Roots and Shoots

Roots and Shoots is a Perth gardening call-in built around useful answers and unruly conversation. Sabrina Hahn brings practical horticultural judgment to callers dealing with the specific pressures of Western Australian gardens. The show is local in the best sense. It understands Carnarvon wind, Perth sand, Kalamunda bird life, coastal planting, parched lawns, sudden rain, and the difference between a plant that needs saving and one that should be removed. Advice arrives quickly and plainly. Young jacarandas get balanced pruning and three-stake support before cyclone weather. Uprooted palms get a narrow rescue window. Stevia seeds get seed-raising mix, surface sowing, and steady water. Whitefly on tomatoes becomes a lesson in ecological control, predatory insects, catch crops, and lowering populations rather than pretending pests can vanish forever. The program also has strong opinions. Self-seeded olives, invasive roots, unsuitable palms, and problem plants may receive very little sympathy. That bluntness is part of the appeal. Roots and Shoots does not treat gardening as lifestyle decoration; it treats it as a practical negotiation with soil, climate, water, roots, pests, and time. The comic energy is just as central. Studio glitches, affectionate name mix-ups, beauty-check jokes, odd tangents about old fabrics or lipstick, and caller banter sit comfortably beside Latin plant names and urgent pruning calls. The pacing can be chaotic, but the answers are grounded. It is especially good for listeners who want real-time problem solving rather than polished gardening essays. The show also makes room for children, regular callers, live events, conservation notes, and quick-fire text questions near the end of an hour. Its charm comes from the collision of authority and looseness. Sabrina can be precise about silver princess soil preparation, then gleefully dismiss a troublesome plant seconds later. Roots and Shoots is a gardening show for people who actually garden: people with failing citrus, windburned trees, sandy holes, mystery vines, hungry cockatoos, and questions that cannot wait for a perfect manual.