Gardeners World S52e28 20-09-19
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Hello, welcome to Gardner's World. At this time of year, there's only one job that really
00:21counts, one job that you should do above all others, and that's deadheading. And that's
00:26because as the days get shorter and colder at the same time, plants are eager to put
00:33all their resources into producing seed. And once they do that, flowering dwindles to a
00:40halt. So by removing the seed heads, you're encouraging it to produce yet more flowers,
00:46to have another bash at getting some seed. Now, the plants that respond to light are
00:52really going fast. It's asking a lot of them as the days get shorter to keep on flowering.
00:57But those that come from nearer the equator, like the cannas and dahlias and typhonias,
01:03will go on flowering however short the days, as long as it doesn't get too cold. Take a
01:09canna like this one here, for example. You've got a lovely flower there, and that flower
01:14spike, but this flower spike has ended. So the thing to do is to cut it off right at
01:20the base there. That leaves the flowers and stops this becoming the focus of the plant's
01:27energy. And if you do this, you can keep the garden flowering and looking really good for
01:34weeks to come. On today's programme, Carol visits a garden which celebrates the onset
01:41of autumn in all its colourful glory. This whole place is full of this glowing golden
01:48colour. The whole place is aglow. Francis is in Glasgow to meet a gardener whose hands-off
01:55approach has helped to create a haven for wildlife. Welcome, Francis, to my little wilderness
02:02patch. Wow. There's certainly a lot going on here, isn't there? And I shall be sowing
02:09a mix of wildflowers in my orchard to provide a banquet of polymer nectar for my bees.
02:27Do you remember that I sowed this bed with seeds in the middle of July? And the idea
02:33being that you could still sow seeds in the middle of summer and get a harvest. Well,
02:39not only have we got a harvest, we've been eating a lot of it. These are little gem lettuce,
02:43and they have been really good. The oakleaf lettuce has grown very well indeed. Spinach
02:50has been and gone, and I've replaced it with the rocket. We've got climbing beans here,
02:55and a lovely crop of purple potted beans. Now, the longer and the shorter it is, sow
03:00some seed. As long as you get something in the ground by the beginning of August, you've
03:04got yourself a vegetable garden. It's garlic planting time. I like to get this done in
03:19September if I can, although October, November, and even December is fine. But this is something
03:24you absolutely want to do by Christmas. Garlic needs a period of vernalisation, of cold weather.
03:31Otherwise, it will grow, but it won't form separate cloves. I'm planting elephant garlic
03:39today. I've got here this year's harvest, and you can see that the individual bulbs are whoppers,
03:47but they are actually more delicately flavoured than some of the smaller garlics.
03:52Now, there are two things to remember when you're planting garlic, whether it's a whopping
04:09great clove like that, or quite a small one. First of all, pointy end up. And the second
04:16thing is, is to plant it quite deep. Ideally, you want the depth of the clove, again, above
04:26it with soil. And these are fairly large plants. They will grow about three foot tall, and you
04:39need a good eight to nine inches in between them. And down we go. Whatever type of garlic
04:51you want to grow, the planting technique is the same. Now, if I just gently rake over the soil,
05:07it'll fill the holes. And those will appear sometime around the middle of November.
05:16And the important thing about all types of garlic is to develop really good foliage. They need water,
05:29they need nutrients, and of course, sunshine. And that in turn will feed back into the bulb.
05:35I always feel that getting garlic in the ground is a real sign that autumn is here. But Carol has
05:46been to a garden in the Cotswolds where they haven't given up on summer at all. The garden
05:52is still just radiant with colour. As the vibrancy of summer begins to fade,
06:14our gardens can start to look a bit on the tired side. But here at East Leach House,
06:21there are all manner of plants that are just coming into their own,
06:24making early autumn a pure celebration. This is the real garden. And right now,
06:45it's packed with plants that all of us could use to bring colour to our borders at this time of year.
06:51It's divided up into colour sections, just like a rainbow. Here, there are a whole variety of
06:59different pinks. This is Prince Heinrich. It's a beautiful autumn flowering anemone. And it's
07:06doing what these anemones always do, wandering around and putting itself up here and there,
07:13and always looking perfect. One of the things I really like about this variety is that these
07:19flowers have five sepals. But having that odd number makes the flowers almost oblong,
07:26quite different from other anemones. It's used here next to a hydrangea. When this was planted,
07:34it was blue wave. It still is blue wave. But because of the high alkalinity of the soil,
07:40the hydrangeas turned to the prettiest pale pink. And then in the background are two big,
07:47tall plants vying for the space. One is a Eupatorium, a great big Joe Pye weed with
07:55these big fluffy heads of flowers. Next door to it, Clarodendron bungei. Don't you just love
08:02that name? This has these big heads of small pink flowers. It's got very dark stems and dark foliage.
08:10So it's a really dramatic plant. Taken all together, not only do the colors blend so
08:18beautifully well, but also it has this glorious informality as things wander backwards and forwards.
08:25This bed absolutely sizzles with orange flowers, all put together so beautifully. And lots of
08:42differences in texture and shape and form too. The centerpiece is this dahlia. It's David Howard.
08:50It's one of the most reliable of all dahlias. And in the background is this Hellenium. It just brings
08:57that orange color, this lovely fiery mass right through the bed. I think this is a really clever
09:05combination too. This is Maclea cordata, the plume poppy. And in this case, the plumes are orange.
09:13The leaves are glaucus, so that lovely sort of bluey green makes the orange even brighter. And
09:20then in the foreground, just to soften the whole picture, is this grass. It's an Amanthole
09:27Lassoniana. Used to call it Steeper Arundinacea. And it tumbles wherever you put it. It's soft,
09:36billowy, and it really completes this beautiful picture.
09:43There are a collection of blue plants here which are at their very best at this time of year.
09:56Asters, which are absolutely full of flower. And wending its way through the center of the
10:03arrangement is this lovely Geranium Rosanne. And then a really exciting Clematis. This one
10:10is Clematis Cassandra. And it's got these deep, rich blue flowers. It's a herbaceous Clematis,
10:18so it will die down right to the ground each year. You can cut it hard back and up it will
10:23come the following spring. But it saves most of its flowering until the late summer and the autumn.
10:30And added to all its virtues, this Clematis also has delicious scent. In front of it is a plant
10:38that's really for the early autumn. It's Ceratostigma Wilmottianum. It has possibly the
10:45richest of blue flowers. True ultramarine. And very shortly they'll be joined by the foliage
10:52going brilliant reds and oranges and russets. It really is the perfect autumnal picture.
11:08Although this is a garden on a grand scale, there are so many good examples here of how to
11:19make the most of a small space. Take this little bed in front of the windows. It's packed with a
11:26few simple straightforward plants. Starting off with this Tucrium, silvery and bringing light to
11:32the whole affair. And then on the wall behind it, this dark Fuchsia. Just a straightforward
11:39Fuchsia Magellanica, the hedging Fuchsia. But the Fuchsia forms the perfect foil for these big pale
11:46pink lily flowers of the crinum. Great straplight leaves and absolutely glorious in this autumn
11:54sunshine. And then spilling out onto the gravel is another Tucrium. This one is Comedris. Huge
12:02attractive to bees and the perfect foil for this great big Dahlia. This is purple gem and it really
12:12is the thing which brings this whole association to life. Another way of cramming more into a small
12:21space is to use one plant as a host for another. Here an unusual Chinese Clematis, Clematis fargesii,
12:29clambers through a shrubby Potentilla.
12:43Look at this Hallianthus Lemon Queen. It's just coming to bloom now and it's going to go on
12:49looking good for months on end. In fact, this whole place is full of this glowing golden colour.
12:57The whole place is aglow.
13:01When we talk about autumn colour, it's often with an air of sadness. Leaves changing colour gradually.
13:08But if you choose the right plants and put them together with partners that enhance them, you can
13:15keep that colour going right the way through for months on end.
13:26I'm transforming the orchard.
13:56For the first 15 years or so when we were here, this was lovely long grass that flowed like silk when it was
14:04full grown, but gradually the weeds have taken over. So I am now transforming this into what will be a
14:13wildflower meadow in an orchard. Back in July, we highlighted the loss of 97% of our wildflower meadows
14:21in the UK, which is devastating for our pollinating insects. The good news, though, is that we gardeners
14:29can help and make a real difference. Last month, I sowed a small verge with wildflower seed, but now I want
14:36to do it on a much larger scale, although the method remains exactly the same. Now, if you're making a
14:42wildflower meadow, you do have to reduce the grass as much as possible. A really good meadow is 80% flowering
14:53plants and 20% grass. So if you've got a lawn or an area of long grass, you need to beat the hell out of it. Rip it
15:02to shreds. Try and expose as much soil as you can. So I've cut it as low as possible. But even that isn't
15:12enough, because the next stage is to rip it up even more, make matters worse. And for that, I've hired a scarifier.
15:22A scarifier is really just a set of blades. If you look under here, you can see that there are a whole series of blades
15:29that are driven round, and they cut slots into the grass. The main purpose of the scarifier is to refresh grass at the end
15:44of the growing season, and it rips up dead thatch and moss and lets light and air in. But in this case, I'm using it to
15:52rip up some of the grass roots and also expose bare soil. Now you can get the same effect by using a wire rake, but for a
16:02large space like this, a scarifier makes life a lot easier.
16:05If I left things as they were, it wouldn't be enough. I need to go a stage further. And for that, I have an invaluable seed to help me.
16:29It is this. It's called yellow rattle, or the meadow maker, and it's semi-parasitic on grass. So wherever it grows well, grass grows a lot less well.
16:43Now when you buy your seed mix, there should be yellow rattle in it, but the reason why I've got extra is because in Herefordshire here, the soil is rich and the grass grows incredibly well.
16:54So I need extra oomph to try and diminish it. The seed mix that I've chosen is specifically high in pollen and nectar for our bees. What I'm trying to do is create the most fantastic banquet.
17:11This wants to be the best restaurant in town. And the beauty of the internet is that nowadays you can go online, look up seed mixes and choose one that is very specific for you. You can have mixes for acidic soil, for dry soil, damp soil, chalk, whatever it is.
17:30I'm going to mix the two up. This wildflower mix contains plants like the common knapweed, oxide daisy, bird's foot trefoil, wild red clover, and of course, yellow rattle.
17:55Okay, here goes.
18:05Yellow rattle is a seed that must be sown fresh. And it also needs fernalization. So buy it now, sow it before the end of October. It won't germinate till next spring, but the cold and the wet will help it germinate. If you wait till next spring to sow it, it may well not work.
18:24There's no doubt about it that October is a good time to sow meadows. Now, I'm sowing it fairly thinly, about one and a half grams per square meter. And the beauty of when you order these seeds is you work out the area and they will send you the right amount.
18:44This will be mown a couple or even three times before winter to keep the grass short. And also by using a mower with a roller, it will press the seed into really good contact with the bare soil and that will help germination.
18:58There'll be nothing to see at all until next spring. But if you want a wildflower meadow filled with poppies and cornflowers, that is an arable mix and is good for a bare border that has been cultivated and you can sow that next spring.
19:12This is a much slower business. It will gradually change and transform over a number of years and it could take between six to ten years before it really gets good. But that's slow gardening and I like it.
19:29Now, it's interesting the way that wildflower meadows cross the boundaries between gardening, wildlife and even farming. And Frances went to visit a garden in Glasgow, which blurs quite a few boundaries indeed.
19:45Sometimes as gardeners, it's hard not to see insects and birds as the enemy, especially when they're busy helping themselves to all of our produce.
20:00But some people don't try and scare away wildlife. I've come to meet Ewan Sutherland, who actively encourages wildlife into his garden to share all of his bounty.
20:15Welcome, Frances, to my little wilderness patch.
20:18Wow. There's certainly a lot going on here, isn't there? You've got trees and seed heads and grasses. So what was here when you moved in?
20:26It was quite a traditional garden. A big patch of grass, some herbaceous beds and a couple of vegetable areas as well.
20:32So how have you come to this design?
20:34I'm interested in wildlife gardening and looking after nature and giving a place to nature, as it's often called.
20:41Also, I'm interested in growing food for myself and also a type of gardening that's quite hands-off as well, so not getting too fussed about slugs eating some of my plants.
20:51Certainly not using any kind of poisons or chemicals at all. Keeping everything very natural.
20:56Just having a slightly laid-back approach to it. Just let things do their own thing. Gardens can be overgrown and still a garden.
21:03So here there's a green-roofed shed, which I built a few years ago, and a bug hotel of sorts.
21:18Bug hotel of sorts. I love the modesty. That is the most beautiful bug hotel I've ever seen. You've got something for everything in there, haven't you?
21:25Yep. There's ladybirds occasionally nesting here, some bees overwinter, the wasps overwinter in the plastic down below.
21:31And clearly spiders as well.
21:33Yep. Lots of different insects built using recycled materials. Old hoses, old plastic bottles, plastic rubble bags, old bits of slate.
21:41And is that a wasp feeding station?
21:43It is today. It's actually a bird feeder I built a few years ago, and I can see now at the moment there's about half a dozen wasps feeding away on some old biscuits I put out.
21:51Some of the icing in the biscuits, which is great because wasps are really important creatures for a garden.
21:56They're beautiful-looking things, but they're also very much the unsung pollination heroes.
22:00Completely underrated, aren't they?
22:01Yes, totally.
22:03What's through here?
22:05More interesting things come this way.
22:12I love this slate wall. That's beautiful.
22:16Thanks. It's a demarcation line between the proper wild of the railway embankment and the…
22:21Slightly less wild.
22:23Slightly less wild of my garden, yes.
22:25But a great habitat as well for invertebrates.
22:26Yes, lots of woodlice, or slaters as we like to call them up here in Glasgow, and there's lots of other insects, etc.
22:32Use this habitat as well.
22:34And some lovely moss growing.
22:36And some lovely moss growing too.
22:38Beautiful.
22:45OK, so we've gone on a journey through and now we're kind of back where we started.
22:50Yes, full circle.
22:51This might look like chaos, but actually there's a lot of traditional design methods here, aren't there?
22:56You've got wooden fencing, wooden boundaries.
22:59And you have a lawn, which you'd think of as a typical garden feature, but yours isn't quite so typical, is it?
23:04Yeah. We've got lots of different lengths of grass, from bits that are mown every couple of weeks to bits that are left and cut only seasonally,
23:11to parts that have never been cut for years.
23:14The grass is filled with all sorts of different plants now as well.
23:17Some of them are perhaps seen as weeds by other people.
23:19Things like dandelions and daisies, plantain.
23:23There's some dawkins coming up.
23:25There's ragwort, a bit of clover, and there's lots of micro-habitats for small creatures, which for me is the exciting part.
23:32Lots of things that are living in the grass as well.
23:34There's wasps and bees and hoverflies.
23:37There's froglets.
23:39There's all sorts of creatures in here.
23:42While Ewan lets a lot of weeds do their thing, at certain times of the year he does exert some control.
23:50With weeds like dock, he cuts them down and hangs up the seed heads for the birds.
23:56And, for the more persistent weeds, he has an interesting technique.
24:00He submerges them in water.
24:02They're soaked for up to six months, and once completely dead, they're put onto the compost heap to rot.
24:09And as a bonus, the stagnant water in the bin creates a habitat for hoverfly larvae.
24:14Ewan doesn't just look after the wildlife in his garden.
24:17He also grows some unusual veg for himself.
24:20This is a great pig nut, or also known as an earth chestnut.
24:26Also known as horticulturally...
24:29Bunnium bulbocastinum.
24:31Correct. Well done.
24:33So this is a native member of the carrot family.
24:36Yeah.
24:37Which has edible nuts.
24:39Edible tubers.
24:41So this is going to be food for me, and it used to be a staple food centuries ago, so I'm going to give it a shot again.
24:47But the reason for planting it was for wildlife, because these are part of the wider carrot family,
24:53and they have big, big umbellia flowers, which the hoverflies and bees and other pollinators love.
24:58So it's a two for one, yet again.
25:01Wildlife benefits, and then later in the season, I benefit.
25:04Fantastic.
25:05So Ewan, why is it so important to you to have wildlife in your garden?
25:10Well there's probably a number of reasons, but fundamentally I think it's important for me to share the garden with all aspects of wildlife.
25:18There's not a minute that goes past that I can't be in the garden and find something really interesting, attractive, or beautiful to engage with.
25:24Whether it's a small creepy crawly, or a spider's web, or a small fly.
25:28There's never a moment that there's not something that can be looked at and enjoyed.
25:51I do know that there are some people who find a garden as loose as this,
25:54quite hard to get to grips with.
25:57But I once asked somebody what defined a garden, and they gave me a very wise answer.
26:02They said, every garden must have a gardener.
26:06It doesn't matter what it looks like, or what's in it, if you're doing it, then that is a garden.
26:12And I thought that was really interesting.
26:14Now I've got a problem here, but it's not one I can do much about,
26:18and I guess it's one that a lot of you will agree with.
26:20I've got a problem here, but it's not one I can do much about,
26:23and I guess it's one that a lot of you are sharing, and that is to do with my roses.
26:28Lots of roses here in the cottage garden, they look fantastic in June and July,
26:32but this rather damp, mild summer that we've had here at Longmeadow
26:37has meant, inevitably, that we've got fungal problems.
26:40This, which is a damask rose, and the lovely Madamadi, has got bad black spot.
26:47And that's caused by the air being too damp,
26:51and that encourages the fungus right next to it.
26:54We've got a plant, this is a Gallica, Gallica officinalis,
26:57smothered in powdery mildew, which tends to be when the plant is too dry,
27:01particularly at the roots.
27:03And that's mainly down to the way that different roses,
27:07different varieties and species react in different ways.
27:11This might be a little bit too dry because it's too close to the hedge,
27:13but my guess is that this is just one of those roses in this garden
27:18that gets powdery mildew.
27:20It's not what you're doing wrong,
27:22it's the way that certain plants react to certain climatic conditions.
27:26And the good news is that it won't harm them,
27:29they'll come back next year, flower as well as ever,
27:32and if we have a hot, dry summer, certainly there'll be a lot less black spot.
27:38Now, still to come, Adam visits a garden in West Wales,
27:43which has made the most of quite tricky conditions.
27:47So I got bog and I got rock,
27:50and one of my great beliefs is that every problem comes with a gift in its hands,
27:55and it's my responsibility to find the gift.
27:58But first, Mark revisits Nyman's garden, which was a boyhood favourite of his,
28:05to see how they are adapting and coping with the demands imposed upon them by climate change.
28:14MUSIC
28:23Since it was bought back in the 1890s by the Messor family,
28:27Nyman's has been famous for collections of fabulous magnolias and rhododendrons,
28:32big, colourful beds, and spearheading the latest gardening techniques.
28:37My parents used to bring me here because it was just on our doorstep,
28:42and it really excited that whole idea of gardening.
28:46But we used to come back year after year just to see how the garden progressed.
28:53Nyman's has always been a centre of innovation and experimentation.
28:59But they're also committed to making the entire garden more sustainable,
29:03so they're doing lots of experiments, including looking at water and how to use less of it.
29:12Joe Whelan is head gardener and has seen at first hand
29:16how the historic garden has been affected by the hotter, drier conditions
29:20we've been experiencing increasingly in the last few years.
29:24Particularly our rhododendron collection, they've really suffered.
29:28Rhododendrons are sort of notoriously shallow-rooted anyway,
29:30so they do have a habit of drying out quite quickly.
29:33And, yeah, it is a big problem.
29:36We try and mulch a lot, we try and water them as little as absolutely possible,
29:40but sometimes that can be very difficult.
29:43As a result, the team have put in a lot of work and infrastructure
29:49for big plants and small ones.
29:53The area of the garden that we're in at the moment is the nursery.
29:56We have these amazing rainwater collection tanks,
30:00so we harvest rainwater in a couple of ways.
30:03Either rainwater that runs off the roof of the glasshouse into gutters,
30:07that then goes to the tank.
30:10But they also have an impressive groundwater recycling system,
30:15so any surplus watering sinks through the black membrane and into a filter.
30:21It gets rid of any excess water.
30:23It gets rid of any sediments and some bacterias,
30:26and we end up then with a suitable water at the end of it for watering.
30:29Brilliant, that's really, really clever.
30:32And then sort of out in the garden, do you water them continually,
30:35or how do you look after them?
30:38We tend to plant tough, so basically we'll generally water pretty heavy once when we plant,
30:43and after that it's only when absolutely necessary,
30:46so if they start to wilt or if they start to look like they're suffering.
30:49But otherwise we tend to just leave it to their own devices.
30:51And I think it's amazing how resilient plants can be.
30:54If you do do that, they'll seek out the moisture rather than wait for it in a lot of cases.
31:00They've also found this tough love creates tougher plants,
31:04which cope better with short, dry spells.
31:07But in the long term, they have other plans for their borders.
31:13I think the main thing for us at the moment is to just try and adjust how we plant essentially,
31:18so looking more towards planting that can tolerate dry conditions,
31:22not necessarily drought conditions, but just be that little bit more tolerant.
31:28And they've started that already.
31:31Over the last four years, gardener Kirsten Kelly has created three South African meadow beds
31:36on Nyman's light, loamy soil, with only a slight nod to the varied British weather.
31:42I know that when you planted it, you've also done it in sort of waves, is that right, with little dunes?
31:47Yeah, so that's partially for aesthetic reasons.
31:50It looks nice in the winter when there's not so much foliage there,
31:53it's easier on the eye because the beds kind of roll away.
31:56And then the second reason is for the planting.
31:59So the South African plants, they don't mind a little bit of cold,
32:03but they don't like the cold and wet.
32:05So the less hardy plants we plant on top of those dunes,
32:07and then the water drains away from them and they're much happier.
32:10And then I know where they are and I don't put my big feet on them as well.
32:13So it's a win-win.
32:15What I also love is you've sort of got this wild sort of drift going on.
32:19Can you just explain some of the planting that you've used to create that?
32:23Yeah, sure. So in front of us we've got the panacea and cream falls.
32:26Which is lovely.
32:28Yeah, it's really lovely and that's got lots of movement,
32:30and that's planted with the gladioli papilio.
32:32We try to kind of match with how things might work in the wild,
32:34and then I'm getting a bit less OCD about it and letting things grow together
32:39and do it more naturally.
32:41And that's kind of inspired by seeing how things have grown in the wild.
32:45But Kirsten's plant choice really is impressive and varied.
32:52You have things like eucomus.
32:54Yeah.
32:56So that's the pineapple lily and they kind of wander off through the bed,
32:58so they're quite quirky.
32:59The allostriculata.
33:01Yeah.
33:03So you wouldn't maybe see that growing outside and that's all spiky.
33:05So I think it's a fun bed because it showcases and it shouts out loud with colour.
33:11Superb.
33:15There's been some surprising stars emerge from the experiment
33:18that would do well in most warm, sunny, well-drained spots.
33:23Like this Hesperantha coccinea mayfly.
33:25Or this Diacea personata.
33:29And the stunning Acopanthus innerpertus grass cop.
33:39So this being your first bed, I mean, how much water have they really needed?
33:43Really, just watering in when we first planted them.
33:46Maybe a couple of weeks later we watered them again.
33:49And they've grown quite a bit.
33:50Just watering in when we first planted them.
33:52Maybe a couple of weeks later we watered them again.
33:55But that's been absolutely it.
33:57So even last year when it was like really, really hot.
33:59Yeah, absolutely. Nothing got watered in here.
34:01And actually they did really well.
34:03And even the Melianthus over here flowered for the first time.
34:06Although it did start to flower and not quite make it
34:09and held its flowers through the winter.
34:11And it's finished off this year with the good weather we're having now.
34:15I think this approach and these beds are an absolute triumph.
34:21It's really great to come back and see the progress of the garden.
34:27But also talking to Kirsten and finding out about that freedom
34:31and the experimentation she's been able to do.
34:34For me, what they're doing with water-wise plants
34:38and the way they're planting is truly inspirational.
34:51BIRDS CHIRP
35:05It's very interesting to hear that at Nyman's
35:09they're treating plants tough.
35:12They're growing them hard, as the expression is.
35:14And we found that here. That always works.
35:16You water a plant in, then you leave it.
35:18You let it find water.
35:20And the roots will go deeper.
35:22And therefore, when there's a drought,
35:24the plant will be better adapted to cope with that.
35:27BIRDS CHIRP
35:29Now we're coming to the end of the season, if you like.
35:32It's time to take stock of the Paradise Garden.
35:35Now, remember, this started very slowly throughout last year.
35:39Now, some things have worked really well.
35:41The Acuminata tulips look fantastic.
35:44These lovely, tall, elegant petals.
35:47And the Verbena benariensis has been wonderful.
35:50It has flowered and flowered, and the butterflies adore it.
35:54All the fruit, the lemons and the olives and the pomegranates have been great.
35:59But it hasn't all gone entirely to plan.
36:03I think I've chosen the wrong grass.
36:06This is Stipa tenuissima.
36:08It's a beautiful grass. It's soft.
36:11And the idea is it's a fountain that rises up and spills.
36:14And it did that until about the end of June.
36:18But then it started to get a flowering head.
36:21And what you get is this ponytail.
36:24And then it doesn't spread evenly and elegantly, it flops.
36:29And it's flopped over other plants.
36:32So it's suppressed the Torbaglia that I've had to put into pots.
36:36It's suppressed the Goura that I put in thereafter.
36:39So what I'm going to do is take these great hanks,
36:42is take these great hanks of grass and just cut them back.
36:48Like that.
36:50It's like a terrible hairstyle.
36:52There we go.
37:10If the Stipas respond well to this cutting back, that's fine.
37:14I can leave them in place and just keep cutting them back as and when I need to.
37:18A much bigger worry is will they respond well to sitting in a cold, wet Herefordshire winter.
37:24Stipas do not like cold, wet conditions.
37:28And I may have to replace them.
37:30But bear in mind that I grew all these from seed.
37:32They cost one packet of seed.
37:34So in terms of money, that's all I've lost.
37:37We shall see.
37:39Now, any paradise garden is upon quite strict rules or a format, if you like.
37:44It's got to be symmetrical.
37:46It's got to have water in the middle.
37:48Certain plants have to feature and there has to be a certain atmosphere.
37:51But in June, we went to visit a garden that could not be more different if it tried.
38:04My name's Rob.
38:06We're in the village of East Harktree on the north side of the Mendip Hills,
38:09the dark side in the Chew Valley.
38:12And this is a forest garden.
38:14And that sort of conjures up images of gardening in a forest.
38:19But it's not like that. It's gardening like a forest.
38:29It's all about symbiotic relationships in the sense that it has fruit and nut trees on top
38:34and then smaller shrubs fill the canopy and there are perennial vegetables covering the ground.
38:39It's like companion planting on a huge scale.
38:42Eliagnus umbelata, sometimes called autumn olive.
38:46It really is the ultimate multi-purpose shrub.
38:49It has so many uses.
38:51It has little tropical tasting berries you can eat in the autumn time, hence the name autumn olive.
38:56It has little star-shaped sweet, sweet smelling flowers that are nectar heavy, very good for honeybees.
39:02It's a nitrogen fixer, very important here for fertility.
39:05It grows very well from cuttings. It's a fast grower.
39:07As a structural plant, it's providing a very good windbreak here,
39:13protecting all kinds of plants around it.
39:15It's good to grow things up.
39:18I have some mashua, or air potato as it's called, growing up it.
39:22And it's quite a beauty as well really.
39:28It's the best way to be self-sufficient.
39:31I mean it takes a lot of setting up.
39:33But once it's set up, it's pretty much self-sustaining.
39:37It's a little bit of tweaking here or there, perhaps a day a month.
39:40And all I have to do each morning, or each afternoon, is just go around and look for what's growing and pick my own food.
39:47The chuckleberry.
39:49Brilliant name, but really it's just a cross between a gooseberry, a redcurrant and a jostleberry actually.
39:57Very, very tasty. These large, black, juicy berries.
40:02They're a must in any garden.
40:08I suppose about half of what I eat comes from the garden at the moment, but then I'm only in year five of the seven-year plan.
40:16When I first got the land six years ago, I spent the first year walking around and assessing the environment,
40:23just watching the movement of the sun and where there were frost pockets,
40:26and where the rain ran down across the land, where the swampy areas were, where the dry areas were,
40:31and also what plants were here already that I wanted to keep.
40:37There was lemon balm here naturally, and I didn't want to plant over that.
40:41The main thing I use it for is if I'm going out to any social occasions and I get a little bit nervous.
40:47The oils in it are really good for calming one's nerves, so I just rub it around myself,
40:53and people often compliment me on my wonderful aroma.
40:58But also, I use it for smearing around empty honeybee hives to attract the scout bees.
41:04There was actually an occasion a few years ago when I was getting ready for a wedding,
41:08and rubbing myself with lemon balm, and the sky darkened with a swarm of honeybees, 10,000 strong.
41:15They were moving into a hive near where I was standing.
41:18Many of them landed on me, because it smells very similar to the queen bee pheromone.
41:22But I was quite calm, and they moved into the hive in the end, and it was a happy ending, and it was a great wedding.
41:27I love this garden because I created it, but also because I'm actually part of the garden.
41:41I'm part of the ecosystem.
41:44I spread the seeds of certain plants. I help things to grow.
41:50Most plants here have a direct edible use.
41:52The plant I use most is the tuna sinensis, or Chinese cedar.
42:02That really is a unique taste, and it's so fantastic for enhancing the flavour of stews and soups.
42:10It's like the veggie stock cube tree.
42:13Most of the plants here have at least three purposes, or I wouldn't plant them.
42:17Everything's got to be multifunctional.
42:20Common mullein, the Bascom thapsus.
42:24They have quite an illustrious history of medicinal uses.
42:28I use them in their most degrading way for them, probably, as toilet paper.
42:33They're soft and strong and long.
42:36They have lovely, soft, moisturising leaves, but they've got little hairs on,
42:42and if you rub them the wrong way, they can cause a bit of a rash.
42:45That's actually where another of their names comes from, Quaker's Rouge,
42:49because Quaker women didn't used to be able to wear make-up,
42:53and they rubbed them on their cheeks to make a nice rouge-y effect.
43:00One of the biggest challenges in creating this place has been the lack of a budget.
43:07Apart from the cost of the land initially, I've only had £1,000.
43:13I've only had £1,000 for absolutely everything.
43:26This is my wonderful low-budget greenhouse, and having hardly any budget,
43:33I've had to start from scratch and plant everything from seed or from cuttings,
43:38which is quite satisfying, really.
43:39It really means you get to see the plants from the start,
43:43and there are all kinds of treasures just here.
43:45There are some perennial sunflowers and pawpaws and persimmons,
43:49and perennial broccoli and sweet sicily.
43:52There's even some licorice and some quinine just here.
43:55By growing things from seed or from cuttings,
43:59even though they've taken a little more tending to initially,
44:03they've done a lot better than the plants that I have bought,
44:06and in fact have overtaken them.
44:08Using the Italian red alder as an example, I planted that as a seed five years ago,
44:14and now I can climb it.
44:19Only five years old, planted from a seed.
44:29Imagine if everyone did this sort of thing.
44:31I mean, not only can this one hectare forest garden feed ten people all year round,
44:36it's restoring the ecosystem, it's creating habitat for all the local wildlife.
44:45It's a very resilient system too.
44:48It's flood-resistant, it's drought-resistant,
44:50and there's so much diversity that even if one thing, or two things,
44:53or twenty things got killed off by a disease,
44:56there'd be a hundred other things to take their place.
45:02Another thing that makes this plot quite special is that it used to belong to my great-grandparents.
45:08I'm not quite sure what my great-grandfather would think of what I'm doing now.
45:13I think he'd be amazed that I'm growing lemons and peaches and grapes.
45:17I can hear him say now actually,
45:19how are you going to make them pay?
45:21But it's not really about money,
45:25it's about living with the very lightest footprint on the earth possible,
45:29and having fun in the process.
45:31Food forests are fun.
45:54Forest gardening is really tricky to make work,
45:59but I know a lot of people are fascinated by it,
46:02and one of the things that I do like about it is that it uses trees as a source of food.
46:09Of course we're all used to trees providing fruit,
46:13and they're good supports for climbers,
46:16but also they're fabulous for nuts.
46:18We don't grow or eat enough nuts in this country,
46:21and I love growing hazels.
46:23Here in the jewel garden we have the purple hazel,
46:25which is Corallis maxima purpurea,
46:27and you can see that this has got a great beard sprouting from the sheath,
46:32and if I pick this off, the nuts on this are really good.
46:36So you can see that as well as being a fabulously decorative small tree or large shrub,
46:42it also produces delicious nuts,
46:45and it's worth growing for that alone.
46:57This is one of my favourite plants.
47:00It's phyllitrum delleveii,
47:03and all of them have been grown from seed,
47:06and you can see even when it's very small,
47:09it has these lovely trembling little lavender mauve coloured flowers.
47:15Now I say little, in fact it will grow to about six foot tall.
47:20I'm going to plant them here in the garden,
47:22six foot tall.
47:25I'm going to plant them here right the way down these borders,
47:30and if I space them out towards the back of the border so they will rise up,
47:35you'll get this theme effect of these delicate leaves
47:39that look as though they're suspended, floating in air,
47:43and then these fragile flowers rising above them,
47:47but in fact they're quite a tough plant.
47:49When we first made these borders about four years ago,
47:53I thought that they would be particularly damp,
47:56and so I thought through the planting in terms of things that would relish damper than normal conditions,
48:03and what I've discovered is that although the soil does retain moisture very well,
48:08these apple trees suck it up like a sponge,
48:12so I've had to change the planting.
48:14Now that seems to me not a problem,
48:16but a creative opportunity.
48:19You have to deal with what is happening on the ground,
48:23and Adam has been to visit a garden called Dufferin-Furnatt in Pembrokeshire,
48:29where they met conditions that at first seemed positively hostile,
48:34but that's when creativity kicked in,
48:37and the result is something very special indeed.
48:47I think gardens are about four things.
48:51They're about people, plants, space,
48:55and the final one being place.
48:58That said, if you live in a town or a city,
49:01you've got a lot more to play with.
49:03Different materials, architecture.
49:06When you're in the countryside, the best gardens feel like they belong.
49:17And just a few paces into this garden,
49:21it's clear this one really does belong.
49:25Almost six acres blends smoothly into this Pembrokeshire valley,
49:30but it was a very different story 23 years ago
49:34when Christina Shand and her sons arrived.
49:38So Christina, what was the garden like when you moved in?
49:41Well, it was a bit of a mess.
49:43So Christina, what was the garden like when you moved in?
49:46Well, there wasn't a garden. There was no garden at all.
49:50It had been a holiday cottage for 17 years,
49:52and before that a small farm,
49:54and there was nothing but concrete, bare stone, crumbling buildings,
49:58no garden whatsoever.
50:00Wow, and you've been on a journey?
50:02Yes, I have. I loved it.
50:09Now, it's an exquisite series of interlinking areas.
50:13Including this central garden, peppered with exotics.
50:17A wide herbaceous orchard.
50:20The topiary area, which is the most formal this garden gets.
50:26And the front garden, built on a base of solid rock.
50:31But once Christina had created it, she was hooked.
50:36How did you start to derive the rest of the garden?
50:39Ah, who's the place?
50:40Actually, I've worked with it.
50:43Gone with the areas that are there.
50:45Let it teach me what plants will grow in which conditions.
50:50Loads of failures.
50:52Very good things, failures.
50:54And you learn so much from them.
51:05She worked within existing buildings and the old rubble walls.
51:09Guided by a sense of place.
51:13It was very much to do with the openness of the garden to the sky and the surrounding landscape.
51:21And not wanting to enclose it or restrict it.
51:27Working with the land like this has awakened Christina's creativity.
51:33I had tried to paint, I tried to draw, I tried to write, I tried to sing.
51:40Disaster all round, you know.
51:43So I had this need to do something creative.
51:49And I found it in gardening.
51:52I found it in being able to play with plants.
52:03But starting with a derelict farmhouse came at a high price.
52:07All the good land had been sold off long before she arrived.
52:14What I was left with was the runt of the land of a very nice farm.
52:18So I got bog and I got rock.
52:22And one of my great beliefs is that every problem comes with a gift in its hands.
52:27And it's my responsibility to find the gift.
52:33Some gifts were more unexpected than others.
52:37You are really dealing with some extreme conditions here, aren't you?
52:41Yes, and this is a prime example actually.
52:44Because we were onto rock here, no topsoil at all.
52:48And there was old concrete.
52:50And I wanted to plant a wisteria here when I first came.
52:54I thought, oh, lovely, all along the wall.
52:56So I broke out the concrete, started digging, water kept coming up.
53:00Wow.
53:01And I got really upset.
53:03Almost.
53:05And then a friend doused for it and said, you've got a surface well here.
53:10So I changed my mind completely and decided to make it into a boggy bed.
53:15And now we've got things that like it really wet, like the Colocasias.
53:19And along the barn, the Banksian rose works really well instead.
53:23Christina lets nothing go to waste.
53:26So she creates this great eclectic mix.
53:31The water feature in front of me, she got that from an old farm sale.
53:36It's a still that you used to make liquor in.
53:39And she was telling me when she first got it, the kids used it as a boat down on the pond.
53:44And when they grew up and couldn't use it anymore, she took it.
53:47The kids used it as a boat down on the pond.
53:50And when they grew up and couldn't use it anymore, she created this water feature.
53:54I think it works really well.
54:12Look at that. It really is a furnery.
54:16It would have been so obvious here to put the compost bins or store some tools or some old barrows.
54:22It's the back of a building, another building. No.
54:25Christina creates this wonderful little space and it carries real atmosphere.
54:30You just want to sort of sit down and look around and enjoy the ferns.
54:36And that's what I love about ferns, looking at them close up.
54:40And she's planted my favorite fern, which is oak fern.
54:44Gymnocarpium, beautiful sort of delicate plant.
54:53This really is a fascinating garden.
54:56It's like a great movie that you can watch several times and still see something different.
55:03I could lose days here.
55:05It's lovely talking to Christina and learning how she's created this space.
55:10And for me, she really understands this site and its conditions.
55:14But then she's given it a sense of place by the selection of materials and the plants.
55:20And just let it be. And it's ended up being a beautiful garden.
55:36Whilst it's always just lovely to look at a beautiful garden,
55:40the really important lesson that I get from that is that
55:44by overcoming what can seem to be quite severe limitations and problems,
55:49actually you unlock the door to creativity that might have remained hidden.
55:54Every garden has limitations. Every garden has problems.
55:59But if you can work around them and use them to your advantage,
56:02then it gets creative and interesting.
56:05Now, creative or not, here are some jobs that you can do this weekend.
56:23For shrub roses that have finished flowering, now is the time to prune them.
56:27And the best and easiest way to do this is with a pair of shears.
56:31Simply clip them over, removing about a third of each bush to a neat dome.
56:37And if need be, you can address any individual pruning requirements next March.
56:49The best and simplest way to improve your lawn for next year
56:53is to aerate it. You can hire a machine that will do this for large areas,
56:58but for a smaller space, simply use a fork.
57:01It's important to work the tines in well and wriggle them around
57:05to really break up any compaction.
57:08And then if you follow that with a good scratch with a wire rake
57:11to remove any moss or thatch, it will go through the winter ready for next year.
57:23Now is a good time to plant out biennials, such as wallflowers, sweetwilliams,
57:28forget-me-nots, or as I am, foxgloves.
57:31Plant them where you want them to flower.
57:33The roots will get nice and established so that next spring
57:36they are ready to grow fast and flower gloriously.
57:39And don't forget to water them in well.
57:42I do think the light on these September evenings
57:46is as good as any that you get throughout the year.
57:50The trouble is, there's less and less of it.
57:53The days are definitely drawing in, so we need to make the most of them.
57:57But that is it for today.
58:00There is just time to mention the fact that it's Nelly's birthday on Sunday,
58:04so raise a glass to Nelly.
58:06There is just time to mention the fact that it's Nelly's birthday on Sunday,
58:10so raise a glass to her.
58:12And Nelly and myself and Nigel will be back at the same time next Friday.
58:16So until then, bye-bye.
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