The Garden Log

From Venice to Plumstead, remarkable stories lurk behind ivy-covered walls.

This episode of the Garden Log leaps the wall of an abandoned garden on the island of Giudecca to tell of gout, roses, princesses, pills, Gertrude Jekyll's sister and tioletless Austrian.

It also visits South London where behind closed doors a secret slice of Mesoamerica is growing.

Here are some remarkable picture of The Garden of Eden in Venice to look at while you listen.

Can the English Cottage Garden survive in the new world of scorching summers and blasted borders?

Is there still a place for higgledy beauty and perennial favourites in our strange new world? Find out in this 500 year history of the nation's most beloved garden style.

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/463428/green-kingdom-by-dark-ben/9781847928337

Celebrating the beauty and strangeness of plants.

This week we lope into the half-shade with graceful Magnolia kobus, elegant Abutilon 'Patrick Synge' and the monstrous Hydrangea aspera 'Bellevue', before bursting into the light with golden Acacia pravissima (the sawtooth wattle), duskyVitis vinifera 'Incana', and the tiny-leaved Myrtus communis subsp. tarentina.

Also featuring one of the finest accounts of plant hunting The Mountains of the Moon and a recommendation of what to read in gardening this this week.

https://www.thegardencollective.uk/ben-dark/

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/463428/green-kingdom-by-dark-ben/9781847928337

An existential defence of high maintenance gardening. Why should we strive for ease when working outside feels so good? With some carex, some meristems and some plant morphology for good measure.

And thank you for preordering Green Kingdom! https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/463428/green-kingdom-by-dark-ben/9781847928337

In this post-rain episode of cult gardening podcast The Garden Log we say goodbye to the universal uncle Monty Don who is to retire from Gardeners' World.

But our Gardeners' World keeps turning, so also enjoy introductions to the gorgeous autumn snowflake (Acis autumnalis) and the Corsican knotweed (Polygonum scoparium) a must-have evergreen perennial for the dry garden.

In this late summer sunset of an episode Ben visits Down House, home of Charles Darwin, considers the hybrid geranium and praises the Michaelmas daisy.

Any emails to thegardenlogpodcast@gmail.com

Are the best gardens designed or created? Why are there beetles crawling on my World of Interiors magazine? What cut flowers would go with my collection of pornographic postcards? These and other important questions answered in the guide to effortless good taste.

For more of this sort of thing join me at https://www.thegardencollective.uk/ben-dark/

Two very different 3am trips to the garden this week as heat gives way to rain. Also, using soft cuttings and plastic cups to make plants from plants, some Musa basjoo, some Clerodendrum trichotomum, some Solanum laciniatum and some flower crab spiders, plus of course, aspidistra: ‘They’re a dashed important subject,'

And here's the link to the How to Academy event: https://tickets.howtoacademy.com/the-epic-family-history-of-plants-tickets/worldwide-live-stream/2026-10-27-18-00

Love to all you gardeners and gardening people

How will our gardens look in the future? Ben visits the new garden in Grosvenor Square with its Nigel Dunnett planting to find out.

Also featuring: tragedy at bathtime; some borrowed seedlings; a 4000 year old stumpery and Tom Stoppard's Arcadia at the Duke of York Theatre.

And if you enjoyed any of that then of course you must pre order my book

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/463428/green-kingdom-by-dark-ben/9781847928337

Is Thomas Knight the greatest villain in the history of fruit growing? And how does a Frenchman's marriage influence the rose gardens of England? These and other very important questions answered in an episode of The Garden Log recorded in the bleached white of a Herefordshire summer.

If you enjoyed any of this history, gardening and plants podcast then consider preordering my book here: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/463428/green-kingdom-by-dark-ben/9781847928337

We find ourselves at the mercy of forces beyond our control and hide from the wind and sun under a leafy bowers of the Baroque garden at Gammel Holtegård. A gardening podcast.

Here is the mega-discount for Americans

https://www.amazon.com/Green-Kingdom-Family-History-Plants-ebook/dp/B0H5D7H8PZ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=RP2TBN1HHA7K&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Bo_HP2EzIae79kSPW1fmkfmTi9cnIVFFedPWaFTKxy0IhNjqQnZmyw-9-Z9S3g2jUQyqpYp_2RZl8cdrCj0pn2uM4vQuzbP_WVV8Qfhn4oqoQqDoC8jNUq0lTckYckglCI7jTvkCL2wOhWxoyDf544YrlxKILoJeqIL-hlNBtaY.JA2A3bZ2AXgmhMakyG53ufPM7AVr6d6RpTFwXDD6vsM&dib_tag=se&keywords=green+kingdom+a+family+history+of+plants&qid=1785172825&s=books&sprefix=green+kingdom+a+family+history+of+plan%2Cstripbooks%2C349&sr=1-1

Lots of love

Just after the summer's hinge, Ben eats his neigbours' soft fruit, considers the lily and reads that all-time classic of garden writing The Education of a Gardener.

Here's the link to the Garden Collective: https://www.thegardencollective.uk/ben-dark/

Green Kingdom here:

https://www.thegardencollective.uk/ben-dark/

Welcome to season 2 of the Garden Log.

Ben says goodbye to the Danish garden and prepares to return to London. Featuring, seeds, clones and the horticultural spirits that linger when we leave.

In this excellent episode Ben finds roses like cats, lawns like dunes and flowers like clothes pegs. Also featuring a few simple tricks to stop things dying.

Its a sultry spring day on the Garden Log. We muse on the kindness of strangers, advise on planting for a rubble-strewn drive and yearn for romance.

https://ko-fi.com/bendark

linktr.ee/bendark

In this recreation of a lost walk Ben visits the garden of G. N Brandt (deceased) who brought the arts and crafts movement to Denmark and whose modest orchard-watergarden-woodland survives in the suburbs north of Copenhagen.

https://ko-fi.com/bendark

Its spring and Ben is gardening hard. In a special dispatch from the flowerbeds he reports on sparrows, cosmos and creeping jenny. Also featuring a trip to the fairground, tabloid libel and a woman named X

Ben discusses Ornithogolum, irises, poppies and golden fleece. Also featuring a trip to the Boboli gardens in Florence and a reading from The Grove: A Nature Odyssey in 19 1/2 Front Gardens - recently described by The Daily Telegraph as 'the best gardening book of 2022' and available to order from everywhere here: linktr.ee/bendark

https://ko-fi.com/bendark

In this special episode of The Garden Log Ben walks out one mid-spring morning in search of beauty and blossom. The pavements brings him plants, thoughts, birdsong and some sort of helicopter, all of which are lovingly reported on.

For more of this sort of thing try The Grove: Available to order now:

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-grove/ben-dark/9781784727383

The garden log comes out in favour of seed heads, weeds some beds, throws some droops, sees some shoots - you know, gardening stuff!

For events tickets go here - https://linktr.ee/bendark