The Nature Garden: gardening, wildlife and nature notes · The Weekending Show

Up with the larks

·40 min·2 clips

Cocod Island now holds about 150 pairs of roseate terns, up from 20 pairs in the early 1990s.

Tom Pattinson begins with the price of plants. He asks whether a plant is worth buying if it can later be propagated, and moves from annuals and bedding plants into layering, where a stem is weighed down until it roots and becomes a new plant. The idea stays simple. He names the thornless blackberry Loch Ness, forsythia, viburnum, rhododendron, and yellow winter jasmine as plants that can work that way, and keeps returning to the habit of looking closely at what is already growing. Cuttings take over next. He describes gathering young stems from shrubs such as Cianothus, Wigella, Choystia, and Forsythia, stripping the leaves, leaving only a small cluster at the top, trimming beneath a node, and soaking the stems in water for an hour so they start out fully charged. Steve Lowe brings in the bees. At Cresswell Peel Tower and Garden, he joins Chris Allen and a group of volunteers who have put bees into the garden about three or four weeks earlier and are learning the basics of husbandry over the next few months. There is a little theory before the work. The beekeeping section stays practical and local, with the breeze, the fog over the wall, and the sense of learning alongside people who are getting ready to look after a hive together. Tom Cadwallander goes out before the day has properly begun. He is up with the larks for the dawn chorus and sounds properly delighted on Cocod Island, home of the roseate tern, where birdsong and place do most of the talking. The butterflies come next. Butterfly Conservation joins the programme to talk about the Big Butterfly Count, pointing listeners to the smartphone app, the built-in identification guide, and the chance to log sightings. The show keeps things rooted in practical observation. Each segment comes with a small action, a place name, or a seasonally timed job that listeners can take back to their own patch. The tone stays companionable. Karl Steinsen and the Weekending Show team thread the pieces together with gardening, birdwatching, beekeeping, and a reminder that there is always more happening in a garden than first meets the eye. It ends with a nudge. The programme invites listeners to join the butterfly count, listen back to previous programmes, and carry on noticing what is growing, flying, and nesting nearby.

As heard by us

Practical garden notes that move from propagation to bees, birds, and the Big Butterfly Count.

Gardening here is treated as a practical habit more than a hobby: spend carefully, then get more from what is already there through propagation, layering, and cuttings.

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Why you'd press play

You want garden advice that starts with one plant and ends at first light.

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