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Gardeners' World (1968) Season 59 Episode 4
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00:21Right now, come on. Good boy.
00:44Hello, welcome to an Easter gardener's world. And it's that first moment in the year for
00:53many people when you can get outside and really appreciate the garden as something to offer
00:58you delight, rather than a series of jobs that need to be done. And the cottage garden
01:04here at Longmeadow is beginning to be delightful. It's just starting to show its colours, but
01:10those colours are very much geared towards pastels, obviously pinks, and then lilacs and
01:17mauves. And, when I can get it, my favourite colour of all in the garden, which is apricot.
01:26Now, there are very, very few flowers that are naturally apricot. They tend to be bred
01:32from a combination of pink and orange. Sometimes you have too much pink, sometimes too much orange,
01:38and occasionally they just hit the sweet spot, but then another one of the same variety doesn't.
01:44It's my obsession. But it is good fun working on a colour theme. And what I have here is a
01:51geom. This is geom Mai Tai. It's from the cocktail series. It's not true apricot, but it's touched
01:58with it. It's got a base of a soft yellow and then flushed with a very orangey pink. The cocktail
02:06series
02:06are particularly low, so great for the front of a border or in a pot, but they flower from, depending
02:12where you are, mid-April right the way through till June. And if you keep deadheading, they will keep
02:17on flowering. That one has got flowers on it. When you're buying a plant from a garden centre, tend to
02:25those that don't have flowers on it, because it's used up the energy of the plant to produce flowers,
02:30and you want that energy going into your garden. So, check out the flowers, make sure it's the colour
02:35you want, and then choose plants that are not yet flowering.
02:41OK, we can get one in here. And I think another over here. Right, that will do for this bit.
02:47Now, the foxclubs. I want to plant those now, because they're bare root. And if you're moving plants
02:52in the garden, move them quickly. The quicker you move them, the less they'll mind being moved.
03:01I've got here some foxclubs called Apricot Delight. Never grown it before. I've grown
03:06from seed. They look as though they could be wonderful. And foxclubs are either a biennial
03:11or a short-lived perennial. And what that means is, they will not flower in their first
03:16year. They flower in their second year. And some won't flower again. They'll set seed
03:21and die back. Quite a few will reappear the next year, maybe even as many as four years.
03:27But by and large, their best performance is in the year after sowing.
03:34Right, I'm going to get this in the ground. And these are in the ground.
03:52It's brilliant planting weather. Over Easter is a really good time. Perfect for herbaceous
03:59perennials or biennials, or even annuals for that matter. Get them in the ground, because
04:04the sooner the roots can get in, the better they're going to cope with summer heat. And
04:08this relates to geoms in particular, because geoms are a plant that really don't like to
04:13be dry. They do their best in moisture-retentive ground. So that's not a bog. They're not a
04:18water plant, but they're not good in very light sand or pure chalk or anything like that.
04:23But they really like soil that can retain moisture. And, of course, you can always improve the
04:30water retention of your soil by adding organic matter.
04:40Now, Ashley went down to Leonard's Lee garden in West Sussex to celebrate spring by looking
04:47at it in detail.
04:54For me, early spring carries a quiet magic. The natural world is awakening, and there's
05:00a thrilling sense of possibility in the air. Colour is returning, buds are swelling, and plant
05:08life unfolds a little more each day.
05:12The garden may seem calm, but that stillness can be deceptive. There's a world of excitement
05:18waiting if you just slow down and look closely.
05:29Magnolias are the real stars of early spring. While most trees wait for their leaves to appear
05:36before flowering, with magnolias, the flowers come first.
05:41I've just noticed this. This is Magnolia Leonard Messel, and it's a really delicate form of
05:48magnolia. There's so many different varieties. What I love about this one is it's got this
05:52two-tone colour to the petals. The outside a lot more of a pastel pink, and the inside this
05:58lovely pale pink. So when you're looking at it from different angles, you get those different
06:02colours. When you look really closely at the buds, you can see they're really fuzzy. They're
06:07almost like little rabbit feet, and this fur actually protects them from cold weather, meaning
06:12that they can flower earlier in the year.
06:15Magnolia flowers are monoecious, and this means that both male and female reproductive organs
06:20are on the same plant. Magnolias evolved nearly a hundred million years ago when bees didn't
06:26exist and dinosaurs still roamed the earth. So they relied on beetles to pollinate them.
06:31So lots of magnolias have robust anthers and stigmas to support these large insects. And
06:37you can see this in some of these flowers here. They're almost like plastic. They're so tough.
06:43Once you start to notice the little details like these buds, you realise that the garden
06:48is full of the promise of spring.
07:01Wow. This is Katsura tree, or Circedophyllum japonicum, also sometimes called the toffee apple tree, because
07:09it has this really sugary scent when the leaves drop in autumn. But I've never noticed the flowers
07:14before, and they're like little flames or tentacles. These are the male flowers of this tree.
07:19There's such a small window of opportunity to see this, so I feel really lucky to be here
07:24just at the right time.
07:33This area of the garden is famous for its rhododendrons, many of which are hybrids that were bred here more
07:40than a century ago. And this one is just starting to show its full colour. But if you look closely,
07:45you can see the different stages we're at now. So you've got the closed bud here, and you can tell
07:51it's a flower bud because it's really fat and juicy. And it also has these really beautiful scales.
07:56Some rhododendron buds have a sticky resin, and this helps to protect it from insect attack,
08:01and also from any wet weather. On this one you can see the flower petals just emerging,
08:07and this is beautiful in its own right. They look like little tongues to me. And then these ones are
08:11in full colour now, and that just shows how you've got these stages, this progression of flowering on this plant.
08:30This is a great example of layering in the garden. You've got your large shrubs and trees like this
08:36pyris above me, and it's been crown lifted, so it opens up opportunity for planting underneath.
08:42So you have your second layer of smaller shrubs and herbaceous plants like these beautiful
08:46hellebores, which are in full flower now. So it provides that early season colour and interest.
08:52And then you've got ground cover like this pakisandra here, which provides a lovely foliage for the
08:57forest floor. And this is something you can apply to any garden, doesn't matter what size you've got.
09:02You could even do it in a container. So you could have a large shrub with smaller filler plants like
09:07hellebores, and then something that trails like vinca. It's a great way to make the most of your space,
09:13and it also means that when these early flowering plants are finished,
09:18you still have all that texture to see throughout the year.
09:30Some shrubs really come into their own in early spring, when colour and fragrance can still be a
09:37little thin on the ground. One of my favourites is this. It's Edgeworthia chrysantha grandiflora,
09:44and it has these amazing ball-shaped flowers. The flowers also appear before the leaves, so it means that
09:50they really stand out, and it packs such a powerful scent. And this acts as a signal. Insects are waking
09:56up from hibernation this time of year. So by putting this scent out there, it says,
09:59I'm open for business. Come and get some nectar.
10:04Planting nectar-rich plants doesn't just give you a beautiful garden, but it also gives wildlife a head
10:10start. Over here we have Coriolopsis porciflora, and it has these delicate pendant-like yellow flowers,
10:17which look like little lanterns. The great thing about this is you could have it in a small garden.
10:22It stays compact, and it has this really nice arching habit to it. If you want to prune your
10:28spring flowering shrubs, the best time to do it is straight after they finish flowering,
10:31because they soon start to produce the growth that will have next year's flowers on.
10:42Once you tune into the season, the signs of spring are everywhere. I've just spotted this, and it's
10:49a emerging leaf bud. And I can tell this because they are very narrow, and you can just make out
10:55the
10:55little fingers of the emerging leaves. And this one has emerged a bit more, and you can see this beautiful
11:01pink hue that it has. It's a type of chestnut, and it will also flower later in the year. But
11:07now,
11:07we can appreciate the foliage. Spotting signs like these is a great way to read your garden,
11:13and it gives you an idea of things to come.
11:28These lakes are stunningly beautiful. And in these cooler temperatures, the surface of the water is
11:34calmer, and it creates this mirrored effect. I can see the trees reflected in the surface, and also the
11:40golden hues of the daffodils in the distance. It's something you could even try at home. You don't
11:47need a massive lake. You could have your own container with water in it to reflect angles from
11:52your garden. It's a great way to add a sense of serene calm into your space.
12:11The soundscape is a huge part of spring for me, and if you listen closely, it tells a story. The
12:17garden
12:18is waking up again, and we too are part of that quiet renewal.
12:27Simply spending time outdoors and noticing those small changes can be surprisingly restorative.
12:33Spring is such a short season, but that's what makes it so special. It's a reminder to slow down,
12:38notice the changes, and really savour the season, because before you know it, it's past.
13:06The thing that I love about spring more than any other season is that it has shifts and changes
13:12over at least two, if not three months. There's an awful lot going on. And one of the things at
13:17the
13:17moment on the mound that really appeals to me is this. It's a Forsythia. Now, Forsythia is as common as
13:24muck.
13:24I mean, there must be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of them around the country.
13:28But this particular one is a bit more unusual. It's Forsythia suspensa nimans. And I've chosen it because
13:37it's got this pale yellow and this quite loose structure and form, and works perfectly with the
13:43daffodils that we have here on the mound. Now, this combination will only last a week at the most,
13:47and then it'll move on and other things will take their place. And I think that's the joy of spring.
14:05Okay.
14:07Good boy. Come on.
14:29I've added a bit of compost to this raised bed, because I'm about to plant up a bed for cut
14:36flowers,
14:37and I'm adding in some ranunculus, ranunculus asiaticus, or sometimes called the Persian
14:42buttercup. But unlike the buttercups you see in fields where they're sort of open, simple petals,
14:47these have a mass of petals that form a kind of globe. These will flower hopefully from about the
14:56end of May into June, planted in December, and then kept in the greenhouse and gradually hardened off.
15:04Or you could plant the tubers now, and they would flower later in summer.
15:14I'm going to space these out about six inches apart. And the thing about cut flowers is that you can
15:21plant them closer together than you otherwise would in the border. There are two reasons for that. One,
15:25they're not going to be there for as long. And two, you want the stems to grow tall. You almost
15:31want to
15:31force them up so you get decent stumbling. Choose a spot that's relatively shady and soil that is well
15:40drained but enriched.
15:54The thing to remember when you're growing ranunculus is that they're half hardy. So if you live in a
16:00very sheltered area that hardly ever gets frost, and if it does it's just a touch of it, they may
16:05well overwinter,
16:06and they're a perennial, and they will come back. But anywhere that reliably gets two or three degrees of
16:14frost or more, they're very unlikely to survive that. So treat them as annuals.
16:34I will need to water these in. It's really important that this time of year water everything you plant
16:39thoroughly. I will also have to have a bit of fleece handy for the next month, just in case we
16:46get some
16:46late frost, which we can do here. And a bit of fleece covering them overnight should be enough.
16:52So that bed is sorted. The two back beds have got tulips in them, and these are tulips that I'm
16:58trialing. And the ones I like, and maybe only one or two, I will then order more next year, and
17:04they
17:04can graduate to the garden proper. Now this bed, last autumn I sowed with hardy annuals, particularly
17:12amy, amy magus and amy visnaga, and a bit of wild carrot. However, we had a really cold snap for
17:20a few
17:21days in November, followed by one of the wettest winters ever. And I'm afraid that did for them,
17:27because if that wasn't enough, we've had a mass of rabbits this winter, and rabbits love amy more
17:33than anything else. So we lost a lot. Doesn't matter. I've now got a free bed, and I want to
17:38use it for cut
17:38flowers again, and I'm going to sow scabious. I love scabious. It makes a brilliant cut flower,
17:44makes a brilliant border flower, and I love the dark colours. Now I've got a variety here called
17:48Black Knight, which is really deep, rich burgundy speckled with white.
17:57Put them into your hand, probably best not to do this on a windy day, and just sprinkle thinly.
18:09I'll show you a tip for sowing any kind of seed outside in the garden that I was shown when
18:14I was
18:14a boy, and it works. Draw a drill with your hand and sow your seeds, and then just simply put
18:25your thumb
18:26and your fingers either side of the drill and run down either side of it like that. And it pushes
18:31the
18:32soil up over the seeds, works a treat. Now, I grow cut flowers in these few special
18:38beds, and they're brilliant for the house. However, you don't need special beds. Just to pick
18:44a small bunch of flowers from your garden is an utter joy. But for some people, it's more than a
18:49joy.
18:49It becomes transformative. It changes their lives. And I think that's absolutely the case for Hattie
18:55Colvin. And we went to visit her at her home in Carmarthenshire.
19:04Flowers are a passion of mine. And I think the more I grow, the more obsessed I become.
19:10I don't think I'll ever have enough.
19:15Just seeing something go from nothing through to a huge display of wondrous colour, I think,
19:23is just something really special.
19:31My name's Hattie, and this is my flower farm in Clondilo, Wales.
19:40I'm unapologetically in love with flowers. I could not be without dahlias. So this flower is one of my
19:49favourites. I can never pick an actual favourite. It's called Dunaj or Dunay, depending on how you
19:55pronounce it. It's a pom-pom variety. I love the kind of intensity of the pink colour on the very
20:02small
20:03sort of ball-shaped form and the incredible formation of petals. The pom-pom shape is better
20:09for cutting because they tend to have a bit of a longer vase life cut at the right stage. You
20:14cut before
20:15the centre opens and then it'll last a lot longer.
20:24This one is preference. Preference is incredibly prolific. It does need quite a lot of food and
20:32nutrition, mostly because it produces so many flowers. It just gets a bit tired by the end of
20:38the season if you don't keep it topped up. So our soil here is very clay, so I spend a
20:45lot of time
20:45making sure that the soil is looked after. I use lots of different types of farmyard manure to mulch
20:53the beds. Every time I plant, I make sure that I replenish some of the goodness back into the soil.
21:00When I start seedlings, I use a seaweed feed as well when they're in their trays. Again,
21:08just to make sure that they have a really great start to life. And I find that keeping the plants
21:13as healthy as they can possibly be means that they're more resistant to pests.
21:26I used to live and work in London as an accountant. I did get a lot of joy out of
21:31what I did, but it
21:32wasn't for me. My partner was in Wales and I felt very much the pull towards being here in somewhere
21:39that was back to nature and slower paced. I was commuting back and forwards to London,
21:47so had a lot of thinking time in the car. I had a few dahlias. I found them just so
21:55exciting and
21:57loved all the different shapes and the colours and the kind of flounciness. And I decided that I wanted
22:03more dahlias. So that kind of formed the idea for, ooh, what if I could grow cut flowers? In three
22:13years,
22:14I've ended up with 27 20-metre beds and polytunnels as well. So yeah, it escalated fairly quickly.
22:29You don't need a huge amount of space to get started with a cutting garden. And actually,
22:35if you choose carefully what you grow, you could have quite a few vases of flowers throughout the
22:41summer to enjoy. So I very quickly learned in my journey of growing that some flowers are much
22:50easier to grow than others. One that is generally pretty steadfast is Cosmos. It comes in some really
22:58beautiful shades. It's easy to germinate and then they're fairly indestructible, I find.
23:06This is a really good example of a Cosmos that's actually been pollinated already by the bees.
23:11So you see it's gone quite fuzzy on the inside and that sadly means that I can't use it as
23:18a cut
23:19flower because it won't really last and it'll drop its petals. But it does mean that the bees have had
23:24a lovely time.
23:33Scabias are really lovely at cut flower. They're very generous with how many stems you get.
23:40This is called Black Knight and I did once have somebody ask me if I could give them the flower
23:45with the hundreds and thousands on it because it's got the white little sprinkles on the top.
23:50You also get these lovely seed heads, which you can either dry or actually use in an arrangement as well.
24:04For anybody that's thinking about starting up their own cutting garden, I'd probably recommend
24:09snapdragons. I think they're really majestic looking and always have a really amazing scent.
24:15A perennial option, I would definitely go for a geom, something like Totally Tangerine, which is
24:21lovely, beautiful colour and it actually keeps flowering from May. Slows down as it gets to later
24:28in the summer, but you do still keep getting flowers. And I think obviously you'd have to have some dahlias.
24:37As a flower grower, you're very much hailed as living the dream and wafting about in the field
24:44with a trug and a floaty dress, gathering flowers. One thing that I have definitely learnt is doing this
24:52is a tough, tough job. All of the critters want to get to your flowers before you do.
24:58The weather wants to destroy things. It is not all glamour.
25:09When I'm arranging with flowers, I would tend to find something in the field that does really inspire
25:15me to want to show that off. And then everything else kind of gets built around that.
25:24I just slowly keep building the bouquet. I want different heights. I've already got some scented
25:31pelargonium. This is a lemon basil and some pennycrest thalaspe to add some green,
25:37some different textures with different foliages. And also that is a delightful smell.
25:45There is definitely a huge sense of pride when you're working with flowers that you've grown
25:51yourself and seeing them all kind of come together like little friends and having a little flower party.
25:59I'm going to try and add this one in. It's quite nice and upward facing,
26:02which this variety isn't normally. This feels like a really, really lovely representation of what's
26:12flowering right now in the field. It's all of my favourite colour palettes.
26:25It feels like a huge privilege to get to do what I do for a living. I often find it
26:31really hard to
26:32believe that my slightly random dream that came to me on the motorway is actually now a very beautiful
26:40reality.
27:19I think it's really encouraging that there are more and more people like Hattie that are local,
27:24that have got a wide variety of really interesting plants, something I would suggest we all support.
27:30Now it's Easter and traditionally the main Easter job in the garden was planting potatoes. You get your
27:37potatoes in the ground now. First early should be ready to harvest round about June. Second early is July,
27:43a main crop in the early autumn.
27:47This is a variety called Charlotte. It's a second early and these have chitted and you can see look,
27:54that's a really good example of a chitted potato. You get this knobbly growth and it speeds up the
28:01growth and therefore the harvest. Now how you grow them depends on how much space you've got.
28:06If you've got plenty of space, you've got an allotment, it's a brilliant idea to dig a furrow or a
28:11trench,
28:11put them in the bottom and then heat the soil back up to make a ridge over them. If you're
28:16shorter
28:17space or you're growing in raised beds like I am, it couldn't be easier. All you do is simply make
28:23a hole,
28:24stick them in. With the chitted chute at the top, you want to bury it ideally its own depth below
28:32the ground.
28:41I get three across here, give it at least a foot or so. If you're growing them in a raised
28:45bed,
28:45you can grow them much closer together than you would in rows.
28:52Potatoes really respond to feeding, so if you've got any compost or any manure, anything,
28:59any soil improver, it's really worth adding to the soil and that will definitely increase the harvest.
29:11Here. Here. No, Ned. Come here. Come here. Look. Put it. Good boy.
29:23Break over to cover them. Hopefully, when I come to harvest them, we shall have a whole mass
29:34of new potatoes and, for Ned, a whole mass of new balls to harvest come July. At least that's what
29:43he
29:43thinks. Right. I'm going to use this ground because nothing will appear for a few weeks' time.
29:52But I'm going to grow a catch crop and the fastest growing crop to grow at this time of year
29:57is radish.
29:59And radish will germinate within a week and be ready to harvest within six weeks before they get
30:05crowded out by the foliage of potatoes. Broadcast over the surface. It just means sprinkle them widely.
30:13Try and do it reasonably evenly.
30:19Put the rake over them again to slightly lightly cover them.
30:30I've got these extra sea potatoes, but I'm not going to waste them because I want to grow some in
30:33pots.
30:41This is a recycled container. You can see I've drawn holes in the bottom.
30:46You need peat-free compost. Put it in the bottom, not right full up.
30:55That will do, to start with. What you need is at most three, and to be honest, two would be
31:04plenty in there.
31:04But the truth is three wouldn't give me any bigger harvest. The more you put in,
31:09the smaller potatoes you'll get. And that should produce you between about 10 and 20 potatoes.
31:19Enough for a couple of meals. A treat. Just cover them up. Put a little bit over the top of
31:25them.
31:26Don't fill it to the top. As the new growth comes, fill on top of it. That means roots will
31:33grow from the
31:33stems and you'll get more potatoes. Keep it well watered. Make sure it's not sitting in a puddle,
31:38so maybe lift it a little bit off the ground. And if you can give it a little bit of
31:42shelter,
31:43they'll grow even better. And this is a perfect way to grow potatoes if you're very short of space.
31:51The beauty of this, of course, is that you can grow potatoes, whether you want them as a treat,
31:57or just because you like spuds, even if you've got very limited space. Now, we went to see Tom Stimpson.
32:05I don't know if he grows potatoes, but I do know that everything else he grows is in pots.
32:15When you get home from work, it's quite nice to unwind out of the garden, surrounded by nature
32:20and beautiful flowers. Just perfect.
32:28Hi, I'm Tom, and this is my small town garden in Ely, in Cambridgeshire, and it's all about pots.
32:44I think very often there's a misconception that if you have a small space, you should have just
32:49small pots, and that's not true. It's amazing how many pots you can fit into a relatively tiny,
32:56tiny space. One of my favourite things to do is build up displays of pots on tabletops. And I've got
33:05four or five tabletops that I sort of rotate and use in different areas of the garden at different
33:11times of the year. So I do that by looking at the size of the pots, the shapes of them,
33:17so some taller
33:19terracotta, some squat ones, and then some little tiny ones as well to slot in amongst the bigger ones,
33:26because that means you can create great floral displays and a little bit of structure and drama.
33:39This is muscari armeniacum, which is a muscari I grow every single year. It's super reliable,
33:49easy to grow, and I love the intensity of the blue colour. They require minimal water, bulbs on the
33:56whole tend to prefer it to be on the dry side. So planted it in the autumn into really free
34:01draining
34:02compost. Once we get into February, green shoots start to appear. And then with a little bit of
34:07sunshine, once we get into March, an eruption of blue. One of the ways to keep your pots of muscari
34:13flowering longer is to deadhead. And it's really important not just to pinch here, but to pinch right
34:19down at the base, remove the stem, just discard it. And you'll find that will encourage all the flower
34:25buds to keep coming, and for it to flower for a longer period of time.
34:38So growing in pots is really straightforward. So it all starts with what's at the bottom of the pot first,
34:45so to make sure you've got some crocs. And I then put a small layer of grit just over that.
34:51Then it's
34:52about the potting medium. So I use a peat-free, general purpose potting compost, nothing too fancy,
34:58but I'll always add a little bit of grit. So if I'm using it for pots of bulbs, like this
35:03one here,
35:04I will probably add around 60% compost to 40% grit. And I think that's absolutely key because
35:13the importance of drainage for the bulbs is so important, and you'll have much better results
35:18if the compost can remain just moist rather than sodden. For other varieties of plants,
35:23violas, primulas, I won't add so much grit, probably about just 10%, just to aid that drainage
35:29a little bit. But they're much more tolerant to wet conditions. And then as we get into them growing
35:35in the spring, is when you tend to look at the moisture levels a little bit more closely. And then
35:40as things start to grow and start to bud up, I'll then start a twice fortnightly feed with some liquid
35:46seaweed, just to give a little bit of goodness back into the compost and support the flowers.
36:04So this is Ifean and a variety called Alberto Castile. I have to say they're one of my new faves.
36:11I just love them. They have this wonderful sort of grass-like foliage. And I love the chaos of the
36:17stems really, how they grow in whichever way they choose really. And I love the fact that they move
36:24and sway in the breeze. And one of my absolute favourite things about it is the reverse of the
36:30petals have a gorgeous stripe down the reverse of each flower petal.
36:43It's important to raise the pod off the table, as otherwise, when it rains, the compost just remains
36:49wet. It never drains away totally. It just, there's always a little puddle of water underneath the bottom
36:55of the pot. I found over the years, one of the best things to use is just tile spaces. So
37:02when you
37:03place your pot on them, you can't see them, but it just allows a few millimetres of air between the
37:09surface of the table and the bottom of the pot. And it just means the water can drain away. And
37:13that's
37:13the one way I get them through the winter.
37:24This is a variety of Narcissi called Polar Hunter, a relatively new variety, but rapidly becoming one
37:31of my favourite ones to grow. It has the wonderful fruity fragrance, quite unlike any other scented
37:38variety of Narcissi. And it's a beautiful colour. It starts off a limey cream colour as it opens,
37:46and then gradually fades to a creamy white. I very often cut a few stems and just have by the
37:52side of
37:53my bed because I love waking up to the gorgeous scent in the morning. It's a brilliant one for pots,
37:59but to give it a little bit of extra support, I just add a few hazel twigs in. I love
38:03doing that
38:04because it looks natural. It's absolutely gorgeous. What do you say to people who don't like defodils?
38:10They should go and get a life.
38:16So as we come into mid-spring, I start to think about what's going in the pots for the summer.
38:22And a key variety for me are dahlias. I absolutely love them. They're brilliant for providing colour
38:28from mid-summer through to the first frost, so great value. The tubers are nice and big,
38:34so I'm planting into quite a big pot. If your tubers are a little bit smaller, so they're fresh stock,
38:40then I'd probably say plant them in a three litre-sized pot and get them to grow and shoot in
38:44there
38:45before planting out into a bigger pot or into the border. Peat-free compost. I've added a bit of grit
38:52for
38:52extra drainage and it's important with dahlias that the crown sits just above the soil surface.
39:00Pots for me are a key element to my gardening life. When you have a small space and if you
39:07love plants,
39:08pots are essential to add interest, drama, impact, colour, abundance.
39:38Like Tom, I grow masses of spring valves in pots. This time of year, mainly full of Narcissi and
39:46tulips and the great thing about them is you have these splashes of colour that you can move around
39:51and assemble. And by the way, if you've not seen this daffodil before, it's called Rip Van Winkle,
39:57with this great sort of splay of flower, which is a little bit heavy for the stem, so it's not
40:03so
40:03much drooping as sprawling in an elegant way and certainly looks fantastic when grown in a pot like
40:11this. And it's not just spring bulbs that look good. We've got bay here with rosemary. I've got pots
40:18in shady areas with ivy and ferns right across the year and right across the garden. There's always a place
40:26for pot.
40:34Go on.
40:40A-ha. You've got it. You've got it.
40:56Now, this was where we had soft root until this winter because I've brought into here
41:03most of the yew cuttings that I took about 10 years ago. The reason I took the yew cuttings were
41:10partly to
41:10replace the box that got box blight and I want an evergreen dense hedge and partly because yew makes
41:18wonderful topiary and I love topiary. So this gives me the raw material for hedges and topiary and even
41:25clip shrubs which I've got in the woodland border. And if you had to buy them, they're really expensive.
41:31So to grow your own is saving you a lot of money. It's really interesting and I think good fun.
41:37This is a yew cutting I took certainly no more than 10 years ago. But you can see it's got
41:42a lovely
41:42straight stem and this lends itself to a standard. A standard is anything that is grown on a bare,
41:49clean, straight trunk. It could be a ball, it could be a box, it could be a dancing bear or
41:56a kangaroo.
41:59To create a standard, the first thing I'm going to do is clean off that trunk.
42:08I want it to be a ball on an upright and I want that to be the bottom of the
42:12ball and that's the top.
42:15So the first thing I'm going to do is take this top off.
42:22Obviously that doesn't look anything like a globe. But these shoots here, these little ones,
42:30as they grow out, then we get the outside and the harder we clip the final shape the denser it
42:36will be.
42:36And it doesn't matter if it's empty on the inside, which it will be because the light will be stopped.
42:40Actually that's not bad to begin with. So the next stage for that is to put into a pot or
42:46into the ground,
42:47give it light, feed it and encourage it to grow.
42:54Yew, along with box and holly, regenerates from old wood. So you can cut it back as hard as you
43:02like
43:02and it will regrow successfully. Now I've chosen this because it wouldn't be hard to make this into a ball.
43:09And you can see because other plants have been around it, it's even started to grow inwards a bit.
43:13So rather than cut it back very hard, I'm going to use shears and clip it.
43:26And in this case, I don't need to go right back to the old wood because the basic shape is
43:31there.
43:39Right, you can see that I've put all these into bags. Plants in a bag will keep perfectly well,
43:44but for growing things on they either have to be in the ground or in a pot. You want a
43:49pot that's big
43:50enough for it to grow into. So something like that, really good drainage holes. Yew is tough,
43:58you will take light, you will take shade, it'll grow in almost any soil, although it's happiest
44:03in lime. So if you've got chalk or limestone, that's great. But it will not take sitting in damp.
44:11It must drain. So this is a very, very gritty mix. So we'll put this in here like that.
44:24Take this out.
44:28Okay, that's good.
44:40Now, those roots aren't anchored in the pot. And all those tiny little new roots will break
44:46if it moves. So we need to put a cane in there like that. And throughout the rest of this
44:52year,
44:53this will need watering and feeding weekly. But in order to get really good topiary shape,
44:59it does need light. This should create the shape I want in about three to five years,
45:09and it will get better and better. Now, go into one of your gardens. It belongs to
45:15the Driscoll family, and they live in Cheshire.
45:20Hi, I'm Owen. I'm Emily. And I'm Liam. Welcome to our garden in Macclesfield.
45:26It's a relatively small space, maybe 10 by 5 metres,
45:30and enclosed by tall fences and rows of terrace housing. With young kids, it was a place to play
45:36and have fun. As the kids got older, and I got the bug for gardening, it increasingly became a place
45:43for flowers and colour, though it was still a little untidy. We paid attention to making space
45:49for wildlife, creating lots of interest for Emily and Leo. We have a little wildlife pond.
45:56It has shallow edges to allow any animals that might fall in to climb out. We have been impressed
46:01by the variety of different visitors to our garden. But there was one visitor that we never thought
46:13we'd see in our garden, with it being all fenced up and barricaded by rows of houses.
46:21Then, one night, we spotted this on our security camera at the front of our house.
46:28A hedgehog. Could it get round the back to the garden?
46:34Dad made a couple of openings in the fence.
46:38One day, this summer, in the middle of the day, we saw this. We didn't know what it was doing.
46:47Turns out it was building a nest.
46:53There was more than one hedgehog in the nest, which meant hoglets.
46:58We started putting our hedgehog food in a feeding station to keep the cats from eating it.
47:11We think they appreciate it.
47:18We hope you enjoyed your visit to our garden, too.
47:21We'll be happy to see who you are.
47:47We'll be happy to see who you are.
47:50and it is it's fantastic hedgehogs are very much nocturnal animals so if you see them during the
47:57day and if they're feeding and drinking during the day it normally is indication that they are in
48:02distress and last summer we saw a lot of that because it was so hot and dry so ideally put
48:08out food and water at dusk and it should be gone by the morning okay at this time of year
48:15we sow
48:16a lot of seeds they germinate and then the next stage of the process is pricking out and what i
48:22thought i'd do is make it really clear what pricking out is why you do it and when you do
48:28it
48:29first thing is what it is is you take a seedling and you move it on to the next stage
48:35because
48:36if you have a mass of seedlings in a seed tray like this these are tithonias they're all competing for
48:40space and nutrition and they would never develop into good plants now pricking out shouldn't take
48:47place until you can see the true leaves so when a seed germinates it produces what's called a seed leaf
48:57and you can see here this is a tray of cosmos these very strappy leaves look absolutely nothing like
49:04cosmos they are just to give the plant enough energy for the roots to develop once the roots have got
49:11established you then get the next stage which is a true leaf and if you look very closely you can
49:18see
49:18the true leaves are just beginning to appear and even when they're tiny absolutely minute they look
49:26like the parent leaves you can see it actually better here on this parsley the difference between
49:32the seed leaves which are here which basically are strappy and simple and the true leaf which looks
49:38like a flat leaf parsley is there finally tithonia you've got these spatulate seed leaves and then the
49:46pointed parent leaf and again it means it's got roots so these two trays are ready for pricking out and
49:53that one is not so you need something to put them in and you need something to carefully tease them
49:59out with
50:00in the past i've used a pen knife i've used pencil whatever works take hold of the seedling
50:07buy a leaf never hold it by the stem it's very easy to crush it or break it whereas if
50:15you damage the
50:15leaf it can grow another one there you go it's got quite a good root system it's always quite a
50:23surprise
50:23that they have so many roots now i've prepared individual plugs for this and i'm just going to
50:30pop that in there like that i'm not going to brutally press it down and it means that each individual
50:36seedling gets a real chance to grow now what i'm pricking them out into is a compost mix that has
50:44a
50:44little bit more goodness in it than the seed mix you could just use a peat-free compost on its
50:49own
50:49i tend to add some sieved garden compost a little bit of leaf mold and some sieved garden soil not
50:57a lot
50:57no more than about five percent of the mix but the bacteria and the fungi in that will start
51:03interacting with the roots so when i plant it out into my garden already there is that symbiosis
51:09between the two and they tend to grow away better sometimes say for example with tomatoes
51:16i prick out into a small pot straight away because they're going to be quite big plants and they grow
51:20fast but there is no perfect way as long as each individual seedling has room to develop into a nice
51:28strong plant don't try and rush it regard it as something that it's part of the process of the life
51:35of the plant and you as almost privileged to be part of that too and to me that's the essence
51:42of gardening
51:43that's really what gardening is all about
52:10i know a lot of people
52:11get confused about pruning hydrangeas the most common type of hydrangea that you see is hydrangea
52:20macrophylla with mop heads the great big round heads or lace caps which are more open with masses of
52:27petals but with always a touch of elegance now this is a lace cap variety called lamarth white and will
52:36give you a display from late summer into autumn now the first thing is do not prune off the spent
52:42flowers in autumn because they trap warmer air inside and they just slightly protect the plant
52:49particularly in very early spring from frost but now we're coming to april as soon as you get vigorous
52:55new growth you can prune them back so at very least take off the spent flowers from last year however
53:04it's not a bad idea while you're doing this to take a look and say okay am i happy with
53:09it i'm happy with
53:10the shape the size for example this here is growing out over the border and i don't really want that
53:17so
53:17i'm going to cut it back now when you're pruning this type of hydrangea go right back in and prune
53:24at
53:24the base and that will encourage new shoots to grow so to remove this i'm going to go in here
53:37young wood will be vigorous healthy and produce more flowers but remove no more than a third of
53:45the plant taking the oldest growth when you do
53:51and if you do that every year it will renew itself over three years so none of them will be
53:56more than
53:56four years old so that's the first type of hydrangea but to make life complicated there's another kind
54:07and we'll go and prune those now
54:19now having pruned a lace cap this is a very different type of hydrangea the first thing you'll notice there
54:28are no flowers on it the second thing is the growth is very different it's vigorous it's upright you've
54:32got different colored stems and this is a hydrangea paniculata now one of the features of hydrangea
54:40paniculata and there are a number of different varieties is that all the flowers are produced
54:46on growth that has happened this growing year so for example these seemingly new shoots the sort of
54:55burgundy colored red ones are last year's growth and the the woody growth is previous years i planted
55:01this about 10 years ago some of this could be 10 years old so nothing that you see will carry
55:08any
55:09flowers at all this year so i'm going to prune this back to a framework which is pretty much the
55:14old growth
55:21unlike the lace caps and the mop heads which are fundamentally rounded or flattened these are conical
55:28they look like a squirty ice cream put into a cone and also unlike the lace caps and the mop
55:35heads which
55:35are very particular about the ph of the soil paniculatas will stay white whatever the soil and
55:42they're very forgiving so they're great the new growth will come from these points they'll grow out here
55:57and we'll have these wonderful ice cream cones of flower from august onwards well that was very simple
56:05didn't take long but it's a good job and here are some good jobs for you this weekend
56:21everybody loves sunflowers and they're a great plant to grow with children now's a good time to start
56:28them they're big seeds so can go into a pot rather than the seed tray i use two seeds per
56:35pot simply
56:36pressing them into the compost and then remove the weaker of the two which guarantees i have one really
56:44healthy plant they need to be watered and then go somewhere warm to germinate
56:58easter is a really good time to get out any garden furniture made out of wood and give it a
57:03once
57:03over if it's not painted consider giving it a coat of linseed oil to protect it and if it is
57:10painted rub
57:12it down remove any loose or flaking paint and then give it a fresh coat and it'll be ready for
57:17those long
57:22summer evenings now is a very good moment to divide herbaceous perennials because they've started to
57:30grow and will recover quickly from any movement i'm going to split this hosta into two lift it out the
57:38ground simply chop it with a spade replant half and that gives me another fresh plant to add elsewhere
57:57good boy no come on well i'm afraid that's it for today but it's easter easter when we can all
58:06get out into the garden maybe go and visit a lovely garden see friends and just this sense
58:13of the garden and spring to come and summer to follow opening out in front of us but for the
58:19moment
58:20that's all from long weather and i'll see you next time buh-bye
58:27so
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