GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
Wildflowering the World, with Richard Scott and Polly Moseley
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Wildflowers can feel like a “nice extra” until you see what they do to a street, a skyline, and the way strangers talk to each other. In this episode we’re joined by Polly Moseley and Richard Scott from Scouse Flowerhouse, to explore how Liverpool’s wildflower gateways and brownfield meadows create real, measurable change: more biodiversity, stronger pollinator corridors, and a renewed sense of pride in places once written off as derelict.
We unpack the Northern Flowerhouse vision for the North of England, rooted in collaboration between community groups, gardeners, artists, academics, and land practitioners. Along the way we share the principles that keep this work human and repeatable: create curiosity, deal in beauty, bring science and arts into unlikely places, and treat gatherings as moments of celebration rather than meetings to endure. It’s sustainability communication in the most direct form, because people protect what they help make.
AND we find out about their plans for a Northern Flowerhouse Assembly, due to land in Liverpool on 18 June 2026.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Welcome To Goodgeist
SPEAKER_00Goodgeist. A podcast series on sustainability. Hosted by Damla Eusler and Steve Connor. Brought to you by the DNS Network.
SPEAKER_04Hello, hello everyone. You are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability, which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damlo from Mira Agency Istanbul and This is Steve from Creative Concern in Manchester.
SPEAKER_02This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicated, and what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
SPEAKER_04So in this episode, we're going to talk to Pauly Mosley and Richard Scott of Scal's Flower House, the people who bring about transformative change through nature, including the amazing Liverpool wildflower gateways that combine social and environmental drivers to collectively build sustainable and biodiverse landscapes in Liverpool.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I have to admit, Tamlett, I had to explain scales to you, didn't I? Yes. To the start. Not lingua franca in Istanbul. Richard is director of the National Wildlife Center at the Eastern Project, delivering the creative conservation project work nationally, always from a Liverpool base, loads of accolades and an incredible track record, including Liverpool Manchester Tale of Two Cities project. And I like this one, was chosen as one of 20 individuals for the San Miguel Rich List in 2018, highlighting those who pursue alternative forms of wealth, which is very cool and groovy. And Polly, meanwhile, is a postgrad researcher at Liverpool John Moores University, focused on social and environmental values delivered by grassroots
Meet The Scouse Flowerhouse Team
SPEAKER_02organizations. And you've always been Polly. We'll get into this a little bit more, right in the nexus of public engagement, beauty, symbolism, urban nature, wildflowers, the whole lovely thing. So Polly, Richard, thank you so much for talking to Dana and myself.
SPEAKER_01I know it's a real pleasure. Thanks for asking us.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you. No, no. So, first of all, we love to hear our guest personal stories. So tell us about the story so far. What led you to here? I mean, we we might go all the way back, you can go back to childhood if you like. But you know, Landlife, Granwh, National Wildflower Center, the wider journey that you've both been on. Tell us about it.
SPEAKER_01Well, for me, it is probably a childhood thing, really, in terms of it sounds a bit like a Romany existence, but we I my mum used to take us to pick violets in the woods because I wasn't born in Liverpool, I was born in quite rural Lincolnshire actually. So we would we were sort of brought up dropping posies on people's doorsteps in the springtime. And you know, those things have an impact on you in terms of rummaging around through woods and things. And I was, you know, I had a university journey and got interested in urban ecology, but it was the it was the real thing. And coming to, you know, to the northwest properly in St. Helens and then to Liverpool, it was the excitement about you know how people were, I suppose, ged up about what they could do with Derelic Land. And there were some wonderful people. And in Liverpool, they went back to 1975, which was the land life story, which was you know like a long time before me. And they'd they'd had exposure to Dutch people, but also people like Alan Ruff, who was at Manchester University, make stolen the benefits of ecological landscape. And so there was a bubble that burst around that time, and it led them to Holland, and they went to see these amazing ecological parks and came back to Liverpool and just wanted to do the same here. So I was very lucky to kind of be, you know, being involved in a little bit of research stuff, but it was the practical and making it real bit that is the special bit, I think, in terms of particularly how that connects to people, streets, corners, you know, all the bits that lead you into conversations with people, which does start to, you know, like lead to a like a northern attitude, I think, in terms of what one local pride and just that you know demeanor of being open and welcoming, um, but also in terms of a vision of how you can change things for the better.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I um had a bit of a different period of working more in the public realm in the arts. So I was very always interested in theatre and storytelling. I did a French and English degree. I really loved speaking French and sort of becoming a different person when I was in France, and I worked with some brilliant French theatre companies, including Royal Deluxe, who did the Giants in Liverpool, and where I did the interpreting and translation. And I was very interested in these bigger narratives in public realm. I met Richard in 2010 when we commissioned Bruce Mao from Canada to come to Everton, and he came up with this for Everton Commons way of connecting the green spaces. And Richard was one of the people who was saying this is an opportunity for nature because Everton was traditionally an area of market failure that had had a lot of demolition, a crazy amount of demolition in the 1960s and again in the late 80s. And so this big sense of loss and also a sense of parks as kind of uninviting areas with antisocial behavior rather than being inviting areas. So that's when I got involved. I saw Richard as a sort of artist who was painting the landscape. I saw the wildflowers as a way of really transforming a landscape, and I was really excited about the Tale of Two Cities project and the potential for exchange between the two cities, and they may be two cities that look away from each other in some respects. Certainly, scousers, that term scouse is a sort of comes from a Norwegian word, which is a kind of leftovers of a stew on a Sunday. And but scouse people turn towards Wales perhaps more than they turn inland towards Manchester traditionally, getting young people involved in writing songs, in performing in recording studios, that bit of extra funding we were managing to get on top of the Kew Gardens project to really enable people to creatively respond to the wildflowers and how that fell into the ethos of land of land life, which is always about the people and nature and the character of spaces. So that really appealed to me and still appeals. And that's how the Northern Flower House concept came about. And I think my sensibility to language and the local language and how that relates to land and the specificity of even like small pockets of public realm and how plants as well as infrastructure can give them character. I think that's something that I really am still on a journey with and very much believe in.
SPEAKER_04Wow, beautiful. And if you don't mind me doing that, I'm gonna mesh the two stories together and say telling the story of the real thing. So that's that's what I got from this. So, Richard, one of the reasons we wanted to have a chat today is that we really wanted to share with our listeners your idea of a northern flowerhouse for the north of England. Can you tell us about this vision and of your plans?
Childhood Roots And Public Art
SPEAKER_04Or in other words, flowerhouse assembly in this June?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I can. And it's it's it's something we wanted to do for a long time, actually, particularly that wonderful connection between local and Manchester. Because it came from that project, you know, somebody in Everton at a meeting with Shave Barlow from Manchester City Council was there and laughed at, said, you know, we're the northern when, you know, in terms of reference to the powerhouse, somebody said, you know, we're the northern flowerhouse now. And it was instantly recognizable that it was a very important statement of ambition, but also you know, the achievements that we'd had in the past. So, you know, setting up a national wildfire centre, conferences we brought to Liverpool in the past, in terms of both Liverpool and Manchester, you know, with the first World Ecological Restoration Conference 2000 in Liverpool, and working with MMU, we brought that to Manchester in 2015. So these things are all in the background, but it's this thing about making it personal and the exchanges and the joy of the conversations with you know academics, the community groups, the land practitioners, and shared legacies. So, for example, the Manchester legacies, the Liverpool legacies, the Sheffield also very hot on you know, landscape and the industrial heritage. We've had such great conversations, and we just wanted to make that expand and bring people together in a proper way, which meant one, they could have a great couple of days, but we could shout this from the rooftops a bit more in terms of what we've got and where this can take us in terms of pride and place and locality, which I think is is big, big for the government now in terms of regeneration and ideas. So we want to have an impact on those, you know, those policies that are underway.
SPEAKER_03So in 2016, when we did the exhibition at the Manchester Museum, it was like a display of work made by community members in response to the flowers. And we also did a display in St. George's Hall, and the Mayor of Manchester and the Mayor of Liverpool met, and the mayor of Manchester was very confident about talking about the Northern Flower House, whereas the mayor of Liverpool at the time thought it was too political to mention. And um, anyway, the mayor of Manchester came into St.
SPEAKER_01George's Hall and gave and gave a big speech.
SPEAKER_03And we came up with this Northern Flowerhouse charter, and it was a kind of improvised charter, but it says things like create curiosity, deal out, deal in in beauty, roll out the best in science and arts in unlikely places, be an engine for change. It's always about sharing food and music at every gathering, so not making the sewings and the things a job, where possible, creating a kind of sense of celebration of being together in the flowers and always holding your nerve with the weather, which sometimes we manage to do, sometimes we still don't. Sometimes you call things off and then it's sunshines. Sometimes we've done sewings where everyone's got wet and we've had the best displays possible afterwards. Treasure playful ways of working. So, anyway, these things that are about hosting and inviting outsiders in and creating a sense of an event when you do something together still are at the heart of what we want to do, and we feel it's more relevant than ever. But also, I think the idea of wildflowers is essential infrastructure. So when people think an infrastructure, they tend to think of big like energy plants or you know, wind turbines and stuff, but they don't think of the small. And Rich is always interested in sight lines that pitch the flowers against the skylines that really like highlight the character and heritage of a place and offset the flowers against the people and the buildings. And this I think is really important, not just in terms of preserving sight lines in our cities, but also in terms of the scale of the connectivity, the pollinator corridors, and how we actually look after the small things and the invisible things as well as aspire to greatness.
SPEAKER_01But yeah, and bringing on all of that sort of northern, I suppose, attitudes a word in a way, but also you know, the the humour, the the northern grit, the northern soul, all these things are part of that story in a way that yeah, I think people really understand. And the fact that it's also about a smile factor, in terms of, you know, like just making people smile, in terms of the perhaps in some ways, what might seem the novelty of it, but also the seriousness of it in what you can prove and do. And I think it's you know, like wildflowers can slip through the cracks and the crevices and surprise and delight, and we can use all these kind of materials that the city generates as part of a new circular economy that passes waves of biodiversity. And I know that you're thinking in terms of things like the cyan lines, you know, through a city in in really pragmatic ways.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. I mean, I this it's not on this podcast, I should say we're proudly audio only on this podcast. We love it, but it is a bit damn like, to be honest, it is a bit gutting because I know that Richard and Polly can share the most beautiful visuals of this kind of love the skylines that Polly was just talking about, where wildflower carpets are kind of bringing spaces and places to life with people right in the midst of them. It's be a beautiful thing. But I think you've painted the picture verbally beautifully. I think we've pulled it off. I think we've managed to it's in everybody's head right now. So we're gonna jump around a little bit on this one. We'll come back to the north and northern flowerhouse in a minute. But Polly, you talked about your joy of language and internationalism, and I think you got I think you got a good eye on sort of that that sort of culture and nature mix, and it's that's a very good geist type of thing for on this podcast. So, where do you think in the world is currently bringing people and nature together in a creative way? What would be your hit list of if we're gonna go on a world tour, where would you take us?
SPEAKER_03Well, my view of the world is quite Eurocentric because I don't really, I don't, there's so much of the world that I haven't visited. And I do think that we've got a lot to learn, but I'm I'm very interested actually in Istanbul because the Istanbul Botanic Garden, which I believe is built on a demolished motorway, is somewhere where our patron Fergus Garrett has done a lot of planting and talked about a lot, and we're very interested in building on rubble and brownfield and this circularity of not bringing in new topsoil or expensive paving, but actually using Mersey grit and substrates which are very local to where we're doing the work. And with in the last couple of years, Richard's had some amazing success with brownfield meadows. So I think that's
Building The Northern Flowerhouse
SPEAKER_03really interesting. I believe, in terms of some of the areas in Germany surrounding Berlin, some of the airports or concrete industrial areas that they've done some really amazing biodiversity parks. But the city I know best in terms of European green capital is not. And I've learned so much from Nantes, just in terms of the ambition and scale of how public art can interact and give new viewpoints on the town, but also gardeners working with artists as respected partners. So sometimes in this country, arts projects might expect dark gardeners to do stuff for free or come in and be a kind of second-class citizen next to the artist who delivers something of the artist's vision. And sometimes that's not always for the best outcome in terms of the plants, the sustainability, the plant life, the way that that can actually flourish and live on. I think Liverpool International Garden Festival was an amazing event, but the legacy of it didn't live on in that space in the way that it could have done. We designed a garden in for a garden festival in China, which we learned a lot of the pro through the process of working with James Hitchmo and Fergus Garrett and some amazing gardeners designs, designers here. And it's amazing in China how fast that garden festival was put on and how they're already thinking about the legacy of the site and the visitor attraction and the numbers of people they'll they'll have to that site. So I think um it's really, you know, I I would hate hesitate to say this place and this place. I mean, I've got a book called Struggle for Space about New York City and the Brownfield site developments in the 70s and how they were so kind of gorilla and amazing in terms of their scale and reach and local engagement. But I think it really depends in terms of how the city's evolving, how the market's evolving in that city, and how skills can be really like the skills of gardeners can be really respected and aligned with that of planners. And we're not really there in terms of how we make that work, I would say, in Liverpool or the Northwest in general, but there are pockets of excellence, and I think it is about bringing that private garden expertise back into public realm and really cherishing the people who know about plants and conditions and substrates, and also having that kind of view of artists that sort of see through different lenses and pushes boundaries in terms of what they're asking for and how things could potentially look in the future, as did Assemble with the Turner Prize and stuff. So I'm not sure I really answered your question there, but there is a network that we get a lot from called The Nature of Cities in the US that also highlights some really amazing urban practice that we've learned a lot from over time.
SPEAKER_04Okay, so a trip to Istanbul is a must after this episode, right?
SPEAKER_03Well, we'd love I we'd actually love to do that. And our patron Fergus Garrett, who'll be speaking at the assembly, who's a bit of a genius plantsman, he his heritage is half Turkish, and that's that's part of why he is spent spends time in Istanbul Botanic Garden. And yeah, there does seem to be quite a few connections at the moment with coming together.
SPEAKER_01Yes, you know, in in Greek terms, we had wonderful connections with uh Sporosa, which is uh where the Mediterranean Garden Society was founded, and they're at the kind of you know white heat of climate change in terms of those kind of temperatures.
SPEAKER_03A group from Everton went there last year.
SPEAKER_01Sustainable gardens, and you know, that dates back to an amazing woman called Jackie Toett, who was English but worked in in America with people like Bookminster Fuller, who they designed the you know, the geodesic dome, which is the Eden project in the fell. In effect, yeah. And so, but in a remarkable story of a sustainable landscape in the in the Athens Hill site, which we learned a lot from and have delivered a beautiful garden, which Pat Williams, which is who's an amazing community gardener in Liverpool, wrote about. And actually, I think with it's one of the first public realm gardens to be in International Journal, which is fantastic.
SPEAKER_04Okay, we're we're gonna arrange that. But Richard, I want to turn back to you because I think you said at one point that wildflowering should be adopted as a verb. So that's a lovely idea. Could you tell us what a wildflowered world might look like?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think it would be certainly a lot more colourful, but it's it's the activism in the doing, and I think that's what it's all about. And it was actually Steve Judder at Liverpool World Museum who who kind of pushed us with that phrase because he, you know, he he reminded us and said this is a great word to use. And it is, and I think it's the fact that you know people sit back and watch watch landscapes diminish, but when people see colour appear quickly, and we can do that with a conversation that hopes with that annual flowers which appear in you know probably 10 to 12 weeks of having happened, it's it's wonderful to see successions. So this idea of successional colour and landscapes developing through spaces of time is something that really fascinates people and and literally brings people to talk to you. And I think you know, like last week in Chinatown in in Liverpool, we did a something that had begun with sewings and bulk plantins in the autumn. You know, now very dense bull plantins are uh are in all flower with wildflowers to follow. So you can you can combine the traditional and the you know the I suppose the the you know the high aspirational ecological together and get this doing effect that means people see change. It's it is transformation in those terms.
SPEAKER_03I think it's about with people, and I think it's about while flowering isn't just looking at the landscapes and thinking, oh, the council could have done that better or whatever, it's saying these spaces are our commons, reclaim the commons, but also let's look at how how the flowers are sort of active citizens and how one meadow produces enough seed for a hundred meadows. So the idea that Scouse Flowerhouse, the wild flowering process goes throughout the whole seasons, it's about hand harvesting, a mix of combine harvesting for seed, and then also which has got to Combine harvester that he brings in that we call sunny, the kids dance around sunny, we do little songs and stuff. Then we've got like this idea of packing the seeds
A World Tour Of Urban Nature
SPEAKER_03in the winter, getting ready for the next year, nominating sites, looking at which sites have the most kind of footfall, trying to choose sites that are in neighborhoods that have potentially less green space or investment, but also choosing sites that will make a bit of a wow factor. It's it's kind of yeah, it's kind of like a constant. So wildflowering isn't just when they're in flower all the way, all the way through the year.
SPEAKER_01It leads, I think, people to curiosity and you know new ways of looking at the world. Um I think that's that's the interesting thing. You know, anybody if you if you see a particular flower for the first time, you can bet your life it's like a word in a dictionary you've never heard before. It suddenly starts to appear in you know, in in all the in books you read and things, things jump out of the page. And I think it it teaches you and it teaches you a new way of looking at the world where you can be effectively a good sulfur phrase from John Keeper Clark, be educated by accident.
SPEAKER_03It should never feel like a historic thing. The the flower names are thought of as historic, but actually we should be constantly reinventing language and constantly reinventing combinations of flowers, and that's where we can learn so much from gardeners.
SPEAKER_02So I am putting in a plea for wildflowering to be fully instituted as a verb. I totally agree. So before we we're almost at the last question, but Polly, I just wanted to come back to you now that we've defined wildflowering, we know what it looks like. Um we've done our world tour. And the only thing I did want to mention was something that I know is close to your heart, which is the kind of intersectionality of all of this, so public art, nature, and health, because we haven't mentioned health, and I know it's something close to your heart. So I know it's an entire topic for another podcast episode, but first of all, give us give us your top-line thoughts on how all this impacts on human health.
SPEAKER_03Well, I mean, from a personal standpoint, you know, I've had a lot of uh like my my kidneys failed in my 20s, and I have traveled a lot, but always needing kidney dialysis. I feel like this interaction between urban and rural has always been really important to me. And I was a campaigner for the NHS improvement to renal services for about 10 years at a national level, and I feel like people who've had a health experience that has been really challenging. For example, I think of two women who are kind of major community leaders in Liverpool who both have had breast cancer and who have really then committed their lives really to the environmental campaigning for this fields in trust, which is protecting all of our parks for the next 100 years. And I feel like there's a sort of bravery maybe that comes with overcoming that, that also shows you what's important in life and that actually everybody needs interaction with nature. And a lot of the problems that we've got in terms of our current education system, making everybody sit down, understanding sensory needs, understanding sensory learning, different kinds of intelligence, all of that requires interaction with nature and things that we might have taken for granted as being accessible to people, but who the pandemic has shown are not accessible to many. At the same time, the pandemic eroded a lot of our public health infrastructure, ironically, at a time when we needed it most, because you know, in there's been times in my life where public health had a lot more money and we were able to look at prevention in different ways. And in a in a way now, that kind of shifted and went back to kind of a more mainstream health. And people are recognizing the benefits of nature, not just in terms of flowers and landscapes, but in terms of food, all kinds of different things that we're losing when the biodiversity is decreasing, as we're seeing, and we're good at counting it, but we're not good at restoring it. So we really need to get better at these kind of restoration projects at scale, and we really need to challenge that in terms of land reform. I think health is integral to it because I think the health of the plants that we eat, the health, the erosion of the health of the substrates, you know, it's all interconnected. And so ecology is kind of the way in which it's interconnected with our households and the way that we live. But yeah, I mean, there are ways of people talk about it happening, like social prescribing, but I still don't see that kind of true partnership way of working where the money flows into nature restoration. And I think that's part of the way that our economy works and is connected to insurance and things that actually prevent us doing the work of restoration
Why Wildflowering Should Be A Verb
SPEAKER_03at scale in cities where meanwhile use could actually provide much, much more not just livable, but environments in which people could thrive and flourish. And in the Northwest, there is land, and especially in Liverpool, there is land, and some of that is fenced off land. And so, yeah, in terms of our health and our relation to our seas and rivers and and land, yeah, absolutely integral, and we need to be bold about it. And most people would get behind those kind of political arguments, and wildflowers are political, and so is our health.
SPEAKER_04Oh my god, I really wanted to make this the title uh wildflowers are political. So we want to go deep into that, but we can't because time is up. So, our final question: our network is ironically called do not smile, because we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. So, what object, place, or person always makes you smile.
SPEAKER_01Well, flowers make me smile, obviously, but I think it is it's it's slash with other people, really. I think it's it's you know the it's it's the interaction with people and uh you know the the kind of jokes, the jibes, the you know, they're making fun. I think that's another northern attitude. So I think it comes out of that interface that is the important thing. It's that that's what kind of makes me smile. It's the surprising elements and people's comments and you know the delights and you know the challenge of responding to people's.
SPEAKER_03Ken Dodd makes you smile a bit. You like Ken Dodd.
SPEAKER_01So it's funny, you know, I don't know if you know that classic Ken Dodd joke, which is you know, if if you tell a joke in Liverpool, they don't get it in Manchester. There's a pause and then she they can't hear it.
SPEAKER_03I I think the interaction with the kids and the wit that they have, the kind of watching a kid by the side of one of our fields w walking up to a guy in a big suit who'd come on, who's like in charge of the maintenance company in the city and saying, How much do you earn and stuff? They there's a kind of there's a way in which sometimes the conversations on the meadows or the conversations after you've done an event with with the young kids, it just kind of sparks a different kind of boldness and doesn't, you know, that there's always ways in which the kids make me smile when we sow, when we sow with kids. Richard had 110 kids sewing on a site the other day. And yeah, I I really love that work, that intergenerational work and on on the meadows, the way that it's a leveller. And actually, you know, throwing down the seed in the way that people used to do before the horses and the machines did it, coming in that direct contact with it, and then having the kind of little gatherings at the beginning and the end. There is always something that happens that kind of makes you smile as a result of that. And Scouseflower House,
Health Links And Closing Smiles
SPEAKER_03the name came from a Scouser putting away his kid's Wendy house with his head sticking out the top, saying, Why don't you do Scouseflower's not northern? And it was hilarious picture, you know. And yeah, so Scousers definitely have a turn of phrase like that was definitely making spar.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and it's the corporation thing, too. I think, I mean, and that would, you know, but the world owes Manchester, that one, doesn't it? Really?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, well, exactly. I mean, I don't want to bring it back to Manchester, Richard, but maybe I'm I might at that point. Thank you for the perfect segue back to the other city. I'm gonna call I'm gonna have to wrap it up, but thank you so much, both of you. That's been lovely. Shockingly, I don't think we've done enough Liverpool on this podcast, Damler. We've been far too, oh, today we're in Paris. Oh, we're in Brussels. We need more, we need more Liverpool in the mix. And obviously, now we're planning a field trip to Istanbul to explore the botanical gardens. So we've got it all under control. Damla, do you want to wrap us up?
SPEAKER_04So thanks to everyone who has listened to our goodgeist podcast, brought to you by the Do Not Smile Network of Agencies.
SPEAKER_02And make sure you listen to future episodes. We'll be talking to more amazing people about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. So, Richard Polly, Damler, see you soon.
SPEAKER_00Bye.
SPEAKER_02Thanks a lot.
SPEAKER_00Goodgeist. A podcast series on sustainability hosted by Damla Auzler and Steve Connor. Brought to you by the DNS Network.
