Pots & Trowels The Gardening Podcast · Martin Fish, Jill Fish, Sean Riley

Bumper Tree Special, Cloud Pruning, Fruiting, Ornamental and Questions on Timing of Shrub Shifting and Droseras

·49 min·3 clips

Frank P. Matthews grows around half a million trees a year, and some specimen-trained trees take six years.

1. Pots & Trowels focuses on tree growing, trained fruit, and listener questions about cloud pruning, shrub moving, and carnivorous plants. 2. Martin, Jill, and Sean host the episode, and Nick Dunn of Frank P. Matthews in Worcestershire joins as the tree grower who explains nursery production and apple varieties. 3. The episode asks what it takes to produce trained fruit trees, when to move shrubs like forsythia, and how to handle plants such as pieris and drossera. 4. Nick says Frank P. Matthews is a third-generation nursery founded through his maternal grandfather Frank Matthews and now includes his daughter as the fourth generation. 5. He says the nursery moved to the Worcestershire-Herefordshire border in the late 1950s and has continued as a tree nursery specialising in fruit. 6. Nick explains that the business shifted from a fruit background to include ornamentals in the mid-1980s, and he says he has a passion for both. 7. He says customers trial new material for about 10 years before release, which is why the nursery keeps extensive trial areas. 8. The nursery has access to propagation of over 700 apple varieties and a show area with around 450 apple varieties grown on cordons. 9. Nick says the nursery produces about 300,000 bare-root trees and around 220,000 container trees each year, for roughly half a million trees total. 10. He says the minimum production time for the trees is two and a half years, while some specimen-trained forms take six years. 11. The hosts describe cordons, espaliers, oblique forms, and fans as ways to fit fruit into smaller gardens and to make trees decorative as well as productive. 12. Martin says his own vertical cordons form a fruiting hedge with 15 varieties in a small area, and Nick agrees that trained trees have both fruit-bearing and ornamental value. 13. Nick explains that crab apples can sit between ornamental and edible categories, using John Downey as an example of a tree grown for beauty with usable fruit. 14. The discussion of apples turns to the Malvern Autumn Show display, where Nick says the table holds over 350 varieties from the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, and North America. 15. Nick points out Arthur Turner, Bramley, Bramley 20, and Dr Campbell's, including the dark red flesh of the latter and its former name, Robert's Red. 16. He also discusses Cornish Gold pears and the value of preserving regional varieties that have been identified from particular counties. 17. The tone is conversational and practical, with several visual explanations using hand gestures to show cordons, tiers, and cloud-pruning shapes. 18. The format moves between a nursery interview and listeners' questions, with occasional digressions into Martin's own garden and a few on-air clarifications. 19. Listeners interested in fruit trees, pruning, and compact garden design would likely find this episode useful. 20. Listeners wanting a brief chat without plant-care detail may skip it.

As heard by us

Apple-heavy gardening chat, cloud pruning, and practical advice with a hands-on finish.

This episode settles into the kind of gardening talk that feels easy to listen to without pretending every topic is urgent. It starts with an apple-heavy visit with Nick Dunn, then moves into cloud pruning and the smaller questions that make a garden feel alive.

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Why you'd press play

You get apples, cloud pruning, and a few thorny garden questions without the fuss.

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