Frances started her love affair with plants doing an NVQ and apprenticeship at The Salutation Garden in Kent followed quickly by a degree in Horticulture with Plantsmanship at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh.Her practical gardening experience is extensive, she worked a season at Monet’s garden, has worked at the Andromeda Botanical Garden in Barbados and has done WWOOF work at a number of different locations including work on vineyards and in viticulture.   Frances is the Patron of Thanet Urban Forest and works with the RHS on the Campaign for School Gardening.  She is currently Head Gardener and Grower at Sharpham Trust.On screen Frances is know for her work with Gardeners’ World and Love Your Garden.  She is the author of 4 books and her down to earth nature make her a popular speaker at garden events.

Dr Pete Falloon leads the Met Office’s Climate Service for Defra on Food, Farming and Natural Environment. The service provides scientific advice on climate resilience and adaptation in the agri-food system to Defra. Pete has over 25 years of experience in modelling environmental systems, particularly the impacts of climate and land use change on agriculture, water, and soils. He has been at the Met Office Hadley Centre since 2004 and led the Climate Impacts Modelling team from 2009-2019, and was the Met Office Science Directorate’s Change Manager from 2020-2023. He is a contributing author to the UK’s Climate Change Risk Assessment and a member of the Global Food Security Programme’s Programme Coordination Group board. Pete is also Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol, and Sustainability Director at Food Drink Devon, which exists to promote quality, provenance and sustainability in Devon produce. Pete is also an honorary Associate at the Walker Institute. Alongside climate resilient food systems, Pete’s interests include soil (especially carbon), water, agriculture, land use and climate interactions.

Sarah Gurr is the former President of The British Society of Plant Pathology, and holds the Chair in Food Security at Exeter University. She is passionate about raising public awareness of plant diseases and has a particular research interest in fungal infestations and their global movement. Previously, Sarah held the post of Professor at Oxford University where she also held a Leverhulme Trust Royal Society Senior Research and a NESTA (Science, Technology and the Arts) Fellowship. She was a curator of the Oxford Botanic Garden for 21 years. Sarah was appointed to The International Advisory Board at SLU University, Uppsala (2019 -) and as Advisor to The Scottish Government on Plant Health (RESAS, 2018 -).

Ritula Shah is a journalist and broadcaster who spent more than three decades producing and presenting news programmes at the BBC. She was the main presenter of the World Tonight, Radio 4’s evening news programme until April 2023. Ritula currently presents ‘Calm Classics’ on ClassicFM.

She is a Fellow of the London Centre for the Humanities and a judge for the British Academy’s Prize for Cultural Understanding.

Anne is a plant biologist who focuses on how crops can face challenging climatic and soil conditions. Her research aims to find new ways to study the strategies plants use to grow in stressful conditions, with the purpose to better understand how plants behave in the agricultural fields where those plants are cultivated, as opposed to artificial laboratory conditions.