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GQT at Home: Orchid Hunting and Clay Soil Planting

Kathy Clugston hosts the horticultural programme featuring a group of gardening experts.

Kathy Clugston hosts the horticultural programme featuring a group of gardening experts, including Anne Swithinbank, Chris Beardshaw, and Christine Walkden, who are on hand to answer the gardening queries of a virtual audience.

This week, the panellists offer up their advice on managing mistletoe, adding lime to soil, and planting for those ever-so British wet conditions.

Beyond the questions, Anne Swithinbank chats to Mike Waller and Sean Cole about hunting for orchids in the wild and Juliet Sargeant joins us from Brighton to tell the tale of her two favourite elm trees.

Producer - Daniel Cocker
Assistant Producer - Bethany Hocken

A Somethin' Else production for ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4

Available now

42 minutes

Plant List

Questions and timecodes are below. Where applicable, plant names have been provided.

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Q – Will my amaryllis plant flower before Christmas?

(1 minutes 57 seconds)Ìý

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Q – How should we manage mistletoe?

(4 minutes 50 seconds)Ìý

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Q – I have an allotment. How and when do I add lime to my soil?

(7 minutes 39 seconds)

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Q – I have a one-hundred-year-old aspidistra. How do I care for it? Is it past it’s sell-by date?

(10 minutes 3 second)

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Chris –

‘Cast-iron plant’

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Feature – Mike Waller and Sean Cole share their knowledge on searching for orchids in the British countryside

(15 minutes 4 seconds)

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Orchids:

Phalaenopsis

Bee

Green-winged

Burnt

Lizard

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Q – My garden has a clay-based soil. What plants don’t like cold wet conditions?

(19 minutes 30 seconds)

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Chris –

Dryopteris atrata

Matteuccia struthiopteris, Shuttlecock fern

Deschampsia

Hosta, ‘Devon green’

Iris sibirica

Iris 'Gerald Darby'

Ìý

Anne –

Salix gracilistyla, ‘Mount Aso’

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Q – Most of our indoor plants have withered in our garden room. We are trying to deal with a small fly - could this be the culprit?

(24 minutes 34 seconds)

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Anne –

Hedychium gardnerianum, ‘Ginger lily’

Strelitzia, Bird of paradise

Bougainvillea

Plumbago

Ìý

Feature – Juliet Sargeant’s tale of her two favourite elm trees in Preston Park, Brighton

(30 minutes 34 seconds)

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Q – I have a small south-facing back garden. It is divided into four large beds that are jam-packed with trees, shrubs, hardy perennials, and annual flowers. How often should I feed it, and with what?

(31 minutes 56 seconds)

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Q – What present would the panel recommend for the gardener that has everything?

(36 minutes 29 seconds)Ìý

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