Introducing the English Country Gardens Podcast

English Country Gardens has always been about more than the garden itself.

It is about the people who grow, make, restore, study and care for the landscapes around us. The gardeners and growers, craftspeople and makers, scientists and conservationists whose knowledge, experience and enthusiasm have stories worth sharing.

Our new video podcast gives us the opportunity to spend time with those people and bring their stories to you.

Conversations worth having

The English Country Gardens Podcast will take us into gardens, workshops, shows, estates and wildlife projects around Britain.

We will be meeting people with experience and knowledge, but also people with a story to tell.

Some conversations will explore gardening and horticulture. Others will take us into biodiversity, conservation and science. What connects them all is a shared curiosity about our gardens, nature and the skills and knowledge behind them.

We will meet British makers and craftspeople, explore traditional skills and discover more about the materials, techniques and knowledge behind their work.

And sometimes we simply want to sit down with someone fascinating and discover what led them to where they are today.

This isn't intended to be a series of formal interviews.

It is about conversation, curiosity and learning from people who care deeply about what they do.

The importance of one small garden

One idea will run throughout much of what we do.

Individually, our gardens can feel small.

Collectively, with an estimated 30 million gardens across the UK, they represent an extraordinary amount of land and an equally extraordinary opportunity.

A pollinator friendly plant. A pond or source of water. Somewhere for a hedgehog to pass beneath a fence. An area allowed to become a little wilder.

Each action may seem insignificant on its own.

Across millions of gardens, those actions can become something much bigger.

In our podcast, we explore what works, what we are learning and what people across Britain are already doing to increase biodiversity and make more space for nature.

British craftsmanship

The same principle of individual action applies to another important part of English Country Gardens: supporting British craftsmanship.

Across the country there are skilled makers and artisans producing extraordinary things, often using knowledge and techniques developed over generations.

We want to meet them too.

Rather than simply showing a finished product, we want to understand who made it, how it was made, what materials were used and why those skills are worth preserving.

It is another opportunity for the podcast to take us beyond the surface and meet the people behind the things we see and use in our gardens.