Hello.

I'm your host, Jessica Mernan.

I'm an author, creative consultant, and a horticultural therapy practitioner.

And with my company, Basker, I help people and businesses use nature and gardening for mental and social well-being.

If this is your first time here, this podcast is called Inside and Outside.

Because we talk about inside things and outside things, I'm equally obsessed with growing flowers and watching shitty TV in bed. So I bring those two things

together in this podcast. Inside things include TV, books, movies, pop culture, internet gossip,

we're obsessed with, and outside things are everything from our favorite flowers to our

first nature memories and reasons to grow. This episode is a little bit different,

though, because we have the ultimate garden outside expert. It's a dream guest. It's Claire Foster.

Claire Foster is the garden editor at House and Garden Magazine. She's a garden journalist. She was at Gardens

Illustrated from 96 to 2005 before heading to House and Garden.

And I don't know if you're a subscriber to House and Garden.

It is my most favorite online place in the world.

It's based in the UK and every single home that they show I want to live in.

Every single garden that they show I want to live in, every single garden that they show I want to be in.

It's just the best website. I will obviously include a link to it in the show notes.

And then Claire has also written six books, including her most recent pastoral gardens.

She's a weekly column on Substack and an amazing course on

Create Academy on growing flowers from seed. I'll include so many links in the show notes.

And like I said, this episode is a little bit different because usually I'll have my guest

explore their relationship to nature and maybe encourage them to grow if they're not only growing,

...