Gardeners World S51e19 10-08-18
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hello, welcome to Gardener's World. I'm sowing some rocket, this is wild rocket,
00:15not a solid rocket, but both can be sown now. In fact, it's a really good time because they
00:22do like mild weather. They grow best sort of March and April and then again September,
00:29October. So by sowing the seed now, it'll germinate and then start to grow as the nights
00:35cool down. And we'll be ready to plant out in September and enjoy right through till Christmas.
00:42And if you've got a greenhouse or a cold frame or even a cloche, you can actually keep rocket
00:46seeds going well into next spring. Now wild rocket is a perennial and you can cut the leaves and they
00:54will grow back and I've kept plants going for years and it's one of my favourite salads of
00:59all. So it's a good thing to do as we're now hitting the middle of August. Now, coming up,
01:07we go to the Brecon Beacons to visit a man who has been making his garden for over 40 years.
01:14If you'd have said to me I would have created something like this, I would have never have
01:18believed him. And we also rejoin Frances on her allotment where she's planting insect-friendly
01:26flowers alongside the vegetables. What do you think? It's amazing, I'm really impressed with it.
01:33And I shall be checking up on my bees and also revealing the source of the plants from the last
01:41batch of honey. I've let this stripper grass grow long except for a path down the middle.
02:10I want to encourage as many insects as possible and the best way to do that is A, have water,
02:14which we've got, and B, have long grass. You don't need a big space. You can have a wildflower meadow,
02:21if you want to call it that, in a square metre or, as I've done here, just a strip either side
02:27of a path. And into that I've been planting bulbs and also herbaceous perennials as well as sowing
02:34seed. But if you want a wildflower meadow, you have to manage it like a meadow. And essentially
02:39that means letting it grow long until mid or late summer and then cut it. And you'll know when,
02:46it's when it starts to look a little bit raggedy. And at that point, cut it right to the ground.
02:58Now it doesn't matter what you cut it with, a pair of shears will do if it's not very big,
03:02or you can use a big grass cutter. A normal mower probably won't be enough. Go to any
03:08tool hire place and you can hire a big heavy-duty mower for a day and you can get a lot done.
03:13When you cut long grass, and whatever you cut it with, inevitably you'll find that after the first
03:24pass, quite a lot of it is laying flat and you start to rake it up and there's a lot of grass
03:29left there. So don't worry about that. You will need to cut it twice, sometimes occasionally,
03:34if it's really thick stuff, even three times. But the important thing is that you rake it up.
03:40You mustn't leave any grass on the ground. The reason for that is because it will rot down,
03:46feed into the soil, and the plant will benefit most is more grass. And very quickly grass can
03:54compete... What? What are you doing? I'm talking to the nation.
04:03Sorry about this, folks, bear with me. Now go away, go on. Right, as we were, grass very quickly
04:12out-competes other wildflowers or other interesting plants. So for a wildflower meadow or anything
04:18approximating to it, rake it all up. Now you can see I'm scratching away and causing dust to fly,
04:33which shows there's a lot of bare soil. The reason I want that is because I want the seeds I'm about
04:40to sow to make contact with soil. That is the secret of getting wildflower seeds to germinate
04:47in a wildflower meadow. Now in this day and age, one of the sort of great developments that the
04:53internet has helped is that wildflower seed is not only available from many different sources,
04:59it's available in mixes that will suit almost any situation.
05:07Take that out. Now what we've got in here is an assortment of flowers, some of them annuals,
05:14some of them perennials, and if you look it's a lovely physically beautiful mixture of seeds
05:21with yarrow and knotweed and vetches. I love the way that in the palm of my hand I have a flowering meadow.
05:32It's a big mistake to sow it too thickly, you'll gain nothing. Divide it up and sow the seed thinly.
05:50It's as simple as that. Just sprinkle a few seeds and make sure they have contact, and if you want
05:55to mow this every week so it reverts to lawn for the rest of summer, that's fine, it'll do no harm
05:59at all, and if you want it to grow back to be long grass that's fine too, but you'll need to
06:05repeat this process of the cutting and the raking before we go into winter. So it starts spring with
06:11short grass. Now you don't need a big garden to enjoy a wildflower meadow, in fact you don't need
06:17a big garden to enjoy any aspect of gardening, and we were really inspired by our Every Space Counts
06:24competition. That's over now and there's a rightful winner, but we want to go on celebrating all the
06:29pleasures and joys of smaller gardens, and we went to visit one in the Midlands that is packed
06:35with plants and ideas.
06:46My name's Paul, I live in a small village north of Birmingham. We moved into the property in 2015.
06:53When we moved in the garden was pretty unloved. There was a small shed at the top corner,
06:59there was a few shrubs and the odd tree. I had this old conservatory base that we had to take out,
07:07so that was the first thing we did. Then I took the old shed out, the shrubs,
07:11and basically I stripped the whole garden to a blank canvas. Then I realised that the soil
07:17quality was really, really poor, so I had 15 tonnes of really good quality topsoil brought in,
07:22which they dropped on the drive at the front, and I had to wheelbarrow through,
07:26and it took me at least, I think it was about four days to do it.
07:30So the design, I started with a patio which was a half moon shape, and I've tried to replicate
07:35that through all the borders, and also with the grass, and it swoops around the house,
07:39and also with the arbours, I've built those myself from scratch. They're a bit of an unusual shape,
07:45but I think they work quite well in my garden.
07:49I've always been interested in cottage style gardens, which I've tried to create myself here.
07:55I've got a massive range of different sorts of perennial plants,
07:59and I haven't got a theme with a colour, I like to mix all the colours up.
08:04Probably my favourite plants are phyllocteran. I have about seven varieties in the garden,
08:09and my two favourites would be phyllocteran and phyllocteran elan, which grow really tall,
08:14and I feel that tall plants in a very small garden work really well.
08:19I've got my dahlias, and I also grow quite a few sanguisorbas, which are an amazing plant,
08:24which always drum up a lot of interest when people come to see the garden.
08:31I think it's really important to work out what's flowering in the garden,
08:35and keeping the garden going, so a good tip I've learnt myself is to go around other people's
08:39gardens at different times of year, and see what's flowering, and what's looking good at that time
08:44of year, and that's how I've created my garden. At the start of the season we have snowdrops and
08:51daffodils, moving through to the mid-summer we have all the sanguisorbas and phloxes,
08:59anything you can possibly think of perennials, going great at that time of year,
09:02and then going off to the back of the year is my dahlias.
09:06In very early spring I put a lot of bloodfish and bone meal down, in fact in this garden I've put
09:12about 30 kilos down this year, and I feel that that's why everything is flourishing in the garden this year.
09:21I also do a lot of staking, which takes a tremendous amount of time, I think it takes me about a month
09:26to put the stakes in the soil, and I think it's really important to do that, because
09:30I do a lot of staking, which takes a tremendous amount of time, I think it takes me about a month to put the stakes in,
09:35there's probably about 800 stakes in the garden. The key thing with staking is to get them in as
09:41early as you possibly can before there's any real growth on the plants.
09:48I deadhead every night, I spend about an hour deadheading the whole garden, I think it's very
09:54important to spend the time doing this for the plant's health and to encourage new flowers.
10:01I spend a lot of time in the evenings when the children are in bed,
10:07and sometimes I can come in at sort of 11 o'clock at night.
10:12I have a massive passion for my lawn, the key to a nice lawn is a bit of feed every sort of fortnight,
10:20probably in the palm of your hand that's all you need, and water it quite a lot. Believe it or not
10:24I do cut it every day, much to my wife's dismay, I also use an old roller mower which is absolutely
10:32fantastic, really really noisy, I think it upsets quite a few of the neighbours, but it gives this
10:36great effect in the garden. I haven't got a greenhouse, purely because I haven't got enough
10:42room for a greenhouse now with the planting I've got in the garden, so when plants get too large
10:47in the garden I dig them up, I take root cuttings off them and plant the original plant back in.
10:53I save quite a lot of seeds, I like to save my delphinium seeds and phyllixum seeds,
10:58which are hardier seeds, which I pot on and grow on and sell for the National Gardening Scheme.
11:06Garden means everything to me, I've got a massive passion for it and I enjoy having people around
11:13and entertaining friends and seeing other people enjoy it, which is where I get my kick from really.
11:20I'm very very proud of it.
11:34It really isn't the size that matters with a garden, it's the love that you put in
11:38and get back from it, but with a smaller garden you do have to choose your plants carefully
11:45and one of the best small garden trees I think is a crab apple. There are lots of different types
11:51but they will all flower in spring and then bear fruit that is decorative in autumn,
11:56but therein lies a slight catch because look at this, I've kept this on just to show you
12:02one of the problems that is likely to happen this year. This crab has got masses of fruit
12:08because we had a really good late spring, then we've had this hot dry summer so the plants
12:13are a bit brittle and then the other day we had a big storm, lots of rain, lots of wind and what's
12:19happened is the weight of the fruit on the branches have meant that they've torn and broken
12:26and the really pertinent point is that that is going to happen more and more between now and
12:32autumn and if you've got fruit trees in your garden of any kind and particularly if they're
12:38young trees, prop them up between now and harvest time so if we do get a big wind or storm
12:44you're not going to snap the tree and ruin it and really all I can do to this is cut it off.
12:51That's a garner and likewise with this one
12:58and then I'm going to have to get a longer stake and stake that up like that so it's supported
13:04and start again. That'll do the trick for now and we'll check up on how it's doing
13:09in a couple of weeks. However I'm not in the border for my crab apple because I've got another
13:16job on hand. What I really want to do here is dig up and divide one of these nepetas.
13:23It might seem odd to be digging up anything in the border at this time of year and you'd think
13:29we'd want all the growth that we can to see us through into autumn
13:33but now is a really good time to dig up those perennials that you like
13:40and to divide them, pop them up and grow them on for next year.
13:46The key is to choose a plant that is a real doer. Make sure it's something that's proven
13:52it's worth in your garden because then you know that the new plants are going to do well too.
14:02Okay pop that in a trug. From a clump like that I should get at least a dozen new plants.
14:09So
14:22what you will need to do is cut it back. So before I begin
14:25I'm going to take all this top growth off and that might seem a little radical but
14:33we want to leave as little stress on the roots that remain as possible.
14:40Now some plants divide by cutting them if they've got fleshy roots,
14:45others will pull apart relatively easily and nepeta is one of this group.
14:53Right let's tease that out. The idea with this is to break it down into as small units as you
15:00possibly can. Now the reason I'm going to this trouble of making them as small as possible
15:06is that I want quantity and that changes the way that you design a new garden. You could start
15:13having them running through borders, you could have great big drifts and clumps, you could start
15:19to think differently about the way that you garden. Now I have here pots and a special potting compost.
15:29This is deliberately rather a poor compost. There's lots of coir in it, there's grit,
15:34there's a little bit of garden soil to add bacteria and the reason for that is that I
15:38don't want a flush of top growth. I want the roots to slowly and steadily establish.
15:46So it's just a process of potting them all up and trimming them to fit. So there where we have
15:53rather a big root system it is these very fine roots that are doing all the feeding. So what I
16:00will do is I'm going to cut that off there and reduce this down like that and then that should
16:09fit into a small pot. If I just put these somewhere slightly sheltered, obviously water them and keep
16:19them watered, they definitely don't need to be in a greenhouse or a cold fret. The roots will
16:24establish before winter kicks in and then plant them out next April and they will take off and
16:31you can do this with almost any herbaceous perennial. So there you are, I've used up just
16:44about half of a modest clump, created 18 new plants, I'll probably get another 18 from it,
16:50so that's going to be well over 30 plants from the Peter Six Hills jar. Now over the years and
16:56we've been here for over a quarter of a century, we have created tens of thousands of plants,
17:01not just by division but by seed and cutting and that's one of the joys in being in a garden
17:05for a long time. You see plants through from the very earlier stage, sometimes into large trees.
17:13But we have been at Longmeadow for only a fraction of the time
17:18that Keith Brown has been in his garden in command.
17:26In the garden there's so many things that are special to you, putting things together as small
17:32plants but to actually wait to see them reach their full size, I get a chill up my spine,
17:39genuinely I do, because it just is a fruition of a lot of ideas.
17:47My name is Keith Brown, welcome to Kilgwyn Lodge, I've lived here with Moira, my partner,
17:52we both love gardening. It's located on the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park
17:59in the lovely Towie Valley in Carmarthenshire, it's just a lovely place to live and to garden.
18:05Well the garden is substantially different now from what it was when we first came here
18:09in the 1970s and it's now very much a designed garden.
18:25Over the years we've tried to make it an oasis by planting trees around the perimeter,
18:32by planting trees around the perimeter, some were here already.
18:36There's a beech tree that was a sapling when we first came here
18:40and it's now 40 foot tall and it's one of the star trees in the garden.
18:48As you walk down the garden there's a range of shrubs incorporated in the border design,
18:53it's not just herbaceous border, particularly strong on hydrangeas which are coming into
18:59their peak by the end of July and then as you walk down the garden on a gentle slope
19:05you're walking towards a large water lily pond with a range of native insects and wildlife.
19:14I always feel a garden without water is a garden without soul.
19:17Nothing gives you greater pleasure than something you've grown yourself whether it's
19:22grown in the garden or whether it's grown as a challenge in the polytunnel because many of the
19:26things I've grown myself I've had to learn how to germinate them properly, how to grow them on.
19:33There's a lot of challenges to face and over the years which I've been propagating my garden
19:38I've had to learn how to grow them properly.
19:41How to grow them on there's a lot of challenges to face and over the years which I've been
19:46propagating plants probably coming up towards 20 years I must have grown a good few thousand
19:54every year. Well this is the nerve center to the garden I do a lot of propagation
20:01very often from seed and it's just magical to grow stuff from seed because you don't know
20:07whether it's going to come true to its parents or whether it's going to be something that's never
20:12been known before and you'll have something very special and it can take up to a year or two years
20:18and in the case of Cardiocrinum giganteum the giant Himalayan lily it can take seven or even
20:25eight years. When I flowered my first one I got quite emotional to have grown something like that
20:31and the thrill it gave me to do so is probably one of my highlights of my gardening year and
20:37my gardening life and I get that with almost all plants.
20:50When I first came to Kilgryn Lodge there were four plants in the garden which I still enjoy
20:56having and I call them the four h's hardy geraniums a bit of a cheat that one hemerocallis
21:05hostas and hellebore and this is a fifth edition to them since those early days
21:14this is hydrangea aspera sargentiana from China a very felty leaf glorious head of flower
21:25and I believe it's true that this has only ever been found once in the wild
21:31and all the plants that are in gardens now or for sale in garden centres
21:36all came from that one plant that was found in China all those many years ago.
21:40The garden makes me feel pretty proud in a way really but not in a show-off sort of way just
21:55the fact that we put it together ourselves. If you had said to me 40 years ago I would have
22:02created something like this I would have never have believed you. Gardening is about giving and
22:07sharing I think and that's hopefully what we've been able to do.
22:27There is definitely something special about a long-term relationship with a garden that's
22:34something that has changed in the last five or ten years of this garden is that I have come to
22:41love ferns. Before then I thought they were rather dull and all looked pretty much the same sort of
22:48vaguely green and frondy but now I love the subtle differences and we plant a lot of them here and
22:54you can see here in the limewalk we have fringed the whole length of it with dryopterist felix
23:01and at this time of year when you lift up the fronds and look underneath they become really
23:07interesting because it is covered in what people loosely call spores but that actually only hints
23:14at the whole truth because these are sorai and each one of these sorai contains sporangia
23:24and each one of those contains up to 64 spores but they don't make another fern
23:31they make an intermediary plant called a prothallus and this is small it's heart-shaped
23:37and has a male and a female sex organ and that will fertilize itself and then in the fullness
23:44of time will throw up a leaf and will be the beginning of a new dryopterist and that whole
23:49process can take anything from about six months to about three or four years so it's complicated
23:57it's mysterious and there is something primeval about it I always feel that ferns are plants
24:05that could have been crushed under the feet of the dinosaurs
24:21I'm going to plant out some Florence fennel appropriately because the
24:25the leaves are distinctly feathery and frond-like
24:29and fennel is one of those vegetables that when it goes right seems very straightforward
24:35but can quite easily go wrong it really doesn't like being cold that stresses it and checks it
24:40and once that happens to Florence fennel it bolts it makes stalks with flower heads rather than
24:48overlapping leaves which form what we call the bulb which isn't the bulb at all which is the
24:52base of the plant that we want to cultivate so if you can get hold of any plants now then it's fine
24:58to plant them out and they'll be ready to harvest sort of late September into October and raised
25:03beds are really good for them because they like heat they like plenty of moisture and they like
25:13good drainage and this sort of spacing I guess it's roughly sort of somewhere between eight and
25:19ten inches is about right it means that each plant can get good and large you get these lovely
25:26juicy crisp overlapping bases to the leaves
25:34now still to come Mark Lane visits the warmest garden in Britain and celebrates the joys of
25:43all things Mediterranean and I should be getting some help and guidance and how to deal with a bit
25:51of a crisis with my bees but first Adam has been helping a young couple in Leicestershire
25:59establish the groundwork the infrastructure of their garden and we join him as he pays his third
26:06visit it's been about two months since I started working with Amit and Vibhuti to help create a
26:19garden for their family they had been in their new build for about 18 months and were feeling
26:25overwhelmed about starting a garden from scratch the biggest problem was how to reduce the impact
26:32of the towering wall and fence at the back of the garden the new design created a new focus
26:38pulling you right across the space by adding a second terrace to kick things off we lifted the
26:44original paving to prepare for the new terraces plus created two distinctive levels since that
26:51visit Amit has put in some hard graft getting in the sleepers for the retaining wall but he's been
26:56struggling with an injured hand so a few weeks ago I went back to help him with the rest of the
27:01landscaping we laid most of the paving put in a brick path and built some steps now I'm back to
27:09finish the job I tell you what I'm chuffed to pieces yeah we have done well I mean I think
27:15today we want to get the hard landscaping done shall we definitely and if we do really well
27:19maybe start prepping this lawn right come on let's get on come on come come come we're gonna start
27:25with the upper terrace and we're reusing the old slabs to keep the cost down all right mate let's
27:31get this line set up and then we can get those last few slabs in promptly yeah you just tie that
27:36off okay when laying paving it really is all in the preparation use a line to lay your slabs to
27:45to prepare the ground put in a hundred millimeters of hardcore which will need to be compacted
27:51I still love doing this I do enjoy it is that a bit sad no that's good is it good
27:58then lay your paving on a six to one mix of sharp sand and cement make sure you lay your paving on
28:05a full bed of mortar so what I'm doing to start with is actually just rocking it a little bit in
28:10place which will just start to key it down on that to cement and then with a mallet or actually even
28:18a back of a lump hammer you just start to work across the slab to get it down to that final level
28:27just keep your hand on it because this sounds a bit strange but you can actually feel it going
28:35down into place to ensure a consistent pointing gap between the slabs use tile spacers there you go
28:47over by the house the new grey brick picks up on the existing ones in the wall and it's brushing
28:53and kill dried sand between them which means the water will still drain through while he's busy
29:00I'm going to point the lower terrace with a five to one soft sand and cement mix
29:06so as I'm brushing it in I'm working it in making sure that every single crevice
29:13it fall with the with the mix and really this is a soft sand so it's going right down in those
29:19mixes and at the end of the day what I'll do is I'll put a very fine mist over the top of that
29:24with the hose and I mean a fine mist not washing because obviously then it starts to come out and
29:29go all over the paving what that mist will do is actually just make this go absolutely solid
29:39the final bit of the landscaping is to create the top of the brick step
29:44I've laid the edges first on a mortar mix but the middle is laid on sharp sand
29:50and use a screen board to level the sand before I put in the final bricks
29:59the landscaping is all but done and that feels really good
30:06now it's time to rotovate the site and get some organic matter in
30:11then we can have a chat about plants and I've brought along some pictures for inspiration
30:15first we're looking at climbers to cover the back wall
30:20first one we've got there is the clematis which you see a whole array of flowers some of them
30:25are spring some of them are autumn jasmine which is lovely and that will give you scent and then
30:31honeysuckles again good grower and then you've got the good old wisteria I just want a bit of
30:36wildlife into the garden so these are gonna if these some of these plants are gonna attract
30:42wildlife bees and just a bit that'd be fantastic and they will make which of these flowers will
30:47flower for the longest I would look in at it I would say choose the months I suppose when you're
30:52going to really be out and enjoy the garden what do you think that's going to be June July August
30:58so maybe what we try and do is we pick the climbers around you know one that's going to
31:02look good in June one that's going to look good in July one that's going to look good in August
31:12Verruti and Ammit have a huge wall to cover so they can choose some quite vigorous plants
31:18but in a smaller space some of these plants could take over and create problems
31:24now we move on to the trees so we've got to think about what we want shade wise what we want
31:29them to block so the shape of them in a sense and then what we want ornamentally you know do
31:34we want flowers do we want berries do we want bark and then we've got to think about what we
31:40want bark and and what I've got here at the moment is a choice of something like a Prunus
31:44Cerula which is which is a lovely cherry got fantastic bark on it absolutely beautiful bark
31:50and then we go into something like an Amelanchier which is a lovely sort of smaller tree fantastic
31:55spring flower super autumn color and then we've got a mix of birches which again
32:01you know are giving you more dapple shade the one I'm instantly drawn to I'm sure you can guess is
32:06because it's got flowers yeah that's fine though so if we went for the Tibetan Prunus Cerula
32:13yeah Tibetan cherry that would give us a lovely bark Amelanchier and then maybe we
32:17add another one to it that that hopefully gives you flowers check the final height of the tree
32:27and canopy shape so it works well in the space plus really gives you the effect you're after
32:34some trees can have strong root systems so make sure they're planted appropriate distance from
32:39walls and foundations
32:48shrubs are really useful as they can give a structural backbone to the garden
32:53plus some wonderful seasonal interest so when I talk about structural gardens and getting it right
32:59really what I'm talking about is the trees and the shrubs we've got things like roses so we've
33:06got color that's a pittosporum and we've got something like a myrtle which has got a variegated
33:11foliage but it's got a lovely flower on it and it's got a scent I like the idea of having mass
33:17of light yeah and then the odd shot of color like the fuchsias or the corals they're the kind of
33:22colors that I definitely like to add more color there are a huge range of herbaceous perennials
33:28to choose from and they can be planted amongst the shrubs so that sounds like we've got a plan yeah
33:36yes good next time plant in and get the turf down
33:59the basic groundwork of any garden is always more work than you think it's going to be but
34:04it's important because if you get that right you don't have to think about it very much ever again
34:10and everything else follows on from it now I've almost got these in and just when I've watered
34:18them in they'll be fine it's interesting to compare these with herb fennel because
34:23you don't want these to develop a flower stalk whereas of course herb fennel which is a very
34:28close relative is all about the flower stalk and now at Longmeadow the fennel is 10 12 feet tall
34:38these enormous great stems topped with bright yellow umbels of flower they're truly magnificent
34:45but I don't want flower stems from these I just want a lovely fleshy basal growth
34:55which is so brilliant with tomatoes or avocado or just in a crunchy green salad
35:00so
35:13now we join Frances on her allotment where all that hard graft of a wet and muddy spring
35:22is beginning to pay dividends
35:25it's been nearly six months since Luke and I started on our allotment journey
35:29and in that time I feel like we've made so much headway
35:33our allotment started as a patch of claggy clay covered in weeds and look at it now
35:40we got to work in all weathers building our raised beds planting fruit trees and creating a herb
35:49garden all this during one of the hottest heat waves in living memory
35:55last time we decided to put camera traps down to see what kind of wildlife we're working with
36:00I'm really curious to see what creatures we're sharing our allotment with
36:05there's a cat here that just stares right at the camera oh really
36:10oh something running is that another cat no maybe it could be a back end of a fox
36:14look it's magpies oh wow what are they up to they're on your brassicas
36:21oh so it's them that's eating the brassicas it's them that are eating the brassicas
36:24I thought it was the pigeons well I think maybe put some netting up to really keep them out
36:29some robust netting birds are always going to be a problem on allotments
36:34there are plenty of ways to deter them but netting is the only way to keep them out
36:38if you use a net make sure you pick one with small holes
36:42if they're too big some small birds could get stuck or tangled up inside
36:49it's nice to see that the uh the old sweetcorns are starting to uh
36:52the cobs are forming aren't they it's brilliant
36:55I mean it surprised me we've got this whole area of grass and it's just so much grass
37:00and it's just so much grass and it's just so much grass and it's just so much grass
37:05brilliant I mean it surprised me we've got this whole plot and I was like yeah there's loads of
37:09space and we're going to grow loads of stuff but as soon as you start going okay well actually
37:13we can get three rows of sweetcorn in here and we can get four chickpea plants in there
37:18and all of a sudden you're like I've kind of run out of space and really quickly and um
37:22I've actually managed to kind of wiggle myself a little bit more land on the plot
37:26have you I don't know if you want to take a look yeah definitely
37:28brilliant
37:34so this is our extension that's amazing and it's level I know no more terracing right which is
37:40great these are kind of a rough plan that I've drawn up and I really want it to be a nature
37:45area yeah so I've gone for a pollinator bed kind of a bit for a pond and then lots of rows of salad
37:50and more space and I really want to globe out each other oh that will look so nice yeah so yeah that's
37:55that's kind of my plan um I think a big place to start should cut the beds out let's do it cool
38:09these past months I've met a whole host of different allotment holders and have learned so
38:15much today I'm keen to discover more about how allotments can not only be hot spots for pollinators
38:22but can also be their homes too
38:27I'm meeting Quentin Alsop who's been keeping bees on his allotment plot for the last four years
38:33how many bees would live in one hive it depends on the time of year really if anything from
38:39say 15 20 000 up to 50 000 in a big strong colony in the peak of summer that's so many yeah so if
38:47you want to keep bees on an allotment like this then then how do you go about that I would
38:52recommend going on a course so you understand bees and understand their behavior one of the
38:57recommendations from the British Beekeeping Association is if you are going to keep bees
39:01on allotment you need to put them out the way into a corner so they're causing the least bother
39:06to people you need to get them to go fly up and over the people's heads so if you can put a fence
39:11like we've got around here so they get over two meters above people's head height and are there
39:15any particular plants that you grow that that are great for beekeeping I would encourage you
39:22to grow early season things like hellebores and snowdrops because when they come out of their
39:28hibernation cluster that kind of source of pollen and next is really important in the start of the
39:34year so I would go for for that but you really want to spread because it's not just honeybees
39:41on allotment there there's one there's one honeybee in the UK there are 25 bumblebees and 225
39:48different types of solitary bees and it's really all the other kind of pollinators that you need
39:52to be encouraging well I'm going to be planting a lot of flowers at different kinds on the allotment
39:57which has to surely be a good thing for pollinators oh absolutely absolutely make sure you've got a
40:01broad spectrum to appeal to all the different types fantastic well thank you for showing me
40:05these so I put them back to bed
40:24hello hey you're right flowers nice how was your visit to the bees yeah really interesting and the
40:31guy was lovely and gave me some honey to take away that's wicked it's a really nice thing to
40:37keep part of your garden or your allotment for wildlife and people often think that means keeping
40:41things weedy wild flowers that don't look very neat but it doesn't need to do that so things
40:47like cottage garden plants are a really nice way of bringing as much wildlife as you can
40:53without compromising you on the aesthetic how's that looking from further back it's looking really
40:58nice this delphinium is a rather spectacular plant for us but for bees it really stands out
41:08this blue and white is like a helipad let's draw them in so it's fantastic for pollinating insects
41:14this is a yarrow achillea millefolium this flower is made up of hundreds of tiny daisy flowers and
41:19it's in the daisy family which means it's fantastic bringing in bees and pollinators
41:24flowers last absolutely ages as cut flowers or here in the ground
41:32what do you think it's amazing i'm really pressed with it it's really good isn't it
41:37what i've tried to do is bring in something for all the different kinds of insects that there are
41:41and people always forget um night pollinators so things like moths and night insects so there's
41:46things like phlox which are fantastic anything that really smells strongly at night time or
41:51often if it's really light in color the flower then they can see it in low light levels okay so
41:56that will be fantastic for bringing in moths oh that's amazing i'm glad we're covering for everyone
42:00yeah insect mini bar exactly keep them all busy looks great though yeah no i'm really
42:05impressed thank you man no no no worries it's good it's been a tough day here but it's really
42:16satisfying knowing that there are now flowers that will bring in pollinators from everywhere
42:20because at the end of the day an allotment is about produce but it's also about all the
42:25other creatures that come here and use this space
42:38i think francis's point about planting plants that will attract night flying insects particularly
42:46is really pertinent and things like this phlox are absolutely ideal and of course they're
42:52fantastic for humans too the phlox nicotiana sylvestris night-scented stock all have wonderful
43:00rich scent and as the light fades round about half past eight nine o'clock not only do they
43:07start to glow but also they release that wonderful fragrance but i confess that i have had a big
43:15problem in the last few weeks with one of the most important insects in the garden and those
43:20are the bees i've got two beehives and one of them a top bar hive was really busy and going
43:26very well until i noticed about three weeks ago there was a lack of activity
43:31and i inspected and looked inside and there were no bees there at all they had gone
43:36so i immediately contacted my bee mentor gareth who has guided me through the whole system and
43:42instructed me and asked him to come over and explain to me what might have gone wrong
44:01gosh look at that you know monty it is it's so disappointing to see this but after the winter
44:08that we had there was a tremendous amount of bees that were lost nationally right um but you think
44:15this is just a result of weather yeah this is this is something that was pretty unavoidable
44:20and all these combs yeah it's just would have had a decent amount of honey in yeah so with these top
44:27bar hives are they slightly more prone to winter damage than a frame hive no mortality on top bars
44:34shouldn't be any higher than a frame hive and what's the best thing to do now shall we leave
44:40it open and hoping that a wild swarm moves in i would say it's not the prime time for swarms
44:45so probably come two three weeks time if we haven't got bees in here it might be a case of
44:51trim the comb down clean everything up and get it ready for spring right now what about that other
44:59hive here the the frame hive which seems to be perfectly active and unhealthy
45:09this is such a different setup isn't it and there we are although there are plenty of bees there
45:16it's not that full is it no it's not it's not a huge colony but having said there's not a lot
45:21of bees in there we've got all the nice pearly white larvae in there yeah which is all healthy
45:26brood so yeah i'd be quite happy with this good good beautiful beautiful yeah we've got some nice
45:38weight to it yeah how lovely is that very interesting to see what the taste of that
45:43is like i mean one of the things that since we started to keep bees you realize how every batch
45:47of honey is different every season it changes but british summer honey is is the honey to have
45:57i think we should give these guys a break yeah i think i think they've seen enough
46:00if you put it back together again we'll have a chat in a minute
46:09you may remember that last summer i sent off some honey to the national botanic garden of
46:14wales to have it analyzed to see which flowers have been the source now i finally got the answer
46:22back this week and it is fascinating because at the top of the list over 44 percent was camellia
46:32and then you have malus cotoneaster cretaceous which is 12 percent choisea 11 percent and then
46:38it goes prunus acer quercus salix but the really extraordinary thing is the camellia and the choisea
46:48and that's because we hardly grow any camellias and we only have one choisea plant
46:55and i was thinking that can't be maybe they went to the neighbor's garden but then gareth explained
46:59to me that it was a top bar hive they couldn't make a bar in a week so what we sampled was really
47:07a snapshot of one week in this garden and i checked up and looked at photographs of the
47:14garden when all the these various plants were in flower and that was the middle of april 2017
47:21and there were camellias in flower in the writing garden there were apples in flower here in the
47:26orchard there was a choisea in the wildlife garden so in fact all the flowers nearby to the hive
47:34they gorged on and then as the flowers finished they moved on
47:39and this summer we have all noticed in our gardens that the plants the bees have been
47:46most attracted to have been those that have enjoyed most sunshine
47:51and mark lane has been to the isle of white to follow that sun
47:56so
48:06in the heat of summer there is one classic garden style that always comes to mind what
48:13better captures the nostalgia and feeling of those holidaying months than a mediterranean garden
48:20The essence of a mediterranean garden is all about relaxation. Outdoor living is at its heart.
48:29Shaded havens provide space for entertaining friends and family.
48:34Fragrant plants fill the air with their heady scents spilling onto weathered tiles and patios.
48:41Today I've come to Ventnor Botanic Gardens on the Isle of Wight. One of the best examples of
48:47a mediterranean garden in the UK and that's because it's Britain's hottest garden.
49:02Chris Kidd is the very lucky curator in charge of the garden.
49:06Chris this is an absolutely beautiful garden. How on earth did you create it on UK soil?
49:12The great advantage that we have here in the undercliff of Ventnor is that we
49:15have the climatic conditions perfect for the mediterranean. So by putting these plants in
49:19which love growing in these conditions you get a very good picture of what the med truly looks like.
49:25So people who may not have this sort of climate where they live
49:29can they get a sense of what it's like to live in a mediterranean garden?
49:33Absolutely. The range of plants which is available to grow in the garden at home
49:37from the mediterranean is very wide. You can find perennials, bulbs, shrubs,
49:44grasses, all the things which will fit together that can be grown throughout the country.
49:49There's a real lovely sort of wildness to the garden and a real sort of natural rhythm
49:53and what I really love are these wonderful boulders and rocks that you sort of position
49:57between the plants and the soil.
49:59These wonderful boulders and rocks that you sort of position between the plants,
50:03what's the reasoning for those?
50:05Where we're trying to recreate the wild when you see the mediterranean there are spaces between
50:10the plants which are rocky where no plants can grow and it's important for us to put those in
50:14there to replicate it. Just like in music where you've got the notes you need the spaces between
50:19the notes to turn it into music. It's the same with our garden we need the empty spaces between
50:23the plants to make the garden come alive.
50:25Personally, this is one of my absolute favourite garden styles.
50:31So how do you transform your own outdoor space into a slice of the med?
50:41In the mediterranean the garden is part of long-standing family traditions.
50:47It's all about living al fresco so getting the mood for eating,
50:51al fresco so getting the mood for eating, socializing and just relaxing in the great outdoors
50:59and find yourself a perfect spot for a little seating area or a small patio and then why not
51:06add height with a pergola and real verdant planting for that shady corner and you'll
51:13soon be feeling that wonderful mediterranean vibe.
51:16Hard landscaping is a key element of this style
51:19so it works brilliantly for anyone averse to lawn maintenance.
51:27Grass can be replaced with easy-going gravel or paving
51:31imbuing the garden with a range of warm natural tones.
51:40And don't forget to have fun with the garden.
51:46Personal touches such as sculpture, pots or a water feature.
51:58Do think about the conditions.
52:00Mediterranean plants love really well-drained soil
52:04but you can use plenty of grit or sand to help with this.
52:11So the success or failure of your mediterranean style
52:14is down to the choice of plants that you make.
52:17So here's my guide to the VIPs, the very important plants that you'll need to get going.
52:31The true icon of the mediterranean is the olive tree
52:35but there are other ways to create height and drama.
52:39Whenever I think about mediterranean plants
52:42I think about these beautiful ecchions.
52:45These vertical spires reaching for the sky with pale blue flowers.
52:51They really like a warm climate so they're best grown down in the south.
52:56But if you want that vertical interest then why not try bacchanthus mollus.
53:03It'll grow anywhere, it is a bit of a thug and it's a bit of a pain in the butt.
53:08It does like to spread in the garden but it's definitely worth the commitment.
53:21Inject a zing of colour into your scheme.
53:24Selvia is another fragrant plant and these delicate flowers add a kaleidoscope of colour.
53:31But my absolute favourite is glorious lavender.
53:35There are now so many different varieties,
53:38you're guaranteed to find one that suits your garden and your conditions.
53:43And of course the best thing of all, bees absolutely love it.
53:56There is something really special about lavender.
53:59There is something really irresistible about the mediterranean style
54:04with its casual elegance and its perfume charm.
54:08And the great thing is it can be used super low maintenance
54:12which means you can enjoy your garden without all the hard work.
54:17Well if ever there was a summer to enjoy the pleasures of mediterranean gardening it's been this one.
54:33And some plants in the garden have performed better than they have done for years and years.
54:38And basil is absolutely one of them.
54:41I grow it normally in my greenhouse and I get really good results
54:47from the heat that it gets under glass and we then make it into pesto.
54:51I also always sow some outside but it never does very well.
54:56It tends to get leathery and yellow when it gets cold and then the taste goes.
55:01Well this year, this summer, the outdoor basil has been as good as if not better than any I've grown indoors.
55:08We've got a great big bed of it against the greenhouse.
55:11I've grown some in the trough here and it has loved every minute of the blazing sun.
55:19And if you cut it just above a leaf, fairly near the base,
55:24there's a real chance that you'll get regrowth and maybe another crop.
55:31Well that should be enough to make a really good batch of fresh pesto.
55:37But if you don't grow basil and you don't want to make pesto,
55:39here are some other jobs you can do this weekend.
55:56The hot summer has meant that lavender has flowered and gone to seed earlier than normal.
56:01So now it's time to cut back.
56:03Cut back hard but not right into old wood.
56:08Then the regrowth will have time to harden off before the cold weather begins.
56:18If you grow tomatoes, all your attention now should be into developing the fruit
56:23rather than the plants.
56:25Nothing will be more effective to do this than using a high potash feed.
56:30I'm using homemade comfrey but a liquid seaweed
56:33applied once a week will do the job just as well.
56:43Cane fruits such as raspberries and taberries have finished their summer crop.
56:49They bear their fruit on the previous season's growth.
56:52So all these old fruiting canes can now be cut back down to the ground.
56:58And then the new green growth that is left behind can be tied in and pruned accordingly
57:04so it is ready for the winter and to carry next year's harvest.
57:19When you're making pesto, it's the leaves that you want, not the stems.
57:24And there is no magic recipe to pesto.
57:27Every family in Italy certainly had its own version.
57:31And traditionally you use a pestle and mortar and grind it.
57:35And what we do is fill a kitchen mixer with leaves,
57:41add a couple of cloves of good garlic and add some parmesan and pine nuts
57:48and then give it a whiz.
57:50And when it's mixed, start to drizzle in some oil.
57:53And you'll need quite a lot.
57:55And that's it.
57:56It's fantastic with pasta or with potatoes and it freezes really well.
58:03But I have to say at this time of year it's a treat to eat it absolutely fresh.
58:09Well that's it for today.
58:11So till next Friday.
58:13Bye-bye.
58:41Bye-bye.