Episode 119: Seasonal help and advice, winter bird watching and Wisley's great Laboratory is reborn

Gardening with the RHS

Royal Horticultural Society

Home & Garden, Leisure, Hobbies

4.4 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2017

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The gardening advisors gather to solve queries on what you can prune now, whether you can plant trees in winter and how to protect bay trees from cold weather. Resident wildlife expert Helen Bostock meets Adrian Thomas from the RSPB to find out which birds come to Britain in winter and how gardeners can encourage our feathered friends. Plus a look at the incredible transformation happening to Wisley's iconic Laboratory building, and the science team discusses two emerging threats to a traditional Christmas favourite, the chestnut.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Get your tickets for the greatest show in Earth at an RHS garden near you.
0:05.0	Where nature puts on an unforgettable performance of colour and fragrance.
0:09.3	The scenery changes many times in one season and our finest trees will happily play the part of.
0:14.7	The best hiding place ever.
0:17.4	Booth.
0:18.2	Put your day out of dreams in the hands of the experts.
0:21.6	It's the greatest show in Earth.
0:23.7	At an RHS garden near you.
0:25.5	Book tickets online for discounts plus under fives go free and under 16s of five pounds.
0:43.5	Hello and welcome back to a chilly December edition of the Royal Horticultural Society's gardening podcast.
0:54.1	Today we're sheltering from the bitter cold outside to hear about the state-of-the-art new science laboratory that's being built here at WISley as part of our massive project to invest in the future of horticulture. Plus, beautiful birds in the most unlikely places, we join an RSPB expert
1:00.6	to hear how you can spot and support our feathered friends in towns and gardens throughout
1:04.6	the winter, even when you're doing your Christmas shopping. I'm Tony Dickinson from the
1:08.7	garden advisory team based here at Whizzley.
1:14.4	This is a tricky time of year for gardeners with the rush to protect tender plants from frost and the cold winds.
1:20.8	The plants here at Wisley in the exotic tropical beds have all been protected, including bananas and tree ferns, wrapped up for the winter.
1:28.3	In my allotment, well, there's not much going on at the moment, doing the last sort of tidying up
1:32.8	before the New Year break, and really checking that brassicas and so on are well netted against
1:38.8	the pigeons, who otherwise will have a Christmas and New Year feast themselves, and just generally
1:43.9	adding organic matter manure and so on as mulch over the surface, and that will be a Christmas and New Year feast themselves and just generally adding organic matter manure and so on as a mulch over the surface
1:47.5	and that will be readily broken down so in spring I can sew or plant into it.
1:56.4	I'm here today in a very chilly, frosty exotic garden here at Wizzley and I'm joined by two of my colleagues from the advisory team, Michaela Freed and Jenny Bowden.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Royal Horticultural Society, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Royal Horticultural Society and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.