Postbag: Horniman Museum and Gardens

Gardeners' Question Time

BBC

Leisure, Home & Garden

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 22 March 2024

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Will my blind daffodils ever flower again, or should I just discard them? Can I use old yule logs to line my plant beds or will the harvested fruit and veg become poisonous? How can I repel spiders from my garden without using chemicals?

Peter Gibbs is joined by his enthusiastic team of horticultural experts as they dig through the GQT inbox and answer your gardening conundrums. On the panel this week are landscape architect Bunny Guinness, self proclaimed botanical geek James Wong and pest and disease expert Pippa Greenwood.

They visit the Horniman Museum and Gardens in Forest Hill, where head of horticulture Errol Reuben Fernandes gives the team a tour of their historical and extensive gardens.

Later, Peter and the panel discuss whether there are house plants that can produce enough oxygen to purify air or if this is just a myth.

Senior Producer: Dan Cocker  Assistant Producer: Rahnee Prescod  Executive Producer: Carly Maile

A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
0:04.6	My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.
0:08.4	As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable
0:14.3	experts and genuinely engaging voices. What you may not know is that the BBC
0:20.4	makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,
0:24.6	poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.
0:29.7	If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast over at BBC Sounds.
0:36.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:43.6	We don't often talk about growing tea on this program, but it's partly thanks to this delicious
0:48.3	crop that we're visiting today's garden location.
0:52.3	Frederick John Hornerman inherited the Horniman's family tea
0:55.4	business in the 1870s and by 1891 turned it into the world's biggest tea
1:01.1	trader. The proceeds from that business allowed adventurer
1:04.8	and world traveler Frederick to indulge his lifelong passion for collecting and
1:09.2	soon he amassed over 30,000 items of natural history, cultural artifacts and musical instruments.
1:16.7	He needed a place to keep them and so the Horniman Museum and Gardens were built in
1:21.4	1901.
1:22.4	Well over the years the museum collections gardens were built in 1901.
1:23.0	Well, over the years, the museum collections grew, and these days you'd be hard-pressed to get
1:26.9	round every artifact, some 350,000 items, including an acclaimed aquarium, a butterfly house, and thousands of stuffed animals,
1:37.3	some of which are, shall we say, anatomically disproportionate.
1:41.9	But it's not the Hornerman's indoor attractions we come to see today. Beyond
	...

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