Did you buy a Yucca from M&S?

Did you ever buy a Yucca plant for yourself or perhaps as a gift for someone else from Marks and Spencer? I ask this because Colin who holds a National Collection of Yuccas, was gifted his first one from this well know store and Fay who is telling her Yucca story next month bought a yucca from there too, as a gift for her dad, the author J.G. Ballard. I was speaking to them both on Thursday night and of course as happens, once I start to work on a story, I suddenly see the plant everywhere.

A very large Yucca in a very small front garden

Chatting to Colin, I showed him this photograph of a yucca, which I now notice as I walk to the tube. I asked him could it be that this was once a yucca bought in a small pot as a houseplant in the 70’s or 80’s that outgrew that pot and is still growing. He agreed it could well be. I wonder if it too came from M&S?

As always when you talk to someone who holds a national collection, you get a whole new insight into the plant. As Colin talked about yuccas that bloom at night, to attract a very specific moth that isn’t found in this country, I realised that I have only ever really seen yuccas like the one in this picture. Listen out for next months episode because Colin will be expanding our yucca horizons. I also talk to Lord Rose the former chairman of M&S who was in the horticultural department of M&S in the 80’s to find out just why they were selling so many of these plants!

This week I have been editing an episode for this Tuesday. It’s a recording that I made at the V&A in Dundee at the Garden Futures Exhibition. I had interviewed two people; Francesca, one of the curators and Andy, the founder of a company called POTR. As I jigsawed their respective interviews together I realised how much we need people who think outside the box. Taking a break from editing, I tried my hand at origami in order to build the flat pack plant pot that Andy has developed. Yes this is a pot that fits through the letterbox and his story of how he came to design it is fascinating. I also think it really links to a previous episode that I recorded with a teacher, Rachel David, while we sat in a primary school playground in Arbroath. Thanks to Project Giving Back she will soon have an RHS garden designed by Nigel Dunnett with plants and an artists bothy, in her playground. She has a passion for bringing the creative arts into education, as you will hear in that episode.

It’s a passion Andy shares, he studied product design engineering at Glasgow School of Art and says:

“In school I was fascinated in art and design, but also loved maths and engineering and didn't realise you could combine them until I kind of happened upon the course that I end up studying.

“I've done a lot with schools and getting kind of younger kids into it and kind of basically just opening their eyes to the different types of careers you can go into with art and science. And you know, it was either I was going off to become an engineer because that was the stable job, or I was going off to become an artist and maybe a not so stable job as I think my dad probably was worried about. And so yeah, when I realized you could combine these things, it was like absolute music to my ears. And you do, you do see like kids light up when they realize they can actually combine these things and they can be inventing things because what's more fun than inventing something?”

So maybe have a listen to the Hospitalfield episode here or on your podcast app over the weekend and then see if you also think there are connections when you hear Andy on Tuesday. I have to tell you that his flat pack pots also incorporate a self-watering system, thanks to a piece of cord and the science of capillary action, and all I can tell you is that my small Monstera is looking SO MUCH happier!

Have a lovely weekend

Sally

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