S3E19 of The Gardner Ben Podcast sees me sharing with you not only a very personal and relatable conversation with Paige (not her real name), but also some incredibly personal and painful parts of my own journey.

Paige is a recovering alcoholic and, in the hope of reaching just one pair of ears that may need to hear her story, wanted to share her journey to recovery with you all.

Personally, I wanted to leave the episode completely unedited, intact, and exactly as it was recorded, so I confess it’s not my most tidy or polished episode, but its integrity was more important than its finish.

If you or anybody that you know is struggling with anything that we discuss in this episode, please do either seek, or help them seek, the help you may need.

I will make sure there are a few points of contact in the comment section below.

The Gardner Ben Podcast is brought to you in association with Peter Beales Roses, winner of 30 Chelsea gold medals and creating timeless roses since 1968. Go online and shop at www.atpeterbealesroses.com, and make sure that you’re following along on Instagram and TikTok.

Next week, to conclude this current season, I’ll be joined once again by my husband, Mark, for a completely unscripted and informal conversation, discussing the highlights and lowlights of season three.

Don’t worry, season four is already being recorded and is well underway. We also have some very exciting news to share with you next week, so keep your ears peeled for that.

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S3E18 of The Gardener Ben Podcast features a conversation with Neil from @national_chrysanthemum_society.

Neil shares how his passion for chrysanthemums started at a very young age, how the gifting of just a few plants sparked a lifelong love of growing, and how it led to his involvement with the National Chrysanthemum Society.

This is a group of plants I have tried growing in the past with limited success. Still making up one of the largest cut flower crops grown worldwide, I’ve decided to give this lovely group of plants another go and was inspired by my conversation with Neil to order myself some rooted cuttings, which should arrive over the next couple of months.

They will add a nice late splash of colour to the garden and hopefully be ready to cut and bring into the house in October and November.

In my own garden, I’ve been processing that huge pile of weeping willow cuttings, creating dead hedges in organic spiral forms and cutting the excess up for firewood. The weather is still being incredibly unkind to us, so it’s hard to really get on with much in the garden. If you find yourself falling behind, please be kind to yourself — the task will still be there when the weather clears.

There are now just two episodes left in Season Three. Next week’s episode is very long indeed. I have taken the decision to leave the conversation entirely intact and put it through absolutely no editing or post-production whatsoever. The share from Paige (not her real name) is incredibly personal and will resonate on such a relatable level with so many of you. She is a recovering alcoholic and wanted to share her story in the hope of touching just one person who may be in need of a helping hand. Tune in next week to listen to the full conversation.

The Gardener Ben Podcast is brought to you in association with @peterbealesroses, winner of 30 Chelsea Gold Medals and creating timeless roses since 1968. Go online and shop at www.atpeterbealesroses.com, and make sure that you’re following along on Instagram and TikTok.

The Gardener Ben Podcast is edited by @mark_hamilton_anderson.

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S3E17 of The Gardener Ben Podcast is available for you to listen to and download now. This week, I have the pleasure of being joined by one of my all-time favourite Instagram accounts I’ve been following, @richardgrows, for a very long time now. His passion for plants simply oozes from his account. He has absolutely massive collections of weird and wonderful-looking carnivorous and tropical plants, which is not a subject I know a massive amount about. I hope that you enjoy our conversation and that you show his account on Instagram and TikTok some love. 💚

The Gardener Ben Podcast is brought to you in association with @peterbealesroses, winner of 30 Chelsea Gold Medals and creating timeless roses since 1968. Go online and shop at www.peterbealesroses.com, and make sure that you’re following along on Instagram and TikTok.

The podcast is edited by @mark_hamilton_anderson.

Join me again next week when I get to talk to Neil from @national_chrysanthemum_society. This is a group of plants that I’ve barely explored but absolutely adore, and guided by Neil’s advice, I’ve gone ahead and ordered myself a collection of plants which will be delivered in the coming months.

Catch us next week. Until then, I hope that you stay dry, safe, and happy gardening.

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Episode 16 of season three of The Gardener Ben Podcast is available for you to listen to now. This week, I’m joined by Ana, co-founder of @seed_ball.

With a love of wildflowers and a background firmly set in conservation, Seedball set out to make wildflowers easy to grow and have since diversified into herbs and salads, wrapping seeds in a mixture of clay infused with chilli to protect them from insect damage and make them easy to grow just about anywhere.

Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, Amazon Music, or my YouTube channel now, and make sure that you head to their account and show them some love 💚

The Gardener Ben Podcast is brought to you in association with @peterbealesroses, winner of 30 Chelsea Gold Medals and creating timeless roses since 1968. Go online and shop at www.peterbealesroses.com, and make sure that you’re following along on Instagram and TikTok.

The Gardener Ben Podcast is edited by @mark_hamilton_anderson.

Next week, I’m joined by one of my personal gardening accounts on Instagram, @richardgrows, sharing with us his passion for rare, unusual, and different plants.

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On S3E15 of The Gardener Ben Podcast, I get to speak to Charles Carr, Head of Production at @hilliergardencentres.

Home-growing all of their stock, supplying 22 garden centres and their online store with peat-free grown stock 50 weeks of the year, Charles and I explored his journey into the world of horticulture and the challenges faced by the garden centre group going fully peat-free. We discussed how some plants that we have been used to purchasing have really struggled with the changeover, while others, such as ferns, have become much easier to produce and therefore more readily available.

If you haven’t yet registered your vote to lobby the UK government into taking action and banning the use of peat in the horticultural industry — which sees enough peat removed from the environment to fill 300 Olympic-sized swimming pools each and every year — head over to @peatfreepartnership now and make your voice heard.

The Gardener Ben Podcast is brought to you in association with @peterbealesroses, winner of 30 Chelsea Gold Medals and creating timeless roses since 1968. Go online and shop at www.peterbealesroses.com.

The podcast is edited by @mark_hamilton_anderson.

Next week, I have the pleasure of being joined by Anna from @seed_ball. So until then, happy gardening!

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S3E 14 of the Gardener Ben Podcast is about mindfulness, self, and the quest to be present. It features a conversation with Nicola from @soulfulwisdomacademy.

Nicola is a shamanic dragon priestess who I have visited several times for Reiki healing. It’s no coincidence that this particular podcast episode is scheduled, as it marks one year exactly since I visited Nicola for the first time.

At the end of 2024 into 2025, I was really struggling with my mental health. I was incredibly depressed, lost, and weighed down, carrying pain, grief, and anxiety that I didn’t know how to let go of. I had lost the ability to hear the voice in my head. I couldn’t decipher which way was up or which way to turn next. Luckily, I had people around me to guide and help me, and although I had started personal therapy, I was determined to do as many things as possible to make myself feel as well as I could.

One of these things was to try Reiki healing. The experience was beyond moving, and even if you’re sceptical, as I was when I first visited Nicola, the experience could not be doubted.

So, at a time of year which is traditionally dark, depressing, and challenging for many of us that struggle with mental health issues, I wanted to bring you this personal conversation with Nicola, who shares with us the gifts that she has and her journey into using those gifts to help others like me.

I really hope that you enjoy the conversation, and if there’s something that you’re struggling with, you reach out and ask for the help that you need.

The Gardener Ben Podcast is brought to you in association with @peterbealesroses, winner of 30 Chelsea Gold Medals and creating timeless roses since 1968. Go online and shop at www.peterbealesroses.com.

The Gardener Ben Podcast is edited by @mark_hamilton_anderson.

Next week, we’re swinging back to the topic of horticulture and gardening, and I’m joined by Charles Carr from @hilliergardencentres. Until then, happy gardening.

#gardenerben #podcast #podcaster #mindfulness #wellbeing

S3E13 this week, I’m rejoined by the amazing Katrina from @buildingafoodforest_scotland. We spoke last year on season two but had so much to catch up on. I thought it would be wonderful to invite them back to the podcast to see how the 2025 growing season ended and see how Clayton and the rest of the family were getting on.

Katrina juggles a busy family life while wearing many different hats, including homeschooling Clayton, who has severe autism and has found a real passion for gardening and being outside with his mum. She also manages, unbelievably, to squeeze in a little time for some crochet every now and then, and has also written a few books.

Please do head over to her channels, either on Instagram or on YouTube, and show the account some love, especially if you have a young person in your life who has expressed an interest in gardening.

The Gardener Ben Podcast is brought to you in association with @peterbealesroses, creating timeless roses since 1968 and winner of 30 Chelsea Gold Medals. Go online and shop at www.peterbealesroses.com.

Next week, I’m excited to bring you a conversation with @soulfulwisdomacademy, who I’ve visited for Reiki therapy several times, which I have found really helps with my overall well-being, mindfulness, and mental health issues over the last 15 months.

The Gardener Ben Podcast is edited by @mark_hamilton_anderson.

#gardenerben #podcast #podcaster #listennow #gardeningpodcast

After a short festive break, the Gardener Ben Podcast is back with season three and episode 12. I would like to stress there is absolutely no pressure and no rush to be getting on with tasks in the garden whatsoever at this time of year. The garden is slumbering quietly, and winter is doing its thing, breaking organic matter down and cleansing the garden of harmful fungal spores, pathogens, and disease problems.

There’s no rush to be getting seeds sown, pots washed, or to rush out and start clearing the beds, borders, or doing your winter pruning. I’ll be touring you through my schedule in the weeks to come, so I hope if you take nothing else away from this week’s episode whatsoever, it’s someone else giving you the permission to take things easy, slowly and gently, for the beginning parts of the year.

This week on the podcast, I have the pleasure of talking to Conrad, the name behind @thatbotanicguy, an account I followed on Instagram for a very long time, coveting his large collection of tree ferns and tropical plants he gets to grow outside in his garden. I hope that you enjoy our conversation.

Next week, I’m catching up once again with @buildingafoodforest_scotland. We had so much to talk about on our first episode together that I wanted just to touch base and catch up to see how the growing season of 2025 turned out in the end.

The Gardener Ben Podcast is brought to you in association with @peterbealesroses, winner of 30 Chelsea Gold Medals and creating timeless roses since 1968. Go online and shop at www.peterbealesroses.com.

The Gardener Ben Podcast is edited by @mark_hamilton_anderson.

#gardenerben #podcast #podcaster #gardeningpodcast #listennow