Episode 16 Gardeners' World

On a bright July morning like this,

there's nothing I like better than to slip downstairs,

go straight outside, and not do any gardening,

but just soak up that sun and the light.

And the early morning light has that combination of delicacy,

almost fragility, and yet energy,

and that sets you up for the whole day.

Now you may have noticed that there's some sort of sporting event going on at the moment,

and tonight Rachel, Joe and Carol will be in London.

Rachel is at the Olympic Park, looking at how this once blighted

post-industrial landscape has been transformed.

This is what gardens can be in the future.

Exciting, colourful, based on planting but also very sustainable.

And Carol is in the West End looking at the wild side of London.

-It must turn everybody on who comes up here.

-It does.

The general public, it's fantastic.

They don't even realise that these are wild flowers.

Joe gets an exclusive peek at the garden

hidden behind a particularly famous front door.

And I'll be here in the garden at Long Meadow.

I'm going to be harvesting my blackcurrants,

making my own plant feed and sowing some winter veg.

I've had a letter from Ann Robinson, which says,

"I'd appreciate advice about which fertiliser is best for planting

and as a general feed. Or is it best

to vary things at different times?"

Now that's quite typical of a lot of letters that I get,

cos it is quite difficult to know what is best to do for plants.

And the first thing I'd say is, on the whole, there's no need to fertilise any plant growing in soil.

It's likely to do more harm than good.

However, if you're growing plants that are being asked to do

a huge amount of work or are in pots,

it's quite likely you will need to feed them at some point but not all are alike.

For example, if you've got lilies like we have in pots here,

certainly there's no point in feeding them now.

If you're going to feed them, you feed the bulb

which makes next year's flower, after flowering this year.

I planted up these four large pots in a jewel garden

earlier on in the summer.

Now I put in lots of garden compost

which should provide the necessary feed but if I used ordinary compost

I'd have to feed them regularly.

It's asking too much to have this much colour coming from this much compost.

Now the kind of feed I need to provide

is that which will promote flowering and not foliage growth,

and that comes down to the ratio of the fertiliser.

So if I have a general purpose feed,

you'll see there "NPK 4:4:4."

Now NPK stands for nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

And you need all three for the plant.

But it's the ratio of all three that's really significant.

Now this is a general-purpose fertiliser so it's 4:4:4, ie equal.

But if I just want to have flowers, I don't need much nitrogen at all

because nitrogen promotes green, lushy growth.

So if I have a tomato feed, "NPK 6:3:10."

A very different ratio.

The potassium which is encouraging flower and fruit development is really high, that's 10.

And that's what you need to encourage any plant

that's producing lots of flowers or you want fruit from it.

In fact, as a general rule, if you use a general purpose tomato feed

on any flowering or fruiting plant

in a container, you won't go far wrong.

However, you can make your own.

It's very easy, it costs nothing and it's very effective.

Now I have comfrey growing at the edges of the damp garden.

It grows as a weed, it gets washed in by the flood.

And this wild comfrey is full of nutrients.

All I do is stuff the leaves

and stems into a trug or a bucket until it can't take any more,

top that up with water and leave it for three weeks.

It'll smell horrid but don't worry about that.

Then strain off the leaves

and the resulting liquid you use as a base for a feed.

And don't overfeed. Dilute it well.

You can do more harm by feeding too much than too little.

So just a little bit of feed once a week or once a fortnight

will do all that's needed. If you haven't got comfrey,

you could always use nettles. Nettles make a really good feed

and you do it exactly the same way. If all this seems terribly complicated,

you can go to our website and you'll get all the information you need.

Now as gardeners, we try to keep everything going

for as long as possible but we have to work with the weather

we're given, there's nothing we can do about it but adapt.

But if you're putting on a big event,

you've got to get it right on the day.

And few events are bigger than the Olympics.

The London 2012 Olympic Park is welcoming the top sportsmen

and women from across the globe.

But it's also showcasing the best in British horticulture.

This 250 hectare site, much of which was an industrial wasteland,

has been absolutely transformed into the largest urban park

created in this country for 150 years.

This landscape along the River Lea in East London has been cleansed,

creating ribbons of colourful planting which weave throughout the site.

These jewel-like displays are the result of over five years

of careful work by a group of British landscape and garden designers.

Along with his colleague, James Hitchmough,

Professor Nigel Dunnett created these flower-rich meadows

which encircle the main stadium.

For the first time here at the Olympics in London,

the park is as important as the buildings.

The park is a setting for the buildings.

What we've tried to do here is to look forwards,

so we could easily have gone and looked back

and tried to recreate some pastiche of Victorian bedding

and the sort of heritage

of gardens but instead we said we're not going to do that at all,

we're going to look to the future and say, "This is where we are now.

"This is what gardens can be in the future."

Exciting, colourful, based on planting but also very sustainable.

The 2012 gardens bring together over 250 species of plants

from across the globe, a vibrant textural tapestry.

These planting palettes are the creation of Chelsea gold medal winner Sarah Price.

One of the largest challenges

in working on the Olympic Park

has been visualising the terrain of the park,

because when I first visited here,

the whole site was an industrial wasteland,

so in a sense you're really designing blind,

because you can't visit the site.

You can't see the ramps, the gradients,

everything that you do you've got to visualise.

You've got to visualise how those plants are going to look in combination

and what it's going to feel like to walk through the garden.

The gardens are really linear.

They're half-a-mile long and so we all really wanted to create

a change of character as you walk along, through the different spaces.

Vibrant tones marry together plants from across continents

in the southern hemisphere garden,

some of the seed for which was specially gathered from South Africa.

Nectar-rich plants pepper the hay meadows

inspired by Western Europe, with Shasta daisies

and purple loosestrife to attract butterflies and bees.

And from the Americas, a dense swathe of prairie planting will provide gorgeous late-summer colour.

From the ashes of its industrial past, the park is now ablaze with sensational blooms

and it was Phil Askew's job to bring this transformation into fruition.

This used to be a goods railway yard, derelict,

not far from the largest fridge mountain in Europe,

and covered in Japanese knotweed.

So we would probably have been battling our way through the undergrowth.

Surely the most crucial thing in this project is timing,

because it's all geared towards being fabulous for the Olympics themselves

-and the Paralympics?

-Yes.

How have you managed to make that happen?

Well, we thought carefully about some of the plant species so we know that they will be flowering now,

but perhaps more importantly we thought about the growing conditions for them.

So we've played around with nature a bit.

We have starved things of water, we've cut them down.

Our perennial meadows in the north of the park,

we cut down about a month ago to slow down their flowering.

And our team of gardeners has also been frantically dead-heading,

removing flowers so that we can get them to flower again, as it were.

So we've done a lot of work on that, on feeding the plants

and on the soil conditions they're growing in, really,

so they're absolutely optimal but also we can control, if you like,

a little bit of nature.

These meadows, gardens and wetlands are now set to celebrate

the best of our horticultural heritage on the world stage.

Well, it wouldn't be summer 2012 if it didn't start to rain, would it?

Never mind, doesn't stop me picking my blackcurrants.

I love blackcurrants,

not least because they're the main ingredient in summer pudding,

and summer pudding, everybody's got to admit,

is the most delicious thing you could possibly eat in summer.

Love it. But of course you can make ice cream from it, sorbet, sauces.

And blackcurrants produce their fruit on relatively young wood,

on wood produced the previous year and then two-year-old wood,

and then they start to decrease after three years.

In fact, I can show you over here. Have a look.

This, which was pruned hard last year,

you can see is producing no fruit at all on this year's growth,

which is the fresh growth here.

But if you go down, look, there's the fruit down the bottom,

which is wood that is one and two years old.

And that gives you a clue to the pruning regime.

The best way to prune them

is to remove a third of the oldest wood every year,

so if we have in here, we've got a stem there,

you can see that is fairly old and can come out.

Cut like that.

So that will rejuvenate and reinvigorate it.

Now, the time to prune can vary.

You can prune them in winter, and you'll do no harm.

I like to prune blackcurrants when they've finished fruiting.

Round about August time.

That way, you get lots of light and air in.

You get the maximum time for new growth to ripen,

because that's going to start bearing fruit next year.

So I do all my blackcurrant pruning in the next few weeks,

after I've picked the last of the berries.

Now, of course, I'm growing fruit in a fruit cage,

in a very carefully controlled environment,

pruning them for maximum productivity.

But Carol has been to the streets of London,

finding plants that will grow whatever the circumstances,

and often against considerable odds.

Wild flowers have a lust for life. They just want to grow.

Whether they're out in the wild world

or they're jostling for position in our towns and cities.

They're total pragmatists that just use

every opportunity they can to live and flourish.

While we pursue our busy lives, wild flowers just get on with it.

But if you stop for a moment just to admire the delicacy

and daintiness

of the tiny flowers of this toadflax,

you're reminded of what the real world is.

This masonry is ancient,

but it doesn't compare in age

to this beautiful little fern.

The spleenwort has been around since prehistoric times.

But it uses every opportunity it can

to colonise every crack and crevice,

just enjoying the richness of this lime mortar.

This is London's West End, theatre land.

Almost every inch lies under tarmac and concrete.

But hidden between Soho and Covent Garden,

there's one space where you can still see the earth.

This garden covering a third of an acre

has been established since 1984,

on what was formerly a car park and before that, a bombsite.

The plants, flowers and trees here provide an invaluable resource

for local wildlife, who've made it their home.

Head gardener Chris Raeburn has been here since the early '80s,

when he answered an advert for "Part-time Gardener Wanted."

It's not what you'd call a typical sort of London park space.

Not at all. One of the things I was really keen to ensure that we did

when we renovated the garden

was not to lose the background plant community

that's developed here over 20 years.

We have to be a garden for people because that's our purpose.

But we can also be a really good garden for wildlife.

I love this focal point at the edge of the path.

It's completely un-contrived but it works beautifully.

It's lovely, thistles. I mean, they seed about

and so they move around the garden each year,

but they're fantastic for bumblebees.

The flowers are like bumblebee beds. They just roll around in them.

But also, particularly as a public garden, they're un-pickable.

So they're fantastic.

-Yeah, and a very dramatic statement too.

-Oh, beautiful.

A beautiful colour. It'll flower for a month and a half, two months.

-At least! Look at all the buds.

-It's lovely, isn't it?

Within this small space, you've got so many different habitats.

I love this pond area.

And I love the fact that you've used the wire fence

to support your climbers.

It's one of my favourite climbers. It's a bramble.

It flowers for months, it fruits for months,

both for wildlife and for people.

Protects nesting birds from cats and also protects my pond from people.

I think this combination of nettles

with this very sophisticated Arundo donax 'Variegata',

this gorgeous tall grass,

typifies the whole philosophy of the garden.

It's this wonderful combination

of accepting plants that are hugely important to wildlife,

wild flowers, weeds,

and combining them with these highly ornamental plants

that makes the whole garden work.

Wild flowers find their way into our cities in a myriad of ways.

Away from the densely populated streets of London's West End,

perched above the River Thames, a meadow of wild flowers

has been introduced onto the roof of the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

Last year, amidst this concrete jungle, the garden was created

by a group of homeless people with the help of the Eden Project.

Paul Pulford spent seven years of his life on the streets,

until a chance to garden

and grow wild flowers up on the roof turned his life around.

This is the best place in the world for me.

Being able to come here every day

and work on this garden is just absolutely amazing.

I'm totally inspired by planting and using native wild flowers

which is my passion, it's my hobby and it's my life.

It's very strange, though, this preconception that people have

that gardens must be full of very cultivated plants,

but you just demonstrate here that's not true.

No, it's not true.

A lot of these plants here, people are digging out of their lawns

and cutting them down in their hedge banks as weeds.

I tell you what, if there were dahlias and roses

in the middle of that, you'd fling them out, wouldn't you?

They'd be straight out, they'd be straight onto the compost heap.

Everything here is either a food or it's a medicine.

And our ancestors would have known about this,

and that's what really turns me on with native plants.

-It must turn everybody on who comes up here.

-It does.

The general public, it's fantastic.

Lots of them come up here with their children

and they don't realise that these are wild flowers.

To be in this garden now, I'm actually at the pinnacle in my life.

I think if Monet was alive today,

then he'd be out here with his easel and he'd be painting it.

I'm sure Paul is right about the healing power of this place.

The wild flower meadow

and the surrounding garden have proved to be a sanctuary,

not just for plants, flowers, creatures,

but also for the people who care for it.

I've got a group of veg here which are perfect for sowing now,

and are really delicious.

They're all Oriental vegetables and all belong to the cabbage family,

but you can treat them as a salad crop or you can cook them.

I've got some Mibuna here, some Mizuna,

some Oriental mustard and some rocket.

Most of us know rocket.

Mizuna's very similar.

It's got more zig-zag leaves and a bit more peppery.

Mibuna has got strapped leaves, and that's also peppery.

You can eat them as salads or you can cook them,

you can make sauces from them. Really nice to eat.

Sow them now, and they'll be ready to eat in September,

and go on right into winter.

Now, I'm going to start with sowing Mibuna,

but you can sow all of them in exactly the same way.

Just put some seed compost into a seed tray.

I've mixed some vermiculite into this to open it out a little bit.

With seed compost, you don't need lots of nutrition.

All you're looking for is a nice loose medium

for the seeds to grow in.

By the way, Mibuna, which has these great strap leaves,

can be a big plant. It can really be like that.

So if you sow it direct,

one of the problems is you need to thin it quite radically.

Now as always, it pays to sow thinly.

You're not going to be any better off

for crowding a seed tray with seeds.

Just an even spread.

Because to have a healthy plant,

it wants to be healthy at every stage of its life.

It's much harder to reclaim a plant from a bad position

than it is just to nurture it gradually.

OK, a slight covering over that.

Now the other way of sowing seed,

which is slightly more time consuming

but actually skips a phase, is to sow them directly into plugs,

so the plant has its own space from the very beginning,

and then you can take it straight from this

and plant it into the ground, whereas in a seed tray,

you need to transplant it, either into a plug or a pot first.

And you just fill 'em up...

..clean that off.

Now this time I'm going to put some...

D'you know, I've labelled that Mizuna, and in fact it was Mibuna.

Easily done.

Right, now Mizuna.

You don't need a greenhouse to raise veg at this time of year.

You can sow them direct if you want,

and then thin them, and just put them outside.

The beauty is you've got enough warmth in the days

for them to germinate, but enough coolness at night

so when they get planted out, they're not going to bolt.

And that means that they will grow nice and strong

and last well into winter and right through till next spring

if they have some protection.

Now last month was the annual Open Garden Squares Weekend in London.

People bought tickets and could visit all the gardens.

However, one of them was 10 Downing Street.

And only 25 of those ticket-holders were chosen at random

and allowed in to see it,

and Joe was lucky enough to go along with them.

Over the years, I've been fortunate to visit all kinds of gardens,

but today, as part of the Open Garden Square Weekend in London,

I've been invited to nose around

one of the most private gardens in the country.

Since the 18th century,

the gardens at 10 Downing Street have been enjoyed by a long line of VIPs.

Lloyd George, Winston Churchill, Harold Wilson

and Margaret Thatcher to name a few.

And now, me.

'Behind this famous door, the garden at Ten Downing Street has been used

'as a world stage to announce peace treaties, coalitions,

'and it's even hosted the odd tea party and barbecue.

'But what's it really like?'

Wow, well...it's much bigger than I thought it was going to be.

Remember, it's a London garden.

And it's surprisingly welcoming and inviting. Have a little look around.

There's been a garden here at Number Ten since 1736,

when the first Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, took up residence.

Ever since, the politicians who have lived here

have all made small contributions to the garden.

To find out more, I caught up with gardener Will Tremorin,

who's been helping to keep the garden here at Number Ten in tip-top shape.

Hi there, Will.

-Hey, Joe.

-See you're tying in the roses on a gusty day like this.

-Really gusty.

-Yeah.

Smells amazing round here. These roses are gorgeous!

These are Margaret Thatcher's roses.

The ropes and the climbers are John Major's contribution.

She did the roses on the side,

and Major did the swags with the climbers.

-Exactly.

-So, OK, there's a dual effort going on there.

What about the veggie patch in the corner?

Erm, Sarah Brown was responsible

for introducing the raised vegetable bed.

At the moment, we've got winter, spring veggies,

we've got a bit of carrot, some radishes,

spring onions, swede, beetroot, garlic.

It's great having a little bit of grow-your-own in here.

It's amazing what you can grow in a small plot.

The space is a combination of Number Ten

and Number 11's back gardens joined together.

It consists of a large, sweeping lawn,

no doubt for all the hob-nobbing guests at state functions,

and like all gardens, it has many horticultural challenges.

We've got a very clay,

sort of, on the acid side, in one part of the garden.

Where we're standing here is quite a sandy soil.

This part of the garden cooks in the summer time,

whereas the other end of the garden stays quite shady, moist and cool.

It's a micro-climate, definitely,

and it gives us a wider variety of plants to play with.

What are the challenges of a garden like this?

Well, I think the main challenge is the surrounding London plane trees.

Although they're great at clearing up pollution,

they're also equally as great at making pollution!

So, we're constantly having to pick up after the trees.

Well, the leaves and the seed balls.

It's the leaves, it's the seed balls, it's the bark,

it's just one thing after another.

-And they're not even in the garden!

-There's no respite.

We've introduced a lot of habitats for various insects and wildlife.

-We've got bee boxes, we've got bird boxes.

-You've got a pond as well.

We've got the pond, we've got areas in the garden

that we don't keep pristine,

otherwise it won't be wildlife friendly.

-We've got finches, blue tits, robins...

-Yeah, woodpecker.

-Woodpecker.

-It's amazing, isn't it? In the middle of Westminster,

-if you create the right environment, things will just turn up!

-Yeah.

It's like any other garden, frankly. It's got the same problems.

Bit of dry soil here and a bit of shade over there.

But as far as hosting very important people from around the world,

this garden fits the bill perfectly.

It's always fascinating to peek over any garden fence,

and all the more so if it belongs to the Prime Minister.

You can get information about next year's Open Garden Squares Weekend

on our website.

But if you're staying in your own garden,

here are some things to be getting on with.

When you get erratic temperatures and uneven moisture levels,

it's very common for the beet family to bolt.

That includes chard and beetroot.

But you can salvage the situation by cutting back the bolting stem

right to the base.

This then will give the chance to grow normally.

However, if your lettuce bolts, there's not a lot you can do

because it'll get bitter to eat,

and the best thing to do is consign it to the compost heap.

If you have a pond, it's almost unavoidable

that you're going to get a growth of algae or weed at some stage.

Gently scoop it off the surface

and then put it by the side of the pond

and leave it for an hour or two.

And this will give all the insects a chance to return to the water.

After that, you'll find it makes excellent compost.

It's been a good year for delphiniums,

but all good things come to an end, and that's the situation now.

So it's time to cut them back, hard to the ground.

Then, if we get plenty of heat in August and September,

they'll re-grow and throw up fresh flower spikes.

MUSIC: "I Feel So Good" by Jo Ann Kelly

Well that's it for this week.

Now, more often than not, we're taken off-air to accommodate sport,

but despite the Olympics, we're here next week and every week,

right through till November, so I'll see you next Friday. Bye-bye.

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