Hello and welcome to Gardening with Ben. You'll go to a podcast for all
things green and growing. I'm Ben, your allotment guide and here to help
you cultivate your garden and your passion for plants. Whether you're a seasoned gardener
or just starting out, this podcast is for you. Each episode will dig
into tips, tricks, and techniques to make your garden and allotment thrive from
planting, sewing and growing. We will share all the tips and add advice.
We will also have regular episodes talking about what we have been up to
on the Alltment. So sit back, grab a brew and enjoy today's episode.
Hello and welcome back to Gardening with Ben for a brand new episode.
Today is Sunday, and yeah, we're here to give you a review of
BBC Gardener's World Live and wow, what a day. I'm still aching as
I'm doing this video now. I must have walked and walked and walked,
and this year I didn't walk as much as I did last year. I
took it a bit easier and I'm still absolutely aching. If you have never
been to the NEC at Birmingham, it is absolutely huge. And when I
say huge, it's like bigger than an airport near enough, you're just walking
for miles, but it is such a worthwhile day out. It's doesn't cost
much for how much you actually get back from visiting it. And yeah,
obviously I've spent quite a lot of money there, but that was out of
my own choice, to be honest, and the things that I've come back
with are fantastic plants for my allotment. So let's tell you about our date
at BBC Gardener's World Live to twenty twenty four. So obviously we had to
get there, which we're like setting off at like six o'clock in the morning
on a coach here from Sheffield to Birmingham. But we got there for about
half eight nine o'clock. And once we got there, what we did is
we had a Weatherspoons breakfast. You can't start the day off without a Weatherspoons
breakfast, especially if you're going to be doing a lot walking. You need
all the energy you can get for the food. But yeah, we had
an ice Weatherspoons breakfast. And it's certainly not Weatherspoons prices at that place.
They definitely a lot more than the usual Wetherspoons, but oh well, we
still had an ice breakfast, and then we went to go into the NEC
and I looked at the forecast and it was forecast heavy rain and thunderstorms on
Friday. So what we decided to do is as soon as we got there,
we made sure we went outside first to start having a look around all
the different stalls. Now there's loads of like craft stores and obviously people selling
different shop item type stuff outside, and obviously there's plants outside as well from
different nurseries. And we'd only been out there i'd say fifteen twenty minutes and
it absolutely bounced it down, and that is not a good start to a
day, especially when it's seeing stuff outside, especially people show gardens and stuff
like that. It obviously can affect all the plants and all their gardens and
all the time and effort they have put into building them. So we ended
up going into the flooral market first off and getting undercover. But obviously everybody
is in good inside, don't they. When it's raining, nobody stays outside,
so all the holes were full of people and the floor and market were
absolutely fantastic. It was so beautiful. Now I've just put a YouTube video
up so you're be able to see the YouTube video inside the floor and market
and what they do. Rather than just selling the different plants, they have
a display of them, of what they would look like real flowers and how
they would look once they're fully grown. And it was absolutely phenomenal, Like
you've got all your futures, You've got all your lilies, you've got all
your Salvier's, you've got all your lavender plants. You've got absolutely loads of
different displays. Now, if you've checked out my YouTube video, you'll see
all these different displays of what they've got. So looking at all the future
plants and I'm thinking, oh, that one's nice, that one's gorgeous.
I want that one. I want that one. And they obviously do like
the three buy three for certain price, so I was wanting like three three
vritis And I came back with some futures. What are good for hedging?
So I've got some of those for one of my borders. And everyone's that.
I kept thinking with eyes. There were none of them were hardaches,
so thinking no, no, I can't buy it. I'm not risking it.
I'm not risking growing it. I'm not risking losing it in the winter
time if we get a cold winter so I purchased all hardy for writers.
Now I purchased quite a few. I purchased nine future plants altogether. Some
are duplicates because I wanted a couple of them, and some were singular,
so fingers crossed they'll all survive and they'll all grow. There are pretty tough
plants for futures, so hopefully it will get some lovely looking futures possibly the
year, and hopefully even bigger plants next year once they've settled in and grown
a lot. So I've got them in the ground today. I went down
to my lot them today and I planted them all straight away and got them
all in the ground and hopefully they'll take route. And we keep getting quite
a few storms here in the Sheffield at the moment and rain, so hopefully
it will rain them into the ground and they'll settle in and they'll all get
growing well. I also purchased some Salviers, as Salvias always look absolutely gorgeous
to come back year after year from when I've seen them growing in places.
So I bought three Salviers as well, three different varieties of Salviers. Now
that will be going on my YouTube channel tomorrow on showing you which ones I've
purchased, the varieties that I've got, so watch out for that as well.
Coming on YouTube. If you don't follow me on YouTube, search Gardening
with Ben and I'm starting to share lots of little videos on there now for
you to watch and enjoy, and obviously give tours of my allotment as well
on there so you can keep up to date with how well things are going
down at the plot. So we purchased three Salvia's as well. And in
this Flora Market you could have absolutely spent loads and loads and loads. Now
people go with actual proper trolleys to pick stuff up in and take home and
stuff like that. But obviously we'd gone on the coach so we couldn't collect
too much, but we came back with plenty. We came back with so
much stuff from there, so we had a good look around for the floora
market. Then after we'd been in the Flora Market, we went inside the
main arena where a lot of the main stalls were and companies were, and
also in there is like obviously where the shows are where people come up and
do talks and stuff like that. We didn't book into see any of this
year we decided against that, so we didn't see any talkers this year.
We didn't even see anyone famous to be honest, and Ho monted On was
there on the day that I was there, but I didn't actually see him,
which is a shame. But there's certainly plenty of stuff that we did
do while we were there, but that was obviously we didn't see that.
And then a we went around BBC Good Food as well as well as BBC
Gardeners World. There's BBC Good Food where all the chefs come. There's all
food tasting. There's drink tasting, which is even better. So it's going
around having shots of little drinks and stuff like that. Wow, absolutely delicious
some of them. And I've found some cheese stalls well, just tasting all
different cheeses. I came back with some cheese what I had paid six pounds
for but it was absolutely delicious. Wow, it would gorgeous. You could
just well, I didn't have anything tweet while we're there yesterday. I was
just going around tasting everything. Why do you need to buy any food?
But you can just go around and taste everything on every every stall. But
yeah, it's absolutely brilliant now some people that we're talking to there, they
spent two days there going around it, and it is understandable that you can
spend two days going around it because it is massive. It's absolutely huge.
So obviously we went around the BBC Good Food. Then in the afternoon,
when it had brightened up a little bit, we went outside and we checked
out all the show gardens, the ones that got an award, and there
were Adam's Frost Garden there, which looked absolutely fantastic with all different vegetables in
it and stuff like that. I don't know how they do it, because
some of the plants in there were bigger than what you would see ready,
like the tomatoes were ripening on the plants and stuff like that. How they've
managed to do that, I don't know. That's a question. They've obviously
somehow shipped me in from somewhere to get them to through look like they ripening
already. But yeah, it's absolute phenomenal. And then there were just loads
and loads of stalls outside. It was absolutely fantastic. We could have asked
for a better data. Obviously, the rain is a dampner, but what
you get out of it is amazing and I'm definitely going to be going again
next year. It is going to be a yearly thing. Now I'm going
to make sure I get there every year. And one of the things as
well is that they had a store where they were giving out three goodie bags
and there were two cues. There were a massive long QUEU and then there
were short Q and I thought, what was his short Q for? And
they said, if you're standing this short queue, you've got to have a
photo take and we are leaflet and you'll get two bags instead of one.
So I thought, why not. I'm used to having my photo taken.
I'm everywhere I am gardening with Ben, but yeah, I took my photo
taken. We came up with these two goodie bags. You get some fantastic
stuff in them. Now I'm not looked in them properly yet, but I
know there's some biscuits and some products in there and stuff like that. So
I'm looking forward to going through that bag. So I might share that in
another video with your of what I've actually got free in these goodie bags.
But like, there were like a stall as well for QVC. If you
signed up for their newsletter, you got some free seeds and free cakes and
stuff like that, So just signing up to everything me. I'm one of
these. If I can get something for free, I will get it for
free. Any people want anything advertising, feel free to send it to back.
Only joking, but yeah, it is an absolutely fantastic Now if you've
always thought about going and you've never been to BBC Gardener's Worldlife, get yourself
there. It is worthwhile as well as the BBC Good Food, absolutely fantastic
tastes, absolutely brilliant everything, all the samples. You couldn't ask for a
more well organized event. It's obviously in Birmingham, so if you see the
tickets advertised for next year, get yourself booked on because I will certainly be
there next year and I couldn't recommend it enough and it makes me feel like
wanting to go to some other events. But I need to have a look
around to what other events you are out there that are like that. So
I hope you've enjoyed this podcast today. It's been a review of BBC Gardener's
World and BBC Good Food, which I give it ten out of ten.
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it Gardeners with Gardening with Ben and you will see my video from the BBC
Gardener's World Tour as well on there. Until next time, remember, keep
smiling, keep shining, and keep gardening with Ben. Everyone. Thank you
for joining me on this episode of Gardening with Ben. I hope you have
found some useful tips and instegiration for your own gardening and a lotment journey.
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