I was leaving the BBC was: ‘never retire, follow your heart as well as your head and start by taking a new path.’  I have written the words on a postcard on my desk.  

 Bill wrote:  I'd be honoured to join you in your Potting Shed, as long as you know that I know very little about gardening - Jane did all the planning and designing but, thankfully, she did teach me a bit about planting, feeding and pruning. 

I am going to add to my bio - Charter Member of the Potting Shed.

I know I can send Bill a pilot programme and within hours he will have downloaded and listened to it.  Bill now signs his emails to me: From your future American podcast marketing associate.

 The oldest member of the Potting Shed Crew is my 94 year old mum.  To be fair mum has listened to almost every piece of audio I have ever made, since those early days at Radio Merseyside.  I recently found a box of cassettes at her house, where she and dad had recorded programmes ‘off air’ and dad had carefully labelled them. 

 The only things I asked of the crew was to be totally honest with their criticism. The comments have been vital and probably means that there are some bits of the initial pilots that I quite liked but that ended up on the cutting room floor because the crew admitted they lost focus at that point. 

I hope sharing this journey may be of use to others who are also travelling new paths.  Sharing an idea can be a scary thing but having a crew of ‘critical’ friends has definitely been key along the way.

Talking of new paths there is something I recently came across that I would really like to share. It is the Camden Highline   I haven’t yet been on one of the tours they are organising but I love the fact that they have already done an audio guide.   Gardener’s visions can be truly inspiring.

I also do have one request of you, kind reader. I am beginning to research publishing the podcast and I think I now also need a ‘podcast crew’ because understanding whether you currently do or don’t listen to podcasts and if you do - where you listen to them, would be SO helpful. You can share this in the comments section below.