It has been great fun to compile this special episode. It gave me the chance to talk to other plant podcasters, and hear how they make their podcasts and learn from those who have been doing it for many years. I have found podcasters, like gardeners, to be very generous. So plant podcasters are obviously off the scale generous!

When I compiled Pick of the Week or Pick of the Year for BBC Radio 4, I became very used to listening for the clip that I thought would work as a stand alone piece of audio and working out how all those clips might all weave together into a programme. A bit like returning to editing after many years, this episode has reminded me how much I always enjoyed that process. (Well perhaps not the first time I did it - I hardly left the office for an entire week, apart from to go home and sleep!)

I hope, as you listen to this episode, the clips from Our Plant Stories may remind you of things you enjoyed from the first series. I hope the clips from On The Ledge, Scotland Grows and Roots and All may encourage you to go and listen to those podcasts if you don’t already. So what follows are some links for your onward listening journey.

On the Ledge : I guarantee you that when you look at Jane Perrone’s website you are going to see something you fancy. As I write this there are 281 available episodes. If that clip of Tea Frances has wetted your appetite to know more about spiders then this is the episode you want - number 268.

Scotland Grows Podcast : I love being transported to other places, other landscapes and this podcast does that for me. The plants we grow, the way we garden is of course influenced by where we live and this is a great celebration of Scottish gardens and gardeners. Do listen to the whole episode which you will find here. I loved that Simon Jones’ has his own special area of propagation - his front garden, and its great to hear about his experiences as the Curator of Plants at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland based at Edinburgh Zoo.

Roots and All is another wonderful podcast which I have been listening to for a long time. There was a brilliant episode recently about bees which I would also really recommend and will be re-listening to when once again next year I try to get better at identifying bees! You can find Sarah’s interview with Paul Sterry here and I found his book in the bookshop at the weekend and it looks wonderful. You can buy the book via Sarah’s website here.

If you enjoy this Pick of the Year episode do please share it with friends - that way we can all grow!

I mentioned that the new series of Our Plant Stories will begin in January. If you sign up to receive the weekly blogposts (which you can do on the homepage), you will never miss an episode or a bonus episode and also get all the behind the scenes stories of making a podcast. You can also send in stories - the first Plant Story in the second series comes from a listener who found me on Instagram @ourplantstories_podcast .

So I thought I would share a little preview! One October afternoon Penn Allen sat down to read her Great Grandmother’s diaries and the story she found will take us to the Lake District and a lost garden. We will be finding out about a Viburnum and Will Purdom; a young man, the son of a Cumbrian gardener, who following his training at Kew goes to China but there is a connection to the lost garden….

If you want to support the work of the new series I am hugely grateful to anyone who can ‘Buy me a Coffee ‘of any size. The link is also at the top of this page.