"If you grow plants you are inherently an optimist".

I love this thought from Richard Hayden, shared as we wandered along the New York High Line, this summer. Richard is the Senior Director of Horticulture on the High Line. We talk about the magic of this garden in the sky, it's history - the trains that were once delivering the ingredients for oreo cookies to Nabisco and the plants - of course the plants.

Richard explains Pete Oudolf's vision for the High Line and his regular visits to edit and add new plants. Don't tell anyone but Richard reveals a few weeding secrets too!

If you like the idea of green spaces in urban places then this is for you. And next month we'll catch up on the Castlefield Viaduct in Manchester and plans for a High Line in London, which we first visited last year.

And if you want to some photographs then do take a look on the Our Plant Stories website.

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Our Plant Stories is presented and produced by Sally Flatman

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Sally Flatman: 00:00:32

Welcome to Our Plant Stories. If you're a regular listener, you will know that I'm a bit obsessed by High Lines urban gardens in the sky.

In the last series, I made episodes about the Castlefield Viaduct in Manchester and the proposed Camden High Line in London. I also promised that we would return to both those projects to track their progress. And we will before the end of this series.

Over the summer, I was lucky enough to visit the most iconic garden in the sky, the New York High Line. And I want to transport you to that space.

I first came here in: 2017

They said yes, and I met up and walked and talked with Richard Hayden, senior director of Horticulture at Friends of the High Line, which is the non profit conservancy that raises the entire budget and maintains the High Line, which is a New York City Park. And I began by asking Richard if he could give us a potted history of the project.

Richard Hayden: 00:01:42

I like to say everybody likes a redemption story, and the High Line is a fantastic redemption story.

It was built in: 1934

And they decided to build 30ft in the air an infrastructure that could hold two freight trains running side by side. And it ran, I think the original High Line ran for almost two miles.

orked really well until about: 1980

st train of frozen turkeys in: 1980

And of course, as we all know, if we're garden folks, that nature abhors a vacuum, and a garden sprung up. You know, originally it was just ballast rock, like a gravel rock that was around the original railroad ties and rails.

But the railroad ties disintegrated and that created some soil and things blew in and a few weeds formed and they decomposed. And before you knew it, there was enough soil to really kind of create what became a hidden garden 30ft in the air. And it was really quite magical.

he Giuliani administration in: 1999

Or if you lived. There were very few residences in this part of Manhattan.

But if you did have an apartment that looked down, you could see what a beautiful garden it had become. And so they had the idea that they wanted to advocate to turn the High Line into a green space. And so they formed Friends of the High Line.

And they were very smart because they engaged an art photographer by the name of Joel Sternfeld, who came up on the High Line and made the most beautifully evocative photographs over the course of an entire year in all four seasons. And then they would blow these photographs up and go to community meetings and show just exactly what a magical place the High Line could become.

And that's how they got everyone involved. And there was all sorts of public private partnerships and private donations and federal money.

on of the High line opened in: 2009

Sally Flatman: 00:04:51

It's really interesting that you use the word magical, because that is the word that Adam Ganser used when I was talking to him about this. And, you know, when you're wading through treacle trying to get something off the ground, he talked about the magic.

That's clearly a very important part of this High Line, isn't it?

Richard Hayden: 00:05:07

It is, because, you know, the interesting thing is the synchronicity of occurrences that had to happen in order for the park to occur is also one of the parts of magic. The idea that Joel Sternfeld's amazing photographs were so evocative.

We had a very significant supporter from the Bloomberg administration who was Amanda Burden, who was the city planner, and she was very much committed to working with the High Line to create different zoning and also making kind of clearing the way for the park to happen.

So there were just a whole series of different events that occurred that made it really important for the coalescing of the design team all of the different things that had to happen to make the park happen.

Sally Flatman: 00:06:01

We are standing in a. Oh, this is just. Describe for me what we're looking at.

Richard Hayden: 00:06:05

So we've just walked out of the Gansevoort woodland from the very south end of the High Line, which we like to call our front porch. It's right outside of the High Line headquarters down at Gansevoord and Washington Street.

And so it's a birch woodland and it's the gray birch, which is a really tough kind of quick growing birch tree. And they overarch the path.

So you have this really shaded pathway underneath that are some flowering shrubs like dogwoods and redbuds and some viburnums. And then below that you have this beautiful woodland floor of grasses, sedges, ferns and some flowering perennials.

And that complexity is really what the High Line is known for, is having all that complexity of planting. And we've just emerged from that shady little woodland that feels like a cathedral almost into what we now call the Washington Grasslands.

And this is a slightly more open feeling. We can see the Hudson river for the first time to the west of us. And it is kind of based on a prairie planting.

So we have a lot of purple coneflowers, we have a lot of grasses like switchgrass, we have Calamintha. And then really just beautiful kind of textures and very full garden with lots of different matrix plantings, wild petunia.

And it's just really evocative of the kind of garden that Piet Oudoff likes too. Likes to design where it feels very naturalistic.

It looks like it almost grows this way, but in reality it's carefully curated by a team of 11 full time horticulturalists who are so dedicated to what we do. And we do a lot of editing and curating to make sure that the garden always looks just as seamless as it does.

Sally Flatman: 00:07:56

You can feel that there must be, as you say, fantastic to have a team of that size as well. You need it, though, to curate and to garden a space this big.

Richard Hayden: 00:08:04

Do you know, I get a little embarrassed when I talk to other horticulture and public gardens because we have just under 4 acres of total garden and 11 full time staff and 3 seasonal staff during the summer. And a lot of other public gardens are lucky to have one or two staff per one or two or three acres. So.

But it is, you know, there's a lot of factors that go in. It is a complex garden. It's very dynamic.

I say if you want to be a successful plant on the High Line, you have to have a certain amount of ability to survive and spread. And so we need to manage that.

We do a lot of editing, a lot of replanting because, you know, perennials have a limited lifespan and we want to make sure that we're always having the right balance of things. And then we're 30ft in the air and primarily 18 inches of soil. So it's really, it's a bridge, you know, it's like growing on a bridge.

So when it's hot in the summer, it can be hot air above and hot air below the soil and then cold air above and cold air below in the winter. So those kind of challenges mean the plants need to be resilient. We have a really targeted and efficient irrigation system that really helps us out.

And then of course, we have a dedicated team.

that's down from our high in: 2019

and generally by: 10:30

Sally Flatman: 00:10:02

Just remind me again of the depth of soil.

Richard Hayden: 00:10:03

18 inches.

Primarily we have a couple of beds where it's mounded up or we have some kind of raised planters, but the majority of the park is just 18 inches of soil.

And I'll tell you, 16 years on, since we've been open, 16 years now, that soil level has shrunk because of course, you know, plants are pulling out nutrients. And so there is probably in some sections we're down to probably about 12 inches.

And one of the challenges that we're thinking about is what is the long term viability of the gardens. How, how much longer can we keep everything happy and surviving as the soil is depleted?

You can't just come in and add a foot of soil to an existing garden.

Our only inputs were completely organic, so our only inputs are compost or humate derived acidic fertilizers for a few plants that want a more acidic soil.

So we're really careful about what we do and always kind of looking ahead 5 to 10 years to make sure that we're anticipating the costs and the labor and the planning for what it will take to maintain the High Line in its world class vision into the future.

Sally Flatman: 00:11:22

Tell me about your own experience. How did you come to this garden? What's your background.

Richard Hayden: 00:11:27

So I did. I lived in New York fresh out of college, and was in the film business. I think many people come to horticultural as a second career. I'm one of them.

I went 2, 3, 4, 5 careers before I came to horticulture. But I moved to Los Angeles to become a famous film producer, and the universe had different plans for me.

And I started renovating a garden of a house I had moved into and really had a lot of fun and put in a patio and a big garden. And then someone said, well, I could use some help. And I said, okay.

And then the next thing you know, I had two or three clients as a landscape designer. And I went back to school at UCLA in Los Angeles because I figured I should really know something at that point.

And I had a really lovely career in garden design for about 20 years.

Then I got kind of burned out dealing with clients and had an opportunity to jump into a public garden at the Los Angeles County Museum of Natural History.

It was a wonderful habitat garden, brand new, and working there with a terrific team, learning how to program gardens, learning how to create educational content.

We had over 250,000 school children that would visit the garden, and then learning from all the scientists on staff about the important biodiversity and the different support that the garden could offer. And they studied what showed up. It was really a question of, if you build it, will they come?

And we built this habitat garden and then just discovered all sorts of interesting...you know, we increased the bat population in that neighborhood by threefold just by building a pond and some different aspects.

So I got very involved in not only maintaining public gardens, but figuring out how they could be of use to engaging people in the importance of conserving nature.

And I did a little flipping around in public gardens on the west coast for a bit, but when I saw this job come up, and I honestly think that the High Line is the most important public garden of the 21st century, because our garden designer, Pete Oudolf, really championed the idea that gardens are for four seasons, that you can have a beautiful garden in winter. He likes to say that a plant is not worth growing unless it looks good dead.

He wants everyone to see the beauty and decay, that it really is part of the life cycle. And the High Line really introduced that on a big level.

We have so many plants that are beautiful in the spring, great foliage or maybe fall colour in the fall, but they also have what he calls seed skeletons, you know, these beautiful structures that stay up all winter. And, you know, there's nothing more magical than seeing really the garden with a fresh dusting of white snow.

And you see really that architecture kind of in a real kind of black and white sense.

So being a part of that and having an opportunity to, to work with Pete Oudolf, who comes in, we have him come in every two years and he walks with us and gives us some great ideas about what we could be doing to edit. This past October he was here for almost a full week and we were really happy to have. He's such a mentor.

He spends time with each horticulturalist in their zone. He talks, here's the challenges. He makes recommendations for editing.

And then this past October he gave us, I think about 12 brand new plants that we could install on the High Line that would be new. He's constantly evolving his style and his plant palette. So we were really excited to have Pete come.

And those new plants went in many in the spring and they're just kind of getting. In fact, here's one right now. This is stokesia, which is this beautiful blue aster relative.

Sally Flatman: 00:15:44

Okay. Yeah, quite small, quite small.

Richard Hayden: 00:15:47

It will get bigger. It's just, it's just six months old. It's about six inches tall with a beautiful lavender, fuzzy aster shaped flower.

And that will just be a really beautiful addition to the summer garden. A lot of flowers that are native to the Northeast have a tendency to be spring or even fall bloomers, but we miss the kind of summer center.

So bringing a little bit more interest of color in the mid summer is something that he was kind of focused on.

Sally Flatman: 00:16:20

What's the kind of mix of native and non native then?

Richard Hayden: 00:16:23

That's a really great question. So we are by species count about 52% native. And we have 560 taxa of plants on the High Line at last count.

But by biomass we are probably 85% native because most of all the trees, most of all the shrubs are all native.

So we have a lot of different, smaller perennials, et cetera, that are, you know, Pete likes to say if it's a great plant and it forms its purpose and it doesn't, and it behaves well and doesn't get out of bounds, then why wouldn't we include it? Because gardens are for people.

And if we're able to extend the garden interest, the summer bloom interest, a lot of our other plants frankly are from the steppes of Asia. You know, plants that are accustomed to growing in thin soils, hot conditions. So we have a lot of those.

And it just really helps to kind of round out the year round interest.

Sally Flatman: 00:17:33

So that is the dream, a beautiful garden in the sky. And Piet Oudolf has said he will do the planting for the proposed Camden High Line when the time comes. So who uses the High Line?

Richard Hayden: 00:17:48

Who uses the High Line?

Sally Flatman: 00:17:49

Is it New Yorkers? Is it tourists? Is it both? Is it. What's your kind of experience of seeing it?

Richard Hayden: 00:17:55

Well, we've done a little bit of interviewing to find out actually who is visiting the High Line. And it roughly comes out to about one third of local. So kind of what we call the tri state area.

New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, one third kind of North America from around the U.S. Canada, Mexico, and then one third is foreign tourists. So it's a nice kind of breakdown and it really shifts timeline wise. So if you come between, let's say 7 and 9am it's very much a place for locals.

We see the same people coming. Maybe they're jogging, maybe they're commuting with their children to school, maybe they're coming to...we're passing by the sun deck right now, which has these beautiful chaise lounges and people will come and just read a book and you'll see the same person day after day, which is really fun. And then about 10 or 11, we get a bigger tourist crowd.

We get a lot of tours that come through and it can get a little bit crowded then, but it's very much, you know, New York City is a destination and we're proud of that. And then in the evenings, it kind of shifts back to more of a neighborhood place.

People come for dates, they come up to take advantage of some of the vendors we have. We have some terrific food vendors and you can get a coffee, you can even get a glass of wine here.

So it can become a really nice place for people to hang out and to just have a really wonderful New York experience.

Sally Flatman: 00:19:38

What's your favorite part of this job?

Richard Hayden: 00:19:40

Oh, my gosh. My favorite part of the job. My favorite part of the job is the people.

I like to say that my real job is doing everything I can to clear the way for my really engaged team of passionate horticulturalists to do their best work. And each of them cares so much about the work they're doing.

They are the front line of, of answering questions for visitors because they're right there in the park. And so they're really good about kind of giving that information.

We get, fortunately, we get a lot of gratitude from people that are passing by just to they see how much work we're actually doing. And so getting to engage with that team, getting to find out what their passions are, seeing how I can mentor them with their careers.

Some of them are just happy being here as horticulturalists. Some in the past when people have moved on, it's been to go back to school or to do programs. And it's fun.

We keep track of everybody and find out where they are and what they're up to. And it's just really built a big community because I moved back three years ago and didn't really know a lot of folks.

I had some friends that were still here, but tapping into the rich horticulture community. And of course, the High Line is pretty well known and so it gets you...it's a great calling card and people are always happy to engage and, you know, giving the tours to different groups as they come through, engaging with other parks, helping them understand some of the tricks of the trade that we've learned here in the High Line to keep things maintained and growing has been another awesome thing.

Sally Flatman: 00:21:28

We're kind of passing here through what? This is kind of like a different section slightly. There were no plants in this section.

Richard Hayden: 00:21:35

Right. So, you know, the High Line passes completely through buildings. We did one at 14th street and now we're at 16th Street.

And the building we're passing through was the original National Biscuit Company that people may know as Nabisco.

Sally Flatman: 00:21:54

Okay, I know Nabisco.

Richard Hayden: 00:21:55

Right. And so it's a two level section here. And so on one level, cocoa, flour, sugar, cream would all be coming in and then going out would be Oreo cookies.

Sally Flatman: 00:22:13

I had an uncle who worked for Nabisco back in the uk.

Richard Hayden: 00:22:17

Do they have it in the uk? Yeah, yeah. And of course they've moved on and now Chelsea Market has taken over. This is a wonderful kind of small shops and different kinds.

And of course our food vendors are in the Chelsea Market passage. So we've got, I think six or eight different. You can get an ice cream or a sandwich or something like that.

Sally Flatman: 00:22:40

And then we emerge out into the garden again.

Richard Hayden: 00:22:44

And then we're back in the garden. Yeah, we're just passing what's called the Northern Spur Preserve.

And it's a little section that jets off from the main section of the High Line and you can see it leads directly towards that building. And it used to. The trains used to flow directly into that building. It was a refrigerated building.

And so anything that needed refrigeration, the train car would just pull straight in and offload and then pull back out. But the planting here is interesting because it's one of Peter Oudolf's favorite sections.

And it's his homage to the original self seeded landscape of the High Line.

People should know that when the High Line was undertaken, because the trains had run for so long, there were heavy metal contaminations, there was asbestos from brakes, there was lead paint. So when the project was undertaken, everything had to be taken out. All of the ballast rock, everything.

All of the rails, the original rails were numbered and actually put back in. But we had to remediate the soil.

So all of the planting, except for the very northern section which is called the Western rail yards, which is at 11th Avenue and 30th street, which is still the original self seeded landscape up there, which is a fun, fun thing to compare. But everything else has been remediated. Fresh soil, constructed soil, irrigation and then planting.

So what we're looking at is the northern Spur Preserve. And it's a very kind of wild feeling with a repetition of. I'm really bad with common names. I think that's parthenium, probably has a common name.

I can't think of it. Northern sea oats, which is a beautiful native grass. There's some asters that are getting ready to bloom.

So it's kind of quiet, just kind of green and white right now with textures. But soon it will be bursting with purple asters and probably some goldenrods in the fall.

Sally Flatman: 00:24:40

I like that.

So if you'd come up here when it was this kind of magical place, before it had been developed, these are the kinds of plants that you would have seen growing.

Richard Hayden: 00:24:48

Correct.

Sally Flatman: 00:24:51

What's your take on weeds? It's a strange word. It's a word that gets debated in the, you know, in the UK a lot. You know, I love weeds. I don't love weeds.

Weeds are planted the wrong place. I'm always just interested.

Richard Hayden: 00:25:02

Well, you know, we all know that the definition of a weed is a plant out of place. So even your most beautiful rose could be a weed. If it's occurring in a garden that's not supposed to be for roses.

I, you know, you'd think that here on the west side of Manhattan, without a lot of natural land around that we might not encounter a lot of weeds. But it's amazing how they just blow. They find us and blow in. And because we do a big cutback in March, the garden is left up through the winter.

We cut back perennials and grasses in March. It's a huge undertaking. 250 some volunteers come in to help.

And because the High Line has got rails running through it and we've got different furnitures and trees. It's not anything that we can do with just a big push mower. Right. We've got to come in and do pretty much everything by hand.

So that that quiet cutback period is the time when the weeds really want to get a established. So we do a lot of weeding in May and June, getting ready to do our spring planting. But we've got strategies like don't tell anyone.

But we will often say you weed from the front back, right.

And then you can find that if it's an annual weed, if you know your weeds, you can just cut it off and it won't have enough energy to make more flowers or more seeds.

So because every time you pull and you bring up weed seed, that's a strategy too, is to cut back the ones we can, to pull the ones we need to, to work from the front back. Just trying to make sure that nothing goes to seed.

Sally Flatman: 00:26:40

That's the key. Otherwise it's just going to spread. Basically, yes.

Richard Hayden: 00:26:47

Bernonia is blooming. Do you know this plant?

Sally Flatman: 00:26:51

No, I don't. What's this called?

Richard Hayden: 00:26:52

Vernonia novaborensis. Ironweed. New York ironweed. It's actually a New York State native. You can see the pollinators on it.

This is a tall, oh, it goes anywhere between five and seven feet, little tiny blue fuzzy flowers. It's in the Asteraceae family. So it's a daisy family plant just coming into bloom here in August.

But it gets its name ironweed because the flowers will fade to a rust color. And of course, being a Pete plant, it has to have great winter structure.

So it keeps those iron colored flowers and that beautiful kind of upright structure all through the winter.

Sally Flatman: 00:27:40

I love that it is such a difference from, you know, at one point when it was all about annuals, wasn't it? And people would plant the annuals, they would bloom, pull them out, replant.

I mean, that whole way of planting is so different to how it's changed now and how a lot of gardens are moving.

Richard Hayden: 00:27:59

That's really true. It's fun. I'll tell you a funny story.

I was at a nursery recently wearing my High Line hat and my High Line T shirt and I was buying annuals because we take care of the Whitney Plaza, which is the museum next to us, we do some maintenance garden care for them because they have several beds that are under overhangs and in the shade. And frankly, the only real way to keep the interest is to plant a few annuals down there.

And I was buying annuals, and there was a garden designer who said, oh, my goodness, I didn't realise they had annuals on the High Line. And I said, well, actually, no, these are not for the High Line. Here we are at the Chelsea Sundeck between 14th and 15th Street.

And maybe if you listen, you can hear the sound of water running. It's our water feature. And it basically is just a sheet of water that comes up on one side, goes across the walkway.

It's probably 3 or 4 centimetres thick. And it's delightful when you've been walking all day and you can take your shoes off, cool your feet. But it's very much like a pool, right?

It's recycled, treated like a swimming pool, but a really popular spot. The birds come and get a drink. So it's not that treated, evidently, but it just adds this cooling effect.

And it's interesting that it's located right in front of a long, skinny bed along the railing. And as you look up, you can see the Hudson River. But the bed that we're looking at is actually what we call our wetland bed or our bog bed.

And it's all plants that are New York State natives that grow in wetlands.

So the idea was that you could squint your eyes, look at the Hudson river and pretend like these plants might have been growing along the edge of the Hudson.

Sally Flatman: 00:29:49

What have you found about kind of biodiversity of insects and wildlife up here? Have you done studies on that to see what's been attracted?

Richard Hayden: 00:29:56

We have done some. We are really proud of the biodiversity and nature support that the High Line provides.

There was a study done with the American Museum of Natural History and their bee expert, Sarah Kornbluth, who's an entomologist, did a study and discovered 33 species of bees on the High Line. 27 of them were native bees.

And they not only were just using the High Line for food resources, but she found evidence that they were nesting here as well. So really excited to be able to do that support. We do get quite a few. Lepidoptera monarch butterflies are one of our favorites.

We have quite a few milkweeds, which is, of course, their host plant, and then quite a few birds doing during the migration season as well. And bats, we've had a few bats as well. So we would love to do more studies.

We're actually working with the New York City Bird alliance around, maybe doing some bird studies. When migration heats up again this fall.

Sally Flatman: 00:31:11

What do you think other cities can take from this? I mean, you know, in London, hopefully at some point, The Camden High Line. That's the ambition to build a Camden High Line.

I know it's been inspired by the New York High Line. I know at times they've said it's a bit like wading through treacle to try and get it underway, to really kind of make it happen. It's hard work, but, you know, what do you hope other cities will take away from this?

Richard Hayden: 00:31:40

Well, I hope people would understand the importance of green space for humans. You know, we're, like I said, very proud of our biodiversity support. And biodiversity is the support of species, and one of those species is humans.

You know, the health benefits for green space and giving people access to nature. And, you know, it's gotten tremendous support for the amount of health benefits that nature creates. So I would say that that's an important takeaway.

I would say as we design gardens, especially urban gardens of the future, we should be thinking about all the different ways they can support our shrinking areas for wildlife.

There's an important entomologist, Doug Ptolemy, who's written a book called Bringing Nature Home, and he refers to the High Line as an important connector between wild places. And that's what I think we can do with green spaces everywhere.

I know in England, I would point people to the work of Nigel Dunnett and James Hitchmough, who are really doing amazing work with urban horticulture, really highlighting all the different stormwater capture, obviously cooling and then biodiversity support, and just giving, you know, a chance for people to interact with the nature that's around them. There's something so inherently relaxing about just watching a mature grass sway in the breeze. We can't really measure that kind of impact, can we?

Sally Flatman: 00:33:23

What's your take on climate change and how that's going to impact a garden like this? Is impacting a garden like this, perhaps? I should say.

Richard Hayden: 00:33:33

It certainly is.

And, you know, I like to call it climate chaos because we don't know if it's going to be warmer or if it's going to be colder or if it's going to be wetter or it's going to be drier. There's a thing that's been identified here in the, in the States called hydroclimate whiplash.

And it's because of desertification and less water available at ground level.

It means that, that the clouds are holding onto water because they're warming, they're holding onto more water, and then when they do release it, it's in a flood effect. So this idea that it's drier, but then when it's wetter. It's much wetter.

And you see it with all of the different floods that have been occurring here in the States. So I think we just need to be thinking about resilience. We need to be thinking about species.

For instance, right here, we're looking at the sundeck, and the major tree in the sundeck is one of our New York natives, which is called sumac.

We've got a couple different varieties of sumac, and that was a tree or a shrub, depending on how you want to position it, that you would have never seen in a cultivated environment. People would think it was too much of a weed. But it's got such beauty. It's such a beautiful pea plant. It's got great texture.

You can see the beautiful seed cones in burgundy that are really kind of standing up above the foliage. Those will persist through the winter. But the other advantage of the other real advantage of sumac is that it's very resilient.

It will put up with drought, will grow in limited soil, and it will just provide some shade and some wildlife value. And so we need to be looking at solutions like that for our urban environments.

Sally Flatman: 00:35:19

Are you an optimist?

Richard Hayden: 00:35:21

I think if you grow plants, you're inherently an optimist, and if you plant trees, you're inherently an optimist because you're planting them for the future, you know, so, yes, I'm an optimist. And sometimes it can feel overwhelming when you think about the habitat loss.

We used to be able to drive through the countryside when I was a kid, and you'd get home, and your entire car would just be covered in insects. And now it's not that way. And so that speaks to really, the loss of hmm and you know, plants are the basis of life, and insects are the next trophic level because they're feeding on the plants. So it all is connected. And, of course, that all, you know, goes up the chain to supporting humans.

And so if we want to be able to have the foods that we need, the environments that we need, we need to really be optimistic about finding ways that we can maximize green space in urban environments.

Sally Flatman: 00:36:28

Maximizing green space in urban environments, that's the dream. And I know there are all kinds of community groups and individuals doing this in small pockets of space across cities and towns.

A high line well, that's a big project. But I want to be optimistic that other cities can follow New York's example.

If you have a story you want to share with me about a green space or a Plant Story. Then you can contact me, sally@ourplantstories.com I'm beginning the research for series four next year.

Our Plant Stories is an independent podcast presented and produced by me, Sally Flatman.