Rosebud - Special Episode brought to you in association with the Royal Horticultural Society from RHS Wisley

We have a treat for you today: an exclusive one-off edition of Rosebud recorded at RHS Wisley, brought to you in association with the Royal Horticultural Society, and starring special guests RHS Ambassadors Dame Mary Berry and James Wong. In this episode, Gyles, Mary and James enjoy walking round the beautiful gardens at Wisley, and discuss the joys and benefits of getting out into gardens of all shapes and sizes. You'll find out about Dame Mary's first memory of gardening, about her love of roses, and about her long relationship with Wisley. You'll find out about James Wong's tips for making your garden more nature-friendly, and about his current pet project: growing a giant waterlily. But most of all we hope this episode will inspire you to get out into your own outside space, and - better still - to visit on the RHS's five flagship gardens somewhere in the UK. Thank you to Dame Mary Berry and James Wong for sharing what gardening and visiting gardens means to them, and of course the important role they can play in bringing people together and creating a sense of community. The RHS is the UK’s gardening charity helping people and plants to grow, so go visit your nearest garden today: there are five to choose from, RHS Wisley, RHS Hyde Hall, RHS Rosemoor, RHS Harlow Carr and RHS Bridgewater. You can visit the RHS website here https://www.rhs.org.uk/join?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21867277171&gbraid=0AAAAA-VcS5NpPokX1OMCTSVHqHFolwBrh&gclid=Cj0KCQjwv4XUBhDBARIsAE6bQURoGZ-uwuw3MywpGzhmwcES9i4qTcymyEdjAXl3_w_Spr4rNqEEb8MaAo1WEALw_wcB. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hello, I'm Giles Brandreth. And if I sound a bit different, it's because A, I'm excited, and B, I'm out of doors. This is a very special episode of Rosebud. It's coming to you from the RHS Garden Wisley. It is a little bit different, this Rosebud. It's brought to you by the Royal Horticultural Society, the UK's gardening charity, helping people and plants to grow. Oh, yes, this is a special one. Cue the music.

• 0:49Speaker 00

  Hello, I'm really in a very happy frame of mind, and for a reason. I'm at one of my favourite gardens in all the world. It's the RHS Garden Wisley. Have you ever noticed that the moment you step into a beautiful garden, everything seems to slow down? All those endless to-do lists, the emails, the general hustle and bustle of life, they manage to melt into the background? There's something magical about it. For me, every garden is an enchanted place. And this garden, where I am today, is truly an enchanted place. So I've escaped here to explore, well, why gardens are so special?

• 1:34Speaker 00

  Why do gardens and gardening itself have such an extraordinary effect on us? Is it the array of colours? I do love colour. If you know my jumpers, you'll know that. Is it the scent, the fragrances? Yeah, smell is so important. Is it birdsong? I adore birdsong. Or perhaps the simple satisfaction of getting your hands in the soil and watching something grow? In my case, it doesn't always grow as I'd hoped. But there, that's the idea. Whatever it is, there seems to be something restorative about it all. And joining me on today's very special episode, we've got two wonderful RHS ambassadors, a friend of mine, a real friend of mine,

• 2:16Speaker 00

  also a friend of Rosebud, Dame Mary Berry, and James Wong. They're going to explore the joy of gardening with me. They're going to look at the power of nature and why the RHS believes helping people and plants to grow can make us all happier and healthier. And there's research that shows that gardens do make us happier and healthier. It's not just a claim, it's a fact. So, welcome to this, I think, unique episode of Rosebud. We're called Rosebud for a reason. We love roses. We love flowers. We love plants. We love nature. We love the joy of gardens. This is one of the best.

• 3:09Speaker 00

  Look who I have discovered at RHS Wisley. It is none other than one of my favourite human beings, Dame Mary Berry. It's lovely to see you here, Mary.

• 3:19Speaker 01

  Oh, I love coming to Wisley. It's such a treat. I always try and go sort of early in the morning or a bit later in the afternoon, because it's more peaceful. But the moment you come through the gates, there's so much to explore.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  Can you remember your first visit here?

• 3:41Speaker 01

  I can remember my first visit here when we first got married, and that's 60 years ago.

• 3:46Speaker 00

  Oh, wow.

• 3:47Speaker 01

  And it was like a breath of fresh air. And I was full of questions, because I had a very small shady garden. And I was looking at where they were growing shady plants with a notebook. Now, I don't have a notebook, but I loved to, I learned so much.

• 4:08Speaker 00

  Can you remember the first time you, Mary, discovered a garden? Not necessarily this one, before this one. Your first garden moment in your life? Your first garden memory?

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Was in the war. We had a big back garden at South Lawn in Bath. And Dad wasn't that keen on gardening, but you, you would, used to dig for Britain. And he grew potatoes, raspberries, which I love picking. He grew celery, and I remember him, like you bank up potatoes, he would wrap the celery in a newspaper and then bank it up. And it's amazing how all that sticks. And I used to follow him around, like a dog, really, and chat and talk and pick. And he grew sweet peas for Mum. Mum didn't garden, but she loved flowers in the house. And I must say, when I come back from a holiday,

• 5:04Speaker 01

  the first thing I do is pick some flowers and put them in the house.

• 5:07Speaker 00

  Doing that with your father, you know, creating food, digging for victory, do you think that actually influenced the rest of your life? You becoming, you know, known as a cook, the baking, etc. That play into the rest of your story?

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny, I can remember vividly the garden and the plants. And then there was a gap when we had three children, had so much to do. And the garden, it was for football, for rugby, for cricket. And I didn't take too much interest in the garden then, because the children were more important. And then, of course, gradually, as they needed us less, then I became interested in gardening, because there was a gap in my life. And I remembered so much of my very early life with Dad. And it helped me, but I made so many mistakes. You know, I realised that we have to know our soil. And you can have that analysed here.

• 6:03Speaker 01

  And you've got to know where the sun is at midday. You know, some things want full sun, some things want shade. And so you've got to obey the rules, just as in cooking. You know, you have to follow a recipe. And you do get a meal in a day. You've got to be more patient with gardening.

• 6:25Speaker 00

  What I love about these gardens is, having lived all my life in London, there was a time I didn't have a garden. I simply lived in flats, and the most you had was a window box. And then, well, that's when you need to be able to get onto the bus, onto the train, onto a car, and come to somewhere like RHS Wisley. If you don't have a garden, here is a garden for you.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 6:44Speaker 00

  Because that is important.

• 6:45Speaker 01

  But we lived in a house in Notting Hill, and we had just a yard. But we had hanging baskets. And I can remember, in those days, you had milk delivered. And so I used to put the milk bottle out full of water, put it in my hanging basket, which was a routine, and they did really well. And the same with the window boxes. It was because I was taking my milk bottles out with water, because things do want water, regularly watering, and then you get success.

• 7:14Speaker 00

  Do you have a favourite flower or plant?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Oh, definitely, I have roses I like.

• 7:19Speaker 00

  Yes, this is Rosebud, quite right.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  We have a huge bed of Chandos beauty, which has brilliant foliage, lovely scent. What more can I want?

• 7:27Speaker 00

  Lovely. I'm for roses too, but I'm very fond of pansies and peonies.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  Are you?

• 7:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's my...

• 7:34Speaker 01

  I love peonies too, but they don't last a long time. And again, I can remember coming here and asking whether I kind of cut them down as soon as they're done, so it doesn't get untidy. And I was told, no, you leave the foliage on until the end of the season. You see, you can have so much advice with a smile, and you're not meant to feel stupid.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  And you know, they've now got their own app. Of course, everyone's got an app. It's called Grow. And, I mean, you just go on the app, and then you can actually just show your phone a plant, and the RHS tells you immediately what it is.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  That's terribly clever.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  The world is, I mean...

• 8:13Speaker 01

  I must try that.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  Oh, good, well done you. That's what I love about you, you're still trying new things. Whereas, I mean, I can't cope with some of the new things, you know? I can't, when I go to the supermarket, unidentified object in bagging area, I want to kick the machine. At home, do you design your borders? Do you actually think it through, or is it more random?

• 8:32Speaker 01

  It's mostly at random, and I make mistakes. But it is important to have low at the front and higher at the back. And I always overplant, so there's no room for any weeds.

• 8:43Speaker 00

  I like that.

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Overplant.

• 8:45Speaker 00

  Now, I think we have a difference of opinion about bright colours.

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  I love bright colours. I love, forgive me, a municipal garden that's full of, you know, plants that are bright red or bright orange. You're not into orange, are you?

• 8:59Speaker 01

  I'm not very keen on orange. And I think that yellow is very much a spring when you have the lovely, all different kinds of narcissus. And then I love them.

• 9:12Speaker 00

  I love the way you say narcissi. Do you know all the Latin names?

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Daffodils.

• 9:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know, daffs. And I'd say narcissus is, narcissi is the correct thing. So do you actually know the Latin names?

• 9:23Speaker 01

  I don't know, I failed Latin. I don't know if, no, I didn't do Latin at school. And I don't use any Latin names, because I've no idea what they are.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  We found this little room here. I love it, that there are all these little pockets of space where we're sitting. On a bench, a stone bench that was put here in memory of someone who used to come here and love it.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  In 1924, I think they departed because I read it.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  Do you know, I mean, do you know how long the garden has been here before it became RHS Wisley?

• 9:54Speaker 01

  I haven't, I've no idea.

• 9:56Speaker 00

  I must find out, but people have.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  We've an awful lot to find out, haven't we?

• 10:00Speaker 00

  Do you know, but that's, that's, but actually that's what makes life interesting, learning new things as the years go by.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  And I was thinking actually about climate change. So has the garden here taken on board the changes that come with, with climate change?

• 10:13Speaker 01

  It certainly has. There are sections of the garden that are dry gardens and a lot of grey plants, some gravel, and things that will take the heat without water.

• 10:26Speaker 00

  A grey plant? What's a grey plant?

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Well, most of the plants in a dry garden have foliage of grey. They don't seem to need so much water and a lot of grasses and things like that.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  How do you, Mary Berry, know so much about gardens and gardening? I thought you were a cook and a baker and a... How do you know all this? Because this has just been a passion for your hobby. Hasn't ever been, you ever earned your living in gardening, have you?

• 10:51Speaker 01

  No, I certainly haven't and I don't know any latticework names and I make so many mistakes. I do know about cooking, but for me, I love to grow all my own vegetables that we eat.

• 11:06Speaker 00

  The Royal Horticultural Society is very proud, they told me this, to have you as an RHS ambassador. But they didn't actually say what that means. What is your ambassadorial role? What do you do?

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Um, I try to encourage people to come to their gardens and tell them what great value it is to be a member. Because it's not only for people who have got big gardens. You can see an awful lot of houseplants and get advice about houseplants. Not everybody's got a big garden or a little garden, just window boxes and hanging baskets. It is for everybody who wants to know the benefit of being outdoors.

• 11:46Speaker 00

  And if you're a member, you can go to any one of the five gardens around the UK?

• 11:50Speaker 01

  You can indeed, and each membership, it's for two people. And so you can go, take a friend, you know, someone who's feeling a bit sad, take them out for the day. They'll feel a lot better in the great outdoors. And also all the year round, because as long as you dress for it, it's lovely and you feel so good. In the winter, when the snow's on the ground, you know, there's so much you can learn.

• 12:13Speaker 00

  Oh, I, when you said dress for it, I thought, well, you have to wear a hat as a garden party.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  No, no, no, but keep warm.

• 12:18Speaker 00

  But I, what I like, because as I get older, I want to travel less. I want to go abroad less because of the hassle of the airports and all of that. And being here in this exotic garden at RHS Wisley, look, there's a banana plant there, isn't that a banana plant?

• 12:31Speaker 01

  It is, no bananas, but banana plant.

• 12:33Speaker 00

  Banana less, it gives you the flavour. And some of these, look at those, those look like, what are they?

• 12:37Speaker 01

  I think they look like variegated nettles, but you can say it because it looks a bit complicated for me.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  Titonia, oh, rhandifolia, rutandifolia. Titonia rutandifolia. Anyway.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  It sounds as though you knew about it, you don't.

• 12:53Speaker 00

  I've got no idea, I've got no idea. But what I do know is this is an exotic garden. So the point is, you don't need to go abroad, you don't need to go to the airport. All you need to do is get to RHS Wisley or one or the other, well, they've got five gardens in all. And the world of plants is there for you. I think you're the best, Mary. Shall we go and find ourselves some tea and some cake, if you've brought it, and picnics are allowed?

• 13:33Speaker 00

  Oh, I just love Mary Berry. She's one of my favourite people on the planet. I've left her to go off for a cup of coffee and a piece of cake. And I'm climbing the hill up to the lavender hill. Right at the top is lavender hill, and standing in front of the lavender is, well, I think he's going to be my new best friend. I've seen him on television, I've heard him on the radio, and I know he's an ethnobotanist. I'm going to find out what that means. It is the great James Wong. James, I know you from radio, from television, from your newspaper columns, from your books, and from that series you did years ago, which tempted me into it because it was called Grow Your Own Drugs.

• 14:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 14:11Speaker 00

  Isn't that right?

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Exactly, yes.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  It turned out to be health giving drugs. But when I looked you up, it said that you are an ethnobotanist.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  What is an ethnobotanist?

• 14:20Speaker 02

  Okay, so it's essentially a really fancy word for a scientist that studies human use of plants. Whether that's like food or medicine or, or horticulture, ornamental horticulture, like we're looking at today.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  So what to you is the main value of a place like RHS Wisley? To a human, what is the main value of it?

• 14:41Speaker 02

  I think, you know, to a lot of people, like a space like this is pretty and it's ornamental, and they have trouble seeing beyond that. But, because you know, it is so beautiful that that's the first thing that kind of really excites your brain and your mind and you're looking at things. But what we're beginning to realise now is the measurable impacts that walking around a space like this can have in mental and physical health.

• 15:04Speaker 00

  Can you give me one or two examples?

• 15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we, we now know, thanks to quite a lot of research, that can pretty much instantly lower your blood pressure and your stress hormones within a few minutes of being in this place.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  Literally five minutes of being out in the garden.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 15:15Speaker 00

  You calm down.

• 15:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, and considering the mental health epidemic that we're faced these days, physically being in this space, even simulated green environments, you don't even have to do the exercise. If you have a disability, for example, and you're a wheelchair user, simply moving through the space, seeing these green colours can have this enormous impact.

• 15:35Speaker 00

  And this is measured and measurable?

• 15:37Speaker 02

  Absolutely. There's really good data, for example, on hospital healing times increased by simply a view of a green space. So, you know, on one hand, it's aesthetic, it's beautiful, it takes your breath away. On the other hand, we now have excellent data, like doctors on the NHS are now prescribing spending time in green space.

• 15:54Speaker 00

  And what does it do to you? What is it physically doing to me, coming out to a garden like this for the morning?

• 15:58Speaker 02

  So there are lots of different things at play. We're still trying to figure out exactly the mechanisms why spending time in green space works. But we know it's various things. So one of it is literally just seeing new things, like having new exposure to new environments. Another one may be the colour, another one is the fresh air.

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Tell me about the colour.

• 16:17Speaker 02

  Oh, the colour green, so human eyes can see more shades of green than any other colour. And it comes from being around plants for so long. We can like see dramatically more colours of green. And we now know that.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  I love this. Fifty Shades of Green is much more important than Fifty Shades of Grey.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  Um, even, even to me.

• 16:36Speaker 00

  This is your next book, global bestseller, James Wong.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  We were trying to figure out why we can see so many shades of green. Well, essentially, if you're wandering around the savannah in our deep evolutionary past, you need to be able to detect the differences between plants. So you can really tell the difference between things that are toxic and things that are tasty. If you're a rubbish botanist and you can't tell the difference between plants, you're very, very likely not to feed yourself, but in fact poison yourself.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  So what is the benefit to me of coming out and being exposed to a wonderful array of greens here?

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:08Speaker 00

  And as well as the lavender we've just been looking at? What is the value to me of these colours, to my health?

• 17:13Speaker 02

  We don't know the exact mechanism behind how that works, but we do know that being in a green space is beneficial and one of them is the colour. And the reason why we know this is through an experiment where they put a bunch of blokes on treadmills. We knew that when you exercise in green space, like we, one of the things is physically the exercise. But when you exercise in green space, you burn more calories and yet it feels easier. And so they took these views on screens of natural environments and then they played them. And then they manipulated the colours. So there was a black and white version, there was a red version, and there was the natural green version. And it definitely is part of that colour because when you played the manipulated views of the same scene, they didn't work as well.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  So we don't really know the mechanism, but we know that colour is one of the factors.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  Okay, so fresh air.

• 18:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:04Speaker 00

  Colour.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:05Speaker 00

  What else?

• 18:05Speaker 02

  Exercise.

• 18:06Speaker 00

  Exercise, yes.

• 18:07Speaker 02

  We also know that plants give off different volatile organic compounds. They're part of the scents. So like when you walk past lavender, the smell you get.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  I love lavender smell.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  So lavender has been demonstrated consistently in studies to help reduce anxiety. Um, and when you have the essential oil.

• 18:22Speaker 00

  So sorry, we love your thing, I'm going to go straight back to the lavender. That's amazing.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  It's the only reason I can string sentences together at the moment.

• 18:29Speaker 00

  I'm taking my producer with me, we both have anxiety issues. We're going to be doing Rosebud in future from the lavender hill. And this is true, this is fact, measurable.

• 18:39Speaker 02

  We, that's actually been demonstrated for a long time, particularly with the essential oil.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  Obviously, this is quite early days in this research. Because you're telling me you know the results because you see them and can measure them. But we don't know quite how all this is caused.

• 18:51Speaker 02

  That's the thing, there are so many different factors that it's really difficult to isolate.

• 18:55Speaker 00

  And that's what you do as a living, and you do it with the RHS, so you're an ambassador. What's your work with them involve?

• 19:01Speaker 02

  Oh, so I do lots of different things. I help them explain things about the importance of biodiversity in gardens like this.

• 19:07Speaker 00

  Stop.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, oh, yeah.

• 19:09Speaker 00

  You've used the word biodiversity.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:10Speaker 00

  Since I've arrived here, everyone's saying biodiversity.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  It's a bit of a buzzword, isn't it?

• 19:14Speaker 00

  What does it actually mean? What is the meaning of biodiversity? And then why is it important?

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Okay, so biodiversity is essentially a way in which we assess whether an environment is good for nature. And one of the key measures for that is literally how many different species are found in a particular location. So ecologists would come to a location like this and you'd count the number of plants, you'd count the number of butterflies, you'd count the number of bees you see, you add them all together and the list you essentially create, the length of that list is not a perfect measure of how good a space is for nature, but it's a pretty good, it's the primary one we use.

• 19:49Speaker 00

  Well, here at Wisley, twenty-five thousand species.

• 19:51Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 19:52Speaker 00

  Any butterflies?

• 19:53Speaker 02

  It's like a manga film here. They've been everywhere except now, but they're all over the place. And when you go up to the lavender place, when that place was first installed and in flower, I came here and I thought they had like, you know, those hidden speakers you get in fancy hotels? I thought they were playing bee sounds. I was like, guys, this is a bit over the top. It was actual bees, but there's so many of them, it just sounds fake.

• 20:13Speaker 00

  Why, I mean, I know they're beautiful. I love a butterfly and I love the buzz of a bee.

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:18Speaker 00

  But why are they important? Why is biodiversity important?

• 20:21Speaker 02

  Biodiversity is important for like a whole number of reasons, but like, let's just take the simplest one, the canary in the coal mine. We know how well our environment is functioning.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  Reminders, the canary in the coal mine.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 20:33Speaker 00

  And your family come, part of them come from South Wales.

• 20:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 20:37Speaker 00

  As my wife's family did, coal mining. They wore, they took a canary down into the depths of the, and if the canary died or fainted.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:46Speaker 00

  They knew the atmosphere was dangerous.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  Exactly. It was an early warning signal. I think that a lot of the toxic gases were quite low on the ground.

• 20:52Speaker 00

  Right.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  So if they had a canary in a cage low on the ground, they could basically detect things like carbon monoxide before it would affect people.

• 20:58Speaker 00

  So you are saying, explain now what you mean.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  So measuring biodiversity is a really important indicator, an early warning system to know if some, you know, there is a catastrophe happening in the environment. And this is, let's say, you don't care about anything environment, you just care about human beings. Even if that was the case, it's an early warning system about things that will affect us. You know, our food is directly affected by our environment. Um, a lot of our medicines, up to fifty percent of the medicines that we take every day, and I'm not talking herbal medicine, the kind of stuff you'd get in a pharmacy or the NHS still come from natural sources. The air we breathe is largely from plants, you know, a lot of it's from algae in the ocean, but an awful lot of it is from trees and grasses. Um, all of these things.

• 21:42Speaker 00

  There's a butterfly.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:44Speaker 00

  Yay.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Finally got that one ticked off. Add it to the list.

• 21:47Speaker 00

  So what you're saying is that the more butterflies, the more bees.

• 21:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:50Speaker 00

  The more different things we see, the better it is for us.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  It's essentially a measure of how good the environment is at supporting all life and we are just one of those species.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  And how good is the, here at RHS Wisley, how good is the biodiversity here? Has having these twenty-five thousand species made a difference?

• 22:08Speaker 02

  It's absolutely astonishing. I mean, like, let's, I think in the UK, there's one thousand five hundred native plant species off the top of my head. So having this space, it's probably one of the most biodiverse spaces in the whole of Britain.

• 22:21Speaker 00

  Yay, I'm feeling better already.

• 22:22Speaker 02

  And that's the case with gardens, you know?

• 22:24Speaker 00

  How then, you're a professional, you know about this, they're all professionals here, they're amazing. In my garden, or even in my window box, I live in London.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:32Speaker 00

  It's a small garden. How do I make biodiversity happen in my life?

• 22:37Speaker 02

  Okay. The most important thing about improving biodiversity in your garden is you don't have to be David Attenborough. Literally just by trying to make a pretty garden, you're already doing it. Because almost everything you want to do as a gardener improves biodiversity. So you, if you imagine that you've got a small garden, you want to see the maximum number of flowering plants and you want to see them for the longest period. The way you do that is by introducing loads and loads of different species. And all of those things that you're doing are essentially what bees and butterflies are after. They want the maximum number of flowers for the longest period of time. The other thing is, uh, just not to bother as much. So don't bother like mowing your lawn.

• 23:17Speaker 00

  I like the sound of this.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, actually, what that means is better food and better shelter for wildlife. You essentially have pets that you don't have to feed. I get, you know, foxes, badgers, all kinds of things in my mum's tiny garden in Croydon. And it's literally there by just being less tidy with things. So diversity of things and not being too neat. There's only two things you need to do.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  I love these secrets. On Rosebud, we always ask people about their very first memory. So James, I want to know your very first memory of nature, of a garden, given it's been your life. What's your very first memory?

• 23:53Speaker 02

  I weirdly actually have a, a photograph of this and I can never remember if I just remember it because I saw the photograph when I was a kid, but I have a very real feeling of a memory of, um, filling little pots with mud and planting seeds in them. And I think I was like three, four, and it's like, it's a hazy memory. Uh, but my, my grandma in Wales used to send me packets of seed in Singapore. And I remember trying to grow them and it was things like snapdragons, things like sweet peas. And there's this thing on the packet where it says estimated germination time. And, you know, it'll say something like maybe ten days, two weeks. If you try and sow sweet peas in tropical rainforest conditions, it's like ten hours, like fourteen hours, not ten days, fourteen days.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  And I remember reading it and like my mum reading it out to me, I just thought, my gosh, I'm a genius. I'm a prodigy. Like all of this stuff is growing so quickly. And then what happens in that extremely high heat and humidity is they all get fungal and bacterial diseases and then just they just fall apart. And I would cry. And I think that part of my obsession with plants is there's that kind of formula, isn't there? You know, desire plus frustration equals obsession. So because I haven't, I wasn't able to grow them the way I wanted when I was a little kid, I've just become obsessed with wanting to grow them and like experiment with them and learn new things about them.

• 25:14Speaker 00

  Do you have a favorite? This is to finish off.

• 25:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  Do you have a favorite flower, plant, herb, tree?

• 25:21Speaker 02

  Do you know, I think I have a favorite every week. It's always changing. Uh, at the moment, I'm trying to grow the world's largest water lily, Victoria amazonica outdoors in my mum's garden in Croydon. And, uh, each, each lily pad is like.

• 25:35Speaker 00

  How will it be, bigger it be?

• 25:36Speaker 02

  Well, if I had a huge heated glass house, each leaf can be like the size of a double bed.

• 25:42Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Like a mate of mine, Alberto, has actually stood on the top.

• 25:45Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 25:45Speaker 02

  Like, yeah, he's, and he's like probably seventy kilos, eighty kilos. Um, so I couldn't, but he can. I'm trying to grow that, but in a bonsai style, in a much smaller pot, less fertilizer, less temperature, less humidity growing outdoors here. But I think I might, in this warm summer, I might be able to get it.

• 26:04Speaker 00

  A lily pad?

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Yes, they're enormous, Amazonian things, trying to grow them in Croydon, not so easy.

• 26:10Speaker 00

  Wonder, what a wonderful challenge.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  And do you have a favorite cake? I ask for a reason.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Oh, favorite?

• 26:15Speaker 00

  A favorite cake that you'd like to eat? Cause we're going to sit on the bench.

• 26:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:18Speaker 00

  Watching your lily pad grow.

• 26:20Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 26:20Speaker 00

  With a piece of cake. What's, what's the kind of cake?

• 26:22Speaker 02

  The way you said it, it sounds like you have, you wander around with like Mary Berry in the back of your pocket and she can just produce cakes at any point.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  As chance would have it.

• 26:28Speaker 02

  Oh, my gosh.

• 26:29Speaker 00

  I do have a hotline to Mary Berry. I think between now and us getting to the table, she'll, she'll rustle something.

• 26:34Speaker 02

  Okay, okay. Victoria sponge, old school. No, nothing fancy, love it.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  Victoria sponge, old school from Mary Berry. This is heaven. This is what RHS Wisley can give you.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  Hurry up, Mary.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  This is the end of this very special episode of Rosebud. And I've come here at RHS Wisley to the Butterfly Pavilion. And there are indeed butterflies flying by and they're lovely. It's been a really uplifting day. So my real thanks to Dame Mary Berry, she's so wonderful, and James Wong, from whom I have learnt so much. So thanks to them for sharing their stories, their wisdom, and principally their love of gardens and gardening. And of course, to the RHS, which is the UK's gardening charity, helping people and plants to grow. Grow is actually the name of their app as well.

• 27:36Speaker 00

  So thanks to them for inviting us to spend time here at the beautiful RHS Garden Wisley. It's one of five very special gardens across the country. And I have to say, they're fantastic. I've been to all but one of them. I haven't been to the one in Bridgewater, which I stupidly thought was in Wiltshire. It turns out that it's in Manchester. I must go to the new alternate capital of the country. If today's conversations have inspired you, perhaps it's a reminder that you don't need to be an expert to enjoy the benefits of gardening or simply spending time surrounded by wonderful displays of nature. Whether it's a visit to one of the five beautiful RHS gardens across the UK, a few

• 28:17Speaker 00

  pots on your windowsill, or planting something to support wildlife where you live, every little step connects us more closely with the natural world. And if you want more information about the benefits of becoming an RHS member and visiting the lovely RHS gardens, simply visit rhs.org.uk. That's me, Gyles Brandreth. I really loved my day at RHS Wisley. Yay. I'm going to do less in my garden and be more biodiverse. Oh, look, I planted a seed.

• 29:30Speaker 00

  This special episode of Rosebud was brought to you in association with the Royal Horticultural Society and recorded on location at RHS Wisley. It was produced by Harriet Jane, hosted by me, Gyles Brandreth, and starred our very special guests, Dame Mary Berry and James Wong. Thanks for listening and see you in the garden.