Jun 22, 2026 · 22 min · 9 segments
S4E9 of The Gardener Ben Podcast is streaming now. This week is a very special episode, not featuring very much of me. In fact, the episode has been brought together by some of you who visited the…
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I've had the absolute pleasure and the absolute awful stress of opening the garden here at North Lodge to the public three times in the last eight years, and before that we opened our garden at Dynamite Cottage as well.
To say it is an incredibly stressful experience is an understatement, but it's also a joyous and incredibly rewarding experience as well.
Getting to share the garden with like-minded people that sometimes have absolutely no idea what's hidden behind our high hedges, trees, and gates is a really lovely experience as they walk down the drive and are completely wowed by what they see.
The overwhelming feedback from people is they had absolutely no idea that our 328-year-old cottage was even here, let alone surrounded by such an oasis of plants.
People are often astonished by how much is here, how complicated the garden is, and just by how many roses I've managed to pack into a relatively small space of just over a third of an acre.
And this year, as I've prepared the garden for photographing for my upcoming book, which will be launched in November 2027, I thought, "Hell, why not? We might as well open the garden.
As I've groomed and pruned it to the point where it can be photographed, surely it can go under the scrutiny of the general public." So with my husband Mark's consent, we decided that we would schedule an event and allow the general public in for a good mooch around.
Luckily, the weather held and we raised a large amount of money for our chosen good causes.
Simply hundreds of you made the effort to come and see the garden from far and wide, and Mark thought it would be a really lovely idea to actually capture people's opinions of the garden as they left, asking them to take part in small soundbites for the podcast.
These have been put together and follow, and I really hope that you enjoy the little bits of information about the garden and it, combined with the three-dimensional tours that I post to YouTube, give you a little bit more information about the house and its garden.
I've had the absolute pleasure and the absolute awful stress of opening the garden here at North Lodge to the public three times in the last eight years, and before that we opened our garden at Dynamite Cottage as well.
To say it is an incredibly stressful experience is an understatement, but it's also a joyous and incredibly rewarding experience as well.
Getting to share the garden with like-minded people that sometimes have absolutely no idea what's hidden behind our high hedges, trees, and gates is a really lovely experience as they walk down the drive and are completely wowed by what they see.
The overwhelming feedback from people is they had absolutely no idea that our 328-year-old cottage was even here, let alone surrounded by such an oasis of plants.
People are often astonished by how much is here, how complicated the garden is, and just by how many roses I've managed to pack into a relatively small space of just over a third of an acre.
And this year, as I've prepared the garden for photographing for my upcoming book, which will be launched in November 2027, I thought, "Hell, why not? We might as well open the garden.
As I've groomed and pruned it to the point where it can be photographed, surely it can go under the scrutiny of the general public." So with my husband Mark's consent, we decided that we would schedule an event and allow the general public in for a good mooch around.
Luckily, the weather held and we raised a large amount of money for our chosen good causes.
Simply hundreds of you made the effort to come and see the garden from far and wide, and Mark thought it would be a really lovely idea to actually capture people's opinions of the garden as they left, asking them to take part in small soundbites for the podcast.
These have been put together and follow, and I really hope that you enjoy the little bits of information about the garden and it, combined with the three-dimensional tours that I post to YouTube, give you a little bit more information about the house and its garden.
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