Gardeners World S52e26 06-09-19

  • last month
Transcript
00:00Hello. Welcome to Gardener's World. Monty's away on holiday, so you've got me today.
00:23Just trying to help these cardoons a little bit with a job that I probably should have
00:26done a month or so ago. Just giving them support because I want to keep these through the winter
00:32months. I do think these heads look absolutely fantastic as the plant browns and the frosts
00:39arrive. So all I'm using is a steel pin. Anything that's going to be strong enough just to support
00:45this stem. Hopefully that will help carry these right through the winter months and
00:52get to enjoy one of those frosty mornings.
00:57Coming up on today's programme, we meet a naval captain who's made it his mission to
01:02design a garden that could take care of itself when he's away for months at sea. Rachel's
01:10rejuvenating a collection of pots to extend their season into late summer.
01:17And I will be tackling one beast of a viburnum.
01:21It's getting to that time of year when you can get back in your borders and start to
01:45make the adjustments for next year. I feel like I've been in and out of these herbaceous
01:50beds ever since I've planted them. But they're slowly, slowly getting there and I think that's
01:55it with gardening. It's just every year, can you edit, can you change what's worked, what
02:00hasn't worked. And now I'm looking at it, I'm really happy with the Cotinus at the back there,
02:05the Baptisia, those two foliages work really well together. And then as we come through,
02:11the Roses, the Munster's Wood and the Gertrude Eco are flowered and flowered and flowered.
02:16But there's just a gap there. And I think I just need to add a bit of colour that's going to,
02:22this time of year, really bring the whole thing alive.
02:25To help add a bit of height to the back of the border, I'm going to use two tall herbaceous
02:30perennials, Eupatorium maculatum, with its purplish-pink flowers and a dazzling orange-yellow
02:38Rebecca. So the first thing I want to do is get this Eupatorium in place.
02:51I don't think that's too bad. Just come out there.
03:01I can see straight away the grasses will be higher next year.
03:04That Eupatorium will get up to two metres plus, depending on your soil, and those
03:09lovely flat heads will work well against that strong vertical of the grass. So we can get them in.
03:23Buying herbaceous plants this time of year makes an awful lot of sense,
03:29because so many of them have got really strong root systems on them. You know,
03:34they've had the full season of growth. And, if you're lucky, you might even pick up a deal.
03:43This is a fantastic back of the border plant, not just for that late colour but for the bees
03:49and the butterflies. I'm really teasing these roots. I'm not being that gentle, and that will
03:57stimulate that new growth and help get them going. I personally think that September is one of the
04:07best months of the year to plant, because you've got that warmth in the soil from the summer,
04:15but also you've got the moisture starting to arrive in the sort of, you know, the dues in
04:21the mornings and then the evening. Make that a bit bigger. Generally, when I'm planting plants,
04:29what I'm looking to do is make the hole twice as wide as the plant. So if you imagine,
04:36you know, that is my plant, I'm going to make that again either side.
04:39Just making sure that there's no air gaps in around those roots. And I'm firming it,
04:45but again, I'm not jumping on it.
04:50And I love the colours straight away as well. Eupatorium, Cotinus. There's a lovely little
04:55tone that just works between them. And not just the flower, if you look carefully, that dark stem
05:01piece of the flower. And then the flowers, you know, the flowers are really, really, really
05:06If you look carefully, that dark stem picks up as well. Anyway, I better stop waffling and keep
05:14planting. Final firm. There you go.
05:45You're seeing this before me.
05:50What do you think?
05:54It's Rebecca, Prairie Glow. And it really does glow.
06:00Lovely little sort of orangey yellow tips, which I think pick up beautifully with the golden rod.
06:04And then that Cracosmia at the front there.
06:08I mean, they're a plant that's not that long lived, but apparently they can see it a little
06:12bit as well. I think it's going to work. Let's just get out of here and have a final look.
06:21Straight away now, you can see that orange against the pear. But actually, as the season goes on,
06:25that will give autumn colour and that will just bring the whole thing alive again.
06:29And what's lovely about things like the Eupatorium and the Rebeccia
06:33is they'll keep those seed heads and they'll look great right through the winter.
06:38It's interesting, isn't it, when it comes to planting gardens and even creating them.
06:43I've put that in there and straight away, it's put a smile on my face.
06:47But as well as that, we should create spaces that work for our lives.
06:51And we're now off to meet a man that has done just that.
07:01I'm Kyle Woodfield. I live in a little village in Hampshire called Lockerley.
07:05The garden's really special to me because I spend eight months of my life a year in a steel box.
07:13And I always buy a few plants for my cabin on board, because I don't like to be the only thing growing in it.
07:21I'm a captain in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary. We operate worldwide in support of the Royal Navy.
07:26I am the only gardener in the family. My wife is bringing up three children.
07:31I can't ask her to take on my garden as well.
07:34So there's some fairly intensive gardening that goes on when I'm at home.
07:38But the garden fends for itself when I'm away.
07:47I've been gardening this space for about 22 years now.
07:51When we moved in, it was just concrete.
07:53I started gardening in pots, etc., but found it quite difficult
07:57because I'm away from the home for four months at a time.
08:01I lost a lot of plants, and I realised that I needed borders
08:04so that the plants could survive without me.
08:20It is a small space. It's about 36 square metres.
08:23And the challenge really is to make it feel bigger.
08:27And to do that, I've brought in some fairly big plants that I've grown on.
08:32So I've planted some trees in here and some large shrubs.
08:35And that helps it feel bigger, even though it's a small space.
08:39I tend to shy away from annuals and things which are too fussy and need too much maintenance.
08:44So in the garden here, I've actually grown all of my box from one plant.
08:49So all of the box you can see are cuttings and provide continuity through the garden.
08:54So there's really good winter structure in here as well.
09:00I tend to sow seeds every year when I'm at home, if I'm home at the right time.
09:05I have a greenhouse which I inherited. It's my granddad's greenhouse.
09:08It's a bit decrepit, but it's hidden up behind the garage.
09:12And it's my hidden paradise up there.
09:15Somewhere to go and escape from three daughters.
09:19I have quite a few hostas in the garden because they're great form
09:26and they fit in really well with the design.
09:28I obviously, you know, suffer with slugs and snails like everybody else.
09:32But I'm lucky at the moment as I have a hedgehog,
09:35which hoovers up an awful lot of slugs and snails.
09:41I've got splashes of color in the garden throughout the year.
09:44And one of them that's out at the moment is the hydrangea Annabelle.
09:48She's got some fantastic white blooms
09:50and just adds a little bit of interest and color, but not too much.
09:59Inspiration wise, I decided to create some focal points and I've used the stained glass.
10:04I borrowed that idea from a show garden at Chelsea.
10:08So from the dining room, you can see right the way through to the lit stained glass.
10:12And also as you come into the garden through the gate,
10:15I've raised the crown on the choice here and created the seating area.
10:20So you have that focal point as well.
10:25My job is very challenging, but coming home and having this space
10:29as a green verdant space is fantastic for me and my mental well-being.
10:36My kids say if they can't find me, they know exactly where I am and that in the garden.
10:45I found that absolutely fascinating.
11:09The fact that Carl spends so long at sea, but still takes plants with him.
11:15And then when he gets back, that connection with his garden is incredibly important to him.
11:21And maybe we all need somewhere just to spend a few minutes and escape.
11:25And this is mine.
11:26The orchard area, which is also the wildflower meadow that we planted last year.
11:32And in general, I'm happy with it.
11:34It's interesting the way that the sunnier end, the flowers have done really well.
11:37Even the Achillea now and the daisies are still doing their thing.
11:41But more you get into the shade, the grasses are good,
11:44but the flowers not doing so well.
11:47It's just a lovely place to come and spend a few minutes, isn't it?
11:51Eh?
12:09When we first moved into the property,
12:13we inherited a lot of big, slightly overgrown shrubs.
12:17And what I would say to anyone, first of all, is take your time.
12:21Don't just go in and slash and burn.
12:24And I didn't want to rush at this space because it's that main view from the house.
12:29And at the moment, it just looks really heavy and quite dark and very blocky.
12:34And today, I'm going to give this Viburnum tinus a prune.
12:40What I want to do is I want to lift the canopy.
12:43It allows me to start planting right the way underneath.
12:47Obviously, you're going to do anything like this.
12:48There's always a little bit of a gamble.
12:51You don't know quite what shape you're going to get out of the plant.
12:54But I've done one already.
12:56Just at the back of the house, we had a huge Viburnum
12:59that started to die back from the bottom.
13:01So what I did is just started to lift the canopy on it.
13:04And it's worked really well.
13:06The stems look interesting.
13:08And it's lovely because from its base,
13:09what's happened is the growths have started shooting from the roots.
13:13So I've got these little patches that I'm going to clip.
13:16Into shapes.
13:18First thing I'm going to do is just get stuck in.
13:21I'm going to start low and lift my way up.
13:24But I'm not worried too much to start with
13:28because as I get further into the plant,
13:30I can start to understand where I make those final cuts.
13:37In a book, it would tell me to prune this early to mid-spring.
13:41But it'd be absolutely fine now.
13:44It's in a shelter position.
13:46And I know it's a tough plant.
13:49I think what I love about shrubs like this,
13:52especially the winter flowering ones,
13:53is I'm quite happy that they disappear into the background
13:57through the summer.
13:59And then in the winter, they become a structure.
14:10As soon as you clear a bit of room in there,
14:12you can see there's so much dead timber in there.
14:16I think that's the first thing to remember
14:18when you're pruning, is the three Ds.
14:20First thing I was taught at college,
14:22dead, diseased, and damaged.
14:24That can really be removed sort of any time of the year.
14:34A couple of bits in here, I've got a lot of dead timber.
14:37The way you can work it out, if you listen,
14:41it's a very different sound to the live timber.
14:46But also, if you're worried, just scrape very carefully.
14:50And if it's live underneath there,
14:53we'll be a bit of grief.
15:16Oh, look at that.
15:24Fun, isn't it?
15:25Hee hee hee.
15:38Hopefully that gives you a bit of an idea
15:40of what I'm trying to achieve.
15:41You've got that depth back in there
15:43and I can start to add those layers of planting.
15:47And I think that needs a little bit of improvement.
15:49So I'm going to put some organic matter in,
15:51maybe add some spring bulbs.
15:53But I'm quite pleased with that.
16:03One of the things that I really love about gardening
16:06is the constant change.
16:07Things ebb and flow and there's always a job to do.
16:12And on that note, you might remember early on in the year,
16:14I put my pots back against the wall
16:17to give real good summer interest.
16:19She's gone back to the same group,
16:21just to look, maybe how she can edit
16:24and just add a little life to carry her through
16:26to the back end of the season.
16:41It's been more than two months
16:42I've planted up the bulk of these.
16:45And I can't tell you how much joy it's given me.
16:47But I think what it needs now is reassessment,
16:51replenishing, refreshing.
16:52And I'm going to start by taking out the things
16:54that are just no longer earning their keep here.
16:58The lily, which was here before,
16:59it was just a little tiny baby stem.
17:02I can go into a nice quiet corner of the garden
17:05and hide away until next year.
17:06Now this is a form of Digitalis purpurea.
17:09So they, to me, look rather scrappy now.
17:12Foliage is a bit shredded, not a great colour.
17:16Flowering's finished pretty much.
17:17And there's some nice new growth just at the very base.
17:20So it might be worth digging them up,
17:23putting them somewhere else for a while.
17:27Most of these plants can have another life out in the garden
17:31or will flourish again next year in pots.
17:35To keep this season's display fresh for as long as possible,
17:39keep on top of the watering, the feeding,
17:42and deadhead regularly to encourage new flowers.
17:46Now sometimes there's a decision to be made
17:48about whether or not you do deadhead.
17:51And I think with the Geum, I was deadheading it earlier on,
17:54but actually I love the fact that it's still producing
17:58the old flower here and there, which is still very pretty.
18:01But I rather like these seed heads.
18:04They're kind of like little orangey stars
18:06and they just dot through this bronze fennel.
18:09And I think it's a very pretty effect.
18:11So I'm going to leave that at least for now.
18:13However, here the mint has gone a bit mad.
18:17It's also sort of starting to flower just on the tips here.
18:21Now I could cut that really hard back right to the base
18:24and get a new flush of leaves,
18:26but actually I like the height.
18:28It looks scruffy at the base.
18:30So I'm going to tuck it somewhere in amongst the other pots
18:33and just have that little bit of very gated foliage showing through.
18:37So
18:54now I noticed that this pot has a very nice diocese, still looks good,
19:00but at the back is a really scrappy looking nasturtium.
19:06And it was great, but I think now is the time to lose it from this pot.
19:13On the compost heap that will go.
19:15Right, I'm going to replace it with this beautiful Crocosmia Carmen Brilliant.
19:26And I like two things particularly about it.
19:29One is that it's going to be that same shot of really fiery bright colour
19:34that you get with the nasturtium.
19:36The other good thing about this variety is it's compact.
19:40This stays at about half a metre, 60 centimetres in height.
19:44So as you can see, it's perfect scale for this size of pot.
19:48So that's nice.
19:48So I haven't had to get rid of everything in here, just refreshing it.
19:54That's something equally lovely.
19:56And then this could always go out into the garden next year.
19:58Oh, snail.
20:00Aha, that's going.
20:02That's from the nasturtiums, you see.
20:06So, now, what I've really loved about this planting
20:19is the height here from these Verbena Benariensis.
20:22Beautiful, that little spangling of mauve flowers on the top.
20:26But I feel they're so tall, they're kind of detached from the rest of the planting.
20:29And I wanted to find something in similar colour.
20:31And then I spotted this beautiful Verbena with a rather branching habit.
20:37And the flowers go all the way through it.
20:39It's called Bampton.
20:40It's more compact, but again, it's a lovely colour
20:43and a really nice dark intensity to the stems.
20:46So I'm going to just put that here as my sort of main plant.
20:55And then next to it, just lower down, because I think this is beautiful.
20:59Here, not so good.
21:01It gets a little bit scrappy at the base.
21:03So I found a lovely Sedum.
21:06It's called Touchdown Teak.
21:09Again, these fleshy leaves means that they're absolutely adapted for low water conditions.
21:18So that goes in there.
21:21Dare I even try a little tiny bit of fennel?
21:27Yes, I dare.
21:32There we go.
21:32And I like that little bit of bronze fennel,
21:34because that will just sort of weave a lovely mist around the whole thing,
21:38make it soft and beautiful.
21:47Right, well, I'm going to try the mint there for a day or two.
21:51And then I think I might be chopping it back after all.
21:53But we'll see.
21:54And that's freed up a little space for this Verbena and Sedum.
22:01Near the door.
22:04I really like that.
22:06I love how it's drawn the colour down to here.
22:17I'll probably come out tomorrow morning and move it all around again.
22:19And that's really the joy of gardening with containers.
22:23And I'm expecting to have weeks of glorious colour still from this lot.
22:27And then we'll do it all over again with winter pots, won't we?
22:31Yes, we will.
22:33Come on then.
22:34Dinner time.
22:51I think Rachel's got an incredible eye for detail.
22:55Those pots looked fantastic.
22:57But they proved something.
22:59You don't necessarily need a lot of space to more or less create a spacious border.
23:03Could be a balcony or a small courtyard.
23:07I use pots in lots of different ways in the garden,
23:10maybe sometimes to pull you through a space
23:13or just here to pause you before you move in to the rest of the garden.
23:17And I've used all the succulents and this Aeonium Pomegranate
23:21at the moment is just stopping me in my tracks.
23:24And I just enjoy, I suppose, the shape of it.
23:28It's quite sculptural and just the way the water sits on it.
23:34It's even quite nice just having a few minutes to come out and tidy them up.
23:58I think it's lovely this time of year
24:00just to try and get a little bit more out of your veg garden.
24:04I'm already thinking about raw beans going in in a few weeks time,
24:09same as the peas.
24:10And some years we managed to get a lovely early crop out of them,
24:14some years we don't.
24:16But what I'm going to do today is sow some Pak Choy,
24:19which is great in stir fries and it really does taste lovely.
24:23We've still got probably, I hope, six to eight weeks before the weather turns.
24:27We can get a half reasonable crop out of it
24:29and even if it doesn't reach full maturity,
24:32we'll still be able to use the plant in the kitchen.
24:35It's a really easy one to sow.
24:38All I'm going to do is create a little drill about a centimetre deep.
24:45This plant doesn't necessarily have to be grown in the garden.
24:48You could try some in a pot.
24:51And then, it's just a matter of sowing the seeds.
24:54I will sow these quite heavily this time of year,
24:57but the moment they start to come up,
24:59I'll just pop out here and thin them out.
25:06Work that all the way through.
25:09Now all I'm doing is just really gently covering back over.
25:13You just water that in.
25:17And I will keep an eye on that over the next few weeks
25:20because September can be a little bit dry.
25:25And the last thing is to fleece it over.
25:29Slugs love fleecing over.
25:31I'm going to do that in about a week.
25:33So, I've got a little bit of a free time to do that.
25:35But I'm going to do it in about two weeks.
25:37And the last thing is to fleece it over.
25:42Slugs love the young seedlings.
25:44So, if I can keep these quite well covered,
25:46then the moment that the seedlings start to come up,
25:50they'll be protected.
25:55Pin those quite tightly.
25:59More or less, in a way, just try and bury that in.
26:02The moment the seedlings start to come up,
26:05I then use these little wire frames
26:07and then cover it that way.
26:09And that gives them just that extra bit of protection.
26:12So, hopefully, in a few weeks' time,
26:14we'll be enjoying Pak Choy in a wonderful stir-fry.
26:18That's one job done.
26:20Here's a few more for your weekend, if you fancy it.
26:32Autumn is a really good time to move herbaceous perennials.
26:36So, if you have any plants that have outgrown their space,
26:39now's the time to dig them up and divide them.
26:44I tend to use two forks back-to-back,
26:47but you could also use a spade.
26:49This may look brutal, but the plants will come to no harm.
26:55Replant each piece,
26:57keeping them well-watered until they get a standing start.
27:02And then they'll be established.
27:09This is your last call to give your evergreen hedges,
27:12like Privet, Lalandeite, and Yew,
27:15their final haircut of the season.
27:17If you do it now, they'll stay looking nice and crisp all winter long.
27:22You could use shears, but I like to use a hedge trimmer.
27:32It's a good idea to lift main crop potatoes
27:35before the bad weather arrives.
27:38But before you do this, it's worth removing all the dying top growth
27:42to give the skins time to harden under the ground.
27:45This will help to prolong their storage
27:48when you come to dig them up in a fortnight's time.
28:03Mrs. Frost has gone and bought me an early birthday present.
28:06I said I wanted a new lawnmower.
28:08She's bought me three of them.
28:10So, Meat, Ron, Rita, and Reg.
28:15The kids named them.
28:17They're islands, and I'm going to use them in a garden
28:19in around that orchard area.
28:22But they're incredibly friendly.
28:26Anyway, that's it from us.
28:27I hope you've enjoyed it, because I've had a fantastic time.
28:30I've got some great news for you.
28:31Next week, Friday night at 8 o'clock,
28:33Gardener's World is back to an hour,
28:36and Monty will be back at Lawnmower.
28:37So, bye-bye.
28:40Hey, what are you doing?
28:42What are you doing?
28:43There you go.