Gardening with the RHS

This week we've a bumper crop of help and advice to get your garden into shape for autumn. RHS experts give timely tips on everything from picking seasonal bedding plants, smartening up your plot, growing lemons and how to prune a purple-leaf elderberry. Horticulturist and TV presenter Flo Headlam gives a garden designer's take on how to get the best from your garden in autumn and shares her favourite plants for late-season impact.

This week we're exploring the weird, wild and wonderful world of foraging with activist Indy Srinath. Dr Chris Thorogood from Oxford Botanic Garden explains the deadly secrets of some of our most common plants and garden designer Juliet Sargeant shares her love of a particular hebe which has some really useful qualities in the garden.

This week we’re exploring the colourful world of floral arrangements. We’re taking a journey from the field to the florist, starting with sustainable British grower Cel Robertson from Forever Green Flower Company. Then, we’re heading to one of the most famous floral centres in the world, New Covent Garden Market, to hear about its history. We’re meeting florist to the stars Simon Lycett in LA as he shares some of his career highlights: from arranging royal wedding flowers, to film set bouquets. Plus we finish with some top tips from our advisory team on how to grow spectacular cut flowers at home.

The transformative power of gardening has never been more evident – or more necessary – than it is now. This week guest presenters TV gardener Danny Clarke and Alana Cama from the RHS Campaign for School Gardening explore communal urban gardens tackling inequality and food poverty in Los Angeles with activist Indy Srinath. Closer to home we meet Tayshan Hayden-Smith. He's CEO of Grow2Know, a non-profit organisation born from the ashes of the Grenfell Tower disaster, that now empowers young people through horticulture. Tayshan talks about breaking through the barriers to make gardening and horticulture truly inclusive and sharing their amazing benefits for health and wellbeing with everyone. Plus a look at what the RHS is doing to promote community gardening across the country.

From growing exotic veg and making Middle Eastern spice mixes to the fascinating world of fermentation, this week's show is dedicated to all things edible.

Seed saving can be a powerful and life-affirming act – permaculture designer Poppy Okotcha shares her thoughts on how and why we should all be saving our own seeds. Resident gardening guru Leigh Hunt dispenses timely gardening advice with his top 10 jobs for August, and RHS advisors discuss rain gardens. Plus: how long can seeds and plants last? Dr Chris Thorogood of Oxford Botanic Garden reveals some surprising facts.

Did you know that the lotus leaf inspired the creation of self-cleaning glass and paints? Or that some tropical carnivorous plants get so big they can eat shrews? Plant hunter and scientist Dr Chris Thorogood shares some of the incredible floral feats that made him fall in love with plants. Garden writer Pattie Barron recounts a meeting with plant that makes a fragrant waterfall of edible foliage with an unmistakeable Mediterranean ambience. Terry Richardson (aka 'The Black Thumb') is a plant paramedic who rescues orchids from bins; hear his tips on turning trash plants into prize specimens. Plus the RHS gardening advice team tackle questions on evergreen shrubs for pots, poorly-looking roses, growing indoor ferns, and how to make your pond water clear.

This week we join in with Tatton Park at Home, as our much-loved Cheshire flower show heads online. Meet designers whose careers have been kickstarted by the show's Young Designer of the Year competition. Last year young designer Charlie Hartigan's 1 in 10 garden won the People's Choice award; hear her story and tips for aspiring designers. We speak to Ruth Bolam from English Country Gardeners to get advice for anyone starting a career as a professional gardener, and hear heuchera tips from the show's Master Growers, Plantagogo.

This week's programme is dedicated to perhaps the quintessential foliage plant, the fern. Firstly, garden designer Danny Clarke shares his love of the majestic tree fern, Dicksonia antarctica. Then we head into the dark and mysterious Stumpery at RHS Garden Rosemoor to meet a magnificent cast of ferns luxuriating in the cool, moist conditions there. Author and journalist Richard Mabey explores a fern frenzy that swept Victorian Britain, the catchily-named Pteridomania. And finally, RHS horticultural advisor Jenny Bowden offers hints and tips on how to get the best out of ferns in your garden.

Writer, broadcaster and houseplant obsessive James Wong encourages us to face our fear of killing plants and reap the incredible benefits of indoor gardening. There's never been a better time to think outside the (plant) pot, curating miniature worlds at home and getting creative with alternative planting spaces such as terrariums. Head of RHS Libraries Fiona Davison explores the history of plant medicine prior to next week's launch of the Healing Garden online exbitition. Erin Lovell Verinder, author of Plants for the People: A Modern Guide to Plant Medicine shares some of the herbal remedies that might just be lurking in our own garden weeds. Plus therapeutic gardener Ozichi Brewster outlines her pioneering social prescribing project at RHS Garden Bridgewater near Manchester.