Our Plant Stories

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 [email protected] 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

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

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 [email protected] 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

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

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 [email protected] 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.

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

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 [email protected] 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

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

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

This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy