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'.

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Sally Flatman: 00:00:04

Welcome to our Plant Stories, the offshoot episode. Because every story I follow seems to lead me to someone else I'd love to talk to.

This season, in the Offshoot slot, we have what we could call a mini series. When I worked for Radio 4, I did love to make programs where you followed people on a journey.

Perhaps they were setting up a business and I'd follow them across a year, so when the opportunity arose to do this with a garden, well, you won't be surprised to hear I was up for it.

Between now and May, we will follow the journey of the Plant Heritage Missing Collector Garden on its way to the RHS Royal Horticultural Society Chelsea Flower Show. And with all journeys, it's good to talk to others, right, who've been there before.

Gwen Hines: 00:00:53

Just been asking people for hints and tips, and their number one tip was be scared. So I think we can do that. They said, never think you're ahead because always something might go wrong. So that's always nice to know.

Sally Flatman: 00:01:07

That's Gwen Hines, the CEO of the charity Plant Heritage.

his prestigious show. Between: 2022

The show attracts 168,000 visitors over its five days and a global audience of millions via the TV and media coverage. And we'll be following the three designers who together form the Planting Design Collective. They've won the opportunity to create this show garden for Plant Heritage.

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:01:55

You know, we've had like, the long list and then we've had to get to the short list and then we get the funding and then we have to go to the RHS and then we present again to the rhs, and at every step, we could have got knocked back and we would always get to that before, just before that next step, and all three of us would take actually, even if we don't get past the next stage, we've learned so much and that's continued. And even today, filming and podcasting and new skills that we're learning and meeting new people. And it's been so lucky to be able to do it.

So it's been so fun.

Sally Flatman: 00:02:28

The Missing Collector Garden is going to showcase the work of Plant Heritage, home of the National Collections.

There are over 730 national collections safeguarding nearly 100,000 plants, from oaks to orchids or plants that have a shared history or perhaps geography. And the collections are held in a variety of places, from balconies to small and large gardens, allotments, parks, zoos, even a pub and a prison.

I think of these collections as a library, protecting plants that are rare. Perhaps they've fallen out of fashion because otherwise, once a plant is lost, it may be gone forever.

Think back to our first story of this season with Sam's search for Clematis Miriam Markham. So this is about biodiversity and conservation.

plant heritage since December: 2024

This is a big moment for Plant Heritage and beyond the designers, there is a whole team of people from the charity, plant collection holders, nurseries, construction and planting teams. Let's start with some introductions.

Gwen Hines: 00:03:48

I'm Gwen Hines. I'm CEO of Plant Heritage. I think I've always liked flowers and I definitely remember colours and flowers from my childhood and through the years.

I spent many years living overseas. I was a humanitarian aid worker, so I moved around a lot. But even when I was overseas, I played with plants.

When I lived in Malawi, we had an amazing garden and I remember going out there and chopping things, cutting things. We had a mulberry bush, which was amazing, but we also had really tropical plants.

So the most amazing cannas, for example, we had a mango tree, we had a banana tree. So very tropical plants. Not so easy in the UK.

So when I moved back to the UK 10 years ago and I had my first garden and we were staying still for the first time so that's when I really got into gardening, because I had this space that was just grass, literally just grass and the terrace and not very big, But I started planting things and from there, over time, I've dug up more and more of the grass, put in more and more flowers, more plants, more trees, shrubs, and it really is my happy space. It's where I go to relax, it's where I go when I'm stressed.

And just the colours, the variety in there really appeals to me and is very much in line with Plant Heritage's mission of that variety of plants is what makes it really special.

Sally Flatman: 00:05:12

Appropriately, I met up with the designers in a garden and what I love about this industry is that people come to it from so many different directions.

So we're in Wisley. I wanted to ask you, how do you look at gardens through a designer's eyes.

Because walking around with you today, I've just sensed it's slightly different to how some of the others of us walk through gardens.

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:05:42

Are you calling us judgy?

My name is Sally-Anne Rees. I am a planting designer and also part of the Planting Design Collective.

Sally Flatman: 00:05:54

I sense that you would describe yourself as a plant geek. Would that be fair?

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:05:59

I think that's fair, yeah. Having hung out with you this afternoon at Wisley. Yeah. You've probably got a sense of that. Yeah, very much so.

I think that since I really got into the world of horticulture and gardening, it's just been something that has just slowly sort of built and built and built.

And I think one of the brilliant things about being in this industry is that there's always more to learn, there's always another plant to discover and plant books to buy and gardens to visit. And it's just. Yeah, it's a real joy to be surrounded by so many beautiful plants.

Sally Flatman: 00:06:33

Did plants feature in your childhood? Did you grow up with a garden? Did you have anyone close to you who did garden?

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:06:41

Yeah, you know, you read about all the time about all these amazing garden designers who, you know, propagating plants with their grandfather in the greenhouse from the age of four. No, I didn't have that. But I grew up in the countryside in Cheshire, so I was surrounded by nature. We had a garden at home my father did have a vegetable patch and I would, you know, would play in the fields and the streams behind the back of our house. So it was something that I was always immersed in nature and I think it's something I took for granted, really.

So it's always been something that I associate with home, with safety and idea of nature being a real comfort.

Sally Flatman: 00:07:20

So what did you do in a former life?

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:07:24

I've had loads of different jobs. I was a lawyer in the city and then I was a legal recruiter for years. And then we moved overseas of my husband's job. So then I was a trailing spouse it's a lovely term, isn't it? So I learned Russian because we lived in Moscow, came back, renovated a house and then started work as a gardener. And now that's it.

But I have got my job now. I'm not changing again. I actually really love this one.

Kate Campbell: 00:07:51

Over time, you develop a way of almost reading a garden and you can tell why someone's made a decision to plant a specific tree in that spot. You know, does it draw your eye down, that kind of thing.

But then you'd also See us probably looking into the distance, but then getting right up close to the plants and being proper geeks and reading the signs. And I noticed you were going through a border at one point.

Did I? Walking into it. My name is Kate Campbell and I am a member of the Planting Design Collective with Will and Sally.

Sally Flatman: 00:08:28

How did you get to be here?

Kate Campbell: 00:08:31

So, in terms of becoming part of the Planting Design Collective, Sally and I met while we were studying our RHS2 Horticulture Diplomatic at Hever Castle. And then we both moved on to do the Planting Design diploma at London College of Garden Design, where we met Will.

And then coming out of college, the three of us felt like we wanted to keep in touch.

We hadn't at that point decided we wanted to form a collective per se, but we really recognised the fact that we were leaving college and we were kind of out on our own. So we wanted to stay in touch just to help each other, support each other, see how we were all getting on, building our individual businesses.

And then over two years, yeah, last couple of years, it's kind of organically formed, the Planting Design Collective. It was never like a decision at the beginning.

Sally Flatman: 00:09:24

What was the inspiration for you to become a designer? Did you see a garden? Had you always loved gardens, had you always loved plants? What was it?

Kate Campbell: 00:09:35

I'd always loved gardens and gardening, mostly because my dad is very into gardening and I was lucky enough to grow up in a garden that was really mature.

Like, it wasn't a massive garden, but the house that we moved into had this mature garden that he actually ended up teaching himself how to garden, to look after it. So I've got lots of fond memories of growing up in that space. But it was never horticulture, design, was never anything offered at school.

I think if it had been, I probably would have gone for it. But I ended up working in finance, trained as an accountant. So very different. And worked for about 15 years in finance.

And then I was working for an investment bank which sponsored a garden at Chelsea. And it was a garden by Chris Beardshaw. It was designed for Great Ormond street, so they asked for volunteers to go and help out during show week.

And he came into the office and talked us through the garden and the planting design in particular. And that came at a point when I was thinking about changing career anyway, like, I'd got to the point where I looked at my boss's job and decided I didn't want it. And it was also a very stressful job as well.

So I decided to make a change and just hearing him talk through the design and the planting and the impact that gardens can have on people was really inspirational.

Sally Flatman: 00:11:05

So that's two members of the Planting Design Collective, Sally and Kate. Luckily there are three. So as they told me, if they need to vote on something, they're never at stalemate. Though they reassured me that they hadn't really needed it

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:11:18

..apart from the plant I wanted. And you said no.

William Murray: 00:11:22

Okay. Sally did choose a really ugly dead looking plant that we did have to say maybe not that one.

Sally Flatman: 00:11:33

Do you want to reveal what it was?

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:11:35

I better not because it's still tagged in a nursery.

William Murray: 00:11:39

It's gonna work its way in.

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:11:41

I must go back to the nursery room and say thank you but no.

William Murray: 00:11:45

Thanks. So I'm William Murray. I'm one of the designers with the Planting Design Collective.

Sally Flatman: 00:11:55

Tell me what you're most excited about this project.

William Murray: 00:11:58

It's a really amazing opportunity to really have a deep dive into different plants. It gives us a lot of freedom to be plant geeks, essentially.

So we're exploring all different things we didn't know about, meeting new people teaching us so much, all the different national plant collection holders teaching us so much about plants that they're really passionate about, which obviously is quite infectious.

Sally Flatman: 00:12:28

Were you always a plant geek? Can you look back to childhood and was there a fascination with plants or did you grow up with plants around you?

William Murray: 00:12:36

Yeah, I actually was, I think for might have been my eighth birthday. My parents got me an allotment, so subscription for allotment. So we were down there with my granddad growing various things.

I think we entered the biggest runner bean competition and things like that. So I did. I was always quite interested in plants. My granddad always had a lovely garden that we spent a lot of time in.

So that was probably quite formative.

Sally Flatman: 00:13:06

And then what happened? Did you go away from it?

William Murray: 00:13:08

I. Yeah, I did go away from it. I had a sort of creative career before getting into garden design. So it was kind of weird one day I woke up and had a sudden realisation I needed to go and buy some cacti for whatever reason. So I did that and then I went and bought more houseplants. And then I went and bought more houseplants.

We were living in a flat with no garden at the time. And then had in my mind, I'd really like to, well, have my own garden for a start, but I'd really like to design gardens.

I already worked in design, but not for gardens. So one thing sort of led to another.

Sally Flatman: 00:13:49

So you've had an experience of doing a garden at Chelsea. How does that help with this process, do you think?

William Murray: 00:13:58

Yeah, it was. I did a balcony garden, so a smaller project and I was working solo. So understanding that process has been, is really helpful.

We're obviously working as the Planting Design collective now, so there's three of us, which is brilliant because this is a such a bigger project. There's so many more moving parts.

But having that experience at Chelsea before in a sort of first taste of it in a manageable garden, I might not have thought this at the time, but quite a manageable space was really incredible. And it's such a special place to be at Chelsea.

It's obviously got such history, but it does as a designer, it lets you be really creative in ways that you don't always get to do day to day work.

Sally Flatman: 00:14:45

What was the biggest lesson from doing that garden at Chelsea the first time?

William Murray: 00:14:51

Attention to detail. So towards the end of the week when you're building the garden, you're really tired and you might see something that isn't quite right.

And the lesson I learned was I should have changed that thing. So some of that is really important.

But working with a bigger team is the benefit is that there's lots of us there, so when one of us is maybe low energy, there's another to pick up that and really making sure we're really sticking to our garden brief and that that initial vision of the garden is, stays true to what it was to start off with.

Sally Flatman: 00:15:36

So now you know the Planting Design collective and I think over the next four months you will get to know them much better. So where did their inspiration for the show garden come from?

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:15:48

It came initially from reading an article about the Missing Collections campaign that Plant Heritage run every year.

And I read it and I hadn't come across this idea of missing collections before and I found it really interesting that some of our really well known and loved garden plants like Verbascum and Aquilegia are currently not within a collection. And I love this idea, this sort of call out to new collectors to come forward to protect these plants.

And then we had been talking about doing another show garden as we'd worked together at Hampton Court. And Will had found the Project Giving Back press release about it being the last year of funding

William Murray: 00:16:31

And they looking for All About Plants gardens which were connected to plants. Lots of the charities at Chelsea obviously don't always have a plant or garden connection.

So we sort of thought plant heritage are a really perfect fit for an All About Plants Garden, Plant Heritage have had presence at Chelsea for quite a long time in the marquee, but never a show garden.

Kate Campbell: 00:16:58

And then I guess the next step was Sally sitting in her hairdresser, phoning up the CEO of Plant Heritage.

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:17:04

Thanks, Kate.

Kate Campbell: 00:17:04

With her foils in.

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:17:08

It was one of those mad sort of afternoons we'd talked about, about the garden. I think we were all really busy at the time and we knew that the deadline was coming up and I think we'd sort of thought, oh, is it going to happen? Is it not? And we had like two or three days left and we hadn't got to that point of contacting the charity.

And I was literally Friday afternoon in the hairdressers with my foils in, and I had, you know, 45 minutes for the colour to cook. And I just googled the number.

And I thought, I'm going to get possibly like a PA who might pass a message on, or more likely the answering machine. And it was, hello. And I said, oh, hi, I need to speak to somebody about maybe show garden. And I was thinking, why have I done this? I haven't even got a coherent sentence. And this person went, well, hello, I'm Gwen and I'm the new CEO. And it's something we've been thinking about. And it was. It was great.

It was a really, you know, fortuitous call.

Gwen Hines: 00:18:02

My immediate reaction was, yes, definitely. I think I'd been thinking already about, could we, should we? Would we do a garden for Chelsea? And had been thinking, okay, maybe in a future year.

And so getting the call from Sally and her excitement and the ideas about doing a garden together really hit at the right moment for me of thinking, yeah, why not? Why wait? Why not do it now?

Sally Flatman: 00:18:30

What's important, do you think, for the charity about doing a garden at a place like Chelsea?

Gwen Hines: 00:18:36

So we were at Chelsea in: 2025

But we need to cut through to so many more people. The work that National Collection holders do is amazing.

They are volunteers, they are passionate about plants, they work so hard on their collections and together they're now looking after 100,000 plants for all of us. We all benefit.

And I want that work to be seen on a world stage by people all across the uk, on tv, but also around the world, and as well, of course, the people who come and see the garden at Chelsea itself.

Sally Flatman: 00:19:21

What's special about those collection holders?

Gwen Hines: 00:19:25

Well, it starts with a passion for plants, and I've met many of them already ready. And I love meeting them because I like asking them, why did they start their collection?

And often it's because they love a plant and they wanted to find more about it.

And then they suddenly found themselves collecting more and more of those plants and researching them, telling other people about them, sharing the plants with other people. And it's the idea that they come together as this living library to safeguard a hundred thousand plants for the future. And that really is everything.

We talk about it, from tiny orchids to enormous oak trees. And it really is just that huge variety of plants being kept safe in this living library.

Sally Flatman: 00:20:08

Do we sometimes take plants for granted? Do we not realise as gardeners that there is a threat to them?

Gwen Hines: 00:20:17

ns, plants for this year, for: 2026

Wallflowers are a really common flower. You know, people talk about their favorite flower.

So when I was a child, I'm one of five children, we were each given a small patch of the garden and chose plants. I chose wallflowers. So actually, the fact that there is no national plant collection at the moment of wallflowers is really sad.

And so we're looking for people to come forward and start a national collection of wallflowers. And people think it has to be just a rare or unusual plant.

And the point of the national collection is to have a variety of different wallflowers within that collection because it's the diversity of the flowers, but also the diversity of the genes within the collection that really matters. So that's an example of something that we totally take for granted.

But if tomorrow they went out of fashion, nobody was growing them, nobody was buying them, they disappear, and when they're gone, they're gone forever. You can't get them back back because they are each unique in terms of their genetics.

So we need to keep them growing. We need to keep caring for them, sharing them with other people. Otherwise they can disappear.

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:21:29

You have these amazing long conversations with these really passionate collection holders who know so much about these plants. The difficulty has been to try and not put all the plants they suggest in the garden. That's been. That's been one of the bigger garden challenges

William Murray: 00:21:42

the garden is 6 by 8 meters. So we have a limit of the physical number of plants we could put in. We'd love to put thousands more.

It is really that curating them down to the ones that tell the story the best.

Kate Campbell: 00:21:54

I think we've all learned from speaking to them, as designers. There'll be so many influences from that in future projects where there'll be things that we haven't been able to put in this garden.

But we've learned so much. They're a real untapped resource of knowledge for varieties and cultivars that we didn't know about.

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:22:14

It's really nice to be able to thank them publicly and acknowledge the work that they do, because they're looking after all of our, a large proportion of our garden plants, that if somebody's not looking after them, then they can be lost forever.

Sally Flatman: 00:22:27

I must admit I've interviewed quite a few of them for Our Plant Stories and I just love their passion as well as their expertise, It's just brilliant, isn't it? Just thinking towards Chelsea, is there anything that keeps you awake at night?

William Murray: 00:22:41

So many things. Lots of stuff's out of our control, so we don't know what the weather's going to be the week we're planting our garden.

That can have quite a big effect on the lots of woodland plants that we're putting in. But the sort of flip side of that is that we're trying to be very organized for the things we can control.

So although we are, we'll have probably suddenly wake up thinking, oh, my goodness, is that plant going to be okay tomorrow? We can't control that. So, yeah.

Kate Campbell: 00:23:14

And Chelsea's such a strange beast, where it's a small space with lots of people creating gardens and just the logistics of getting stuff in there could be tricky and there will be things that go wrong, but we just need to adapt to it.

Sally Flatman: 00:23:29

At the end of January, Sally, Kate, Will, Gwen and me went on an outing in London to the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, home to the Chelsea pensioners. Many of us will have seen the grounds on television.

Kate Campbell: 00:23:42

We are here for our site visit at Chelsea Showground. So there's nothing here at the moment.

I think we're going to see just bare grass, but we're going to go to where the garden is actually going to be built.

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:23:53

I guess looking at things like the tree canopy and being pointed out where the services are that we can't dig down and, yeah, storage.

Kate Campbell: 00:24:00

Think about where we're going to store stuff.

Gwen Hines: 00:24:01

We've just been asking people for hints and tips and their number one tip was be scared. So I think we can do that. They said, never, never think you're ahead because always something might go wrong. So that's always nice to know.

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:24:15

Wow I've just been chatting away to Gwen and not really looking up, and then, gosh, it is.

Gwen Hines: 00:24:20

It's really not very big, which is so scary when you think about how much you have to fit in it.

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:24:24

It's so true. It's just so different and flat. Wow.

Sally Flatman: 00:24:30

And look. That's what's in the middle of the monuments, in the middle of the marquee.

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:24:34

Yeah, of course.

William Murray: 00:24:36

Wow.

Sally Flatman: 00:24:37

How does everything fit in this space?

Sally-Anne Rees: 00:24:39

Quiet as well, isn't it?

Gwen Hines: 00:24:42

We are at Chelsea for our first site visit. How exciting.

Sally Flatman: 00:24:53

Between now and May, we will follow the progress of the Missing Collector Garden.

And along the way, we will meet national collection holders, find out about a very special feature in the garden and visit where it will be going after the show. And if you want to see the design, then you can see it on the websites of Plant Heritage and the Planting Design Collective.

And I'll put all the links on ourplantstories.com This podcast is recorded, edited, produced and presented by me, Sally Flatman.