4 Extra Goes Gardening

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Factual: Homes & Gardens: Gardens

01/02/2014

BBC Radio 4 Extra - 4 Extra Goes Gardening

Penelope Keith unearths some horticultural highlights from the BBC archives.

Penelope Keith explores our horticultural passions and changing fashions through the BBC sound archives.  From the home of the great garden designer Gertrude Jekyll.

The great gardener Gertrude Jekyll once said: 

"A garden is a grand teacher. It teaches patience and careful watchfulness; it teaches industry and thrift; above all it teaches entire trust." 

Through her fascination with colour, cottage gardens and experimentation, it has been said she "changed the face of England more than any save the Creator and perhaps Capability Brown".
 
Penelope Keith explores Miss Jekyll's own 10-acre garden – the enchanting Munstead Wood in Surrey – and along the way unearths some horticultural wisdoms and delights from the BBC sound archive.
 
Joining Penelope to discuss Gertrude's influence and changing horticultural fashions are broadcaster and author, James Wong, author Catherine Horwood and Munstead Wood's head gardener, Annabel Watts.
 

Archive includes:
 
*   Great Gardens: Gertrude Jekyll, with Chris Serle from 1984

*   Gardeners' Question Time from 1947

*   The BBC Home Service's Radio Allotment from 1942

*   At Home With the Snails, from 2001 starring Geoffrey Palmer and Angela Thorne

*   An interview with Percy Thrower from 1963 in Beyond the Back Door: That Reminds Me

*   Desert Island Discs from 2000 when Sue Lawley's castaway was the gardening writer Christopher Lloyd.

 
Made for BBC Radio 4 Extra by Pier Productions and first broadcast in February 2014.

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