Nominated again….

This was the exciting news that greeted me last Friday afternoon!

A finalist in the Garden Media Guild Awards

On Friday morning I had written my blog post about the fun of being a finalist in the Independent Podcast Awards and even though we didn’t win our category - it was great to be in a room full of podcasters. Then after I had pressed send - there came the news that the episode featuring Fay’s Yucca Plant had been nominated in a different set of awards. These are the Garden Media Guild awards so the room this time, will be full of garden writers and photographers and broadcasters, producing content for magazines and radio and tv programmes, blogs, podcasts and social media. There will be more talk of plants than there was in the other awards!

When I first began to think about making a podcast I wrote a list of existing ones and began to listen to them to work out what I liked and more importantly what was already out there in the market so to speak. One of those I listened to, liking the high production values, was BBC Gardener’s World. So it feels very exciting, after 3 seasons of Our Plant Stories, to be nominated in the same category as them!

I told my mum about the nomination this week. She’s 97 and I have written before that she has been my most faithful listener throughout my radio career from those early pieces at Radio Merseyside to the podcast. Sadly now she is no longer really able to concentrate and listen to it but when I told her we’d been nominated she was very excited. And I hope you are too because everyone who faithfully receives and reads this blog feels like part of the crew to me. Your messages of good luck for the Independent Podcast Awards were so lovely and knowing you are sharing the joy of seeing the podcast germinate and find its feet - if that is not mixing the metaphors - means a great deal to me. The results are announced at a lunch on the 21st November.

This week I have been finishing off an Offshoot episode for next Tuesday. Back in April I spent a day at Kew Gardens. You can read about it here. I was there to record Jerry’s story about a tulip tree and how, at one of his lowest points when he was homeless, remembering the tree’s Latin name had stirred memories of his past as a gardener. You can listen to his plant story here. On that same visit I got to go behind the scenes to the arboretum nursery.

Now I love propagation - doesn’t everyone? A group of us were in the greenhouse at the Museum of Homelessness garden this week and the sight of some seeds emerging led to such whoops of joy! But imagine propagation for Kew Gardens is your job. Sal, who features in this next episode absolutely loves her job, she is raising ‘plants for the future’. Not to put too fine a point on it but some of them - trees - are part of a 50 year plan so some of us will have to be 100+ to see the results of her work!

I find myself reflecting that people’s passion for plants is what makes the podcast, so much fun to produce. This week I also spoke to a nurseryman who is 81 and so excited and knowledgeable about his particular plants. He first went to RHS Chelsea when he was just 16 years old - it was his first visit to London. Every evening after working on the display they would go for supper and gradually the passion of the person he was helping - flowed to him. And the rest, as they say, is history. He takes his plants to RHS Chelsea every year and already 2000 of them are growing ready for next years display. But what was wonderful was how he is also excited to hand that knowledge down to the next generation, keen to help them with their research as you will hear in the November plant story.

Finally just a note to say that even when the podcast is ‘off air’ during December and January, I will continue to write the blog. I’ve already begun to research the next series which will take us to New Zealand again and possibly Japan. Has anyone got any links to the Imperial palace gardens - if so do get in touch!

Have a lovely weekend

Sally

ps I cracked Youtube! Apparently in order to be verified I needed to share the back of my driving licence as well as the front - even though that just tells the verifier what class of vehicle I can drive which seems a little irrelevant to me….

But if you know any fellow plant lovers who do spend time on Youtube - they can now subscribe and listen to the podcast there - there’s the link.