Chirk: Pickled Onions, Tall Perennials and Picky Pests
Gardeners' Question Time
BBC
4.6 • 1K Ratings
🗓️ 21 November 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Why are my herbaceous perennials growing so tall? What is the best type of onions to grow for pickling? Why do pests prefer my burgundy blooms over the rest?
Kathy Clugston and an esteemed panel of gardening experts are in Wrexham to answer the questions of a green fingered audience.
Joining Kathy on the panel are garden designers, botanists and alotmenteers Marcus Chilton-Jones, Bethan Collerton and James Wong.
Bethan Collerton visits Wales in Bloom winners Nichola Ellis and Craig Youens for some insight on how they’ve achieved such an accolade on behalf of Wrexham.
Senior Producer: Dan Cocker Junior Producer: Rahnee Prescod
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:07.0 | Hello, I'm Emma Barnett. For most of my career, I've been on live radio, and I love it. |
| 0:13.3 | But I've always wondered, what if we'd had more time? How much deeper does the story go? |
| 0:19.2 | I remember having this very sharp thought that what you do right now, this is it. |
| 0:24.3 | This defines your life. |
| 0:26.0 | I'm ready to talk and ready to listen. |
| 0:28.3 | I'm insulted by how little the medical community is ever bothered with this. |
| 0:33.9 | Ready to talk with me, Emma Barnard, is my new podcast. |
| 0:37.0 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:39.4 | Hello and welcome to this week's GQT with me, Kathy Clugston. Today we're the guests of |
| 0:44.8 | Cherk Gardner's Club. Cherk is a small town about 10 miles south of Wrexham in northeast Wales. |
| 0:51.2 | It's just a stone's throw from England. The Welsh-English border lies immediately |
| 0:55.1 | south of the town. You could walk from today's venue, Cherk Parish Hall, to England in about 15 minutes. |
| 1:01.8 | There's been a horticultural society in Cherk from as far back as 1891, and for a long time |
| 1:07.6 | the town held produce competitions, mainly between the two great estates of Cherk Castle and Brinkenalt Hall. |
| 1:15.2 | I wonder if a remnant of that competitiveness exists today? |
| 1:18.6 | Ooh, I think it might. |
| 1:22.0 | Well, I already know that Cherk is a very welcoming place. |
| 1:25.2 | Today's tea and cakes have been supplied by a local social enterprise cafe |
| 1:29.2 | that puts its profits into a hospice and local groups. |
| 1:32.9 | A volunteer group plants up the local train station. |
| 1:36.0 | There's a churchyard group |
... |
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