Pitlochry Festival Theatre

I am delighted to be back with another series of the Scotland Growshow talking all about Scottish gardening and hope you enjoy this new series of episodes as much as you have enjoyed the previous ones.

We're starting series 12 of the Scotland Growshow at Pitlochry Festival Theatre but our journey today will take us far beyond Pitlochry to the far-flung corners of the earth as we enter the theatre's explorers garden with Caroline Bavey, its landscape and garden manager.

This six-acre chemical-free woodland garden is set on steep highland terrain and organised into global zones celebrating 300 years of the Scottish plant explorers who brought back familiar species in our landscape like the Douglas fir and rhododendrons.

Areas are organised by world region, with a large Himalayan section that houses the National Plant Collection of Mykonopsis, that gorgeous Himalayan blue poppy, right through a South American section to a Japanese garden and reflection pool.

Let's go exploring with Caroline.

Caroline, you are very welcome to the Scotland Pro Show.

It's really lovely to get a chance to chat to you about the wonderful Explorers' Garden at Pitlochry Festival Theatre and lots of things around that.

Thank you for having me here today.

And, um, yes, they will be in Pitlochry Town Hall on Friday the 30th of October, along with Angus McCall, Ross Ainsley, and the other members of NB.

Talking of Pitlochry Town Hall, um, I was at a performance in that very space this weekend just past, part of the Pitlochry Festival Theatre program for this year under the artistic direction for the first year of Alan Cumming.

What a boon to my town he has been, uh, I have to say, in terms of creativity based around Pitlochry Festival Theatre.

Anyway, this show was in the town hall, a kind of outpost of the theater.

Uh, it's called Ceilidh.

Well, thank you, uh, coming in and telling us all about it.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is on at the Lyceum Theatre at Edinburgh till Sunday before touring to Glasgow and Aberdeen fish- and finishing at the Pitlochry Theatre on the 7th of, uh, November.

That's our loose ends tied up for this week.

If you've just tuned in or logged on or just want to hear it all again, you can find this edition of Loose Ends and a big chunk of our back catalog available for your listening pleasure in BBC Sounds, including Craig Revel Horwood on why he prizes the baddie roles above all others, and Si King on paying tribute to fellow hairy biker Dave Myers with a, a knockout meatball recipe.

... who is the, uh, artistic director, isn't he, of the...

Where is it? Where is it? Uh, Pitlochry Festival Theatre-

That's right, yeah

... where our lovely, uh, Ali Harding-

Liberace appears to him in all his glittering glory, and the playwright questions him about his life, especially the 1959 libel trial about his sexuality against the Daily Mirror, which he won after the newspaper had insinuated he was gay.

The show was directed by Alan Cumming and Ben Okapinti at Pitlochry Festival Theatre, from where Simon Russell Beale spoke to me this morning.

I asked him first how much he knew about Liberace before taking on this part.

Oh, minimal.