Absolute beginners
with Lucy Lucraft
Where do you start when you decide you want to grow things? Or when you take on a house with a garden attached – how do you know what you’re supposed to do with it? There’s a wealth of gardening advice on broadcast media and in the papers, but how useful is this to a complete beginner when it’s riddled with jargon?
Lucy Lucraft joins me on the podcast to talk about her experiences as a newbie gardener, and how she dealt with finding information in a field that initially seemed overwhelming and a bit intimidating. Which leads me to wonder, are we, as more experienced gardeners, doing enough to help newcomers to embrace our favourite passtime? Or is it just a bit cliquey and inaccessible? I found it a really useful conversation, and it’s always good to have people like Lucy who can offer up a mirror to what you’re doing and hold you to account. In the nicest possible way.
There’s a reading by the author from Alice Vincent’s How to Grow Stuff, as well as the soundtrack to the garden in August – wheeling on the thermals overhead, red kites make an appearance in this instalment, the final episode in the first series before a brief summer break.
I hope you enjoy this episode – please continue to share the podcast on social media, and if you’d really like to brighten my day, leave a review on iTunes or your podcast app of choice. Or drop me a note in the comments section below, having listened on the embedded player on this page.
Gardens, weeds and words podcast, S01E15 show notes
A blend of slow radio, gardening advice and conversation, and readings from the best garden and wildlife writing.
These notes may contain affiliate links.
Garden soundtrack
Peak productivity in the garden.
Does nature need our help?
The joy of growing things, but where to start?
Micro book review
How to Grow Stuff by Alice Vincent, published by Ebury Press, 2017
Extract read by the author
Interview with Lucy Lucraft 07:39
07:52 Earliest memory of plants and gardens
08:48 The attraction of a house with a garden
10:17 What kind of plants Lucy’s growing right now. Edibles.
13:00 The perils of gardening jargon
13:37 Finding gardening intimidating
14:00 the shed of doom, and pots of dead stuff
15:15 “I don’t really understand weeding"
16:00 Catching the weeding bug, and some garden tool geekery
17:23 Keeping houseplants alive
20:00 Gardening with small children
23:37 Veganism and gardening, growing your own and eating seasonally
26:34 What one thing Lucy would change to make gardening more approachable for beginners
A huge thank you to Lucy for joining me on this episode. You can find her here:
instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lucylucraft/
website: https://lucylucraft.com
Thank you also to Alice Vincent for reading from her book, How to Grow Stuff. You can find Alice on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/noughticulture/. Details for the House Plant Festival, which Alice is hosting on Sunday 29 September 2019 at London’s Garden Museum, are available here: https://gardenmuseum.org.uk/events/houseplant-festival/
With thanks to all my listeners for your continued support and reviews, I really do appreciate them. You can support the podcast by buying its producer a virtual cup of coffee for three quid, at https://ko-fi.com/andrewtimothyOB. Proceeds will go towards equipment, software and the monthly podcast hosting fees.
The music towards the end was Gift Horse, a track from the album Proverbs, by Les Hayden, reproduced under the Creative Commons Licence (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
https://leshayden.bandcamp.com/album/proverbs
website: gardensweedsandwords.com
email: gardensweedsandwords@gmail.com
Instagram: instagram.com/AndrewTimothyOB
Twitter: twitter.com/AndrewTimothyOB
You can hear find the podcast trailer and the first four episodes here, either on iTunes or on Switcher.
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Hello! I’m Andrew, gardener, writer, photographer, and owner of a too-loud laugh, and I’m so pleased you’ve found your way to Gardens, weeds & words. You can read a more in-depth profile of me on the About page, or by clicking this image.