The Great Barn: Chillies, Camellias and Consciousness
Gardeners' Question Time
BBC
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2026
⏱️ 43 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
Peter and Gardeners’ Question Time panel visit the historic Great Barn in Harmondsworth.
Beneath the medieval beams, Peter is joined by Bunny Guinness, Francis Tophill and James Wong as they tackle a wonderfully wide‑ranging set of questions from the audience that are as thought‑provoking as they are informative.
Are plants conscious? Why do camellia buds turn brown and drop? And which plants might humans take to grow on another planet?
Along the way, there’s practical advice on organic ways to keep vine weevils at bay, how to dry lilac flowers, and what to grow in pots in a narrow alleyway with limited light.
Later in the show Chris Beardshaw talks all things pruning - why, when and how.
Producer: Dan Cocker Assistant Producer: William Norton
A Somethin' Else production for BBC Radio 4
* If listening on BBC Sounds and you wish to view the plant list, please go to the Gardeners' Question Time website and open this week's episode page. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qp2f/episodes/guide
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.4 | I'm Dilley Carter and I love organising. |
| 0:11.6 | In my brand new podcast, sort your life out, unpacked, celebrity guests join me to unbox three revealing items from their home. |
| 0:18.7 | Oh, wow. I wasn't expecting this. Along the way, I'll be |
| 0:22.8 | giving you practical hacks to help you declutter your life as well. This is the tough love I need. |
| 0:27.4 | Don't hold back. I'm definitely tucking you with me back to my house. Sort your life out, |
| 0:32.6 | unpacked. Watch on eye player, listen on BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to this week's GQT with me, Peter Gibbs. |
| 0:40.3 | One of gardening's little pleasures is the humble shed. |
| 0:44.4 | If you're lucky to have the space for one, or maybe even two, |
| 0:47.6 | it'll no doubt be filled with gardening tools, pots, seed packets, |
| 0:52.1 | maybe a lawn mower and a dozen pairs of holy old gloves, you just can't |
| 0:56.2 | bear to chuck away. Well, today, we've come to a shed that's not quite so humble, the great barn at |
| 1:03.2 | Harmonsworth in the London Borough of Hillingdon. And when I say great, I mean enormous. At 192 feet long and 37 feet wide, it's the largest intact medieval timber |
| 1:15.8 | framed barn in England. And this year is its 600th birthday. Dendrochronological, or tree |
| 1:24.1 | ring dating of the barn's timbers, show they were felled in the spring of 1426. |
| 1:29.8 | The whole barn was built from scratch within the space of about 15 months. |
| 1:35.5 | We're recording the programme next to these timbers, still resolute and standing towering pillars |
| 1:40.2 | of ancient strength framing the GQT stage today. It was called the Cathedral of Middlesex |
| 1:46.3 | by John Betchamon, and the barn was for about 550 years a grain store, housing wheat, barley, |
| 1:52.0 | oats, right up until the 70s. But following a sad period of neglect, English heritage stepped in |
| 1:57.4 | to save it for the nation in 2012, and it's now regularly open to the public. |
| 2:02.6 | Well, alongside me here in the Great Barn, |
... |
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