Whether you’re in the garden or stuck in traffic in the most stressful of urban locations, there’s nothing like a free gardening podcast to soothe the nerves.
So take those green fingers and get ready to click on to some great gardening content.
Gardeners’ Question Time
The most well-known and popular gardening podcast in the UK is Gardeners’ Question time. This programme is broadcast weekly on BBC Radio 4 and is a radio institution, having run since 1947.
Gardeners’ Question Time is both informative and entertaining. It comes live from a different location each week, and benefits from a wide range of panellists who answer questions posed by a live audience.
As well as being a Q&A programme, they also provide mini reports on the location that they’re broadcasting from so you get advice mixed with ideas of locations and gardens you might like to visit.
The panellists are far from dull and dry; there’s often plenty of lively banter. The average running time for the podcast is about forty minutes.
Unfortunately, the episodes are not archived, so there is only ever the latest episode available. However you can download and then keep the old episodes. You can find the podcast here.
Gardeners’ Corner
BBC Radio Ulster’s Gardener’s Corner is available as a weekly podcast.
It’s a thirty minute mix of gardening questions from listeners with answers from panelists, and reports from various gardens across Ulster. The host, Cherrie McIlwaine, has a natural ability to really evoke the places she’s describing.
As with Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time, the location visits mean that the programmes are much more than simply dry Q&A affairs. Unlike Gardeners’ Question time however, the episodes are archived so you can catch up with previous episodes.
BBC Radio Ulster’s Gardeners’ corner podcast can be found here.
Gardening With Tim And Joe
BBC Radio Leeds’ weekly gardening programme is also available as a podcast. It only runs for fifteen minutes but manages to cram in features such as Job of the Week (which focuses on a specific gardening task such as weeding or planting ), Plant of the week (you can probably guess what that involves), Joe’s Top Tip, and Back to Basics (good old-fashioned gardening-based pearls of wisdom).
Unlike the previously mentioned podcasts, this does not include questions from listener’s but there is an active Facebook and Twitter page associated with the programme, where you can give and receive gardening advice from the presenters and the programme’s listening community.
This is a really insightful podcast, benefiting from Joe’s encyclopaedic knowledge of plants, fruit and vegetables, delivered in his broad Yorkshire accent live from his allotment. A proper Northern gardening programme.
Episodes are kept on the site for thirty days. You can find the podcast here.
RHS Gardening Podcast
This is a new venture for the Royal Horticultural society, the fortnightly podcast only commenced in February. So far they have provided coverage of the Chelsea flower show and the London Plant and Design show, as well as bringing you advice and audio tours of the society’s various gardens. The podcasts run for around twenty-five minutes on average. So far, all seven episodes have been kept online, suggesting that they don’t intend to remove old episodes.
The RHS Gardening podcast can be found here.
Garden Confidential
This is very different to the other four podcasts. It’s an American podcast that is very entertaining as well as informative.
They cover unusual subjects relating to gardening that you are unlikely to get from the above UK podcasts. For instance, a recent episode entitled ‘A Plant Walks Into A Bar’ talks about the use of plants in alcoholic drinks.
It’s a very entertaining, often humorous listen, and you can impress your gardening friends with your knowledge of fun and random horticultural facts. Again, like the RHS podcast, the episodes are kept available for some time, so you can catch up with what’s been going on.
You can find the Garden Confidential podcast here.
These are just five great gardening podcasts but I’m sure there are lots of others. Can you recommend any? Share them in the comments.
Still Growing… is a weekly gardening podcast dedicated to helping you and your garden grow. The show launched in June 2013 and is an interview format featuring gardening experts from around the country.