Episode 19 Gardeners' World

Hello. Welcome to Gardeners' World.

Now, even though the weather isn't brilliant,

there's no doubt, it does feel like the holiday season.

Nevertheless, there are lots of jobs to do,

and there's no doubt

that summer is gently slipping away.

So it's important to relish every second of it.

This week, Carol goes to Dorset

to revel in the sheer artistry of water lilies.

It's these beautiful flowers

which inspired some of the most celebrated paintings in the world.

And we have another masterpiece.

This one is a walled garden in North Yorkshire.

It's a perfect example

of how to create a grand display in a small space.

Any art, and gardening's an art,

then I think that's what it's about, blowing people's minds

or blowing them out of their seats.

That's a very gentle weed.

I confess that this wall has been pretty much neglected

since I planted it in March.

It's a wall that I hadn't used for 20 years, and it's a pity

because it's a west-facing wall, very handsome,

and the perfect background for a whole range of plants,

particularly because west-facing walls, as well as being quite warm,

tend to be wetter than others,

and dryness at the feet of a wall is a problem,

so if you're planting against the base of a wall,

do remember to water. Now, what I've looked for here

was to get a combination of plants

that would give me flowers from spring right through to autumn,

and I've used roses and clematis to that effect

so we've got a clematis here, Alba luxurians,

little delicate flowers,

slightly tinged with mauve,

which are lovely, and coming into their own

and they'll go on flowering

for another month or so. There's a rose, New Dawn,

which is a really good old favourite, and rightly so.

You have this lovely flower

which will go on from June into October or even November

and almost evergreen leaves.

In time, that will cover the whole of that area

and work with the clematis.

Another clematis here, which is John Huxtable,

rather larger flowers.

That's been going now for about three weeks.

Another rose here,

Madame Alfred Carriere, which does its best stuff earlier in the season

and is delicate, but got a sort of fulsome body

and that will work in along this area

and finally, Clematis paniculata. I've not grown it before.

This is a froth of white flowers. It's a little on the tender side

but I'm hoping it will come up here into the tree.

So the combination of the plants should work well

and where they are now,

after this slightly chilly, wet summer, is actually fine.

They're doing exactly what I would hope they would.

Thank you very much. I need that.

You can't have it.

Now this is a rose that really does need some action,

and it needs it now.

It's a rambler, called Paul's Himalayan Musk.

If I get in there, I can show you.

The reason I'm wearing a thick coat and I've got these big gauntlets

is because it's awfully prickly

and these tendrils have a habit of snagging you

and then it's difficult to get out.

You can see this. This is very typical rambler growth.

There's probably about four foot of it that's all grown this year

and it's arching and loose

and brilliant for scrambling up trees and old buildings,

and that's where ramblers look their best,

whereas a climber's growth tends to be a bit more structured.

You establish a framework

and then the new shoots will be more upright.

So rambler - lots of small flowers,

produce once, usually in July, and then that's it,

whereas climbers tend to have bigger flowers

and many of them will go on flowering all summer.

The other really big difference,

which is why you need to prune ramblers now,

is that ramblers produce their flowers

on the previous season's wood,

so this shoot here will bear next year's flowers,

whereas climbers

tend to produce their flowers on the current season's wood

so you could prune a climber as late as May and still have flowers.

Prune a rambler any later than August

and you may be cutting off next year's flowers.

However, having said that,

I don't want to be spiked every time I come in the border!

I need to restrain this thing.

Ow! 'Ramblers will flower perfectly well without any pruning at all,

'but they do get out of hand.

'Pruning as soon as they've finished flowering allows the new growth...

Ow! '..which will produce next year's flowers time to ripen.'

Look at that. This is all this year's growth

and if you've got a pergola or old fence,

I suggest looking at a climber before a rambler.

They're more easily constrained

and in fact, they're better for it

but if you've got a rambler - and they are glorious -

now is the time to prune it, if you're going to.

It doesn't need it,

but you may well want to stop it spiking you every time you pass.

Do it this weekend. Get on with it.

Now, if you're not pruning this weekend

and you fancy a day off from the garden,

then visiting another garden is the next best thing.

And the RHS, as well as having its major gardens,

has 147 partner gardens.

In fact, it's got another 23 abroad too.

And we went along to North Yorkshire to visit one of them,

which is a town garden that unfolds to reveal a vast array of treasures.

The site is so perfect.

The terraces, the steps,

the river in the background,

the landscape beyond.

People might think, "Well,

"it's about a third of an acre. That's not a very big garden."

But in fact, we've probably got as much stuff in the garden,

as much interest, as many gardens which are ten acres.

I would say the real signature mark of the garden

is the intensity of planting.

Every little nook and cranny has got something in it.

Like many people, we overfilled the space

and we've spent probably the last 30 years taking things out.

Heartbreaking as it is, we've had to get rid of a...

We've been taking things out,

but didn't you buy 23 new hostas this winter?

Yes, I did.

THEY LAUGH

That's my passion!

I tends to be the decider of plants to buy and where to put them,

so a sort of designer

and I really enjoy that.

I can move a plant around or a pot around

and it doesn't seem quite right, and he'll come out and say,

"five inches to the left" or "six inches back,"

and it looks spot on, damn it.

So he's got that designer's eye.

One of the great things we're blessed with is walls and paving

which was taken out from what were the kitchens below

and put out into the garden,

so you've got this sort of very hard stone, York stone, gravel,

high walls, and all those textures of green and shapes

which is just a joy.

Austin's the doer.

Once they're in, he looks after them.

He's very much a sort of tender of plants.

This is Comtesse de Bouchaud

and it's going around these lovely campanulas

which are standing up beautifully this morning

and the clematis is finding its own way up a natural support there, look,

which is rather fun.

And the great thing about this technique

is that instead of it being on artificial trellis work,

it's just falling around naturally

and it will flower all over this area.

This kind of slightly anarchic approach

would irritate lots of people, I think, enormously.

To keep it looking natural

is a complete artifice, and you've got to really...

There's a lot of work, a lot of work.

You don't want it to look perfect

but you don't want it to be running all over you and on top of you.

We're maybe rather old-fashioned.

Our style is almost an Edwardian style

of just exuberance and roses

and very full and crazy...

The top roses for me would be, I think, Maigold,

which is on the balcony of the garden.

It's actually planted at ground level

but it's right up onto the balcony.

It's disease-free, almost, the flowers are beautiful in the bud,

it's beautiful when it opens.

Secondly, I would have to say

probably the centrepiece of the garden is Rosa helenae,

which is a Himalayan climber.

It's huge and it almost dominates the gardens.

And the scent fills the garden.

-The scent fills the garden completely.

-Early July,

first half of July.

Because of the walls and because of the aspect, which is south-southeast,

the perfume of the garden on a warm still day

is just mind-blowing.

We've often, you know, thought, "Let's have a 20-acre garden."

And now, I think, "Thank God we have got a third of an acre."

But I called this a glorified window box.

I don't really want 15 more acres

whilst he's doing his Sudoku and I'm working on the garden.

Several years ago, a nun came to the door

and said, "Is this your garden?"

"Yes." "Oh! It's just wonderful.

"I feel anointed all over with holy oils."

I said, "Time to go back to the convent, sister."

But it hopefully gives people that sense of uplift.

Yeah, she'd been wowed. She'd been completely wowed,

which is really what I said we were trying to do with people,

is to blow them away.

I think that's a really good example

of how a relatively small space has an energy and an intensity

because it's packed with plants

and you just can't achieve that in a big garden.

Do go along and see it for yourself.

It's open every day from now to October

and you can get all the details from our website.

Talk to any vegetable grower

and the first thing they'll tell you is what a hard year it's been,

how difficult it's been with this weather

but the truth is, you deal with the weather you're given.

There's nothing you can do about it. However, the runner beans

have loved the weather.

Runner beans like warm, wet weather

and whilst it hasn't been hot, it hasn't been particularly cold,

and the wet is exactly their cup of tea.

This is a variety called White Lady,

and due for picking. Now, I'm not interested

in growing a vegetable that's bigger than anyone else.

What I'm really concerned with is that it tastes good,

so I don't mind picking runner beans when they're quite small

and if you keep picking them, rather like sweet peas,

they will keep producing more of these lovely beans.

These were plants raised indoors and planted out

and it's interesting that

they are considerably ahead of the ones that I planted direct.

Another crop that has benefited from the cool, wet weather

is celery.

Celery really likes it wet, and this is a self-blanching variety.

It's still got plenty of growth in it

but no reason why we can't start harvesting it now.

And the easiest way to do that is with a knife

and just cut it right across.

Now, the plants are still quite small,

so you're not going to get the great stems that you can buy...

..but really delicious when cooked

and the fragrance of the celery is really intense,

and I think delicious too. That'll be good.

And those should go on growing quite happily into autumn,

just like the runner beans.

And if it dries out a lot, then it is important to keep watering them.

You can see these tomato leaves are all rolled up like that,

and it's much worse nearer the door.

And as you come down the greenhouse, you get less and less of it

and that's because it's caused by temperature fluctuations.

The difference between the cold of the nights and the hot of the day,

which obviously is going to be worse near the open door,

will cause the leaves to roll up.

It won't affect the crop, so don't worry if you've got it.

What is worth doing is pinching out the top.

As you can see, the tops of these have been cut off

and that will stop new trusses forming

and allow the existing trusses of fruit a better chance of ripening.

But we've been picking them for three weeks,

and they're very good, not been bad at all.

This is a new variety on me.

It's Merveille des Marches

and it's absolutely delicious.

I'd definitely grow this again. We've probably picked

about 30-odd fruits. They're not huge.

They've got that lovely warm tomatoey smell

that you can only get from a greenhouse.

And it's the warmth that gives them taste. It's not been a hot summer

but the taste is still good. The sugars are fairly concentrated.

With any luck, these tomatoes will go on ripening steadily

over the next month or two.

The only thing to really watch out for is blight

because all my potatoes have got blighted

and tomatoes, of course, are close cousins of potatoes

and can be hit by blight. However, very unlikely inside the greenhouse.

Talking of potatoes, I asked you

if you'd had any experiences with growing first earlies.

Remember, I did a taste test a month or so ago

and I've had a mass of replies. Here are just a few of them.

And it does seem that there were lots of very varied experiences

across different parts of the country

but one or two common threads came through, and those of you

that grew Winston, just as I did,

also found that they grew absolutely enormous for first early potatoes

but not many are as big as this one,

from Andy from Gislingham in Suffolk -

a potato looking to be about half the size of Andy himself.

But the general theme that comes through this very mixed response

is that one - Arran Pilot did particularly well as a first early,

and two - that those of you who grew Charlotte,

which is a second early, loved it.

Now, I've got one more thing I want to harvest.

DISTANT THUNDER

RAIN PATTERS

This is a small variety of cucumber called La Diva

and it proves to be a perfect size.

I grow cucumbers in pots

and have done so for the last few years with great success,

there's really no trouble at all. The secret of cucumbers

is they like as much warmth as you can give them

and as much moisture and richness as well.

These are large pots that I've had for years and years

and they are half filled with garden compost, half with potting compost.

And I water these at least once a day

and if it's at all warm, twice a day,

a really good soak, and they thrive.

And by the way, I like hot cucumber too.

You just cut it into four,

fry it in a bit of butter for a few minutes

so it's just a little bit crispy on the outside,

and some cream, salt and pepper,

some chopped parsley or mint or whatever herbs you've got to hand,

and it's absolutely delicious.

A couple of weeks ago, I cleared the silkweed from the pond

and put in some oxygenators

and I'm pleased with the way that it's reacted.

There's a little bit of weed back, but that's because I left some in.

I just didn't manage to get it all out, but believe you me,

if it hadn't had any oxygenators in,

I reckon that would have blanketed the whole area

because once it starts spreading, it really grows fast,

so that's a result. I'm very pleased with that.

Another really good thing

is that the water lilies have produced a bud.

Now, that's pretty exceptional in the first year. Normally,

you'd expect that to happen in year two or even year three sometimes,

so I can't wait to see that open.

Not very dramatic, just one small flower,

but it's all part of the excitement of the pond

and if you do want to see dramatic water lilies

or dramatic plants of any kind,

you need to go and see a national collection

and Carol has been down to Dorset

to see a national collection of water lilies.

So far in this series,

I've been looking at wild flowers

who've got their roots firmly in the ground,

terrestrial plants.

But today, I want to look at something

which occupies an entirely different element - that of water.

It's the water lilies - Nymphaeacea.

They take their name from the Greek word nymphae, a water nymph,

a mythological creature

who lived in rivers, streams, ponds, lakes,

and it's these beautiful flowers

which inspired some of the most celebrated paintings in the world -

Claude Monet's Les Nympheas, The Water Lilies.

Of course, his water lilies were in his pools and ponds at Giverny.

They were cultivated varieties,

but those lilies, and all our water lilies,

have their roots firmly in the wild.

You'd hardly believe

that this exotic-looking plant is indigenous to the British Isles.

It's one of only a couple of species that we have as wild flowers.

It's an extremely vigorous plant.

When it's left to its own devices,

it will just take over any stretch of water it can find

and cover it with these great green pads and these exotic white flowers.

Think of water lilies and you imagine a whole array of colours

that goes far beyond yellow and white.

this is down to the life's work of one passionate Frenchman.

Joseph Marliac devoted his life to the water lily.

Using wild species as his starting point,

he developed and hybridised over 110 new cultivars

in a kaleidoscopic range of colour.

Here at Bennett's Water Garden,

Jonathan Bennett knows all about

how this incredible colour range was developed.

So what did he start off with, then?

-I believe he started off with the wild white Alba water lily.

-Yeah.

And he also imported the Mexicana yellow from South America.

-Right.

-I think that was the magic ingredient,

because the plants he got together were capable of producing seed

in the climate that he brought them together in,

which was in the South of France, lovely warm climate.

-Look at that! Isn't this beautiful?

-Yeah.

-And you must love them too, Jonathan.

-Yes, I mean,

I've been working with them for so many years now.

If you have to throw the plant away because it's in the wrong place,

it's a weed, you still have to save the flower and pop it in water

cos it'll carry on opening for a few more days.

It's such a beautiful thing. There you go.

-It's a beautiful colour, isn't it?

-Such perfection.

What are their roots like?

-Apart from being ugly!

-Yeah, they're chunks of rhizome down there,

then they have the fine roots that spread right out through the mud.

In this situation, they'd be spreading miles away from the plant.

-Bringing the food.

-That's it.

-And dragged up

any nutrient from the base.

-What about the leaves? They make a contribution too.

-Oh, yeah.

They're the food factory of the plant

and I think the unique thing with the aquatics

is that they're actually taking air down to the roots.

There's not much air down in the mud

and the stems have these little...

-Tubes.

-Tubes, that's it.

-Yeah.

So it's not just photosynthesis.

-It's dragging some air in there as well.

-So which one is this?

-This is a Marliac one too?

-It is.

Yeah, this one's called Hermine

and it's an almost brilliant white and it's grown for the...

Well, I think the unique thing is about the star shape of the flowers

and those lovely apple-green leaves.

Something tells me this is a special favourite of yours.

Yeah, I've got this one in my garden pond at home.

-Ah, well, that's a really good recommendation.

-Yeah, it is.

-When you've got the pick of how many?

-About 180 varieties.

-Oh, is that all?

-That's right, yeah.

-This is Escarboucle.

-Escarboucle? What a lovely name.

Just difficult to say.

It's a slow grower,

and it doesn't produce many side shoots

so therefore, it won't fill a pond up so quickly.

Joseph Marliac's breeding programme continued apace

but he needed somewhere broad of platform

to exhibit what he'd achieved so far.

The opportunity arose

when towards the end of the century, in 1889,

the World Fair was held in Paris

and he took his water lilies there

and showed them off to huge public acclaim.

One of the people who saw them there was the painter Claude Monet.

He fell in love with them!

He wanted to grow them, but more than that, he wanted to paint them.

But imagine what those paintings of Giverny would have been like

if it hadn't been for the work of Joseph Marliac

in creating this wonderful range of beautiful colours and forms.

In fact, they might well have contained

only white and yellow wild water lilies.

HEN CLUCKS

When I planted these water lilies,

I set them up on layers of bricks

because the idea is

to have the water lily foliage just sitting on the surface

and if you have deep water and a short plant,

that obviously won't happen.

You put them on the bottom and it's completely submerged,

so by jacking it up, that gives it a chance to get the maximum light

and then as they grow, you can lower them down.

Now, if I lift this one up here,

you can see that it's well clear of the water.

I could drop that by about six inches.

And as long as one or two of the leaves are floating on the surface,

the others can be below the water level.

Now, the base of the pond

is sloping, and it's quite slippery

so I don't want to go falling over,

which I'm sure would provide good entertainment,

but not the desired effect. Let's move that to one side.

I'll set it down there

and then grovel around under the water for bricks.

I put the bricks inside a plastic container

so that they wouldn't fall over and damage the liner.

There are two.

Right, two more.

Right.

See, that leaf is floating on the surface, as is that one

and just about that one,

so that's perfect.

Still one brick to take out, and it will be sitting on the bottom

and I don't have to do that this year.

This can stay all winter, if need be

if they don't grow any more.

But that now will encourage it to grow more

and get more established and to spread out.

Now, I'm going to move that one as well, but if you don't have a pond,

here are some jobs you can still be getting on with this weekend.

Cabbage white butterflies find all members

of the brassica family irresistible.

They lay their eggs on the leaves

and then the caterpillars emerge and munch their way through the crop.

Now, I deal with this by checking the plants daily,

removing any eggs or caterpillars,

which start out tiny but grow very fast.

Then they can be dealt with according to your fancy.

It's been a funny old year for sweet peas,

but they are still flowering.

However, they are setting seed too,

so remove any seed pods as soon as you see them

and to stimulate new blooms, cut all the flowers every ten days.

This might be a bit ruthless,

but it will provoke new flowering and delay seed formation.

It's surprising how much moisture

a full-grown plant can lose in a container at this time of year,

particularly if it's in a terracotta pot

and if you're planning to go away, it's a good idea

either to get someone to come in and water them for you

or to move them to a shady place.

And gathering them together in a group

will also help conserve moisture

Well, that's it for this week

but I'll see you at the same time next Friday. Bye-bye.

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