Episode 17 Gardeners' World

Hello. Welcome to Gardeners' World.

I'm really pleased with these calendulas.

It's a variety called 'Neon' and it's just one packet of seed.

It's kicking in now but so much is.

It's funny that when you get to August,

it's like entering a new season, because all those plants

that depend on warm weather rather than light come into their own.

That's the same in the vegetable garden as well as the flower garden.

On tonight's programme, I'll share with you all the skills and tips

I've acquired on looking after hedges after a lifetime's obsession with growing them.

Carol travels to Yorkshire, which is perhaps an unlikely place to find a garden full of flourishing exotics.

Oh, it's fabulous!

It really is!

And you can come with me on a privileged exclusive tour

of the US Ambassador's private garden in London.

I really like hedges. I think they can make as beautiful an arrangement

of plants as any border, depends how you use them.

When we came here there was nothing in this garden and we desperately needed shelter,

so I planted hedges everywhere.

As they grew up, they created micro-climates which made it easier to grow other plants.

But also as they grew, they assumed a stature in their own right,

and by making different heights of hedge, you get different spaces.

We've got knee-height ones, some that are head-height and some that are really tall.

Of course, whatever the height of the hedge, at least once if not twice a year, it's got to be cut.

August is the perfect time to cut any hedge of any kind

because the birds are finished nesting, the young have left, most of the summer growth

has stopped or slowed down. And also, in August,

everything is getting a bit jaded,

so if you cut your hedges, suddenly everything looks

smarter and crisper and gives it a new kind of energy.

What I'm trying to do is get a nice flat surface but it's on a slope.

That's called a batter, and every hedge, whether tall or short,

should have a batter to some degree. The reason for that

is if the top gets wider than the bottom,

which very easily happens with a hedge, it shades it out.

HEDGE TRIMMER WHIRS

Next step is do the top.

The key thing for cutting the top of any hedge is be above it.

Be stable and in control of what you're doing.

I do love these monumental hedges.

This architecture that plants can give you, as well as colour and light and delicacy.

Remember that if you have an evergreen hedge that forms a boundary with neighbouring property,

there is legislation governing the height that's allowed to be maintained at.

Contact your local authority to find out how that applies to you in your area.

Within a garden, it's simply a matter of what you can control,

and I think it's worth the trouble.

This is hornbeam. All these hedges are, because it grows really well on this fairly heavy soil.

It keeps its leaves throughout winter, which turn brown.

It's similar to beech but hornbeam and beech never grow well together.

Beech tends to like lighter soils.

When I was a child in Hampshire, it grew very well on the chalk there.

But one of the two will give you a really good hedge which will grow very fast,

be easy to keep and keep colour throughout the year.

What you put between your hedges can vary hugely.

Carol's been to Yorkshire to visit a garden that is FULL of surprises.

Look at this.

Oh, it's fabulous!

It really is.

It's marvellous.

About nine years ago we went to the Eden Project

and I saw these tropical plants

and wondered if I could grow them in Yorkshire.

I just kept buying plants and having nowhere to put them,

so I have to dig more grass up till we've ended up with none!

-No grass at all! Who wants grass when you can have this?

-Yeah.

It's like an antique shop full of all these treasures but it's all living.

Which are your favourites? I bet it's difficult to choose.

It is difficult but I really like this impatiens - Congo Cockatoo.

Which gives a clue to where it comes from.

How do you treat that in the winter?

I take it up and put it in a pot and take it into the house.

It's not the sort of Busy Lizzie that we're used to.

It's so packed with exotic plants. Any more special favourites?

I really like this little gentian.

You wouldn't think it was a gentian at first.

I bought one, thinking it was blue,

and when it flowered, it was white.

When I looked it up on the internet, it's a bit rarer than the blue.

-Definitely. The blue one especially, isn't it?

-Yeah.

Although these plants are from all over the world, and there's a sort of mystique,

-but a lot of them are straightforward to grow, aren't they?

-Yes.

-And some of them are easy to propagate too.

-They are.

I know you just LOVE these aeoniums.

If you've got a plant with a straightforward rosette like that, how do you tackle that?

Cut if off two or three inches from underneath the rosette

and leave it to callous over for a couple of days.

Then just put it in 50-50 compost and grit sand.

-Push it down.

-Just push it down, water it,

and just stand it in the greenhouse.

About four weeks, you'll find that roots have developed.

Unusually, you've got a few shoots on these that are beginning to produce flower.

Once they flower, that whole top dies.

What would you do then?

They'd come in again and just cut it off like that.

That's discarded and then it produces these little babies.

It makes babies of its own volition at the top of the stem.

Leave a few on to grow bigger,

take the babies off and propagate them.

These are the ones that were cut back like that last year.

Apart from the tea, Linda, you'd hardly believe where we were!

You've got catalpas in flower, you've got great Paulownia Foxglove trees.

It's so wonderful. What's your regime?

What do you do first thing in the spring?

In the spring, before things have taken too much growth,

we sprinkle chicken pellets.

That gives everything a boost.

As the season goes on, we feed with tomato food.

Tomato food has got plenty of potash in so you get marvellous flowers.

Yes, you do.

Palms, we use blood, fish and bone. That just keeps them well fed.

What about watering, generally? You've such a lot in pots.

The pots have to be watered every day.

If it's really hot, we do them twice, morning and evening.

We generally try to do the garden every day.

Usually at night when it's a bit cooler.

What sorts of plants would you recommend? You must have had lots of successes but a few failures too.

I have. Aroids, like Dragon Arums and Arisaemas,

they're quite easy to do.

You can leave them out as long as you put mulch on for the winter.

-They have this wonderfully exotic sort of look.

-Leaf, yeah.

You've one there, a beautiful Erysimum with that Epilobium,

-that little white willowherb,

-That's lovely that, yeah.

That's a smashing plant.

It's not too bad as long as it's got a little bit of shade.

Yes, and plenty of moisture.

-It likes water.

-A lot of these hardy plants

-mix in together with the things that are more tropical.

-Yes, they do.

-You love them, don't you?

-Joyfully, I do.

I'll never tire of it, I don't think.

I just love it too much.

You can see Linda's garden for yourself because it is open this Sunday the 14th

from 10am to 4pm in the afternoon.

It's part of the National Gardens Scheme and you can find details

about her garden and any of the others through our website.

I do urge you to get out this month

and visit gardens because it's a great time of year to do so

and you always bring something back to your own garden at home.

Now, I've got loads of hedge cutting to do and it's hard old work.

I have learnt over the years not to rush it,

just pick away at it, and it'll get done over the days and weeks.

So I'm going to take a break now, go and do something else

and come back and finish tidying up a little later.

This time of year,

the cold frames always have a number of plants

that either should have been put out, or are not quite ready,

or you haven't got a home for.

To some extent, that's true of the dahlias and the cannas

and actually I've even got some Salvia elegans there.

All these were taken from cuttings earlier in the year.

The dahlias have come through well

and I've now found the perfect place for them.

Originally, my plan was to grow these on,

so they'd be nice, stocky plants for next year,

but I think that we can get flowers out of them this year

and we can do that in pots.

Dahlias are tropical plants. They like warm, wet conditions,

so I'm going to give them some extra goodness at the bottom of the pot.

I've got two barrows here. This is pure garden compost.

And then I've got my potting mix here, home-made.

That goes like that.

Now, this is 'Arabian Night',

which has got a really good red flower.

You can see, look, good root system on that.

That actually is the perfect time to pot on or plant out a plant,

so you can see the roots round the outside, but it's not root bound.

I'm putting these round the outside

because it just gives it more room

and the plant will then consolidate to create one mass

whereas if I crammed them in the middle,

they would immediately be butting up against each other.

I guess we'll start to have flowers in a few weeks' time.

As well as 'Arabian Night',

I've also got another good red which is 'Grenadier',

and 'David Howard', which is a fabulous apricot-y orange colour

with dark brown leaves.

Right, so much for the dahlias. Now the cannas.

I tell you what, have a look at that. We've got a little visitor.

It's obviously not been feeding too much on the cannas.

You don't want to know what's going to happen to him.

I'll put that to one side.

Cannas, above all plants, are very tropical and lush.

They come from as far south as Argentina

and as north up into America, sort of Central America band.

And they love hot, wet, rich conditions.

This variety is 'Durban' and it's notable for two things.

One it has enormous orange flowers

but also it has these leaves

which are shot through with stripes of pink and they get really big and dramatic if it's warm and wet.

So I'm going to plant these directly out into the Jewel Garden

but they would work in a pot.

All I would say is give them lots of goodness.

They really respond well to feed and water.

This time of year, it's always a little bit of a struggle

to find space for a plant that will potentially grow so big,

although I think, this year, they won't reach anything like their full potential,

but I've got a nice space here.

In the 19th Century, these became very popular for bedding.

Then, after the second world war, cannas went deeply out of favour

and they were very, very un-trendy.

It was the late Christopher Lloyd who made them popular again at Great Dixter.

He famously ripped out his rose garden and used exotics like cannas.

Since then, people have realised that they're really good

added to the late border,

getting that colour and size of foliage.

But to help them get the best for the remaining period of this year -

because the first frost will just stop them in their tracks -

I'm going to give that a really good soak

and then I'm going to mulch it individually.

Now, I've been to London and I've been to see a garden -

but not just any old garden, because I've been allowed to go and visit

the private home of the American ambassador to the UK,

who has a beautiful and enormous garden in London's Regent's Park.

Although there's been a house on the site since the early 19th Century,

as part of Nash's great Regency redevelopment of London,

the building we see today was built by the Woolworths heiress

Barbara Hutton in 1938.

But the war broke out soon after and she left for America,

so she hardly ever lived in it.

In 1946, she sold her lease to the American government

for the princely sum of 1.

Since 1954, Winfield House has been the official residence

of the American ambassador in London.

The house is set in 12½ acres of grounds in Regent's Park

and is the second largest private garden in central London.

Only the Queen has a bigger garden, up the road at Buckingham Palace.

I'm being shown round by the head gardener Stephen Crisp.

How many American presidents have you met?

Five, starting with Ronald Reagan.

There can't be many people who've said that,

and hardly any head gardeners, so it is extraordinary.

You're obviously very discreet, but what are they like?

All very individual, all very statesmanlike,

but President Obama has been here twice,

most recently for the state visit.

But on his first visit here, after he stepped off the helicopter,

he decided that he wanted to exercise his legs

and went for a tour round the garden and at the end of the tour,

he said, "If I'd have realised how impressive this property was,

"I might have applied to be ambassador instead of president".

He certainly knew how to butter you up -

exactly the right thing to say to a head gardener.

I just need to get that on my CV.

You have these formal areas round the house but...

really an enormous area of space.

In a way, the garden is sort of two parts -

the formal gardens that runs to the north and south of the house,

but then you have this landscaped park,

and in a way that great York stone path is the dividing line

between the formal and the more naturalistic.

And these roses - which ones are these?

This is Iceberg.

They look very healthy to me.

These roses are from 1985, remarkably.

They are one of those few floribundas that will go on and on.

We look after them, prune them hard, feed them well

and keep them well mulched and watered

and they perform.

This is really interesting.

This is the Green Garden, a relatively new garden,

only five years old.

A living sculpture in a more contemporary style

using just four different kinds of plants.

The grass is Panicum Heavy-metal,

boxwood hedging,

Pachysandra with its lustrous green leaf

and the male fern Dryopteris Cristata the King,

which is great in a slightly drier situation.

But just using a very restricted palette of plants

to create a very strong design, and often less is more.

I love the way that there's so much going on. And yet so little is used.

As you say, less is more, and, God, it works.

This is completely different. Very, very different.

This is the summer garden, a garden that I made about six years ago now.

The inspiration for this garden was Frank Lloyd Wright's stained glass,

where he used colour in asymmetrical panels.

I've tried to do that in a three-dimensional way,

using familiar plants.

There's nothing rare in here, but by using them

in a strong, graphic way, it makes for a contemporary appearance,

and strength of design.

Clearly you're given a pretty free hand here, aren't you?

I see myself as being the guardian, and perhaps serving the role

of the owner in many other situations and seeing and doing

what I think is the best for the property,

for the role that it serves.

And what is the role that it serves?

The house works extremely hard. It's a centre of hospitality and we have...

7,000, 8,000 people come to the house for all different sorts of reasons -

diplomatic, political, business, cultural.

We grow a lot of our own material, as well.

We have a range of glass houses where we, probably uniquely as a private house,

grow about 7,000 or 8,000 plants a year, cos we do our own bedding, and material from inside the house.

I don't know this plant. What is it?

It's phytolacca, North American pokeweed.

It's such a terrific plant - wonderful flowers

that then turn into these green berries,

that then turn into these berries that almost look like they're made of glass or something.

The Americans often go, "Oh! That plant!"

-So, what's this bit of the grounds?

-This is the parterre garden.

It's a formal garden, perhaps inspired in the French style,

but in the centre of the garden there's a statue of Barbara Hutton.

The statue was commissioned by her in '38,

and was rediscovered in 1989 by Mr and Mrs Price,

who found it in Florence and brought it to London,

and it commemorates her generosity.

-It had lain there all those years.

-All those years in a studio, unloved, but she's very much loved now.

-She's come home.

-Yes, come home. Absolutely.

I don't know if you noticed, but the hedges at Winfield House

were beautifully cut, immaculate.

And one thing I have learnt over the years is that,

A, you need to use the best kit you can find and afford,

and B, perhaps more importantly, no one piece of kit does it all.

With lots of different hedges of different heights and purposes,

you do need to use different tools to get the best from them.

Now these really tall hedges need an extended arm.

These came out about ten years ago, I think.

I remember trying them and they transformed my life.

You could stand on the ground and do most of it from ground level,

whereas before there were trellises, and the whole thing was a caper.

With this, I've got a really chunky, heavy-duty battery,

which lasts for about 40 minutes,

which is the time it takes for the second battery to charge up.

So if you buy this with a spare battery, you can go all day long

and keep changing the batteries over.

The beauty of this is it's lighter, it's not very noisy,

but you still need to wear eye protectors.

And this box, which has been growing out,

which I want to become rough topiary, is a perfect example

of where this solid, heavy-duty electrical machine works.

A rough shape on that.

In fact, this is the start of the process of making this into topiary.

And it copes with really quite thick branches, but if you see...

Just take the battery out to make it safe.

You can see here there's quite thick gaps between the teeth.

And to do fine work, like this box hedge, that's too crude

and it tends to crush them.

If you have a finer one, like this...

This is another electrical machine -

very, very light and much finer teeth.

The disadvantage is you have to plug it in, and in a garden like this,

it means yards and yards of wire, and if it rains that's no good.

You're for ever cutting through it.

But very good for doing fine work.

Mind you, the simplest thing of all, and the most old-fashioned, is often the best.

A good old pair of garden shears.

This pair, heavy duty, I could easily cut the hedge with it.

It'd be hard work, but it would work, and be much, much cheaper.

You can buy really good ones for about 50 quid,

and they will last you years and years.

And if you're feeling a bit expansive, you can get ones like this.

These are Japanese shears, designed for topiary. They are razor-sharp.

They're about twice the price of the other ones,

but about half the price of the cheapest of my hedge cutters.

And what they do is they just give you an exact age.

So, if you want to make topiary - or say we take this bit here -

I can shape that and get it perfect.

Down to an individual leaf.

Now, whatever hedges you've got,

I would say just consider the most suitable bit of kit for it.

Buy the best that you can afford, and that will save you a lot of work, a lot of time,

and in everything but the very shortest term, a lot of money, too, cos good kit always lasts.

Now, if you're planning to go on holiday, you're probably trying to forget about the garden,

but here are just a couple of jobs you can do before you go away

so it stays looking good until you come back.

If you don't have anyone who can come in and water your pots for you,

gather them all together in a shady, sheltered spot.

Give them a really good soak, and if you've got a tray or basin,

stand them in that so they can

slowly draw up water while you're away.

If you've recently planted soft vegetables like lettuce or chicory,

you'll need to water them really well and mulch them with compost.

This will keep the moisture in the soil

and keep them growing happily until you return.

Before you leave,

go through your vegetable garden and cut back bolting stems.

Also harvest anything that's ready, and if you've got time,

freeze it for your return.

If not, give it away to friends,

or if the worst comes to the worst, put it on the compost heap.

That way, you'll have a fresh crop to pick when you get home.

Now, clearing up edge cuttings is always the drudgery

that follows the work, particularly if it's in a border,

because you more or less have to do it with your hands without damaging the plants.

But on grass like this, it's not too bad.

And summer hedge prunings make fantastic compost.

Because you've got lots of green material,

which is rich in nitrogen, and yet lots of stemmy, but soft, material

which is rich in carbon, and it really rots down quickly

if you can chop it up.

You can put it through a shredder, or you can do as I do, which is to mow it.

And if it's very twiggy,

you can still find a really good use for it in the garden,

because gather up a bundle and pop it down behind a hedge,

in a corner, amongst some long grass, and it makes a perfect home

for all kinds of wildlife, from the smallest insect

to hedgehogs and frogs and toads.

It's cover that they love,

and the loose cover of a bundle of twiggy hedge trimmings is perfect.

However, this is all pretty soft, so I'll mow this up, to chop it up for compost and tidy up for me.

Now that's all chopped up, that will make brilliant compost -

very quickly at this time of year - and of course, it's tidying up as it does so.

I've got loads more hedge cutting to do, but I'll plug away at that,

and I'll be back here at Long Meadow next week at the same time,

so join me then. Bye-bye.

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