Gardening with the RHS

This week we’re embracing the arrival of spring in the garden. RHS horticultural advisor Jenny Bowden applies a right plant, right place approach in her sandy, drought-prone garden in southeast England. Embracing experimentation, she’s creating a resilient, low-maintenance space that shows even challenging conditions can thrive. We’ll also be celebrating the breathtaking displays of blossom unfolding across the UK right now, as RHS expert Jonathan Newell joins us to explore the rich variety of flowering trees and shrubs in bloom, and what makes this time of year so special for gardeners and nature lovers alike.And to round things off, our resident veg growing affionado Liz Mooney returns with another allotment favourite: this time turning her attention to cucumbers. 

Host: Jenny Laville

Contributors: Jenny Bowden, Jonathan Newell, Liz Mooney

Links:

Drought-resistant plants

Drought-resistant gardening

Guide to growing cucumbers 

Liz Mooney’s top tomato cultivars

Liz Mooney’s guide to aubergines, sweet peppers, and chillis

Liz Mooney’s guide to peas

Liz Mooney’s guide to potatoes

This week, we’re focusing on the edible garden, and the simple yet radical act of growing your own food in an age of convenience. Food writer Nancy Matsumoto explores how our globalised food system is impacting both people and planet, and why women-led initiatives could help shape a more sustainable future. RHS Garden Wisley’s Liz Mooney joins us from the World Food Garden to answer everything you ever wanted to know about growing potatoes. And finally, Nick Turrell and Jenny Laville sit down to look at how you can get started growing your own – without ending up with a mountain of plastic along the way.

Host: Nick Turrell

Contributors: Nancy Matsumoto, Liz Mooney, Jenny Laville

Links:

Reaping What She Sows book

Nancy Matsumoto’s substack ‘Reaping’

Liz Mooney’s top tomato cultivars

Liz Mooney’s guide to aubergines, sweet peppers, and chillis

Liz Mooney’s guide to peas

How to go plastic-free in your garden

With the first glimmers of spring starting to show through, this week we’re diving into the theme of wellbeing – both for us and our garden wildlife. RHS Science & Horticulture Editor Olivia Drake joins us to explain why the common primrose is an essential early source of nectar for pollinators. 

We’ll also be exploring the powerful role gardens can play in our own health and wellbeing. The RHS has just launched a new science-backed Wellbeing Blueprint, designed to help anyone create a garden that actively supports wellbeing. Ashby Sachs and Vicky Shearing, who worked on the project, join us to talk about what the research reveals, and how we can all put those insights into practice.

And finally we’ll also be dropping by the World Food Garden at RHS Garden Wisley, where edibles expert Liz Mooney will be showing us how, where and when to sow peas for a great harvest later in the year.

Host: Guy Barter

Contributors: Olivia Drake, Liz Mooney, Ross Cameron, Ashby Sachs, Victoria

Links:

RHS Daffodil Diaries

Primroses

RHS Wellbeing Garden Blueprint

What to plant in a wellbeing garden

The science behind the RHS Wellbeing Garden Blueprint

How to grow peas

This week, we’re leafing through the pages of The Plant Review to explore a simple question: what can we learn from the wild?

American plantsman Daniel J. Hinkley reflects on a lifetime of exploration that has taken him to some of the wildest places on Earth in search of plants. Yet in his article he turns his attention to a small, unassuming genus growing close to home in Washington State: Coptis.

Next, David Pearce, curator of Abbotsbury Subtropical Gardens, transports us to the cloud-shrouded mountains of Madeira to meet a striking architectural plant found nowhere else in the wild, and one that he’s been successfully cultivating on the Dorset coast.

And finally, Sacchi Parasrampuria and James Miller take us to Poon Hill in Nepal, reflecting on a recent plant observation trip and the lessons they brought back from the Himalayas.

Hosts: James Armitage and Gareth Richards

Contributors: Daniel J Hinkley, David Pearce, Saachi Parasrampuria, James Miller

Links:

The Plant Review

Heronswood Gardens

Abbotsbury subtropical gardens

Musschia wollastonii

This week we join gardener and biologist Benny Hawksbee in his rose beds to find out how one small adjustment to the traditional rose pruning method can create vital habitat for a key aphid predator. RHS Garden Wisley’s Liz Mooney tells us about her journey to self-sufficiency, and horticulturist Rose Holman guides us through how to cut back your ornamental grasses before the new growth comes through.

Host: Josie Harris

Contributors: Benny Hawksbee, Liz Mooney, Rose Holman

Links:

Benny’s video on pruning roses

RHS guidance on pruning roses

Become a member of the RHS 

Ornamental grasses