You can find more information, photos and advice sheets on all the plants and recipes that we talk about in this podcast by heading to the links in the show notes or on our website at sarahavin.com.

Welcome to Grow Cook Eat Arrange, the podcast of me, Sarah Raven and Arthur Parkinson.

Actually, Arthur's not here today because Josie Lewis, who is the head gardener at Perchhilden, has been with us for, I think, nine years, is completely my right-hand woman and runs this place fantastically.

We run all the trials together, we decide what we're trialing, she does the records,

she runs the team when I'm off and around teaching or whatever.

And so she is the thread of continuum in this place, without which

it would fall to bits.

I know that I've referred to her as of Arthur so many times through the last year of the podcast,

but it just struck me that it was so strange and bad, actually, that we hadn't yet had

Josie on the podcast. So that's why I asked her to join me today. And we agreed we would talk

about one of her incredible passions, which are roses.

And it's sort of quite a good time to be talking about roses now because you can still

just about plant them, even just about bare root when you're listening to this.

And so they are cheaper and better value. And anyway, what is nicer than a rose?

And really genuinely, it is Josie who has completely taken me back to roses. So when I started gardening,

I loved them and I love picking them. and then I went off them because I felt

all the varieties that I wanted to grow like that wonderful Madame Gregois-Stashelan,

which is remarkable partly for its name, or Madame Isaac Perrier, all these ones that

when we lived at Sizzinghurst, I was surrounded by, I wanted to grow here at Perch Hill.

But they just got black spot and defoliated completely and just look awful in the garden.

So I'd been really put off them.

But then Josie came and she's passionate about roses.

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