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A few months ago my friend Ione told me a story about a plant called Amaranth. You might not have heard of this plant before, I hadn’t – but basically Amaranth is a food crop – you can eat the leaves and seeds it can grow to over six feet tall. It has these tassel like flowers that can be striking maroon and crimson, it’s a beautiful plant.ÌýÌý

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Anyway, my friend Ione works in agriculture and, as she was growing this vibrant crop she discovered that Amaranth wasn’t just a plant, it was a gateway that helped her navigate what it means to have a mixed identity. As she cultivated the amaranth, which is native to the American continent, Ione suddenly felt as though the Mexican part of her identity and the British part weren’t at odds with each other or competing, there were just existingÌýÌý

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When I heard about this I thought, ok I’m gonna Ione on the podcast, maybe use a few minutes of our chat for an episode about the English Countryside and national identity. Remember that episode?Ìý

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But our chat Ione expanded into something much deeper. It raised big questions for me around belonging and how you define yourself. It made me reflect on my own mixed identity in a way I hadn’t before. It led me to other gardeners and to questions that I wouldn’t have asked them otherwise, about the special connections they have to particular plants.ÌýÌý

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So I decided to make an entire episode about itÌýÌý

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I’m Talia Randall and you’re listening to ‘Blossom Trees and Burnt Out-Cars’, the podcast were I dig beneath the surface and chat with the people who are opening up nature to everyoneÌý

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Episode 6 – How plants can tell us who we areÌý

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This episode is all about how a plant can be a gateway to explore complex emotions about home and belonging. it’s about how the tiny things – a seed in the soil, the scent of a tropical plant trying desperately to bloom on a frosty windowsill, can connect us to the bigger things – like how we find a home in the world.Ìý

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I’ll be chatting with people you’ve heard from earlier in the series - Gardeners Mothin Ali and Carole Wright.ÌýÌý

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CAROLE: And there is something really quite special about swapping plants with people and knowing of their journey, much like my ancestors, how they travelled from Syria, my great granny travelled from there with all her skills and her plant knowledge which she instilled in her son, my grandfather, who then passed it on to my mum.Ìý

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MOTHIN: I mean, a lot of the things that we grow here are things that have some kind of cultural significance. We’re growing bottle gourds. Now bottle gourds, so this is the iconic Bangladeshi plant. Ìý

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TALIA: You’ll also meet a new person, my friend Ione Maria RojasÌý

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IONE: When I was back in the gardens in Devon in 2017. And I was watching this plant grow. I had no idea that it would lead to me going with my abuelita, you know at the end of her life back to where she was born and where she lived out her like early years and finding out about her father and her heritage. Ìý

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TALIA:Ìý

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Ione and I met at uni years ago – imagine us in the regrettable noughties fashion of feathered hair and bolero cardigans – and a lot of our time has been spent chatting absolute fraff into the early hours. One of the things we’ve often talked about is our mixed heritage, which can be a tender subject. We’re both British and were born in England but have connections to other counties, languages and cultures via a parent.ÌýÌý

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Ione is artist and food grower. She works on farms, schools, care homes. In her work she uses nature – be that soil, plants or animals – to help people forge connections with each other and with the landÌý

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Back in March we sat in an icy garden on the outskirts of Brighton - with our freezing hands cramped around the microphones – Ione told me about how significant this Amaranth plant had been.ÌýÌý

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IONE: Amaranth is a really, really ancient crop. So it was known as Huahtli by the Mexica who grew it before the Spanish colonised Mexico, and it was the staple crop. It formed a huge part of their diet. Uhm, there's some interesting descriptions of tamales that were made with stuffed with amaranth leaves. But the grain was also mixed with honey and apparently blood as well to form these really beautiful, like offerings that were images of the different gods. And then they would be broken up and passed around and eaten as part of ceremonies and rituals. Ìý

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Obviously, with that connexion of eating the flesh of the gods, the Spanish were really threatened by the practise and were therefore threatened by, like the way that the crop was seen as to be so sacred and powerful. So Cortez banned all growing of it. Which in itself is just such a bizarre concept. I just find that also in terms of like the way that plants can communicate things. That's such a powerful image of colonisation to think that you can ban a plant growing and he threatened to cut off the hands of anyone found growing it. And they also raised all of the fields of the crop to the ground. So this was, like horrific. Ìý

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Uhm, but as always, there were some communities and indigenous communities that kept the crop alive and actually now in Mexico it's like a widely grown and used crop and it still forms these, there are these bars called ‘alegrias’ which are a bit like a flapjack but with amaranth seed instead of oats. And that's still amaranth seed and honey. So I also find that really interesting when you're in the markets you see these stands with ‘alegrias’ wrapped in plastic, and I just always have this funny kind of like, time travel moment where I'm trying to imagine what the equivalent would have been when you saw those shaped into creatures and gods. Ìý

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I remember my friend Jimena when she saw the amaranth growing. She was so excited because she could make ‘alegrias’. So the first time I made ‘alegrias’ was with Rafa and Jimena who are both Mexican and they would kind of taking me through what it meant for them. But they were talking to me, like as in like. I never liked ‘you're one of us’ because it feels quite, public school boy. You know one of us. I just hate those kinds of chanting stuff, yeah? Ìý

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TALIA: Yeah ‘one of us’, ha. I hear that.Ìý

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But it was one of those moments where I was like, I'm in the kitchen with Rafa and Jimena and they're getting excited and we've got like a big pot with Amaranth and Jimena was showing me how to pop amaranth, you cook it a bit like popcorn and um we were chatting in a mixture of Spanish and English and it was such a like, warm belly feeling. Ìý

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It felt yeah, very warm and fuzzy. And interestingly, a little bit like the big finger was going to come out and go. ‘You're not supposed to be here. You have to back out because you're not actually Mexican’. Which was really painful at the time, and looking back quite funny like I don't feel precious about those things now. But if I'd spoken to you about it then I probably would have felt quite tearful and maybe a bit defensive and not really known why.Ìý

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So it was a very like complex feeling 'cause there was a lot of warmth. And a lot of excitement and like Rafa drops words into conversations that sound, he's from Mexico City, he’s Chilango. And so his accent sounds just like my dad's. So it made me really, like I got a real little girl like excitement feeling and then also this kind of wobbly lip. What if I'm not? Ìý

Supposed to be here? Which sounds ridiculous, but is true. Ìý

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TALIA: I think it's really interesting that you're saying you had this, I guess fragmented relationship to Mexico, which is where your dad's from where your family's from and you have indigenous ancestors. I can identify with that as well in terms of a fragmented relationship to a home country outside of the UK. That's via a parent and I'm really curious about how you had tried to rebuild or reconnect with this other homeland? And hadn't quite found a way to do it. And then suddenly this plant comes into your life, and that's the like, portal that gets you there. Ìý

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IONE: It was definitely a fragmented relationship, perhaps still is in some ways. And I had,Ìý

I think without realising it over the years, I'd kind of swallowed this desire and this need and actually like a calling to go to be on that landmass as simple as that. Just to stand with my feet on earth, that is the earth that my ancestors came from and part of my family came from and I think yeah. Going and learning to study horticulture, which in itself was it was a very thought out decision, but it was almost a bit of a leap of faith when I did it. I was leaving a lot behind in London and it felt quite scary in some ways. Going to do it so I think partly also this particular plant also became like an ally in some ways. Uhm at a time when I was maybe feeling quite lonely and a bit adrift and met this plant and had this something in common with it.Ìý

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So it for me., it wasn't just the fact that it had Mexican origins, it was the fact that it had Mexican origins, but it was growing in Devon soil. I'm originally from Kent, but my parents moved to Devon when I was 18. And I just loved this. I just as I watched these plants grow. Ìý

There was no question to me of their identity as a plant. Or of their belonging or their worthiness of belonging. And there was also no question. There was no doubt about the fact that these plants have this really rich history in Mexico and there was no doubt about the fact that they were a crop in an English garden and there was just something about the way that something so humble can hold all of that complexity. Ìý

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I think that made me feel more OK in my contradictions and in my complexities and then the excitement of oh, I can get that just from being with a plant. It just made me feel really happy that I didn't need to articulate it or explain it. And then I suppose the other thing that feels really important to say is it wasn't just the plant the plant, as is always the case. I think with seeds and plants is a catalyst for human connection. So because I was excited about the plant and because it's just a stunning plant, people who came into the gardens would spot it and ask about it. And because I'd done research on it, I would then talk to them. And then those conversations would open up other conversations. All of those points meant that I could start talking to people about, not just about Mexico and my connection with Mexico, but about food and farming and what I wouldn't probably have framed as social justice at the time, but was essentially the threads of those conversations. So it just really like opened up so many avenues for connection and for learning that I wouldn't have had if I was just talking about my inexpressible desire to connect with Mexico. Ìý

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TALIA: We've had these conversations before about what mixed identity is and what it feels like. How do you define? Is it half British, half Mexican? Is it a mixture? Is it, how do you define your own identity in that sense?Ìý

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IONE: It's really funny. It's changed a lot and I noticed since this, so I just got back from Mexico about two weeks ago and it was my first trip back since the pandemic. And was quite a profound trip this time. I mean it always is, but for different reasons. And I notice since I've been back it's made another shift in the kind of process of identity.Ìý

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I used to say I'm half Mexican and if someone would ask me about my connecion to Mexico, I'd say I'm half Mexican. And when I was in Mexico the first time, I found myself saying to people I'm Mexican when they asked me where I was from. Which landed really oddly, because I am very British in many ways. And then I started saying my father is Mexican. Ìý

And I actually, interestingly read a really interesting post on Instagram that was talking about mixed indigenous heritage by this young indigenous guy who was talking about his own mixed heritage and he was talking about how you distance yourself from your culture when you say ‘my father is Mexican’. Or for example, if I was to say my great grandfather was Hñahñu, how that's actually essentially saying they were and I'm not. And yet I feel very hesitant about saying I'm Hñahñu because I haven't been raised in that ways of that culture. Ìý

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And actually, my great grandfather made a very, very strong point of distancing himself from that and disowning that as so many indigenous people did in order to progress. That's in inverted commas. just for like, just for clarity!Ìý

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TALIA: Because you can't see it, the rabbit ears came outÌý

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IONE: They did. But I thought it was a really interesting point. And I've noticed all the times I've said I'm half Mexican. I've started tripping up on it and thinking, I hate saying to someone, I am like presenting myself as half something. I generally say now I'm British, Mexican and it feels important in a way that the British is first, because I think something that's been really interesting and that I feel very grateful to Amaranth before is that in opening this connection with Mexico. And in actually catalysing me in going to Mexico and spending time there and reconnecting with my family. Ìý

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The feeling I got when I was in Mexico. I often have this image of like the earth rising up, picking me up by the scruff of my neck, slapping me around the face and saying, ‘if you really want to understand your heritage and your roots and you want to connect with this land you need to go back to the land where you grew up and do the work there as well in order to have that more integrated sense of self’.ÌýÌý

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Actually I'm British and I hold all the privileges of a white middle class British woman and I also have Mexican blood and heritage and there are really important stories and aspects of culture that need to be passed on and maintained and held. Ìý

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TALIA: Its amazing to me that Ione is getting a better sense of her identity by growing a Mexican plant in English soil yet understanding what her Britishness means when she’s on the other side of the world planting her feet in Mexican soil. The image of Ione watching this plant grow – she called it an ally - and feeling all the complexity and contradictions of her identity were just simply expressed by a plant. I think that’s pretty deep.ÌýÌý

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I also totally relate to this idea of not being ‘enough’ of something. You know, when Ione talked about making Alegrias from the seeds of the plant there was this a small voice asking ‘should I really be here’? I have mixed identity - I’m part Jewish, my mum was born in Israel. I have a complex relationship to the land of Israel, as you can imagine, for reasons that are too long to go into now. My mums parents came from Bulgaria, before that maybe Italy and Syria, definitely Spain. I’m not religious, or practicing but these places, the languages, the cultures, the food, they’re all a part of who I am .ÌýÌý

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For example, members of my family still speak a language called Ladino, which is sort of like old Spanish. It’s a Jewish language that we carried with us when we were expelled from Spain during the inquisition 500 years ago. Loads of the food I ate as a kid had a Ladino name, like ‘fritikas’ or ‘boorombolikus’, that’s a real food by the way, its basically a fritter you have at Passover. My grandma would call me Kerida, which means dear is Spanish. But, all these things still feel far removed from me because they happened in another country and it can feel hard to hang onto all the fragments. Basically what I’m saying is I think I need to find my own version of Amaranth.ÌýÌý

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Another person who has talked about a finding a connection with ancestry through plants is Carole Wright. You met Carole in episode one. She’s a community gardner, beekeeper and creative based in South London.Ìý

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Carole also runs ‘Blak Outside’ which creates outdoor events with and for social housing residents. Carole works a lot with young people, she’s really passionate about instilling a sense of joy in nature and reminding us that nature is for everyone.Ìý

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In episode one Carole and I talked about the gates that keep people from her community locked out of nature and I invited her back into this conversion becauseÌý I wanted to know if Carole also had a special connection to a particular plant, something that inspires her workÌý

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CAROLE: My ancestry is from Jamaica and Ghanaian and on my mother and my maternal side it's Syrian Jewish, so that's kind of a whole thing going on there init. So my special connexion is to the aloe vera plant. So the two plants that I have special connexion to are actually in the shed.Ìý

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TALIA:  Perfect magic then?Ìý

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CAROLE: Magic. And I'm actually standing underneath a Bird of Paradise. And these are the two plants which I have in my kitchen amongst the spider plant, a cacti and succulent. Ìý

But these are the plants I look to and to me they represent both sides of my family. The Gardnerian and Jamaican side, subtropical planting. Ìý

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And it's really weird because it's only since lockdown that I've had them in my kitchen. And that makes a difference. And really I tried out the Bird of Paradise in my living room. Didn't care for it, it looked really ill. And then I had no choice but to give up my kitchen table to it. And then once I put it there, it looked lonely. Then I had to build a whole family to this whole thing with a bird of paradise like I'm just squeezed on my table. And every week I turn it around so the other leaves can get the light and I talk to it every morning. I talk to it going ‘you happy in that position? Let me just get the cotton buds and clean your leaves because I don't want you to look dried up at the tips, which is what you're trying to do’.  And so I had that conversation! And the aloe,Ìý I move it between the living room and the kitchen. So I moved them about because I think that they would benefit. So those are the ones I've got the special connection to.Ìý

More and more now the cacti and succulents and I break pieces off though because they're very giving parts of the plant. They’ve got these runners, their pups. And the same with the cacti and succulents, and I like to take those to garden clubs or workshops I run with children. I take my whole plant and say ‘look, this is the parent plant and these are kids so we need to remove the kids and I want to take that plant home. I don't want you to mash my main plant but you can have all these little ones’. Because what you're doing is you're introducing, reduce, reuse, recycle. And it's like bring your jars in. We make a little terrarium. Things like that so it's like, sharing.ÌýÌý

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There is something really quite special about swapping plants with people and seeds and knowing of their journey. Much like my ancestors, how they travel from Syria, a great granny travelled from there with all her skills and her plant knowledge which she instilled in her son, my grandfather, who then passed it on to my mum. And recently at the Sewing Roots exhibition at the Garden Museum, which I took part in as one of the Caribbean heritage Growers, I was able to have a portrait of my Nan and Grandad. Eric and Wilhelmina right from Chapelton Clarendon. I'm giving them props in the afterlife. You hear that ancestors!Ìý

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We were going to he's flat for years and years being taken to the allotment, millions of cabbage with worms in. We had to endure all of that, and so when I think back to those times and he just quietly went about his business. Now his granddaughter is a completely different character! (laughter)Ìý

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It's good to let people know ,this is our history, that we're not coming, quite a few of us,from a situation of knowing nothing about horticulture, but it's not termed horticulture. That’s the difference. It's words. Very important, isn't it? I'll come down here and I bop about and it's more about the chatting with people or the banter, as we say, South London things init. And it's like seeing people and knowing that you see some young people who are in their 20s now that you did gardening with. And they've got a regard, respect for you because they remember you coming into their school during lunch club or after school gardening club or now with ‘Blak Outside’ that they're involved in the garden and they want to come and give back and say all right, ‘what do you need me to do? You've come to the back square and you spoke up when the police were harassing us during lockdown. You was there when we did gardening at our school. So what can we do?’ÌýÌý

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And I said, well, you know why don’t come and help me set up the plant sale and I said, but I'm going to find money for you. You know, coming here to volunteer, that's me. If I want to do voluntary work that's my lookout, but for you, I think it's important to say let's find the money to pay them whether they want a career in horticulture or not. But I want them to have a positive experience of coming into this garden. Helping, having the conversation, walking around telling them what's growing in people’s plot, encouraging them. You know if they want a plot for themselves for their younger siblings and those conversations still go on and it all started from the garden, from nature. You know nature takes on different forms and it's getting that love of nature. Getting them to express. Ìý

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TALIA: Just on a random sidenote, my great grandmother I think was also Syrian JewishÌýÌý

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CAROLE: OK. Ìý

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TALIA: And then they went to Bulgaria, anyway. Ìý

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CAROLE: Yeah, uhm, SephardiÌý

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TALIA: Yeah, exactly. Do you speak. or did your grandparents or great grandparents speak Ladino? Ìý

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CAROLE: I don't know, ‘cause she passed in the early 80s and very much kept her Jewish identity at the back of everything and I find this when I visit family in Florida, 'cause where my mother and aunt live is predominantly Ashkenazi Jewish, European heritage people. And they tend not to really speak about where they've come from because they've actually fleeing from persecution. Ìý

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TALIA: Yeah, so much trauma there. Ìý

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CAROLE: Yeah the trauma. They just keep that side out. Their grandchildren and their great grandchildren often don't know their history because we don't know what caused my great grandmother to go from Syria to Jamaica. Ìý

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TALIA: Wow, what a story though. Ìý

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CAROLE: it's a big story, so she went in 1890s to Jamaica as a teenager. With her aunt, so nothing is really known about her parents and what caused them to say goodbye to their child with one family member and end up in Jamaica. But Jamaica does have a lot Sephardi Jews, including Chris Blackwell of Ireland Records who signed Bob Marley.Ìý

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TALIA: I didn't know that there was a safari link in Jamaica. As a Sephardi Jew I need to get up on this history. Ìý

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CAROLE: It's big history in Jamaica and Canada in particular, big, big and parts of America I'm finding out. Ìý

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So Carole and I have a shared Sephardi Jewish connection. I never knew that about Jamaican history so I wasn’t expecting this to come up during our chat. I went on a bit if a google deep dive afterwards. I think this is exactly what Ione was saying about how something as simple as one plant – in this case Carole’s Bird of Paradise - opened up all these different layers, and was a catalyst to talk about something that means a lot to both Carole and myself.ÌýÌý

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Carole talked about her connection to homelands via plants, and giving props to her ancestors. And I think its wicked how she extends that legacy to young people today, getting resources, rooting them in a love of nature and celebrating the nature where they live in the city.ÌýÌý

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I want to bring Mothin Ali into the chat now. You met Mothin in episode one. Mothin’s gardener based in Leeds and you might remember that we talked about the gatekeeping he’s experienced just trying to be a gardener. Mothin runs a gardening YouTube with his family, is a big fan of deep mulch and also runs a campaign to tackle racism in horticulture.ÌýÌý

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Before I hit record, Mothin gave me a tour of his suburban garden. He told me that his set up was all about bringing a piece of Bangladesh to Leeds, that he designed his garden as a nod to his parents gardens back in their childhood villages. There was a living boundary made from bamboo, a workstation for him and ample play area for the kidsÌý

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MOTHIN: I mean, a lot of the things that we grow here. Things that have some kind of cultural significance? I mean, there's things right away from your humble potato. But then we're growing things like eddoes in Bengali we call it mukee and that's a really nice plant that is, you know, in Bangladesh it's growing everywhere. It's like a weed. You know they're growing at the roadside. They're growing under trees, they growing in the water, they're going everywhere. Ìý

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But over here you know they're really expensive to buy from the grocery shops. The quality is not great, but we're growing it here. We're getting mukee. We're getting the leaves. We're enjoying it all. We're growing bottle gourds, now bottle gourds, so this is the iconic Bangladeshi plant. Or iconic Bangladeshi vegetable, it means so much to Bengalis that they actually write songs about this plant. You know they write songs about the bottle gourd. Ìý

So it just has that real cultural significance. People will come round, they'll come round to see the plants, not to see us, you know!Ìý

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TALIA: its like ‘I'm growing celebrities in my garden’.Ìý

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MOTHIN: Yeah! I mean there's one of my viewiers I was talking to a couple of years ago, she was saying that people ring her up to ask her about her bottle goals rather than ask her about her children!Ìý

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TALIA: It's really funny. So are they really difficult to grow in this climate or is it just that they are expensive and people don't grow them? OrÌý just gardeners don't know what the plants are? Ìý

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MOTHN: I mean bottle gourds. So they are expensive in the shops because they're being shipped over from thousands of miles away, so growing them yourself is one - You're cutting down on cost, two, you're saving masses on general transport costs. They can be a little bit difficult to grow, but they're not that difficult to grow, but they are relatively unknown to the average British gardener. Ìý

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I mean our channel has done a lot to combat that because we've introduced plants to people that they've never heard of. We grow ginger in our garden. We grow turmeric in our garden where growing things that you'd never think about growing. We're growing some extremely, extremely hot chillies. So right from Carolina Reaper. I've got. I've sort of developed a reputation for growing my Chili's. We've got a Trinidad muruga's, you can't. Ìý

You can have hotter chili's but you can't beat the Bangladeshi naga. There's there's something about that plant. The fragrance I mean, you've got the heat, but you've got the fragrance and their taste. It's just absolutely amazing and I've traditionally I've never been someone who's into hot things. I mean I like growing them. My wife likes eating them. She'll eat them for fun. Ìý

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TALIA: She sounds hardcore, I like it. Ìý

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MOTHIN: Yeah she is. And the other thing is their like chocolate. The heat of a Chili's addictive. Ìý

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TALIA: Yeah, it totally is. I see that. Ìý

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MOTHIN: So I don't know if I'm just getting my chilli fixÌýÌý

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TALIA: And you go jackfruits here as well. Do you go Jack fruits?Ìý

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MOTHIN: No, we don't grow jackfruits. I mean, we've got a couple of plants. House plants. We grow them just simply because jackfruit the national fruit of Bangladesh. We'll never be able to grow an actual fruit, but we've got a couple of jackfruit plants we've got mango plants that we grow as house plants. I mean, some of them are three four years old.  But they don't make it sort of past about four or five years old. But I only grow them simply because its a jackfruit plan. It's a mango plat, you know. It's just something that. Ìý

That just reminds me of Bangladesh. That's the only reason that I grow it, and I don't think there's absolutely no chance we’ll get fruit here. Ìý

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We've got, uh, a lemon tree that's inside the house that is probably from a 50 year old lemon tree in Bangladesh. You know, it's a it's a really ancient lemon tree, so it might even be older than that, I mean. In our village in Bangladesh there's a pond and when that pond was dug out, that's when the lemon tree was planted, and so I took just some seeds from the lemon tree from there we've got one in the house from. Ìý

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You know we can’t always go back. We won't be able to afford a trip to Bangladesh as a family regularly. You know it's every four or five years that we can afford to do that, so we still have a lot of family over there and we can't get out to see them. We can't get out to see experience the culture as regularly as we'd want to, but there's some other culture I can have in my greenhouse. Ìý

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TALIA: I love that. I think it's funny how, well, it's not funny, but I think plants can be gateways to these things. Do you know what I mean? Like you're saying this big cultural connection to somewhere that is another home that you can't get to regularly, and I don't know there's like this duality of like gatekeeping on the one sense, and gateways on the other sense, so, like plants, gardening can be such a sort of deep thing. Ìý

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MOTHIN: Do you know what? When we started first keeping chickens right. It was a massive thing for my mum because it just reminds her of when she was a little kid and when she was young. When she was a young girl, she said she had she used to have chickens and she used to have hundreds of ducks. She was like a pied piper she would lead their ducks out to, you know, to the to the canals, let them go, and then in the evenings she should go and call them in and all her ducks would just follow her. Yhey'd follow her home. When we started keeping chickens and we got this House and we started growing our own food. Ìý

It was just we've just taken my mum back, you know? Back to childhood. It's like you can see her look and feel and act younger. Ìý

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You know, since we moved here, and that's one of the things that I think a lot of people, especially from the sort of area that I grew up in like the back to backs the terraced houses. Ìý

They don't get this quality of life just from having a garden. You know, it's one of those things that I think if people, especially people from poorer backgrounds, if they had gardens of their own space to just chill. to just take them away sometimes from the burden of everything else that's going on. Ìý

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I can’t get over the image of Mothin’s mum being Queen of the Ducks, leading a little crew through the neighbourhood. And how they’ve tried to recreate that feeling in their back garden in Leeds by keeping chickens.ÌýÌý

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And the seeds from the old lemon tree in their village sprouting a new miniature one in their front room. It makes me think of my mum and the little orange plant in her kitchen, how she sniffs it intensely when it blossoms, it reminds her of home in Jaffa and all its complexities.ÌýÌý

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When you first met Mothin in episode 1 we talked so much about gatekeeping and I’m glad that we could find a way to talk about gateways - to places and to cultures that are part of you but that you can’t be in all the time. It grows in abundance in Mothin’s greenhouseÌý

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I want to bring my friend Ione back into the conversation one last time, to sum up her journey with the Amaranth plant.Ìý

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Ione told me that on a recent trip to Mexico, a trip that was sparked by this very plant, she went with her Abuelita – her grandmother – to San Juanico, the rural village where Abuelita grew up. And Ione learnt all these things there she never knew about her family.ÌýÌý

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Ione didn’t know that her great-grandfather Don Waldo was a bit of a big man - a landowner who’d acquired a fair bit of land, which had some big family feuds attached to it, and there were still people in the local shop who remembered la familia Hernandez and all their beef even though Don Waldo died over 60 years ago...Ìý

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Earlier Ione mentioned that, like many people at the time, Don Waldo had tried to distance himself from his hnahnu indigenous culture and I think its really interesting that, as his descendent, Ione is reconnecting herself to it and re-finding those roots.Ìý

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I just think how wonderful it is how this plant enabled her to do all that and find out things about her family that she never would have otherwise.Ìý

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IONE: When I was back in the gardens in Devon in 2017. And I was watching this plant grow. I had no idea that it would lead to me going with my abuelita, you know at the end of her life back to where she was born and where she lived out her like early years and finding out about her father and her heritage. And my cousin, who was with us was also hearing a lot of this for the first time, so it then also became a point of connexion for me and my cousin. Which is just very beautiful. That's itÌý

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TALIA: I'll drink to that, salud.Ìý

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IONE: oh, and then I got to go and have a pulque with my abuelita which was just the best thing. And she said when I left Mexico and I said goodbye to her, she was like ‘now you can go back and tell all of England about going to San Juanico, finding out about Don Waldo and having a pulque with me’, and I was like ‘deal’. So there we go. It's happening. Ìý

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TALIA: It's happening abuelita! Um, Babe whats a pulque?Ìý

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Basically it’s a drink made from the fermented sap of an agarve plant and it sounds tasty.Ìý

I know it sounds a bit cheesy (and you might be tired of hearing me saying that by now) but all these chats about how plants can be portals to homelands, family, belonging has made me feel really happy.Ìý

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And I like I said earlier, I realise how badly I need my own portal. If I think about how important red peppers and aubergines were to my grandmothers cooking that’s probably a good place to start. Though I’m not sure they’ll do too well on my cold kitchen windowsill.ÌýÌý

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Ione, Carole and Mothin told me that particular plants were gateways to heritage and homelands – the Fuchsia pink Amaranth growing tall in a Devon garden, a Bird of Paradise on a crowded kitchen table in central London, or a bottle gourd defiantly growing in a West Yorkshire greenhouse.ÌýÌý

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Reflecting back on this series I can see that nature itself has been a gateway for me - into themes and ideas that I had never before associated with nature. The series started with the simple question of who has and who doesn’t have access to nature but its grown into something so much more than that.Ìý

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And I’ve reflected on my own relationship to nature more than I thought I wouldÌý

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Behind the house I grew up in there were these train tracks that stretched across the whole estate. When the fast train slammed past it would violently shake the house, I didn’t notice how much everything shook until a friend would come over and their juice would jump out of their hands every 15 minutes. Despite the warning videos they made us watch at school we would still play on the side of the train tracks. Just like the locked nature reserve this out of bounds area was another playground to us kids on the estate; it was nature, it was a greenspace.Ìý

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Now that I’ve moved to the green suburbs of east London the train tracks have been replaced by a woodland. In the house I share with my parents, my boyfriend and my rescue dog Stevie I gulp my morning coffee and watch the squirrels forget where they’ve buried their acorns.ÌýÌý

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Instead of the sharp rush of trains, I hear the psychedelic sounds of the dawn chorus, its volume turned all the way up. Occasionally I wake up to the midnight muntjacs with their freaky bark. The first time I heard an owl in real life was from my bedroom window. It wasn’t that long ago I was so excited I text half my mates.Ìý

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Maybe its sounds basic, but I didn’t realise how transformative this constant, daily connection with nature could be.ÌýÌý

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And it needs to be available to everyone. and, as I’ve learnt in my chats with nature pioneers from a park bench in Glasgow, to a beach in Cornwall and a Traveller site by an A road in London, there is so much can do to make that happen.ÌýÌý

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I’m Talia Randall and you’ve been listening to ‘Blossom Trees and Burnt Out-Cars’Ìý

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‘Blossom Trees and Burnt Out-Cars’ was written and produced by Talia Randall. Ìý

The researcher was Erica Mckoy. Ìý

The technical producer was Gayl Gordon and the production mentor was Anna Buckley. Ìý

Executive producers were Leanne Alie and Khaliq Meer. Ìý

This podcast was commissioned by Khaliq Meer at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Sounds Audio Lab. Ìý

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