Rewilding and the weed that ate the South

Gardening with the RHS

Royal Horticultural Society

Home & Garden, Leisure, Hobbies

4.4 • 654 Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2022

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From Sussex to South Carolina, this week we're exploring what happens when plants take over. What do you get if you mix poor quality farmland, a passion for wildlife and a biodiversity crisis? The answer is a pioneering rewilding project that has stunned ecologists and revolutionised ideas about nature conservation in Britain. We head to Knepp Estate in Sussex to meet Isabella Tree and find out more. Bill Finch is a naturalist who grew up in the Deep South of the USA. Here he witnessed a very different form of rewilding from an invasive plant, kudzu (Pueraria montana). It became infamous during the 20th century for swamping roadsides and blanketing everything in its path - becoming known as a scourge and 'the vine that ate the South'. But is it as much of a problem as people think? And finally, podcast regulars Fiona Davison and Gareth Richards discuss the history of two very wild plants, ivy (Hedera helix) and Japanese knotweed (Reynoutria or Fallopia japonica). More information Knepp Wildland Rewild your garden with tips from Springwatch RHS wildlife gardening hub Learn more about ivy Ivy on houses RHS ivy monograph Japanese knotweed advice from the RHS

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.
0:05.1	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!
0:18.3	Put your day out of dreams in the hands of the experts.
0:21.6	It's the greatest show in Earth at an RHS garden near you.
0:25.6	Book tickets online for discounts plus under fives go free and under 16s of five pounds.
0:30.6	Today on gardening with the RHS, we're exploring what happens when we let nature take over. We've gone from being, you know, a depleted piece of land that really was not notable for nature,
0:44.3	to being one of the most important biodiversity hotspots in the UK.
0:50.3	We've now got some of the rarest species, including nightingales, turtle doves, purple emperor butterflies, peregrim falcons, nesting here.
0:58.0	We've got such abundance of songbirds that when you go out on a spring morning, you can feel that sound reverberating in your lungs.
1:07.0	Yes, we're running wild in a pioneering rewilding project in West Sussex where the pigs and the ponies roam free.
1:13.6	We're also delving into the history of often vilified garden plants, ivy and Japanese not weed.
1:20.6	And we're debunking some myths about America's most infamous weed.
1:23.6	Oh, it was spooky, it was scary. It was, it was monumental. I remember as a kid the
1:29.3	stories about kudzu and snakes. The vines acted like snakes and they looked like snakes and
1:35.7	people said, don't go into that kudzu patch. There are snakes everywhere.
1:41.4	Hello and welcome to the show. I'm Fiona Davison.
1:45.7	And I'm Gareth Richards. Today's show is all about exploring what happens when we hand over responsibility to the plants and wildlife in our green spaces.
2:10.0	Now what do you get if you mix poor quality clay soil, a passion for wildlife and a biodiversity crisis?
2:16.1	Well, a 20-year rewilding experiment that has stunned ecologists throughout the UK.
	...

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.