The next generation

The next generation of gardeners

You can’t get much further apart than a prestigious botanical garden like Kew and a small primary school in Arbroath in Scotland. However they have something in common; encouraging the next generation to understand, care for and care about nature. And the joy of making this podcast is that I get to visit both!

If you google this phrase, ‘RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2025’, your search engine will quickly return so many articles; designers to watch out for, gardens not to miss. The countdown is on. The show runs from Tuesday 20th to Saturday 24th May.

So with that in mind I am heading to Scotland next week, with the aim of recording a very topical episode for the podcast, something I haven’t really done before. One of the joys of the plant stories is that they are timeless or in podcast language ‘evergreen’ which is very appropriate for a plant podcast. So it doesn’t really matter if you listen to the peony episode in 2023, or 2024 or 2025. However when I found myself organising a visit for members of the Garden Media Guild to the new Garden Futures exhibition at the V&A in Dundee with an afternoon trip around the gardens at Hospitalfield in Arbroath, I decided to have a go at something a bit more timely.

The designer Nigel Dunnett is making a garden for this years Chelsea flower show which draws its inspiration from the gardens at Hospitalfield, where he previously designed the walled garden. The show garden will have at its centre an ‘artist bothy’ studio. It draws inspiration from the sand dune landscape of the East coast of Scotland. After the show the garden will be relocated to Ladyloan Primary school in Arbroath, a school which is itself almost on the beach it is so close to that coast.

So next week I am heading to Arbroath to meet Rachel, the teacher who will be finding ways of integrating the new garden into the children’s learning. She herself has a background in design and is passionate about the importance of creativity in the school system. For her, art is another language, to add to the children’s learning.

Apparently you see the coastal inspiration for this garden from the train, which is exciting in itself. I’ll also visit and record at Hospitalfield which supports artists through its artist residency programmes and champions ‘inspiring and nurturing the creative health of young people’ so it is fitting that the garden will go to a school.

The plan is to put the episode out on Tuesday 20th, the first day of Chelsea. I might get a sneak preview of Nigel’s garden before the day, as I am due to be working on site on the Saturday helping Plant Heritage with the setting up of their stand. But either way it just feels good to be following the story of this garden and meeting the people who will get to use after the show. Perhaps we can follow their journey in future episodes and hear what the children make of their new space?

Whilst I am in Scotland I hope to record at the Garden Future’s V&A exhibition in Dundee too. It opens on the 15th May but will run till January 2026 so there will be plenty of time to see it and I thought it would make a good offshoot episode.

In the meantime if you haven’t yet listened to this week’s episode recorded at Kew Gardens, with Jerry telling his story, sitting beneath a majestic Tulip tree, then do take a listen. He tells of finding his way back to Kew, a place he knew from childhood and to gardening, after several years of being homeless. It was this tree which reminded him that he had once gardened professionally.

Simon Toomer the Curator of Living Collections who joined us, has so much to tell us about this and other trees. From how there came to be Tulip trees in America and China , to how to plant them (forget all the extra manure), to the trees he thinks will be resilient in our changing climate. He also has what I think is a wonderful piece of advice for all of us. He says:

“I used to be a forester and I always thought I was inheriting what the people before me did and handing it onto the next lot. As long as each generation does something, there’s always going to be a continual supply of beauty and trees.”

And perhaps that’s what is so exciting about Nigel Dunnett’s garden which is definitely being handed ‘onto the next lot’. And Rachel has plans for that bothy and the new garden, which will surely enable that next generation to learn how to do something for: that continual supply of beauty and trees.