HortWeek is delighted to present the Cultivate Your Future podcast, in partnership with the Colegrave Seabrook Foundation and sponsors MorePeople. At a time when horticulture needs to encourage a new wave of young people to come into the industry, this podcast is designed to highlight the multiple and varied career opportunities available. Hear from people who have found their way into their chosen career through different paths, what their job involves and what it means to them. This week we focus on Horticultural Education with an interview with Sarah Ha ..read more

Financier and environmentalist Ben Goldsmith joins the HortWeek podcast. He was a Defra non-executive board member from 2018-22, where he was involved in the Environmental Land Management scheme, the Nature for Climate Fund and the Species Reintroductions task force. Goldsmith is chair of the influential Conservative Environment Network. His new book is titled God Is An Octopus: Loss, Love and a Calling to Nature an inspiring story of finding comfort and strength in nature after suffering the loss of his daughter. Ben set about rewilding his farm, nature became a ..read more

Ahead of his time in naturalistic planting at the Dorset gardens and nursery Knoll Gardens, Neil Lucas was an innovator in a movement whose time has well and truly come: "Certainly when I first started it was far more unusual to garden or more importantly to be thinking in this way. For many of our customers it is [now] becoming front and centre. "I think it is such an important subject...supplying plants that are going to be suitable for the gardens of the future - I think we're just at the beginning of a really exciting new curve". A career-changer, Neil left a job in the civil servi ..read more

At the age of 15, Michael Buck, was busy destroying plants in his back garden kicking a football around as at that time he was already getting paid to play and was contemplating a future in the professional game. But he transferred his ambition to the world of horticulture and as head of horticulture at Creepers Nursery, is not beyond singing to plants to get them to flower. Creepers, which serves a client base predominantely made up of landscape and garden designers and developers, supplied plants for Hamptons Mediterranean Garden at the 2023 RHS Chelsea Flower Show. These included ..read more

This week renowned soil scientist Tim O'Hare unearths the ways soil is impacted by and can impact climate change. Tim O'Hare Associates recently won a Pineapples awards for Circus Street in Brighton where a derelict urban market space was redeveloped into a mixed-use neighbourhood space. Tim developed the various soil profiles and ensured they were sourced and installed correctly: "We're well down the food chain on the consultants that are involved iwth these sort of things but we take pride in the work that we do". "I've always felt soil was pretty much the forgotten natural elem ..read more

Garden designer Peter Donegan returned to the HortWeek Podcast fresh from the 116th Royal Windsor flower show in June where he enjoyed the "humbling compliment" of judging alongside a "who's who" of garden industry including former Chelsea shows manager Alex Denman, Rob Hardy of Harkness Roses and Alan Titchmarsh. He reflects on his trajectory from a 'geeky' kid growing plants under his bed, on top of the wardrobe and in the garage to his grown up self (resembling "Something out of a bad boyband") and enjoying "everything that is a daydream for this tall person". Donegan was impressed with t ..read more

HortWeek editor Matt Appleby talks with ICL's Sam Rivers about irrigation and peat-free growing media.  Sam explains why irrigation is important in peat-free growing media and differences between watering with peat alternatives and peat. He reveals options growers can use to help manage irrigation, which wetting agents to use and gives examples of where H2Gro has shown to benefit growers. Finally, Sam talks about how much interest in peat-free is growing, with many growers trialling the peat free composts, now the ban date of 2026 for professional growers has been announced ..read more

Henri Ghijben of HRG Tree surgeons has been mentoring other tree surgeon businesses through the Tree Surgeon's mastermind since the start of 2022. Keynote speaker for the Arb Show of 2022 he tells the Horticulture Week Podcast about how tree surgeons and arb contractors can benefit from sharpening their business skills. Drawing on his own experiences, he offers his "blueprint to my tree surgery business" based on 'Five Pillars of a successful arb business': Mindset Sales and marketing Numbers Systemisation Culture After working for other companies but not enjoying it, he set up own busine ..read more

Plant breeder Peter Moore, who has been creating new plants for 40 years, tells HortWeek about his new breeding and his vast experience in the production of new plants. He started work at Hillier in 1960 with some legendary Hillier propagators. In 1997 he left Hillier’s to become propagator at Longstock Park Nursery in Hampshire. He is still responsible for the National Collection of Buddleja held at the nursery and is also a member of the RHS hardy plant trial committee. Plant collectors like Sir Harold Hillier and Roy Lancaster were early inspirations, but it was P ..read more

Harrowden Turf's managing director Stuart Ridd-Jones talks on the Horticulture Week Podcast about the company's diversification from turf growing to wildflower turf, sedum, green roofs and topsoil.   Ridd-Jones gives us a market outlook and discusses new technology such as the Firefly Harvester. The effects of extreme weather due climate change on smaller gardens means we need new types of turf, such as shade-tolerant products, he says. Plastic in wildflower turf and not mowing turf as part of campaigns such as 'No Mow May' are hot topic and he gives us his views. And finally, Har ..read more