The latest season of the Gardens Illustrated podcast, Talking Gardens, launches next week with a top line-up of exciting horticultural talent talking to Gardens Illustrated editor Stephanie Mahon.
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The first episode of season 5 lands on Tuesday 22 April, with lauded landscape designer Dan Pearson, who describes his dream garden, including what he would want to include in his fantasy space, from a temple garden in Kyoto and the landscape of Joshua Tree National Park to the architecture of Mexico, the high glades of the Himalaya and his own ravine.
Talking his garden pet hate, Dan chose the tennis court. "If a client says to me I want a tennis court my heart sinks," he says, "because so often they are a square of tarmac that gets used a handful of times a year and they are a big rectangular ugly object with tall fences that takes a piece of good ground away."
"It's so rare you see a grass court, and they are beautiful for the fact that they are grass, but a tennis court seems like a hole in the landscape," he adds.
Dan also talks through his design process and the plants he would love to grow, and discusses how to manage clients' expectations, plus some of his new projects he is working on right now.
The designer is one of the eight guests on the latest season of Talking Gardens, which asks garden stars what their dream garden would look like. Episodes drop each Tuesday for the next eight weeks, and the guests include plantswoman and TV presenter Carol Klein, who speaks about her recovery from cancer last year; designer Manoj Malde , who talks about what it was like to get married at the Chelsea Flower Show; and designer Tom Massey on the the most hotly debated topic in horticulture right now - bringing AI into gardening.
This season, listeners will also hear designer Jo Thompson give advice to women striving in the garden design profession; Professor James Hitchmough on the proudest moment of his life; writer and horticulturist Alys Fowler on her new nursery venture; and head gardener Tom Coward on gardening as a performing art at Gravetye Manor.
Each episode is a conversation between Stephanie and her guests, who are asked to choose the places, plants and people that they would most like to include in their fantasy growing space. Who would they have as their imaginary head gardener? What are the little garden pleasures they couldn’t live without and what's the one thing they would never allow in the garden gate? There is also plenty of discussion about plants and gardens, as well as what’s going on in the horticulture industry, the nation's backyards, climate change, trends and more.
Talking Gardens launched in March 2023 and won the Garden Podcast of the Year Award at the Garden Media Guild Awards in November 2023. Previous guests include Monty Don, Alan Titchmarsh, Piet Oudolf, Sarah Price, Nigel Dunnett, Fergus Garrett, Ann-Marie Powell, Andy Sturgeon, Troy Scott Smith, Kate Humble, Tom Stuart-Smith, Nigel Slater, Isabel Bannerman and James Wong.
It is available now wherever you get your podcasts - make sure to follow now so you never miss an episode.
