This was Emma’s tree when we went to see it back in January. You can read about Emma’s professional career as a classical singer here and read about her charity East London Metropolitan Opera here.

Below are the words that Emma wrote about the tree a few years ago:

My Magnolia is my only ever success of the gardening variety. When it flowers, people even stop and admire it when they pass by. At Christmas we hang red baubles on it and it gets more attention. What the passers by don’t know is that I planted it about 26 years ago in a pot in Willesden after a sad little trip to the garden centre with my husband Serg. I had just miscarried my first pregnancy at 3 months and someone suggested it might be a positive thing to plant a tree as a kind of memorial.

Recently I heard the NHS are changing their approach to miscarriages. I certainly remember the shock and sadness of it. It was my first personal loss and there was much anxiety for months to follow about whether it would happen again and again.

What I didn’t know when I was planting my Magnolia with Serg (I wish I had) was that 26 years on it would still be growing and flowering and I would be lucky enough to have gone on to have 3 healthy children. Since then, when other horrible things have happened, I have often looked back years later and thought, I wish I’d known how things would turn out, then I’d have found it so much easier to cope. Of course I have been incredibly lucky and things don’t always turn out OK in time, but it’s surprising how many things do.

Recording Emma’s story struck a chord with me, as I had two miscarriages between my first and second child. My hope is that it will become something people talk about more. I was lucky enough to have so much support from family and friends but also importantly my manager in BBC Radio Features. I don’t think he ever fully realised what a difference that made so thank you again Richard Bannerman. There are also charities that can help - The Miscarriage Association.

Joe Woodcock is a brilliant teacher and his instructions for how to take a greenwood cutting are wonderfully clear and I love the way he also explains why you do, what you do, at each step of the process. During his career he worked for the Royal Parks and the Royal Borough of Greenwich running the tree management department there, so his knowledge of trees is extensive. He named his favourite magnolias as:

Magnolia stellata

Magnolia soulangeana

Magnolia grandiflora

Magnolia loebneri

As this episode was all about how to take a cutting from a magnolia, we’ll share that first and then share Joe’s more general points about how to grow a Magnolia.

How to take a cutting from a Magnolia tree

Timing:

Obviously it depends on the weather conditions and how the plant grows, but I would suggest end of May, maybe through to middle of June.

What to do:

You would get possibly. something like a 7.5 centimeter cutting of current season's growth. That's the growth that it's made this year. And you could propagate from that and take it at what we call a node. So that's a joint where the leaves appear. So if you take this cutting of about 7.5 centimeters in length, and then if you prepare a mix of, let's say, 50% peat-free multipurpose compost and either perlite, vermiculite, or indeed sharp sand. So you've got 50-50 of both. And in a square pot, if you take four cuttings from all around the tree, but they must be current growth, wood produced this year, and put those cuttings, once you've taken them at the node, into this pot in the four corners of a square pot. Square pot, 10 centimeter, nine centimeter pot would do. If it's bigger, you know, it can't hurt for it to be a wee bit bigger than that. And then put a clear plastic tent of some sort (a plastic bag) over the top just to keep the humidity in. Now, I'm just gonna go back a step in relation to taking this cutting because you will have taken it from current season growth. you will have taken it as a nodal cutting. Any leaves that may be there at the nodes that will go underneath the soil, underneath the ground, cut them off so that they, otherwise they will rot away. And the leaves that are above the ground once you put the cutting in, you want to try and reduce the number of leaves. And the way that you can do that is by literally cutting off the leaves. that are above the ground. So let's say for example, you've got five leaves above the ground. It may pay you to take two of those, the two largest ones off, cut them off with a sharp knife and leaving you just the three maybe at the top. And that will reduce the loss of water from the plant. Once you take a cutting, you've actually taken away the life support system of the plant, by removing that cutting from its roots. What you've got to do once you've taken the cutting is prepare it, as I've mentioned, in such a way that it will survive. And one of the major reasons for it failing would be that it loses water. So that's why you put it in the clear polythene tent that reduces the loss of water because you've increased the humidity around the plant. There's only one other thing you can do which may or may not help, and that's dab the base of the cutting at the node in some rooting hormone. Now rooting hormone, which you've probably seen or heard of on gardening programs, rooting hormone is, if you like, a derivative of a chemical that is naturally found in plants, known as, well, a group of chemicals known as auxins. And those auxins are growth hormones. And if you dab the end of the cutting into that material, it increases the concentration of that growth hormone at the point where you want the roots to grow. And so therefore all of the nutrients, all of the requirements for growth of that cutting will be directed down to the base of the cutting. So it's more likely to be successful.

Don’t forget to water the cuttings in the compost before you apply the clear polythene tent and thereafter keep the humidity in the tent up by spraying film of water around the cuttings on at least a daily basis.

The only other thing I'd say is don't just take four, take eight, take 12 of them. Usually I get one or two that produce roots.

How will you know if it's rooted?

That is a really good question. I think the foolproof way to know that it's rooted is to, after say two weeks or so, just take the plastic top off the pot and give them a very gentle tug. And if they are anchored by roots, obviously they won't pull out. I've heard various gardeners say, oh you'll know because they produced a flower, not so much with magnolia but you know with other plants that have taken from cuttings and that's not necessarily true that they it means that they've rooted and the reason for that is it could mean that the chemicals in the stem have now gone up to produce a flower because the flower is the reproductive part of the plant and as it's the reproductive part of the plant, if a plant thinks it's going to die, which the ex plant will, because it's no longer got any roots, it will say, in nature, I've got to reproduce my species. And so it will send all of its nutrients, up to produce a flower rather than going down to where you want them to produce a root. So seeing a flower bud doesn't necessarily show that the plant's rooted.

A couple more of important points, if I may, it might be a rather obvious point with magnolia, and that is, don't take wood that has a flower on it or a developing fruit on it. So in other words, the petals have now died off and you've got a fruit developing there. Don't take that wood because that wood will be exhausted and will not produce roots. It's got to be what we call vegetative growth.

In fact, with a lot of softwood cuttings that we take, so we take Pelagoniums and Fuchsias from softwood cuttings, you know, when you're looking for the material to take, you always take a non-flowering growth from the plant and if you see a bud there you pinch the bud out because otherwise you know the growth will go straight away, it's nature, to the flower so that it could then hopefully affect pollination and reproduce its species.

How long before that Magnolia cutting might bloom?

A long time to be honest with you, you know, for one that's going to bloom and obviously depends on the conditions but you know, it's going to be years rather than the following year maybe between five and 10 years.

So if you don’t want to wait 10 years - here is some advice on buying a Magnolia!

What’s the best time to buy a magnolia tree?

The best, I would say the optimum time is to buy in the autumn. Then the plant gets a chance to get its roots down into the ground before... you know, the worst of the winter, which usually nowadays is after Christmas. And then most importantly, to get the roots down into the ground before the spring and summer. And our spring and summers recently have been quite hot and dry.

Can I grow it in a pot?

You can grow trees and shrubs in pots. The larger the pot, generally the better and the better quality potting compost too. And you know, if it's going to be in a pot for a long time, then John Innes no 3, is the one that's probably going to give you the amount of nutrient that the plant would need. Keep it watered and then as it grows. make sure it's fed because the only issue about a woody perennial tree or shrub in a pot is that the nutrients can be used up fairly quickly and the roots have only got that volume of compost to get their nutrients from. So it's a good idea if it's a large pot and a reasonably large shrub, I'm thinking of a magnolia, a stellata, something like that. it's a good idea to take some of the compost away from the surface and replace with new compost, I would suggest every spring, you know, in order to give extra nutrient and then, you know, maybe a liquid feed during the summertime. I think that with most potted plants, that's important.