We're following the charity Plant Heritage as they take their first show garden to the RHS Chelsea flower show. This charity was formed almost 50 years ago and for those of us who are plant lovers, it is as important today, if not more important, than when it started.

Plants go in and out of fashion, but how do we ensure that those garden plants that we love will still be available for future generations to enjoy?

Well you could be part of the solution...

Can I dig into more plant stories?

YES! You can check out the website where there are lots of photographs of plants and how to grow instructions. Our Plant Stories website

You can also follow the weekly blog where you will get the behind the scenes lowdown on making the podcast and you could also contribute - readers have suggested gardens to visit, plants to feature, experts to contact.

Our Plant Stories blog

And you can follow more plants over on my Instagram account Instagram

Every month I will make a plant story but stories often lead to more stories and I end up publishing Offshoot episodes. So if you 'Follow' the podcast on your podcast app you will never miss an episode.

It also makes a real difference if you can spare the time to rate and/or review an episode after you have listened. Spotify and Apple look at these ratings and it helps to get the podcast promoted to other plant lovers.

For this episode we are in New Zealand. Luke Gardner wrote to me saying he had been listening to Our Plant Stories since day one and he had a plant story he wanted to share.

Luke's childhood memories are of a cottage garden with roses and peonies and tulips - 'exotics' and in the garden there were blackbirds and thrushes. He has now created his own cottage garden and plants thousands of tulip bulbs each year, opening his garden for a tulip festival.

Yet the plant he wanted to talk about was a New Zealand native - Harakeke, swamp flax. It is the soul of his garden, giving a sense of place, woven in amongst the cottage plants.

Luke admits he is still learning about native plants so his conversation with Edith Rolls a Māori weaver focus on the significance of this plant to the Māori and I think connections are forged again through plants.

If you enjoy this episode and want to hear about another native New Zealand plant then seek out the episode called Mona's Corokia.

Can I share my plant story with you?

YES PLEASE! I called this OUR Plant Stories for a reason and that is that I love to hear from listeners wherever you are in the world!

You can email me Sally@ourplantstories.com and tell me your plant story. That's all you need to do - I'll do the rest. I'll work out who we can talk to. Can we find someone who shares your passion for the plant, they maybe in the same country as you or the other side of the world.

Independent podcasts like Our Plant Stories depend on their listeners for help with the costs of making the podcast such as the hosting platform and the editing programme.

Using the Buy Me A Coffee platform you can make a one off online donation of £5 and that money will go towards making more episodes. Everyone who buys a 'virtual coffee' will get a shout out on the podcast.

The support of listeners means a lot to me.

Buy Me A Coffee

Mentioned in this episode:

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Our Plant Stories has its first mini series.

I love following journeys - a venture undertaken over months even years. If you are a regular listener you will know this from my return visits to the Castlefield Viaduct and the proposed Camden Highline each season.

The Offshoots for the next few months will follow the journey of the Plant Heritage Missing Collector Garden from sketches on paper to a show garden at the RHS Chelsea flower show.

The garden will showcase the work of the charity Plant Heritage at the heart of which are the National Collection holders; conserving plants for all of us, ensuring they don't disappear from cultivation. Over the next few months we will learn all about this work.

The show garden is possible thanks to Project Giving Back which has sponsored 63 charity gardens since 2022.

So in Part 1 we find out how this garden came about and the crucial call from the hairdressers.

I think I could have named this episode 'seize the moment'.

Can I share my plant story with you?

YES PLEASE! I called this OUR Plant Stories for a reason and that is that I love to hear from listeners wherever you are in the world!

You can email me Sally@ourplantstories.com and tell me your plant story. That's all you need to do - I'll do the rest. I'll work out who we can talk to. Can we find someone who shares your passion for the plant, they maybe in the same country as you or the other side of the world.

Independent podcasts like Our Plant Stories depend on their listeners for help with the costs of making the podcast such as the hosting platform and the editing programme.

Using the Buy Me A Coffee platform you can make a one off online donation of £5 and that money will go towards making more episodes. Everyone who buys a 'virtual coffee' will get a shout out on the podcast.

The support of listeners means a lot to me.

Buy Me A Coffee

Mentioned in this episode:

Buy Me A Coffee

In this first episode of a new series of Our Plant Stories we are searching for Miriam. To be a bit more precise since this is a podcast filled with plant stories, we are searching for Clematis 'Miriam Markham'.

Our search will take us from a graveyard in Sussex to a gardener's cottage on the Gravetye estate where once thousands of clematis were being propagated by Miriam Markham's husband Ernest and the owner of the estate William Robinson.

We piece together this story with thanks to Sam Fry, a gardener at Gravetye and Raymond Evison a multi-award winning clematis grower. They'll also teach us how to grow these plants.

And we're asking you - have you seen Miriam?

Can I share my plant story with you?

YES PLEASE! I called this OUR Plant Stories for a reason and that is that I love to hear from listeners wherever you are in the world!

You can email me Sally@ourplantstories.com and tell me your plant story. That's all you need to do - I'll do the rest. I'll work out who we can talk to. Can we find someone who shares your passion for the plant, they maybe in the same country as you or the other side of the world.

Our Plant Stories is presented and produced by Sally Flatman

The music is Fade to Black by Howard Levy

Mentioned in this episode:

Buy Me A Coffee

Happy New Year.

The Royal Horticultural Society have just announced that this year in the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2026 - the charity Plant Heritage has an All About Plants garden. It is sponsored by Project Giving Back and supported by the Shanly Foundation.

Plant Heritage is the home of the National Plant Collections and plant conservation is going to be taking centre stage in this Missing Collector garden and we'll be meeting the designers, finding out about the plants, watching the build.

Our first Plant Story of this new series is the tale of a plant that has disappeared but could it be growing somewhere, in someone's garden?

Remember that there are over 60 episodes of the podcast available to listen to now!

Can I share my plant story with you?

YES PLEASE! I called this OUR Plant Stories for a reason and that is that I love to hear from listeners wherever you are in the world!

You can email me Sally@ourplantstories.com and tell me your plant story. That's all you need to do - I'll do the rest. I'll work out who we can talk to. Can we find someone who shares your passion for the plant, they maybe in the same country as you or the other side of the world.

Every month I will make a plant story but stories often lead to more stories and I end up publishing Offshoot episodes. So if you 'Follow' the podcast on your podcast app you will never miss an episode.

It also makes a real difference if you can spare the time to rate and/or review an episode after you have listened. Spotify and Apple look at these ratings and it helps to get the podcast promoted to other plant lovers.

Mentioned in this episode:

Buy Me A Coffee

I know it is a bit of a strange title. But bear with me this is the last episode of Series 3 (Series 4 will start in February 2026) and we have a couple of loose ends to tie up and an amazing idea to share.

Back in November 2024, I visited the Castlefield Viaduct in Manchester and the route of the proposed Camden Highline in London. Now regular listeners will know that I love high lines and I have walked the ones in Paris and New York. (For the latter check out episode 17)

I promised in 2024 that we would revisit both the UK projects, one year on and in this episode we catch up with Kate Picker and Simon Pitkeathley. And treacle features quite a lot!

Then there is the amazing idea of twinning your garden with a farmer in rural Africa thanks to the charity Ripple Effect. I worked with this charity under its former name 'Send a Cow' when I was the BBC Radio 4 Appeals Producer and I was thrilled to learn, thanks to Claire - the Garden Editor, that the charity has another brilliant idea.

So enjoy this episode and perhaps any others you have missed during this series; they feature Napolean, Adam Frost and Poppy Okotcha, alongside a million daffodil bulbs, ancient seeds, enormous yucca plants and tiny snowdrops - there are lots to choose from.

Ripple Effect

https://rippleeffect.org/get-involved/giving/garden-twinning

Claire - The Garden Editor

https://www.gardeneditor.co.uk/about

Independent podcasts like Our Plant Stories depend on their listeners for help with the costs of making the podcast such as the hosting platform and the editing programme.

Using the Buy Me A Coffee platform you can make a one off online donation of £5 and that money will go towards making more episodes. Everyone who buys a 'virtual coffee' will get a shout out on the podcast.

The support of listeners means a lot to me.

Buy Me A Coffee

Can I share my plant story with you?

YES PLEASE! I called this OUR Plant Stories for a reason and that is that I love to hear from listeners wherever you are in the world!

You can email me Sally@ourplantstories.com and tell me your plant story. That's all you need to do - I'll do the rest. I'll work out who we can talk to. Can we find someone who shares your passion for the plant, they maybe in the same country as you or the other side of the world.

Every month I will make a plant story but stories often lead to more stories and I end up publishing Offshoot episodes. So if you 'Follow' the podcast on your podcast app you will never miss an episode.

It also makes a real difference if you can spare the time to rate and/or review an episode after you have listened. Spotify and Apple look at these ratings and it helps to get the podcast promoted to other plant lovers.

Our Plant Stories is presented and produced by Sally Flatman

The music is Fade to Black by Howard Levy

Mentioned in this episode:

Buy Me A Coffee

If you find yourself in a gathering of gardeners today they are unlikely to break into a glee...a song, as their predecessors might have done. I think its a bit of a shame!

As part of the Being Human Festival - the UK's national festival of the humanities , historian Francesca Murray and musician Osnat Schmool gathered a group of people to explore these glees. A chance to be transported back to a lost world of gardening.

And I composed a glee!

Our Plant Stories is presented and produced by Sally Flatman

The music is Fade to Black by Howard Levy

Every month I will make a plant story but stories often lead to more stories and I end up publishing Offshoot episodes. So if you 'Follow' the podcast on your podcast app you will never miss an episode.

It also makes a real difference if you can spare the time to rate and/or review an episode after you have listened. Spotify and Apple look at these ratings and it helps to get the podcast promoted to other plant lovers.

Independent podcasts like Our Plant Stories depend on their listeners for help with the costs of making the podcast such as the hosting platform and the editing programme.

Using the Buy Me A Coffee platform you can make a one off online donation of £5 and that money will go towards making more episodes. Everyone who buys a 'virtual coffee' will get a shout out on the podcast.

The support of listeners means a lot to me.

Buy Me A Coffee

Mentioned in this episode:

Buy Me A Coffee

Sal Demain has her dream job and in this Offshoot episode she shares why she loves it so much.

Working as the Supervisor of the Arboretum Nursery at Kew Gardens, she has many plants to look after though she does have her favourites!

Her curiosity about how plants spread goes back to childhood. And she would love everyone to have a go at propagating. Just: "don't come after my job".

In this episode we learn about the tree gang who go out collecting seeds and the landscape succession plan for trees we might be growing in the UK in 50 to 90 years time. And we learn the definition of 'naturally sourced material.'

Our Plant Stories is presented and produced by Sally Flatman

The music is Fade to Black by Howard Levy

Every month I will make a plant story but stories often lead to more stories and I end up publishing Offshoot episodes. So if you 'Follow' the podcast on your podcast app you will never miss an episode.

It also makes a real difference if you can spare the time to rate and/or review an episode after you have listened. Spotify and Apple look at these ratings and it helps to get the podcast promoted to other plant lovers.

Mentioned in this episode:

Buy Me A Coffee