Kate:
Well, I am delighted to introduce to the podcast today a wonderful garden writer and a lecturer of horticulture. Ross Pearson. Good morning Ross.

Ross:
Good morning. How are you doing?

Phil:
Hi there Ross, good to see you.

Kate:
Yeah. Thanks so much for coming on board.

Ross:
Thank you. It's an absolute honour to be asked.

Kate:
So let's crack on with the thing that has really struck me, watching your amazing social media work at the moment. And it's your Dig for Victory project. So what made you want to do this? And why on earth did you think I'm going to grow exactly as they did?

Ross:
Yeah. I think probably first and foremost, I'm an old soul. I'm a really old fashioned person. I think I was born in the wrong era. Honestly, everybody that meets us says, ‘You're a really old-fashioned person at heart, aren't you?’, and I just am. And I think that sort of era really captivates my imagination. I'm a very nostalgic person anyway, and I think the sort of feel of it, something just really appeals to me.
But more than anything, I had a small allotment to begin with, and I wanted more growing space because I've got a family, I've got two girls, and I wanted to produce as much food as possible. So I got a brand new allotment, which is way bigger than I could probably imagine.

Kate:
It's enormous.

Ross:
It's absolutely huge. It is. It's a colossal size. But that's a good thing, because one thing that struck us is that because of the world that we live in at the minute, with the cost of living so high, and because the price of fruit and vegetables is going up so much, I just thought there has to be a way to grow my own for my own family that can be successful.
And there's lots of different ways that people do that nowadays. I think probably the one that everybody goes for is no dig, and that's great. And everybody knows the benefits of no dig. But I wanted to do something a little bit different. And what struck me with this idea is that people during the war had to grow food if they wanted to survive.
Rations were so tight they didn't have an option. If you wanted to supplement those rations, then you had to do it yourself. You had to grow your own. So I thought, well, you know, the Ministry of Agriculture produced information on how you should do it. So I wanted to see, is there anything in that information that's still relevant today that maybe over the years we've forgotten about, that we've lost techniques that aren't as popular now?
And can we go back to those in a way of trying to maximise the produce?

Phil:
Yeah. Fascinating.

Kate:
So within that you said and that's kind of one thing I wanted to ask you. You wanted to see if there is anything relevant. So what have you found that maybe is more relevant than you thought?

Ross:
Probably what surprised us most is the emphasis on soil, because we know nowadays how important it is to look after your soil. That's where you have to start. And but it's surprising that they they also knew that back in the day.

Kate:
Sorry, Ross, can I just stop you there? Sorry you said that we all know now about soil, but I would disagree with that. I think a lot of people haven't realised that soil is the key. It's all been about spraying plants and feeding plants and adding. So I think maybe in a way I think it's quite revolutionary that we've kind of gone full circle because I think a lot of people don't get that it's soil.
I think a lot of people who do it as a profession maybe know, and it's filtering down. So I'm really excited to hear you talk about soil.

Ross:
I think you're probably right there. That's that's probably the wrong way to word it, I think, because, you know, when you teach plant and soil science, you know, you're teaching every day about how important it is and you can see the science behind it. That science is relatively new. So probably for people who are in the know people who are being taught how to do these things, you're right.
You know that that is we all know how important it is, but probably a common gardener who hasn't done it before, who was just starting doesn't realise how important it is. And I guess that all ties in with sort of the conditions that you have. And and if you're able to grow in the ground or if you only have maybe a courtyard or if you have a balcony space, and so you're growing in containers and then you know that draws in sort of the argument with peat-free and, and that sort of side of things.
But if you are lucky enough to have soil that you can grow in, then the evidence is there just how important it is. But it did really surprise me that the information from Dig for Victory is that, yeah, that's what you have to start with. So every recommendation comes back to making your own compost, putting as much manure on as you possibly can.
Every single crop that I've put in, it always starts off with manure heavily…

Kate:
Right

Ross:
Which is fine for me because I've got ducks in the back garden, which is great. Because they produce so much manure for me. I can just load it up and put it straight in. But that was really important. And of course there would have been a lot more horses around back in the day then. They would have been used a lot, so they would have been able to access manure. But crop rotation was so important.
I've actually got it up here. I'm just looking at it. This is the the guide that that was produced by the Ministry of Agriculture. And and it sets out this was sent out to every household. And it sets out exactly how you need to crop rotate. And I think that that comes through really strongly about, you know, look, if you've put your brassicas in here one year, you can't put them in the next year, you have to move them around.
You've got to move your root crops around. So that that side of things was very well known and pushed, and also about how you had to carefully cultivate the soil. And I think, always sort of go to, ‘Oh, they were doing double digging’. You know, everybody was double digging back in the day and we couldn't possibly double dig because we are all no dig gardeners now.
But there wasn't a tremendous amount of double digging, the single digging, but it was sort of the viewpoint of: you do it once and that's it. Prepare your plot beforehand and then you don't have to do it after. If it's prepared properly, then it doesn't have to be done again. And I think if today, if we're all honest with ourselves, even no-dig gardeners would probably say they're no dig gardeners after they've dug it!
You know, you start with a garden or an area or, you know, you've got this allotment, or, I know Kate, you've taken on a new allotment as well, and you see an area that hasn't been worked that you want, then grow crops in.
The first thing you're going to do, you're going to strip it back and get rid of all the weeds, but then you're probably going to cultivate it in some way that it does have to be dug over to get the air into it and just sort of start that process.

Phil:
So do you think that the modern gardener would actually cope with doing this Dig for Victory, the stuff that you're looking at now because, you know, obviously nowadays we've become a bit spoilt with garden centres and gadgets and, you know, all these new products that are coming in. Do you think they'd actually be able to cope with trying to do this Dig for Victory.

Ross:
Yes. But I think we've probably become accustomed to convenience.

Phil:
Yeah.

Ross:
And everything. You know, you go to a garden centre now and there is a lotion and a potion for every single thing that you can possibly imagine. There is a cure all for everything.

Kate:
And a machine.

Ross:
Yeah, exactly. And I think we've probably become, as a society, used to having instant results. Everything's at your fingertips. If you want to watch your favourite programme, you don't have to wait another week until the next episode comes back around. You know you've got it instantly. If you want to have an answer on something, it is a click of a button away.
And I think that's probably also the same for your garden. And we're possibly a bit impatient nowadays. And if we don't see instant results, then our enthusiasm wanes. Get a little bit bored of it, think, oh, this isn't working and give up on it. That might be a sweeping statement and I might be wrong with that. It's certainly not going to be the case for everybody, but I think we're accustomed to convenience rather than being incapable of doing it.

Kate:
Low maintenance.

Ross:
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think the best gardeners today probably combine modern knowledge with traditional knowledge as well, and I don't think anything can really replace going out there and trying it for yourself and getting your hands in the soil, getting accustomed to it and, and really understanding through not just your successes but your failures. And there's going to be a lot of failures.
And, and I think that that also comes through with CH Middleton, who wrote the book Dig On for Victory. He was the he was the Monty Don of the day. So he was a big… he started off in TV. He was the first TV gardener. He was also sort of the first Gardeners’ Question Time radio presenter. So he was the person that everybody looked to for information.
So C.H. Middleton is the guy that I go to to figure out what do I need to do. But he would he would always talk about, you know, getting to know your soil, getting to know your plants, accepting that not everything's going to work. He was actually really down to earth as well. When you hear him, there's a few recordings of him out there.
He had a bit of a regional accent. He wasn't sort of stiff upper lipped and very posh, like they would have been back in the day. And so he was quite relatable as well. And in a way that we probably relate to somebody on the telly like, and Adam Frost, because he's, you know, from London, he's got that east-end accent.

Kate:
Man of the people.

Ross:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. And yeah, I think he would have been very relatable when he was saying, don't worry about the mistakes, they're going to happen, but just try your best because every little bit that you can do is going to help to the overall war effort, which is what they wanted at the end of the day. I think we can probably adopt that as well and not be so critical of ourselves.

Kate:
Oh, so easy to be.

Phil:
There’s a really interesting distinction nowadays, and I think we've spoken with a few people just recently about this, that there's a difference between gardeners and what we have now. A days is sort of garden decorators. So people who just want that instant fix.

Kate:
Yeah. Plonkers.

Phil:
Yeah. So yeah, we were talking with Natalie Boynton from Happy Plants and she came up with that phrase Garden Plonkers. So people who just buy a plant, take it home and plonk it down.

Ross:
Yeah. But I think if I'm being honest, I think probably the the ones that are most responsible for that are going to be the garden centres. Because if you go to a garden centre now, and you walk in, you're not going to see very many plants that are just in the green that are still waiting to do their thing.
It's all about that wow factor about walking in, about what catches your eye. Because as consumers, that's that's what we're attracted to. We're attracted to things that are in flower, that are doing their thing because you can see it in your own garden. You can look at something and think, I've got that gap. I want something that's purple.
Look at this salvia that's doing its thing. I'm going to buy it. I'm going to take it back. I'm going to plonk it in. But what they don't really appreciate is that yeah it's great. It's lovely now. But in two week’s time it's going to start looking past its best. And then you're going to be looking for that next fix of going back to the garden centre and buying.
And so it's a clever technique. You have to do that. And it's I don't think people would be going to as many garden centres as if they weren't there to, to buy stuff and to be drawn in. And with that allure of having all this colour and scent. But if you go to a local nursery that's growing, you'll walk in and you'll, nine times out of ten not be able to recognise the plant straight away, because it will just be a small little thing in a pot that has a couple of leaves. And you're kind-of thinking, is that what it is? Or I'm not sure. How big will this get?
I've got a fantastic one that's not so far away from me, and I'm like a kid in a sweet shop when I go. Because the prices are lower, but because you have to use your imagination more, you have to use a bit more of your, you know, that creative side of your brain to think, what is this going to look like, what height is it going to get to, and is that the right plant for the right place?
Whereas now I think we're probably just accustomed to sort of yeah, this is great. Now let's just buy it and let's put it in.

Phil:
Yeah, yeah. So is that a knowledge and expertise something that we've lost then you think.

Ross:
Probably. Probably.
Yeah I would say it is. I think it's I think the difference is back then during Dig for Victory, everybody was a gardener. Even if you didn't have a big space. You still had, you know, planters that were out, pots, something that would just look cheerful because it was a pastime. You didn't have the telly, you had your radio for entertainment, you had your books.
You didn't really have anything else to do after that. So gardening, going outside, growing your own things, whether that was cut flowers or whether that was vegetables. It was an important part of their day-to-day life. It's probably, I would say now, not that way or it hasn't been for maybe the last 10 or 20 years.
And people you know are… not everybody is a gardener. So that trend has probably changed. And so with that, skills are going to be lost over the years. But I think the trend is changing now.

Kate:
Well, lockdown helped that.

Ross:
And I think you're right. Yeah, I think that was the big turning point wasn't it. Everybody was at home and really didn't have much else to do. Apart from think well what hobbies can I do and can I grow some indoor plants? And that's why we've had this massive spike in indoor plants now. And hopefully I mean, that's only a good thing, isn't it?

Kate:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Ross:
Yeah. Hopefully it'll continue.

Kate:
So, Ross, if there's one takeaway from this project that gardeners now could follow, what would be your one takeaway.

Ross:
To feed your soil before you feed your plants? I think that's really important. Healthy soils solve so many more problems than something you can buy off a garden centre shelf. There's going to be something to solve everything in that garden centre, but you can solve all those problems before they become a problem just by looking after that soil.
And I think that's really, really important.

Kate:
So for those of us that haven't got access to lots of duck poo, what would be what would you recommend people could get?

Ross:
Well, I would start by making your own compost. Really, you don't need to have something like, like manure to be able to do it. You know, we're all producing food waste. We can save that. And you don't need a big area to do that either. And if you did want to try something that's a little bit different, that is along the manure lines, then try something small, like a wormery.
Wormeries are fantastic. They you know, your food scraps go into the top. You have all of your worms inside. They're making this fantastic worm compost. And you're also getting a liquid feed out of that as well. So even on a smaller scale, if you haven't got a lot of space, you can still do it. But if you if you wanted to go and try, you know, getting your own manure.
There's tons of places that hand it out for free. You know, if you go to a local stables, they will have a massive heap of it and it'll all be nicely rotted down. And, you know, nine times out of ten it's just there and you can go and help yourself. So if you're resourceful enough and you want to go and find it, you definitely can.

Phil:
And you don't mind having it in your car.

Ross:
Yeah, there's always that.

Kate:
So let's just change subject a bit because you talked briefly about your Instagram account and now your tentative foray into TikTok, but you've been a professional horticulturist, a garden writer for a number of years. So what got you started in the beginning into this career?

Ross:
Oh, well, I would say as a child I was always interested in it because it started with my grandad, who we affectionately called Jackie. He didn't want to be a granddad. That was too old fashioned. No, he wasn't a granddad. He was a Jackie, a good Geordie name. So, Jackie was my absolute hero. He really was when I was growing up.
I just absolutely idolised the man. And. And I would be over there with my sister. We would go over to my gran and Jackie's on a weekend, and my parents would ship us off there. And he was an amateur gardener, but boy, he was an accomplished gardener, he really was. He won so many awards for his allotment, and he won awards for his front garden and his back garden, and he's got Britain in Bloom certificates that I've still got today.
So he was the inspiration for it because whenever I went to his, he had something, we call it the hut. It was a shed. We called it the hut. And he would say, ‘Aye, come into the hut’ and I'd spend, you know, I'd be knee high to a grasshopper. I would just be able to see above the bench.
But on that bench there would just be everything you could imagine that would fascinate a child of 6 or 7 years of age from projects that he'd disassembled and was putting back together, things that he was in the middle of making himself or creating. We always said he did it the Jackie way. There was one way of doing it. And then there's the Jackie way. He would find the most complicated, convoluted ways to do something, or mend something, or fix something, or make it. But it would be his unique way of doing it.
And sprawled out on the bench would be packets of seeds and corms and bulbs and rhizomes and he would always be doing something in the garden, and he would just get me to do it with him.
I would have to just go and pitch in and do it that way. And my parents loved gardening as well. I was so fortunate that they had a nice back garden. It wasn't huge, but it was lovely. It was well maintained and we were always encouraged as kids just to get involved and to do it. So that, it was definitely the key for me was doing it from an early age.

Phil:
Right. Yeah. So you’re a lecturer at Durham University, that’s right isn’t it, in horticulture?

Ross:
That’s right.

Phil:
Have you seen a change in the attitudes and expectations of the students coming in?

Ross:
Yeah. I get to do something called Wider Student Experience, which is giving students the opportunity to do something that's above and beyond their normal studies. So I get the opportunity to teach students that are maybe doing something completely off the wall, like, I don't know, engineering or biosciences or classics or something like that, and giving them the opportunity to do horticulture; and also to do heritage craft as well.
So I'm in quite a privileged position because whereas before my, my lecturing role was, was purely in horticulture where I would be delivering, you know, levels one, two, three, four, all of that, I'm now in a lovely position where I'm a lecturer, but I'm lecturing without the need for somebody to have to sit an exam or to submit anything.
It's given them the opportunity to be involved in gardening and horticulture in whichever way they see fit.
So what I'm finding is that there are so many more young people nowadays that are… They've never been a gardener before. They've never been involved with it. They may live in the middle of the city in London or Manchester, and they just want to try it, and see what it's like.
And I think what I'm finding I'm quite guilty of is… I'll start off a session and I'll be looking after a border and we'll say, okay, what we're going to do today is pull everything out, we're going to strip everything back and we're going to weed it, and then we'll redesign it and plan it and see how we want to go about doing it.
So the first thing to do is start weeding and you'll hand them a spade or a shovel or a fork and they'll go, ‘Great, what do I do?’ Because they've never done it before. And so weeding a simple task of weeding is totally alien to them. So it's realising that actually there's a lot of people out there, a lot of young people that really don't know, just the very, very basics, but they're all keen.
And what I, what I love about this generation, this young generation that's coming up, is that this is probably the generation that is most aware of the environment and most aware of the impact that they themselves are having on the environment. So something like gardening, it really appeals to them because they feel like they're giving something back, that they're doing something positive.
And that's an amazing thing to see. It really is. And the, the sort of the joy that you get in taking a group of students that have never done this before or have and say, we're going to do this, this is what we want to try and end up with. They see what it's like beforehand, and they leave at the end of the session, being able to visibly see the difference that they've made. It’s fantastic. It's absolutely brilliant. And I think I think the future is bright for gardening and for horticulture, the industry at large, because there just are so many people that want to be involved. That's taken me by surprise.

Phil:
Oh, that's so good to hear.

Kate:
Well, let's tone it down a bit. Would you say there's become a bit of a divide between professional horticulture and garden influencers? Would you say experience still carries the same weight online, or is it all about the personality?

Ross:
Oh, controversial. Yeah.
No, I completely agree with you. I think the problem comes when confidence is mistaken for expertise.

Kate:
Right. I love that, that's a very polite way of putting it.

Ross:
Yeah, I'm being quite diplomatic about this, aren’t I?
Because, look, personalities get people watching.

Phil:
Absolutely.

Ross:
If I'm looking at something on social media, I'm looking at somebody that I find interesting to watch.

Phil:
They've got to be engaging.

Ross:
Of course they are. And so you're always naturally drawn in by those big personalities. But the things that keep you succeeding in a garden is having the right information. So I think that there's a lot of gardeners on social media that don't necessarily have the knowledge to dispense it, and I think that's probably where the friction lies.
There probably are two camps between the professional gardeners and the social media gardeners. But having said that, I would say that the likes of C.H. Middleton or Percy Thrower or Jeff Hamilton, if they were alive today, they… I mean, their knowledge is unsurpassed. They were the very best of the best and that knowledge was gained through experience.
But let's be honest, they were media personalities of the day. They were on the radio, they were on the TV, they were in magazines. So there's nothing to suggest that they wouldn't also have been on social media as well. So I think it's getting that balance between having real experience and being able to portray that to people. And those people take that knowledge on board and act upon it.
And then just being a little bit wary and picky about who you trust, the ones who are just there simply to entertain. And that's possibly, again, like we mentioned before about Covid and lockdown. I think you had a lot of celebrities who were known for something completely different, got involved in gardening, really enjoyed it, saw that their content picked up a lot of traction and thought, well, I could continue to do this and they're making a success of it, there's no doubt about that.
I think the only issue comes that, you know, you've just got to be you've got to be wary about who you can trust and what the advice is that they're giving.

Kate:
It's an interesting one. I did a post about, you know, everyone's going on about drought tolerant planting, but it doesn't mean if you go and buy a pot of lavender and put it in another pot, that you never have to water it. So I kind of tried to make it. You still need to water them, especially if they're in a container or if you've just bought them.
They need as much water as every other plant until they're established. And then the other day I saw a post by a very well-known garden influencer saying, you know, this is what you need to buy from the garden centre today because you buy this plant, it's a drought tolerant plant and you don't need to worry about it. And I'm just like, no, because you're setting people up to fail.
It's so frustrating, you know, and you want to comment, be like, no, no, draw it back in.

Ross:
You've got to hold yourself back.

Kate:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you just I think people just say, oh, you're just sour grapes because they've got, you know, a million followers.

Ross:
That's it, that's it. Yeah. It's difficult to compete with that. You know, if you do have somebody that has millions of followers and you know, where you only have a few thousand, then the ones that are going to get traction are the ones that have millions because they're going to get more views. So it's yeah, it is tough.

Kate:
And then that becomes a myth. And people say, oh, look, I'm going to buy this plant. And that people were commenting, I'm going to go to the garden centre today and I'm going to buy some lavender, I'm going to buy some echinacea. And it's like, yeah, because it's going to be easy. We don't have to worry about watering.

Ross:
Yeah, it's a worry. It is a worry.

Kate:
It is.

Phil:
All right. So, Ross, as someone who's built a career in horticulture, has being on social media opened up new doors for you, or has it become something that you almost have to do just to stay visible?

Ross:
No, it definitely has. It's certainly put me in touch with audiences that I would never have reached. So that's a positive. And it's certainly given me a lot more opportunities when it comes to writing.
I think that's the big thing. Now social media is sort of viewed as your online CV. At one time, everybody would have had the CV. If you wanted to apply for something, you'd send that CV off. Or when I first started in garden writing, you would fire off an email to an editor and you would say, here's my CV, here's the experience that I have. Here's maybe a sample of an article that I've done. I would love to work with you if there's any opportunities.
Now, that's not really what people are looking for anymore. What they're looking at is how many followers do you have? How much engagement do you have with your followers. And how many views do you get? And that's sad.
That is really disappointing because, you know, you may not be the most tech savvy. I'm fortunate because, you know, I'm not necessarily the most tech savvy person, but I'm able to record, I'm able to edit my own videos and put that content out there. But I know that there's some amazing gardeners that are way more experienced than me and have far more knowledge than I do, but wouldn't even dream of going into social media because it's just not something that's in their wheelhouse.
But that then almost excludes them from those opportunities, because you do have to have that media presence online. And so that's that is a concern that it's almost like if you don't do this. You're almost not in the club.

Kate:
Yeah.

Ross:
But I'm fortunate enough to be in it. And when you are, when you do do it, those opportunities are fantastic. And they do open up so many doors. But it does seem a little bit off kilter now the way that the trend is going.

Phil:
Yeah. So do you ever find yourself like thinking about what's going to perform best on social media, rather than actually what information would I like to share as a gardener?

Ross:
Yeah, I would be lying if I said that I didn't. I wish, I wish I said that, that I didn't. But yeah, you almost have to. But I try not to let it dictate the type of content that I'm producing. I would rather make something that was genuinely useful for a smaller audience, than try and chase trends that people are doing on Instagram, but they don't really teach people anything.
I think there's a lot of that around. There are an awful lot of trends now on Instagram and TikTok where they will do something. But actually, what have they done? At the end of the day, they haven't really taught anybody any skills that are transferable back to the garden. And I do think that if I'm being honest and I hold my hands up, I really don't like social media. I really don't.
It's something that I find onerous. It's a burden. And if I could click my fingers and get rid of it for everybody, I probably would do that. But that's not going to happen. And it is. It is the situation. So we've kind of got to evolve with the times. But for me, I think the biggest negative of it is that it takes time away from actually gardening.

Kate:
Yeah, absolutely.

Ross:
And I think that puts me off sometimes. I'm really guilty of saying, you know, all right, I've got to get my brassicas in. But I can't just go and do it. I've got half an hour spare and I could do it now. And that means that it's planted at the right time, that I can start feeding it, that they can get well established, blah blah, blah blah.
But I only have half an hour to do it. But I can't do it because half an hour is not long enough for me to set up the tripod to get the right camera angles to do all these cutaways figure out, is my microphone working, have I tested it and the neighbour on my plot then starts having a chat.
So I have to start like there's so many things where you're like, right, okay, well you end up just procrastinating. I can't be bothered to do it because it's too much of a faff. So, yeah, it does. It does take time away. And honestly, it's… Kate you'll know this as well. I'm sure that it really takes a lot of effort.

Kate:
Oh, my God, I'm so glad to hear you say this, because I do exactly that. I'm like, oh my gosh, I've got to get this in. I've got to sow this. Oh no, but I'm not ready to film it or there's too much noise and it takes away. It kind of sucks the joy out a bit sometimes.

Ross:
It does.

Kate:
And for me gardening is often about well-being. And so now I'm thinking what I'm going to film because I kind of joined the club very late on properly in January this year. I kind of had always been lurking, but I'm not a techie, so I was terrified about the editing side of it and all this kind of thing. So I've just really backed away and I've embraced it fully.
But yeah, it’s a bit of a beast, isn’t it? And the more you feed it...

Ross:
It really is.

Kate:
...the more it wants feeding. And having said that, my garden is a lot more colourful this year than I think it would have been had I not been doing stuff for social media.

Ross:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm quite lucky because, my, my dad has really got into it.

Kate:
I've noticed. I'm following your dad.

Ross:
Yeah. Yeah, he's absolutely fantastic. He retired a couple of years ago and he kind of been drumming his fingers thinking, what am I going to do now? And he's always loved gardening. And he's got a fabulous little garden that he just renovated last year, redesigned it. And now he can really spend a lot of time doing it because he was a businessman that used to fly all around the world and just didn't, didn't really have the time to do it anymore.
So now that he's retired, he's throwing himself into it. And I'm so grateful to him and to my mum as well. She's retired recently and because they're sort of my support crew in the background, they come in. Yeah, they come in on the days when I'm at work and, and they'll, you know, tidy things up for me and they'll crack on with little projects.
And if I need to go down and do some filming and I can't be bothered to set up the tripods and do it myself, my dad, is just a phone call away and he can come and do that side of it for me. So I am very fortunate in that and it's making it a lot easier. But he's actually becoming really quite accomplished at that, and I'm concerned that he's going to overtake me in popularity.

Kate:
Totally.

Ross:
Because he's really good, the content he's churning out.

Kate:
We won't promote him. So Ross, if you could ban one gardening trend or piece of advice, or my least favourite word hack, and if you could delete one phrase from gardening social media forever, like with that click of the finger. So what would your trend be and what would the phrase be?

Ross:
The phrase is easy and you've just said it. gardening hack.

Kate:
Okay.

Ross:
It's an awful word. Because I think it makes it sound as though that there's some sort of secret that has been unknown to us all, and that now they have the secret, and it's just going to make everything so much easier. And that's not the case. There's little tips and tricks that can, you know, that are interesting little ways of doing things in the garden, but I don't think there's any real shortcuts that get the same results without putting the hard work in.
So yeah, I don't like 'gardening hack'. And trends...
One thing I can't stand, and it's a really little thing, is when somebody has their microphone and then they put it on the end of something like a trowel or a spoon. So I saw somebody with a teacup and then they had their microphone on there. I really don't like that.

Kate:
Yeah, I’m with you on that one.
I don’t understand it. You know, have a nice little lapel mic.

Ross:
Yeah it's quite gimmicky. But if, if I'm being completely honest and this is where it probably gets a little bit controversial. And the biggest pet peeve that I have is when somebody produces gardening content that isn't anything about gardening. It's more about promoting the person and just wanting to get the views and the clicks because they're, you know, trying to portray themselves in a certain way or act daft or silly.
And really, it's got nothing to do about we're going to do this task in the garden and you're you're going to learn from it or you're going to be entertained by watching me do it. It's more about just the silly little slapstick, gimmicky side of things. And it has its place for entertainment. But I think for gardening content. Yeah. That kind of winds me up.

Phil:
Yeah. Kate will know this, it absolutely drives you wild. You become irate at it.

Ross:
Yeah.

Kate:
But back at you, is that not just what social media is and it is more about personalities and you know, maybe through somebody watching that person might then go on to, oh, actually, that's quite interesting. I want to know a little bit more about gardening. So is it just us being, you know, maybe. Well, they've got loads more followers than me, but maybe it's good for the category.
I mean, I do agree with you, but I'm, you know, I'm not sure. Is it getting more people involved in gardening or is it getting the wrong kind of reputation for gardening? I don't know.

Ross:
Anything that anything that gets people involved in gardening is a good thing. Anything. What is it they say? There is no such thing as bad publicity. All publicity is good publicity. So anything that gets them drawn in is a good thing. I think you're right that it is probably us thinking we put all of this hard work and effort, and we're really spending a lot of time thinking, okay, well, what's going to be relevant and how do I do this and how do I do that?
And how? And then somebody just comes on, does something daft online. And all of a sudden they've got half a million views by the end of the week and you think, oh for goodness sake.

Kate:
And actually let's, let's move from one slightly frightening side of life, modern life, to, you know, a part of life that I'm finding a bit scary, which is AI, AI and gardening. So, you know, AI can pretty much do everything, identify plants, answer gardening questions, write articles. Is it an exciting tool, or are we in danger of losing the real value of horticultural knowledge? Would you say?

Ross:
Well, it's a tricky one. Probably both, I would say. I think it depends what you're using it for. AI is an absolutely fantastic assistant, but it's a poor replacement for experience. Nothing can replace experience. And it can, you know, can summarise information for you like you said, it can identify plants and it can explain concepts that you're not familiar with very, very quickly and that they're all really useful things.
But what AI can't do, is it can’t smell the compost, you know, it can't tell you by just looking at your soil what it needs to be improved. It can't notice the subtle changes that a plant makes over weeks, and it can't understand the countless little observations that experienced gardeners make almost unconsciously, and that that will never be able to be replaced by AI.
And it's dangerous if it's used for expert advice to give out as your own, I would say, because I think there's a lot of people that probably turn to AI, especially in gardening, and want to know how something is done. They'll just ask the question and then they will regurgitate that information as if it was their own without really finding out. Is that right? How does that impact on people living in different areas and climates on whatever it is?
And so yeah, that's a difficult one. I think there's probably areas which it's very good for in horticulture, in the commercial gardening sense, I'm sure that it's streamlining processes and making things a lot easier for them, which is brilliant.
But I think the bigger picture here is how AI is ruining the environment. At the end of the day, you know, because of these huge, great big data centres and the amount of energy that it’s taking, the amount of water that is used.
It is so bad for the environment. And if we as an industry are using it and we’re contributing to it and we are endorsing it, then we’re part of the problem rather than part of the cure. So, it’s a really tough one. You have to, you know, walk a tight line on that one. So I don’t really use it if I can get away with it. There's times when I've thought, yeah, I need to, to, to use it almost as like a very fast Google search to find out some information, which is great. It's brilliant. That's wonderful for it to do. But I try and stay away from it as much as possible.
I think in the area of garden writing, it's becoming a big problem.

Kate:
It really is.

Ross:
Because, you know, I am forever trying to fight people who are able to churn out an article in seconds on any topic that they could possibly think of because they just say, I want to write an article on X in the style of anybody that they want, and I want it to be a thousand words. And within 20 seconds they have a publishable article.
And it's probably not it's probably not very well known, but there are people that are out there who it is their job to tweak articles to make them sound more human before they can then be published in magazines. And that's terrifying. That's really scary. Because then, and don't get me wrong, it's not everybody. The majority of editors want to have that human personal touch, and that's brilliant.
And hopefully that always stays the same. Hopefully, you know, everybody sees the value of having that human personal touch and that they can differentiate between what is AI and what is human and how different it sounds. But I think that it’s an easy way out for saying, you know, I can have somebody write something for me now without any deadlines, and it’s publishable, and it can go in and people can really enjoy it.

Kate:
And it’s free.

Ross:
And it's free. It's free. We don't have to charge hundreds of pounds to get somebody to sit down and do it. And actually, that's quite scary in itself as well, isn't it? Because I could see a trend happening where, you know, there's not a lot of money in the magazine industry. You know, people don't buy magazines very much now, printed magazines, you've got subscriptions where you can read them digitally, which is brilliant. And I use those myself because you've got access to all of them.

Kate:
Oh I don’t yeah. I don’t like that.

Ross:
I do do it, though, because, you know, if I want to see the contact details of a certain editor, I can pull out 50 different magazines and see them straight away, so I do, I am guilty of doing that myself. But you can never replace that sort of magazine in hand, can you? You know, the feel and the smell, the tangible element of it. But if there's there's less and less…

Kate:
The free seeds.

Ross:
Yeah, exactly. The free seeds.
But if there's less and less money in that industry, then there's, you know, it becomes more and more appealing for an editor to turn to AI to get those, those articles written.

Phil:
Yeah. So, Ross, where do you think gardening content is heading then over the next, say, five years? Do you think audiences will start valuing trusted expertise again, or do you think entertainment is always going to win and AI is going to continue its surge?

Ross:
I think a lot of it's going to depend on what happens with social media and AI. I don't think at this point we can second guess anything because trends come and go, technologies come and go. You never find a period of time where you say, this is how things are, and it's not going to change. Change happens all the time.
And if I go back to the Dig for Victory era, there is absolutely no way that they could have ever conceived that we would have access to social media and AI in the way that we have now. You would have thought it's just not possible. So I think now it's difficult to say, you know, well, yeah, we're always going to have social media and we're always going to have AI because there could well be a point where we don't have either of those things.
When it either moves on to the next thing or, you know, we all band together and say, this is not a good thing, so we're going to have to stop it. Or we say that actually what's really damaging the environment or has got worse and worse and worse and worse over the years is the use of AI. So it has to be, you know, pared back or got rid of.
So I think there will always be a case for a good gardener with proper knowledge that's been built up over years of experience. I don't think you'll ever be able to replace that.

Kate:
Good to hear. So finally, Ross, you have touched on it briefly, but what gives you hope about the future of horticulture?

Ross:
Well, obviously young people, I think that the future is definitely bright. I've been so fortunate over the years in my career to have worked with children that have been two years old, all the way up to students that I'm teaching now, and everybody. I don't think I've come across anybody yet that's been involved in some way in gardening who has said, I really don't like this. This is not for me. Because I don't think you can. Because there's so much joy in being outdoors, whether that's just from even the social aspect of getting around and digging and chatting while you're doing something or just being outdoors and getting fresh air, there's always something that appeals. So I think, you know, people, young people in horticulture will, will, will save our horticultural industry moving forward.
But I think the, the hope that I get from gardening comes from nature itself. Because you look at nature, you look at the seasons, you look at one season drifting into the next, and how it's always changing and it's always on the move. And you know that no matter what is thrown our way, whether that's a new pest that comes over, that's a problem for our plants or whether that's a disease that hits, that's sprung up out of nowhere and wipes out certain species.
Or if it's the climate that's getting worse and harder for us to garden, nature always finds a way. It always overcomes it. There's never been a time when nature just stops and that's the end of it. It's always moving and it's always changing. So that gives me a lot of hope as well. Because if nature can find a way of adapting and changing, then I think we, we as gardeners and we as a horticultural industry can do exactly the same.

Kate:
Well, that is a beautiful way to end our chat with you, Ross today. That's such a lovely thought to take home with. So thank you for that. And thank you so much for being honest and open and sharing your story and your Dig for Victory allotment with us. And yes, I'll tell you what, what is your social media handle so people can follow you.

Ross:
@rosspearsongardening. And that's the same for Instagram and TikTok.

Phil:
Brilliant, and I’d definitely recommend you taking a look.

Ross:
Thank you so much for letting me on. Thank you I've loved it.