Saxifraga x urbium perhaps better known by it’s common name ‘London Pride’ maybe tiny but it has its own song! Found surviving in amongst the rubble of the streets of London during the second world war, Noel Coward wrote a song about it during the Blitz.

Saxifraga x urbium

The small plant Saxifraga x urbium “London Pride” reminds Janet of her mum. The plant may be small but the question it led to: “how are we passing knowledge about nature down through the generations” - is much bigger.

This episode is dedicated to Janet’s mum Margaret, who you can see in the photographs below. Herself the child of Victorian parents, Margaret had learned the names of flowers and plants even though she wasn’t living in the countryside but in the town of Burton on Trent. She passed this knowledge onto her children by taking them out on regular bus trips to parks and fields where she would teach them to recognise the flora and fauna, giving what we might now call lessons in biodiversity.

What to listen for in this episode

Janet Hickenbottom trained as a teacher but spent over 20 years working with the agricultural industry, first with FACE and then with LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) to help children understand where their food comes from and to plant up gardens in schools. She was awarded an MBE for her work.

Listen in this episode as she shares her experience with Lee Connelly also known as the Skinny Jean Gardener, who stared his media career on the Blue Peter garden. Lee is passionate about parents and children spending time together, planting seeds, growing plants, creating memories. He fears that there is a lost generation of parents who didn’t grow up gardening with parents or grandparents so they now need to learn those skills alongside their children.

Janet and Lee compare notes on visiting parliament - trying to convince MPs to make changes to make it easier to integrate some of the things that gardening can teach us, into our schools. It’s clearly a long hard slog to make changes but Janet pointed us to one success; the Countryside Classroom. It’s an online resource for teachers and schools. Lee has devised School Garden Success as a resource for schools wanting to get children gardening. He also hosts the Skinny Jean Gardener Podcast - it’s a great listen for parents and children wanted to learn about gardening.

Can I grow ‘London Pride’ in my garden?

That would be great and of course we always learn how to grow each plant featured in this podcast. It seems that the Saxifraga “London Pride” has rather gone out of fashion. Perhaps its ability to spread is less cherished. If you don’t know someone who has some and you can’t find it in a garden centre - I have looked in a few and not seen it, well then you can grow it from seed.

At the Malvern Spring show I came across a lovely couple Debi and Mark Padgett of Skerne Nurseries who were taking such care to explain to buyers how to look after alpines. Thanks to Mark Padgett for this advice.

How to Grow Saxifraga x urbium “London Pride”

It's one of the most easiest Saxifragas to grow, to be honest. And it's classed as a non-invasive species, but it does tend to self-seed. And because we kept moving it around the nursery, we ended up with it all under our benches. So we've stopped growing it. It has gone out of fashion as well, to be honest. I think it's because there are a lot more interesting varieties come out, to be honest. It is one of the older generation plants. People like it because it was their granny had it basically. It is quite a lovely, interesting plant. It grows about 12 inches tall with the flower spike.

Can I grow it in a pot?

You can, it just needs very free draining soil and don't overwater it. This is the problem. It is actually one of the Saxifragas which are classed as alpines. But this one does like growing under the tree cover as well, it prefers shade and semi-shade.

What kind of soil do I need?

A well-drained soil such as an alpine compost, don't get the expensive stuff. There's no need. Alpines are cheap and cheerful. They like very cheap compost, either a seed compost or John Innes one, and then mix that with more sharp sand and agricultural grit, about 50-50. Layer of gravel over the top to protect the roots from the cold and wet and direct sunlight, because they don't like heat.

Where can I get the seed?

You can get them from most reputable seed companies, to be honest. We normally do our sowings when it's cold and cool outside, because alpines don't need heat. So we sow our seeds any time from late September, early October, right through to the end of February. They will take a while to germinate. It could be four to six weeks for germination depending on conditions. And then they will need potting on, growing on and then planting out in your garden. But once it's planted out in the garden, it will flower in its first season if you sow the seed at the right time of year. If you plant later in the year, then it will flower the following year.

Post-script

It is often the way that once you start researching a plant story you come across other stories related to the same genus and I found this rather beautiful one this week - the rosy saxifraga last seen in the wild in 1962,  being returned to a secret location, back in the wild.

Transcript

00:01

Welcome to Our Plant Stories

00:05

Lee: I so want people just to spend time with their kids, and whether that's outside or inside, but just create some time with each other. Because at the end of the day, the biggest achievement I think we all have in life is, as parents, what we pass down to our kids. And I think that's really important.

00:30

This is a plant story about just that, what we pass down to our children. I love it when a listener contacts me with a plant story. And that is how this episode began. When Janet Hickenbottom emailed me, she said hers was a very small plant story. It is certainly a very small plant, but I think as you'll see, it has turned into a much bigger story.  

00:59

Janet: My plant is called London Pride and it's a small, very small saxifrage. The reason I decided to talk about this was because I remember it from my childhood. We had a very small garden but one of the plants that I remember most was the London Pride because if you know the plant, it's very pretty, it's very tiny because you've got these tiny white petals with different coloured pink spots on them, really delicate. And I always liked it as a child and I've got it in my garden today. I grew up in a town called Burton-on-Trent, which is famous for beer. We lived in a terraced house in the town. We had quite a small garden, but my mum was very keen on flowers. And she liked all the usual flowers that people had in their gardens then we had, I remember we had a hydrangea, a big hydrangea, and some golden rod. They're the two things I remember, as well as the London Pride. The garden wasn't very big at all. I think it was probably about 10 or 12 foot square. My dad built a shed within that, within the confines of that, and a bench that you could sit on and my dad grew beans really, he liked to grow vegetables and he grew beans, but not in that same plot of garden. We had, we lived next door to a factory as it were, that made chives and chives are bungs for barrels, hence the connection with the beer production. Their business premises adjoined our house and part of the grounds, there was a big area of soil where my dad grew his beans. My brother, in that big area next door, when the factory closed in the evening, we had the run of the place, and he built a rock garden for my mum out of old stones and things that he found, and put plants in there. So that was his contribution.

03:27

My mum preferred flowers, she always preferred flowers. And she was very knowledgeable about wild flowers. And I think this is because she was of the Victorian upbringing. She was born in 1913, so obviously her parents were Victorians. And as far as I can see, nature was much more important in Victorian times. And it wasn't unusual for children to learn about wildflowers and she always used to tell me the names of all the flowers when we went out for walks in the countryside and she was very knowledgeable as I say about wildflower names.

Why do you think that knowledge that the Victorians passed to their children, in the case of your mum, and then she passed to you, but I'm not sure we've kept passing it down through the generations.

No, I don't think we have.

That's a great loss, isn't it really? And I think that's for a variety of reasons. I mean, nowadays there's so many other entertainments for children since the birth of the internet particularly. And we don't spend, none of us spend as much time outside as people used to do. And so there isn't that same interest, which is a shame. I think what's interesting about what you talked about when you tell your own story about your mum is that you were not growing up in a particularly, you know, you were growing up in what a small industrial town? Yeah, it wasn't a rural spot, no. And yet you still grew up with a kind of appreciation of the countryside. Yes, definitely. Because of your mum's knowledge, not because of what was on your doorstep exactly. Yeah, and because she was keen, we used to go out into the countryside quite a lot. We'd go..I mean, we didn't have a car or anything, but we used to go on the bus and we'd go to the Terminus on the bus, which there were lots of Termini, and then from there you could go for a walk somewhere and we'd usually find a park or a playground or something. And yeah, I have many happy memories of doing that and going to local parks and things with her and seeing the different plants and so on. It's more what...they're called biodiversity now, isn't it? She was also very interested in birds and so she loved to have birds come into the garden and would feed the birds and so on and again she knew the names of the birds. That's all the same sort of thing, isn't it?

Because this plant is so linked to your mum, tell me a little bit about your mum. A little bit about my mum, I can't think what to say about my mum. My mum sadly passed away when I was 16 so I didn't have that long to get to know her really, I always feel she was very interested in, she was brought up, as I said, by Victorians and so it was one of those you knew your place and this was your place, you didn't better yourself or anything like that, which caused some problems because when I was hoping to, well I did, when I wanted to go to university it was a bit of a new idea, you know, nobody in our family had ever been to university before…why don't you get a job in the offices at the brewery? You know, that was the sort of, so, but she was very loving and she was very community minded, I think. She helped in the local Methodist church and she gave up work when she got married, I think. She used to work in a shop. And then when she got married, as many ladies did at that time, she didn't work anymore. Although later in my life, she did work part-time in a local factory, because we weren't very well off, and so she needed to supplement the family income. But obviously I have very fond memories of her, but I just wish I'd have known her longer really.

07:50

So it's an important plant for you. Yeah, yeah, it is. It is, and I shall go out and, not now, but it's dark, but I shall go out and check that it's doing all right tomorrow. And hopefully I'll get some more Saxifraga.

08:05

Janet started her career as a teacher and after she had her children, she began working with the agricultural industry, first for farming and countryside education, FACE, which later merged with an organisation called LEAF, linking environment and farming. And her role was to help children understand more about farming and where their food comes from. They also helped children to set up gardens in schools. In 2016, she was awarded an MBE for her work. Whilst I was wondering where the conversation part of the episode might go, I came across another podcaster.

08:48

This week on the Skinny Jean Gardener News, there is going to be a Children's Choice Award at this year's Chelsea Flower Show. That's right, Chelsea Flower Show has pretty much been a no kids zone for its entire entity, I'm guessing. I don't know that far back. But this year, not only is there going to be the children's picnic, not only is there is also gonna be a Children's Choice Award with 70 school children going around and marking up the show gardens for that final award. I think this is amazing news, probably the biggest news of Chelsea.

I'm so excited. Go to the garden center with a fiver each, see what you can get for a fiver, probably a cup of tea, and you get a cup of tea, let them go and get a plant, and then bring it back and plant it up. The biggest thing for parents here is the freedom to let children go and buy what they want. I'm going to do it this weekend. I'll let you know.

Lee Connolly is the skinny Jean Gardner who started his media career on the Blue Peter Garden. And yes, he did get a badge. He's on a mission to get children gardening. It could be in school, he runs School Garden Success, but he also passionately wants parents to connect with their children by being outside, away from technology, around plants and nature. Janet's mum had been brought up by Victorian parents and had passed her knowledge on. So I asked both Janet and Lee, was that knowledge still being passed down through the generations?

10:34

I think at the moment that we have a bit of a lost generation of parents that probably didn't garden with their own parents and now are not passing it down to their own children. And so I'm talking about like I'm in my mid 30s now and I'm talking about mid 30s range where we were not brought up on social media and technology but have jumped onto that whole social media train and there seems to be so many more distractions for parents now than maybe there once was and that means that we have less time to get outside and do stuff with our children and maybe we're a little bit more scared about letting kids get outside and do stuff. So I think at the moment we've got a bit of an area where children are not getting outside and growing with their parents and and that's a real shame I think I think that's a real shame.

11:33

I agree with that entirely. And I think that applies also to teachers. You've got a generation of teachers who are your age about who won't have any experience of gardening. And so how can we expect them to teach their children their classes about gardening if they've not got that initial experience themselves?

Do you think that's necessarily just down to social media and technology, Janet? Or do you reckon it's like, is it something else?

I don't think it's just that. I think we can blame that for some of it and social media and all that side of things. Home entertainment has grown massively hasn't it in the last few years so people can stay in and watch a film or they can play games or whatever and that sounds to a lot of children and probably adults as well more exciting than going and digging the garden.

Lee were your parents gardening, were they gardeners? Yeah my dad was a gardener but the problem, not the problem because it sounds bad on him because he had an amazing garden but it was very much like look don't touch with him so that meant that I never actually got into garden I actually only get onto gardening when I was in my mid-20s before I never did anything so when I have my daughter I wanted to ensure that that wasn't the case for her and it's sort of I feel like now we have to sort of work backwards almost where get the children interested to get the parents interested rather than the other way around.

That's so interesting.

Yes, I would agree with that. That's true. And did you see that sometimes with your work then Janet, when you were taking children, it was slightly different because obviously you would, it was less gardening and more taking than to understand where food comes from. But did you kind of also see that as a kind of working backwards?

Definitely, yes, because I mean we all know about pesta-power and things and children do influence their parents and with what Mrs. So-and-so said, so it must be true. And I think that is very much the case, that the children are helping their parents to understand these things, which is quite a massive change from how it used to be. Well, children care more about the environment now, they actually do care more about, especially in primary schools, actually care where their food comes from how it is grown, it feels like there's a lot more, even in the 10 years I've been doing children's gardening, I can see how very slowly that has been growing, the knowledge and the inquisitiveness of children to find that out. And I've seen that over the last 10 years, that more children want that. So where's that coming from?

14:26

I think a lot of it is coming back to television and things. There's a lot of programmes, a lot more programmes now about nature and wildlife. And, and. Yeah, I love it. Do you know what I love? My daughter's eight now and children's TV. Again, just being a father, I've been able to watch how children's TV has changed as well. Yeah. And the the more they add in like, I love watching. What was it I was watching the other day with her, even though she don't really watch it. Hey, Dougie. I love that program, right? I would sit and watch that all day long. But the way they add stuff, Peppa Pig, they add stuff in with even with gardening and growing. And I think, oh, that's really clever how that can just spark something in children. And children love to ask questions. And off the back of stuff like that, you know, we can really make media the enemy, or actually, we can say actually, there are some benefits to that as well. So yeah, I think that’s where possibly some changes come from. Yeah.

So when you go into schools, what's the kind of first reaction you get when you go into a school, both of you, when you've done that and you've been with young people and you're arranging visits, is it excitement, is it enthusiasm, or is it slightly, oh, I'm gonna be dragged outside, or what's the kind of feeling you get?

I reckon, I wanna say 25% of teachers that I come across really want to do it, who are like just so energised and excited about getting their class out there. There's a big percentage of teachers that are just a little bit have a brick wall up, a little bit worried about diving into something that could take up a lot of time, you know. At the end of the day, primary school teachers is what I predominantly go into is primary schools. The problem we have is no funding and time and knowledge for teachers to really get their children out there. And so yeah, there's a lot of excitement for kids because they're like, yes, let's do something. Let's get messy. But just teachers, it just really does vary, I think. I think if you've got a head teacher that is excited about pushing it, all of the teachers in that school, you'll see, have a little bit of interest into it. I think head teachers really, they really can push that forward. Yeah.

So time is the enemy, really, in a way, there's a curriculum. Is there time for it on the curriculum or isn't on the curriculum currently, no?

Not as such. I think the simple- No, I'm just going to say, we always used to say that you can teach anything through gardening or farming or whatever, but you've got to be of that nature, yourself to start with, you've got to be of that mindset. You know, you can teach maths, English, science, anything at all through gardening, really.

Yeah, exactly. I think the main answer to that is no, there's no time on the curriculum for growing and gardening and I think that's really important to note that because what we don't want to actually do is have a whole lesson dedicated to gardening. What we do, exactly what Janet said, is add that, add gardening to Mathematics, Science, English, we can get outside, we can learn. I was having a discussion the other day with a head teacher who said that we were talking about 2020 and how much they had to get outside with their classes, the kids that were there during 2020. And they noticed the difference of them learning. Obviously they had to be outside because of what was going on. But they noticed the difference in them learning. And we all said it at the time, we all said we were all gonna change right. And we're gonna continue that, but it never happened, of course it didn't. We were all desperate to get back to normality. But I think referencing back to that, is really important. I think we can we can do a lot from that. So if we could do it back then, I think we can do it now. So I think it's a mistake to say, let's have it as a as a separate lesson, because I think that's there's too much. It's too much to change. You're literally asking to change everything in the curriculum, and that's just far too too big a task.

Janet did you see it change over your time? How long were you working with that organization for?

18:45

Well, I'm so very old that I've been working in this area of work since, well, for over 20 years. And there have been changes, there have been changes, like Lee said, in the interest in the environment and so on. Children are much more interested in their surroundings and what's going on on the planet and how they can help.

If you were in Lee's position now, at his stage of his career, wishing this again, what would you do differently, as I think you do differently to what you did or anything that you would say to him that, you know, is the is the way to things that you learned that you think.

You've got a big question. I think finding a way which he's doing now to get into schools, I mean, there's no no substitute for hands on learning. And to be able to facilitate that which it sounds like Lee is doing is great. But who knows how things are going to change. Things have changed so much in the last 20 years, what's going to happen? I mean, by the time Lee reaches my great age, he'll have seen so many more changes. I really hope so. I think, like I said earlier, I've seen the little bit of change in the last 10 years of what I've been doing. Well, not me personally, but just in general, what schools do.

20:03

And I'm excited. Like one of the things I did last year, I spoke in the House of Lords about bringing it into education a lot more. And my wife said to me, like, how long are you going to keep pushing this whole thing? I don't like talking about it, Sally. I may reference it quite a lot. Um, but, uh, how long am I going to keep like pushing this like curriculum? Uh, the thing I was like, this could be like, we could be looking at 15, 20 years in the future until we actually see any, like a tiniest step forwards for it because parliament and government are just, as we all know, and I don't, you know, like going into too much, but it's something I'm stepping into. It is slow, right? It is a slow thing and you just need to find the right person that wants to push it. And that's one of the things that I'm really concentrating on. So it's kind of learning almost, if you're gonna, you know, who do you have to get on side? Who do you have to kind of get behind it to be able to get that kind of weight?

21:00

I've been very much involved in that side of things because we had a great advocate in the House of Lords called Lord Currie, I don't know if you've come across him. He's brilliant and he's always supported our work. And there are other members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons who've been involved, but it's just those individuals, isn't it? There's no joined up sort of way forward.

I had a meeting the other day with someone, I won't say who it was, it was an MP, and I was asking about this whole thing about honestly are we going to get it is it actually going to happen and their answer was they gave me an answer but the answer was no it was a it was an honest and straight answer and i come away feeling really like you say like a little bit oh man like this is not going to happen but you know the hardest things, the things that mean the most are not going to be easy to actually happen. And I suppose, and for anyone in government, they're not there for long, right, so they want to pick up the easy ones, do the quick headlines, look great, cash in, get out. I get it. Right. But, um, but to, you know, to do this is going to take time and effort. So yeah, I come away from that meeting feeling a little bit down about it, but on the other side, if there isn't people like us, Janet, knocking on doors and pushing it forwards, then who's speaking up for the kids and the teachers and that sort of thing?

Yeah, and there are a lot of people, a lot of different organisations out there doing the same thing. Not exactly the same thing, that's always been one of the arguments, you're all doing the same thing. We're not, we're all doing slightly different things, but the aim is the same in the end, which is to help young people learn more about food growing, countryside, that sort of stuff, nature.

I loved before when we were chatting, you told me, Lee, that when you do the festivals, you kind of get kids in to do stuff, but the parents have to go too. Tell me a little bit about that, because I think that sounds fantastic. And you've talked about memories being part of your thought process around how you work. Because if you think about it, Janet, the Saxifraga is very much linked to a memory of your mum taking her walks, naming all the plants. So it shows in a way that that memory sticks, doesn't it? Oh yeah, yeah definitely. So Lee, tell me about your festivals and how it works. Yeah, one of the biggest things for me is and what I push is I love growing my own food, I love growing flowers, but the biggest thing that I push every time I do talks or this mini festival that I travel around the country with is creating memories between children and parents. So we have a mini festival that has loads of little areas like So and Grow, wildlife, bug hotels, even a little reading area in there as well. It travels around and what we do is we make sure, because it's very easy right, especially over the holidays, that it's very easy to say, oh go and go and go and do that, go into the play area or go onto the park and I'm going to sit here with a cup of tea and have five minutes. That's great, we all need that as parents, of course, but sometimes we're missing out and what we do with the festival is say, hey, like, parents have to join their children in the area and I thought when we first did this, we'll get a bit of pushback and parents will be like, no, no, no, we just want the kids to go and play. Actually, parents came in, sat down, been able to watch them make a bug hotel together, sit and sow some seeds, even just sit together as a family, reading a gardening book, was really beautiful to be able to watch and just being able to see them communicating away from a phone or away from technology was amazing. And so we travel around and hopefully we get more people creating memories and remembering.

What I really want is after a school holidays or after a weekend, a child to walk into school and tell their friends what they did with their mum and dad so they made something that's now growing. I so want people just to spend time with their kids and whether that's outside or inside but just create some time with each other because at the end of the day, we do this stuff, we do podcasts and we're getting into schools but at the end of the day, the biggest achievement I think we all have in life is as parents what we pass down to our kids.

25:49

If you follow the podcast on your podcast app, you won't miss an episode. And there's an offshoot coming up with another campaigner who is trying and thank goodness is determined to get a GCSE in Natural History on the curriculum. She had the idea in 2011. It takes a lot of time and determination to shift things.

26:17

As regular listeners will know, we always end this podcast by learning how to grow the plant in the story. I happened to be at the Malvern Spring Show and I passed a stand of alpines and a lovely couple who were taking such trouble to explain how to grow the plants to buyers. So I thought I'd ask them about London Pride. I'm Mark Padgett and my profession was a biomedical scientist who is now interested in plants and growing alpines as a profession.

SEE FAQ on how to grow Saxifraga x urbium with Debi and Mark Padgett

 31:32

So keep going, Lee, because something that happened to Mark aged five has stayed with him all his life, and now is his life. And thinking back to where this story started, with that tiny plant, I think we should dedicate this episode to Janet's mum, Margaret.

31:55

Our Plant Stories is presented and produced by me, Sally Flatman.