They’re not sniffy about wonky carrots and awry roses but down in the dirt with the rest of us P.S. columnist Agnes Stevenson

Our green-fingered guru on enduring radio favourite as gardeners get busy

Our gardening expert AGNES STEVENSON hails the enduring popularity of Radio 4’s Gardeners’ Question Time.

Friday afternoons pre-covid had a familiar routine. I’d collect my son from school and he’d eat a pink iced donut while we drove to my mum’s for tea, to the accompaniment of Gardeners’ Question Time on the radio.

I’ve been tuning in weekly since Clay Jones, with his rich Welsh baritone, was at the helm. I kept on listening when it was the turn of Eric Robson, with his soothing Cumbrian accent, to deliver the questions. And now I enjoy the warmth that Northern Ireland’s Kathy Clugston, who recently took over as host, brings to the show.

Since I started listening to GQT I’ve moved home seven times, but the show has been a constant, helping me to face the challenges and see the potential in every new garden that I have tackled.

“Do you really know the panellist?” My son would ask me that question almost every week and I would tell him, once again, that when the show was being recorded at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, I was invited to take tea with Bunny Guinness, Bob Flowerdew and Chris Beardshaw, before they faced the audience.

“And I sat beside Anne Swithinbank at a very posh lunch in London.”

Post gardening expert Agnes Stevenson tending her plants

Anne’s book, The Greenhouse Gardener, has been on my bedside table for months now as I await delivery of my new greenhouse, and if I scan my bookshelves I can find titles by most of the knowledgeable panellists who, each week, solve the gardening conundrums of a nation, delivering their answers with gentle humour and no shortage of wisdom.

And that’s the secret to GQT’S long and continuing success. The experts who make up the panel are at the very top of their game, they’ve garnered success at The Chelsea Flower Show, earned their reputations through many years of getting their hands dirty and assessing the results, and yet they wear their learning lightly.

Far from sitting in judgment on the audience and their problems with wonky carrots and roses gone awry, they are right down in the dirt with them, sympathising, analysing and sometimes gently bickering amongst themselves about the solution.

Listening to the show, on Sunday afternoons on BBC 4 at 2pm, and repeated on Friday afternoons at 3pm, is like being amongst friends and, I suspect, lots of young gardeners tune in, especially now that they’ve added brilliant botanist and houseplant fanatic James Wong to the panel.

So thank you Gardeners’ Question Time for wit, wisdom and good company. It will be 75 next year. Here’s to the next 75.