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

Essential Clematis Job, Cheers for Chestnuts, Lawn Rolling Question & Australian Adventure Continues!

·32 min·2 clips

John claims chestnut is the only tree where every part can be used.

1. Pots & Trowels Gardening Podcast visits Chestnut Bray in Western Australia, where Martin and Jill Fish speak with John Stanley about horticulture, chestnuts, and the farm’s agritourism business. 2. John Stanley is a Birmingham-trained horticulturist, Linda is his wife and business partner, and Martin and Jill Fish host the episode while Sean is absent in Australia. 3. The episode asks what Chestnut Bray does with 1,000 chestnut trees and why John thinks garden centres and plant retail are changing. 4. John describes starting at Birmingham Parks Department, studying at Pershaw College, moving on to Essex Rittle College, and later teaching horticulture and nursery practices at Merrisford Agricultural College in Guildford. 5. He says a Nuffield Scholarship took him to the USA in a ground bus for three months, and that work later led him into self-employment as a horticultural consultant. 6. John says he specialised in garden centres and farm markets, worked in 35 countries, and eventually received a phone call from Sydney that brought him to Australia. 7. He recalls a two-day workshop in every Australian capital city, including Perth, where he met Linda after she arrived late and said she had been working in Gosnells. 8. John explains that garden centres developed around container-grown plants and the plastic plant container, with Stewart’s in Dorset, Siebenthalers in Ohio, and Lascox in Adelaide as early examples. 9. He says garden centres peaked for him in the 1980s, when plants were the main focus and businesses were still passionate about selling them. 10. He argues that large hardware chains, coffee shops, Christmas shops, gift shops, and clothing shops have turned many garden centres into rural shopping centres. 11. John predicts a circle back to smaller companies that are passionate about plants, and Martin says young people are wanting to green their homes for wellness after getting property. 12. Martin and Jill note that specialist growers and flower-show plants are decreasing because people are retiring and dying, which shapes the plant range available to gardeners. 13. Claire from Prince Edward Island asks about lawn rolling after a worker’s truck compacted her lawn, and John says domestic lawns in the UK are not usually over-rolled now. 14. John advises against a heavy roller on compacted wheel marks and suggests using a garden fork to lift the sunken areas before any light rolling or thin topdressing. 15. The hosts then reach Chestnut Bray, which John says is the largest chestnut farm in Western Australia, with 1,000 trees on 70 acres and three sides bordered by state forest. 16. John says the site is remote, with a Tuesday shopping run, a dirt-track approach, and a frost-free valley inside the world’s largest temperate rainforest. 17. He gives the farm’s climate details as roughly 1.3 metres of rain a year, summer temperatures around 35 degrees, and winter nights that can fall to four or five degrees. 18. John says the business is split between farm stay, chestnut production, and agritourism, and he describes Chestnut Bray as a top-ten agritourism destination in the Global Agritourism Network Awards. 19. The tone is conversational and practical, with phone-in questions, garden advice, and a long on-site interview that moves from plant history to food production. 20. Listeners who like chestnuts, farm diversification, and practical gardening advice will get the most from this episode; listeners wanting fast-fire entertainment may skip it.

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