Here in the UK it’s the August bank holiday weekend - I do hope that wherever you are and whatever the weather you have a great weekend.

I’ve been looking back and realised there are now 15 episodes of this podcast which equates to about eight hours of ‘planty’ listening and over 40 blogposts if you are wondering how we got here.

According to the website - Listen Notes a website which bills itself as ‘Listen Notes is the best podcast search engineTM. It's like Google, but for podcasts’; Our Plant Stories has a global ranking that puts it in the top 5%. I am very happy to take that! Thank you if you have listened to it, shared it or told your friends and family about it. I can see from the downloads each day that it is finding new ears. It’s exciting to see that so far the stories have between them clocked over 6000 downloads.

So for this bank holiday weekend I thought I would just give you a few suggestions of episodes to listen to depending on your tastes and your weekend’s activities. (I do a lot of my podcast listening in the car.)

If you are heading into the garden this weekend, perhaps tackling the weeds that have thrived in our wet summer, then maybe you will be assessing the spaces in the garden and up for some suggestions of what you might plant next year. Can I recommend the first episode - Peony. Now is the time to start browsing Clare Austin’s wonderful website thinking what bare root plants you could buy in the Autumn. Or perhaps there’s a fence that needs something more dramatic to be planted against it - look no further than the Passion flower episode

If social history is your thing alongside plants, then I think Fig Tree offers a fascinating insight into the mindset of the Italians who headed to America to build new lives, taking a beloved plant with them, sewn into the hem of a skirt or hidden in a bag. And in the Fig Tree Offshoot you can hear about the gift of a Fig tree cutting sent from the Pope in Rome to the Archbishop in London 500 years ago. It is still growing.

Alongside offering ‘familiarity in strange places’, plants also offer hope. If that strikes a chord with you, I would suggest listening to Lally who is a war journalist and Anya who is Ukrainian as they talk about gardens in Ukraine in Mint or Alison talking about Hostas in Moscow.

If you just want to be transported by sound to another place can I recommend Willow. Standing on that riverbank as Andrew talks about the patterns in the willow leaves, I really did expect to see Mole and Ratty come round the corner.

If it’s a bit of slow gardening you crave then I think Topiary might offer it. Lucy Boston’s belief that you can never win in a garden alongside some 300 year old pieces of topiary in Cumbria really put a bit of perspective on our efforts. And in the Topiary Offshoot we hear about the power of a garden to offer healing and peace in a turbulent world.

If you seek travel this bank holiday weekend, Camellias can take you to the Blue Mountains in Australia and you can sit on the hillside with Marion and hear the early morning sounds of the botanical garden and the fascinating stories of the Camellia Ark.

If you like a bit of detective work then there is the Peasgood Nonsuch Apple Tree - which sent me on the search for ‘Anna’ with phone calls to the Peasgood’s listed in the Canadian phone directory!

And if you want to stay closer to home and tend your houseplants then there is Spiderplants. I didn’t know that there was a curly spiderplant but I am loving the one I bought after making the episode. I have already given two rooted ‘babies’ away and a third is currently rooting on the kitchen sink.

I hope there is something for you to listen to this weekend whether or not you have a ‘bank holiday’ - I haven’t mentioned Magnolia Tree or Plant Tattoos - they are beautiful stories of love and loss which have really helped me to see just how important plants are to us in so many ways and in so many times and places in our lives.

Have a lovely weekend.

Sally

x

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