Just don’t come after my job!
Sal Demain - Supervisor at the Arboretum Nursery at Kew Gardens
I am constantly struck by how often the people I meet tell me about passions that seem to have been ignited by their curiosity as children.
Who can forget Lucy with her pockets full of woodlice and the photograph at Disneyland where she is holding a snail! If you haven’t heard her story you can listen here and you are in for a treat. She told me her first telling off at primary school (I think she used the word detention but surely not at primary school!) was for leading the other pupils astray when she took them to the out of bounds area to see the bees on the lavender plants.
Then take Sal or Sarah Demain the Supervisor of the Aboretum nursery at Kew Gardens. She worked in horticulture for some 20 years before finding her dream job at Kew. She’d gone there in 2016 to do the Kew diploma and when they asked her what she wanted to get from it she answered ‘propagation, propagation, propagation.’ But she can trace her fascination with propagation back to her 6 year old self. She’d seen that bluebells were growing in next door’s garden but not in hers. Then the following year they appeared in her garden! She was hooked and though she wants to spread the joy of it - she did add ‘just don’t come after my job’.
She is so passionate about the need to go out and find trees that might be suited to our climate as it’s predicted to be in 50 to 90 years. She feels we don’t have a moment to lose in terms of collecting seeds from those trees. I have observed that ‘tree people’ think in different timescales to many of us. If you want to know what I mean have a listen to Simon Toomer in this episode called Jerry’s Tulip tree - also recorded at Kew.
I loved Sal’s excitement and joy at seeing the first seed of Abies nordmanniana emerging - seed she had collected in Georgia in Autumn 2024. Admittedly she wasn’t scaling the trees to collect it like the ‘tree gang’ but she was standing at the bottom of the tree doing all the recording with an eye out for bears and wolves which are to be found in the area. I would rather be up the tree!
I think I mentioned on the episode this week that even when the podcast is off air in November and December this blog will still be here. There are some very exciting things happening next year which I can’t share yet but when I can it will be on the blog. And I am always open to ideas for episodes that you might want to suggest. Just email me sally@ourplantstories .
I’d love to grow the blog. If you know someone who you think might enjoy a little bit of plant talk every Friday then perhaps you could share it with them, to see if they would like to subscribe to it.
Your loyal following means a great deal to me - consider yourselves part of the Potting Shed Crew.
Have a lovely weekend
Sally
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