Episode 12 Gardeners' World

Hello. Welcome to Gardeners' World and a lovely day here at Longmeadow.

Of course, the beauty of this time of year is that a lovely day is a long day.

Plenty of time to relish the garden in all its beauty,

as well as getting on with all those jobs that need doing.

Today I'm sharing tips on how to grow delicious herbs for the kitchen,

as well as protecting my strawberries so we get to enjoy them before the birds eat the lot.

Carol is at Glebe Cottage with lots of ideas on how to get healthy new plants for free.

June's such a wonderful month.

There's so many things to propagate.

And I visit one of the most famous gardens in the world's -

Claude Monet's garden at Giverny in France.

This is the herb garden.

It's a good spot, because it's near the back door.

And, really, we want herbs for kitchen use.

There's not a big collection.

It's got nothing unusual or curious.

It's simply what works for us in the kitchen.

So, we want lots of them and we want them fresh and available

for as much of the year as possible, and we want it to look good.

Until a few weeks ago, we had Portuguese laurels in here.

There were four - one in each of the beds.

I've taken them out for two reasons.

One, because they weren't really happy,

and also because they were shading the plants.

I want full sun, if possible.

I'm adding grit in, to fundamentally improve drainage

and impoverish the soil a bit further.

Because if the goodness is too much, one, you get too much lush growth

and you don't get the flavours from the herbs.

Two, they're much less hardy.

There is no reason why we can't get a really good, strong rosemary bush in the middle.

One of the advantages of letting herbs grow big is you can be generous with them.

It's a real treat.

If you're always restricted to thinking of herbs

as something you just have a pinch of, or a sprinkle, or a few little chopped bits,

it doesn't unleash the potential that you can get from growing them.

I like great bunches of herbs.

And you can have them in pots,

you can have them filling a room with scent

as well as cooking with them.

So, we'll pop this in here.

Good drainage.

And then, with a bit of luck, it'll grow to be a healthy plant.

I say luck, because they don't like cold, wet winters

and we do get them here.

I always feel that herbs don't get the attention they deserve.

Although the resurgence of veg growing is fantastic -

and, you know, keep it going, I hope there's much more -

actually, more people grow herbs than vegetables.

You can grow herbs in a pot on a windowsill, in your garden,

you can have a dedicated herb garden,

or you can just have a patch of herbs.

They're really important.

Now, I've got mint here.

There are three types of mint I really like to grow.

This is peppermint, which is the best for mint tea.

I've got spearmint, which is really good for cooking.

And apple mint, which is by far and away the best mint for new potatoes.

They all share the same characteristic,

which is of genuinely being runners and of spreading.

There are two ways of dealing with that.

You can either do what I've got here, I've got some Moroccan mint

which is in a pot, sunk in the ground.

Or you can do what I'm going to do here - plant it straight in the bed because I want it to spread.

If worst comes to the worst,

you just cut it right back and put it on the compost heap.

I've got a couple of pots here.

Dill, which is fabulous with fish.

And chervil is a pot herb.

It's good in salads, you can add it to sauces, all kinds of things.

But look at the way they're grown.

You've got a mass of plants in there.

But no one plant will ever get very big.

You'll get very little dill from this pot.

What I've done with the chervil, actually, is pick them out.

So, you can see, I just did this a couple of days ago,

and already, they've doubled in size almost.

So, I've got there 30 good plants that I'll plant out in a week or two

and each one will give me almost as much as the whole of that pot.

There's a pretty good range of herbs that grow well

in these sunny, relatively poor soil conditions of this herb garden.

But there are a few that need a bit more specialist treatment.

See, I grow parsley and coriander always in the vegetable garden,

partly because they like a better soil, and also because

I can grow them in rows and harvest them with real generosity, use a lot.

That's the same for garlic, which I grow in the vegetable garden, chives,

all of them need a richer soil than they can get in the herb garden.

And they're very easy to grow from seed.

In fact, a lot of herbs you can either grow from seed or from cuttings

and this is a really good time of year to be propagating,

and that's exactly what Carol has been doing down at Glebe Cottage.

Although there's quite a long period of time

during the growing season

when you can take cuttings,

every plant has its optimum time.

As far as this elder goes,

now's the perfect moment.

Now, I chopped this back really hard last year because it was sticking out over the path

and as a result of that it's made all this wonderful strong new growth,

and if I just bend that shoot, you can see the wood is really soft,

and these cuttings are usually called softwood,

or occasionally greenwood.

What I want to do is take a very sharp knife

and I want to take the cut right underneath a leaf node...

as straight as I can.

I'm putting them straight into this plastic bag,

because I want to make sure they retain as much moisture as possible.

That'll do. Can't be greedy, don't want to denude the bush.

I'm going to use completely fresh compost,

and it's a nice, gritty mix, plenty of loam in it,

just filling it to the top.

So, what I want to do is take these bottom leaves off.

You can do it

with your finger and thumb,

or with this sharp knife.

And since I've cut to just below that leaf node, that'll do fine,

and then I'm going to take out the top,

just that growing apical point,

to stop the cutting trying to go upwards once it gets in here.

We want it to concentrate on making roots.

I'm sinking the cutting right up to the base of the next set of leaves.

You should always do this as quickly as you can.

You can see already they're beginning to look

a bit sorry for themselves!

And when I've done this, I'm going to top it all off with grit.

I'm going to water it very, very thoroughly.

There are masses of plants that you can take cuttings from right now.

You can make more plants from woody climbers like honeysuckle.

Go for short, robust shoots without flowers

and pull them away from the main stem with a little heel.

And it's not just shrubs and woody climbers that you can take cuttings of at this time of year.

Some herbaceous perennials really respond to it too.

Things like this Aster "Calliope", real late-flowering Michaelmas daisy.

If you want to give it a belated Chelsea chop

to help it bush out and make more flowers,

no reason to waste that material.

It'll make lots and lots of new plants for you.

Just cut it under a leaf node and make some nice short cuttings out of it.

Well, that's all of them in here safe and sound.

A good place, this, because although there's plenty of light,

no direct sunlight gets on here.

These elders are looking a bit sorry for themselves. They've wilted.

But you'd expect them to do that because after all, they're softwood cuttings.

I'm just going to... Every time I go past, I'm going to give them a little spray over.

I'll do that with all the cuttings.

They'll soon regain their former selves and start standing up for themselves proudly.

I love growing plants from cuttings, but if you want lots of plants,

you can't beat growing them from seed.

I've been noticing all sorts of plants around the garden that are very, very special

and they're just coming to the end of their flowering,

so I want to make a note of them and mark them,

then I don't miss collecting their seed.

I think this aquilegia is beautiful. It's just sown itself here.

What I love about it is these sort of clematis flowers.

It's got no spurs

and it's already made these fat, lusty seed pods.

It's such a really special plant. I'd love to have more of it.

So, I'm just going to identify it by tying a piece of ribbon, a nice, neat bow,

then I'm going to stick a bit of the same ribbon into my notebook

and put a very simple description beside it.

I've been marking plants since early in the year,

and I started with my hellebores,

some of which have pollinated.

And now...

is the time to harvest the fruits of my labour.

Now, the trick about doing this

is to make sure you collect them before they disperse themselves.

A few people are allergic to hellebores,

so you'd have to wear gloves if you were doing this,

but I've done it so many times, I know I'm not.

These pods have got to be fat

and fecund, like that.

Then just pop the pods

and out should tumble these dark, dark seeds.

Whether it's cuttings or seeds, June's such a wonderful month.

There's so many things to propagate,

and, of course, this is just the start of it.

Thank you very much.

Can I have that?

Oh!

Right.

Bt the way, herbs, particularly the shrubby once, propagate brilliantly from cuttings.

I've got some rosemary on the go there, some French tarragon,

and I always take a few cuttings,

particularly from those that we're liable to lose in a harsh winter.

It keeps the succession going.

But what I'm doing here is planting up a container

because herbs grow very well in containers.

I've got a lovely old copper bowl, drilled some holes in the bottom

and that makes a stylish but very adaptable container for growing any herbs.

But what I'm choosing to do is restrict them to Mediterranean herbs

and if you are growing them in a container,

you do need to be clear about which group you want to,

because if you have something like thyme here,

it's not going to share the same growing conditions as, say, parsley or lovage.

The beauty of Mediterranean herbs is that they need very poor, thin soil,

so it's very easy to replicate that in a relatively small container.

We'll put some crocks in the bottom.

It's a pot graveyard. That will help drainage.

I've got some grit.

That goes on there.

The main thing that will do is stop it sitting on water.

We'll put some peat-free compost, break it down a little.

Then add grit. I'm going to add all this grit.

It's 50-50. Half grit, half compost.

'I'm planting a selection of familiar herbs.

'Rosemary, two types of thyme, sage and wild marjoram.'

Now, so far, so familiar. Most people have heard of these plants.

This is French tarragon,

and the key thing about French tarragon

is not to confuse it with Russian tarragon.

French tarragon tastes fantastic,

especially with chicken.

Russian tarragon doesn't taste very good at all and they look practically identical.

The real difference between the plants is French tarragon is not hardy.

It won't survive frost below a degree or two, whereas Russian tarragon is a lot tougher.

So, if your tarragon has survived last winter,

it's definitely Russian, not French,

and, quite frankly, no use to you in the kitchen.

This is winter savory.

It's a really magical herb because not only is it a good pot herb,

just add it to soups and stews,

but it's also medically really powerful and is a calmative,

it's an antiseptic,

and in medieval times was really, really important.

I'll put that in there.

Already we've got a good cross section of Mediterranean herbs.

I'm going to finish it with some summer savory.

Summer savory is an annual,

but the key thing about it is it's a digestive,

and it's nearly always used with beans.

It's perfect as an aid to digestion with beans, which can be a little tricky from time to time.

I'm going to top-dress that with grit to ensure the drainage.

And the place to put it is in maximum sunshine.

It cannot be too hot or too exposed.

That's a good collection. They look good.

Each one of them is going to work really well in the kitchen all summer long.

The garden has reached the high days of June like a homecoming

and there is a real sense of arrival.

But it's been quite a journey,

and Longmeadow has changed a lot since early spring.

One of the small pleasures of gardening

is just walking around every day and noticing the little changes.

This part of the garden has hit a big seasonal change

because in spring we have crocus and narcissi,

and we planted a whole load of fritillaries,

but all trace of them has gone,

and what we have now is not so much a wildflower meadow

as just overgrown lawn, and I think it looks fantastic.

We've got clovers and buttercups and grasses,

nothing fancy, nothing special, but the insects love it.

I love the way it looks. It has a kind of freshness and looseness and also, it's no trouble.

Just cut a strip down the middle, leave the rest to grow and it looks good,

and in about a month's time, when it's looking a bit tired,

cut the whole lot and it reverts to lawn again and is mown weekly.

The one place you wouldn't find this kind of gardening

is in Claude Monet's garden in France, Giverny.

That world-famous garden is really a hymn to the power of colour.

Monet was an obsessive gardener

and all that obsession was directed towards the intensity of colour from plants.

I went along there the other day because there's a new head gardener,

the first one for 35 years,

and it turns out that he's an Englishman.

There are few gardens in the world that are more iconic than Giverny,

and it brings half a million people a year to visit it,

and the thing that draws them is not just the garden,

which, of course, is astonishingly beautiful,

but also the paintings that were produced from it,

which are amongst the most famous images the world has ever seen.

So, to get here on a marvellous early summer morning

with the garden at its very best,

before those crowds flock in, just for an hour or so,

is about as big a gardening treat as you can have.

Monet once wrote, "Apart from painting and gardening, I'm no good at anything."

He'd always gardened, but at Giverny, funded by the sales of his paintings,

for the first time he was able to indulge his passion on a large scale.

But after his death in 1926, the garden became abandoned.

However, it was restored in the late 1970s, and since last week

the job of caring for this world-famous French garden has been passed to an Englishman,

albeit one who has lived and worked in France for 17 years,

and he is James Priest.

Before James, there have only been two head gardeners here,

and one of them was Monet himself.

What was Monet's gardening style?

A complex combination.

When Monet made the garden it was the end of the 1800s,

beginning of the 1900s

and so influenced by the different gardening styles of that period,

so obviously by French gardens with the straight lines,

but by the English gardens, which were much more natural,

and then added on to that the artist's eye,

because his garden was planted to be painted, plants to be painted

and views to be painted.

And then he invented this style of putting plants intensely together, very close together,

and planting in layers as he made his paintings,

where he'd put layer after layer of paint to reflect the light.

There are more plants here per square yard than any garden I've ever been in.

The effect is enhanced because the beds are actually long mounds

rising as much as three feet tall.

So, instead of the traditional approach of small plants at the front and larger ones behind,

you get these dense strips and blocks of colour.

It's not just a case of a painter expressing his natural instincts through his garden.

It's more than that.

It's almost as though that the garden and the paintings became one.

But to most of the thousands of visitors,

this part of the garden is just the appetiser.

The main attraction is reached via a short tunnel under the road.

And it is this, this bridge and the water lilies that it looks over,

that draws the hundreds of thousands of people here every year.

This, that Monet was to paint obsessively, over and over again,

for the rest of his life.

What is it that the public expect, or even demand, from this garden?

I think that the garden has a special place in everybody's minds

and everybody's imagination,

and so everybody has a picture or a painting of Monet somewhere in their home, in their lives,

and so it's trying to reflect the images that people have of Monet,

and when they come to the garden, they want to see these images in the gardens,

so you have to be true to those images.

It is this expectation that creates the major challenge for the team at Giverny,

to keep the whole garden looking like a Monet painting

every day for seven months of the year.

How do you keep a garden that is based upon such a strong historical past alive and growing?

Because this is Monet's garden, it's not yours or anyone else's.

-Mm. Interesting.

-But he's been dead a long time.

He's dead but his spirit lives on.

We're trying,

obviously, to be true to his memory, to the atmosphere he created,

but at the same time, yes, gardens do move on, plants change.

Many of the plants that were available in Monet's time aren't available today

and so there's a story that 75% of the plants in the garden today

weren't around in Monet's time,

but we're always trying to select those plants that feel right in Monet's time.

Keeping Monet's creation looking this way

requires far more plants than can be grown within the walls

of the original, relatively small garden.

So, two additional nursery sites are needed

to feed that almost insatiable desire for colour.

But does James feel he'll be able to express his own creativity in the garden?

To be guided by Monet, try to get inside his skin,

and at the same time, obviously,

to do what I feel is best for the garden.

That's a wonderful experience!

When Monet first went to Giverny, he used to grow some vegetables,

because they were dirt-poor and he needed the food.

But as soon as he could afford it, fruit and veg were banished and sent down the road.

He had a separate kitchen garden down there. I couldn't do that.

Vegetables and fruit are too important a part of any garden that I've got.

Although my fruit, particularly soft fruit this year, are not doing very well.

I'm trying to recover them from a bad situation.

They were unpruned, they were overgrown and they're very old.

So if you remember, in March,

I pruned these red and white currants hard, right back.

Now we've got lots of new growth and it looks very healthy.

The price is there's no fruit,

because it doesn't bear fruit on this season's growth.

But to make sure they're good next year,

I now need to prune that centre away

to let light and air in, let the wood ripen,

and also to stop the sawfly.

So, just get in here and snip away.

If you remember, when you're pruning fruit bushes, you want a bowl,

a goblet shape, so it's completely open in the middle.

It just lets the light and air in.

I must stop, because although I've got the rest to do,

I came here to do the strawberries and I've been distracted.

And what I want to do to the strawberries

is to protect the fruit.

As the fruits ripen, they get splashed by mud,

they get eaten by slugs, and they need a bit of protection,

and of course, the birds get them too.

One of the easiest ways to protect them is to buy these pads

that look like old record covers.

You just slip them round the strawberry, like that.

It means that the fruit can sit on that and it's not on the soil

and if it rains, it's not going to get all dirty.

But the conventional way was to use straw,

and just spread it around the fruit in a layer.

It's a bit messy, but that's OK. Right, just like this.

It means that the red fruits nestle on the golden straw.

So, the next stage is to protect it from birds, particularly blackbirds.

Blackbirds love a strawberry and they're not fussy about it being fully ripe.

As soon as there's any red, they're in there.

I've put up some stakes.

The net needs to be a fine enough mesh

to stop a hungry young blackbird.

So, make sure you've got a net big enough to go down the sides,

leaving no gaps at the bottom, and be really taut on the top.

You don't want any bird tangled in the net.

Right, that should keep even the most strawberry-loving blackbird at bay.

So, that's done, and I must, this weekend,

finish pruning those bushes and not leave them.

Here are some other things you can be getting on with this weekend.

It's never a waste of time to get down on your knees

and do some hand weeding.

It means that you can go through individual seedlings

and judge them on their merit.

As well as removing obvious weeds,

you can thin and select plants that you want to keep

but are in the wrong place.

For example, I've got a patch of onopordum seedlings here,

which, if left, will become a dense, invasive thicket.

But by moving some and discarding others,

I can keep it looking good, but also get extra plants for free.

If, like me,

you sowed your sweet peas in spring

and planted them out about a month ago,

they'll now be growing strongly,

but not yet producing flowers, which they should do in about a month.

However, it is important to keep tying them in to some support.

That way, they'll grow upright and strong

and you'll be able to see the flowers very clearly when they're produced.

Well, one job I shall certainly be starting this weekend,

although I probably won't finish it,

is cutting back the box hedges in my Jewel Garden.

You may remember that in spring,

I could see that they were not looking happy at all.

I thought it might be box blight,

but it was much more likely to be frostbite

because these were cut in October,

and then we had that really cold weather in December, and they got hit.

And the other day I took out the end plant,

and it's revealed very healthy growth on the inside.

Now, that's good news, because it means it can't be blight.

If you've got box blight, the interior of the plant is what gets hit first

and it will be black and brown and fungal and horrible.

So, this is simply a plant that's got too cold.

However, the dead material on top can't regenerate.

So, to make it look crisp and green all over by the end of summer,

I must get rid of that dead material.

I'm going to cut this down to knee height,

and now is the perfect time of year to cut box hedges.

No more risk of frost,

and plenty of time for the new growth to harden off before winter.

You can give them another light trim in September if they need it.

Now, next Friday we've got a full one-hour programme starting at eight o'clock

because not only will I be here at Longmeadow as usual,

but also, I'll be joining Carol, Rachel and Joe at Gardeners' World Live.

The show is on from Wednesday to Sunday next week.

If you're planning to come along, remember to bring some plants for the bring and buy sale.

All the proceeds from this go to Children In Need.

I'll see you then, and have a really good weekend. Bye-bye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]