The Show That Bloomed: Sarah Raven's Podcast Journey
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weekly episodes
Overview
Sarah Raven needs little introduction. Author, broadcaster, grower and founder of the UK's most beloved gardening brand - she's spent decades helping people discover the joy of growing things. So when her marketing team reached out to Podcast Labs in 2020 with a simple brief - "Sarah wants a podcast and we have no idea where to start" - we knew this was a great opportunity. What we didn't know was quite how special it would become.
Five years, 342 episodes and 9 million listens and views later, "grow, cook, eat, arrange" is the UK's number one Home & Garden podcast and a top 1% show globally. It was one of Podcast Labs first major brand clients and incredible that Sarah and her team trusted our growing agency with something this important.
Strategy
Sarah came with something most clients don't: complete clarity. She knew the gardening world inside out, had a clear vision for the show and a network of extraordinary guests ready to share it with. What she needed wasn't strategy - it was a team who could make the whole thing effortless to produce and exceptional to listen to.
So that's exactly what we became. From day one, the brief was simple: show up, take care of everything and make sure Sarah can focus entirely on what she does best - talking passionately about growing, cooking, eating and arranging - while we handle the rest. Nearly six years later, that's still exactly what we do.
Every Six Weeks at Perch Hill
The rhythm of this show is unlike anything else we produce. Every six to eight weeks, the Podcast Labs team loads up the car with microphones, cameras and lighting and heads to Perch Hill Farm - Sarah's extraordinary cutting garden in East Sussex. We set up in her home and record in bulk: ten episodes in a single visit, giving Sarah everything she needs to publish every single week without the grind of constant recording sessions.
It's a production model that works beautifully. And there's something genuinely magical about returning to Perch Hill across the seasons - watching the garden shift from the bleakness of January to the riot of a summer cutting patch. It makes a show about gardening feel exactly like it should: alive, seasonal and real.
After each recording day, our team handles everything else. Audio and video post-production - editing to create a natural listen, grading, EQ, noise reduction and repair. We then create the social media graphics and videos, audiograms, show notes, social copy and curated links back to the Sarah Raven website for every plant mentioned in the episode.
Beyond the main show, we've helped build a rich content ecosystem around it. With monthly Q&A episodes with Sarah and Josie (Perch Hill's Head Gardener), monthly job features, a live video Q&A with real-time questions from listeners and a full video episode with the legendary Dame Mary Berry including B-roll footage of the two of them exploring the garden together. Quietly one of our proudest days on the job.
When we've wanted to push the show somewhere new, we've built it from scratch. A YouTube "Cook-along" mini-series filmed in Sarah's kitchen. A "Beginner's Gardening" mini-series to welcome a new generation of growers. The "Be Your Own Florist" video course, which performed brilliantly on YouTube. One mini-series alone drove a 30% uplift in listeners. Across six mini-series and 342 total episodes, the show has never once missed a weekly release.
Numbers that make us proud
The show continues to grow - in every sense. Whether it's a star-studded guest episode, one of Sarah's own kitchen cook-alongs or a quiet conversation about what to do in the garden this month, the weekly rhythm of grow, cook, eat, arrange has become a fixture in the lives of hundreds of thousands of gardeners across the world.
"At Sarah Raven we've been working with Podcast Labs for just over 5 years. The team at Podcast Labs have been integral to the success of our chart-topping podcast. From a production point of view they are innovative and supportive, always thinking ahead to ensure recordings run smoothly and that we're continuing to make an impression in a very saturated podcast landscape. Kelly and Andy really care about what they do, and how they do it - I think it would be harder to find better podcast partner."
Lucinda Greasely, Head of Brand, Sarah Raven
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