Episode 21 Gardeners' World

Hello, welcome to Gardeners' World.

Now, you know, I don't know if I've ever seen the garden

looking so lush and the colours so intense right at the end of August.

Normally about this time of year,

everything's starting to fade a little, but I suppose that's because

we've had such a wet summer on this side of the country.

It's one of the few benefits of too much rain.

However, you can't stop the roll and turn of the seasons,

and plants are beginning to set seed, and I'll be collecting seed -

particularly of perennials - both to sow now

and to store to make new plants from next year.

Carol will be looking at umbellifers,

plants like cow parsley with lovely open tops.

This is such a wondrous and multifarious family.

You'll find that once you bring one umbel into the garden,

you'll be greedy for more.

You'll want to fill the whole place up with them.

And we'll be visiting a garden in Cheshire

where a man's passion for one plant

has filled his garden with late-summer colour.

Dailies give me more colour and more interest than any other plant,

and so I've thrown out all the shrubs and everything else.

Really, it's taken over my life, I suppose.

Good boy.

Now, last time I was in here,

I was showing you how the tomatoes were doing fine,

the leaves were curling a bit, but that wasn't a problem,

everything was hunky-dory.

Well, I shouldn't have spoken so soon.

I think I remember saying that the risk of blight

was very minor in a greenhouse.

Two days later, blight swept through this greenhouse.

This, of course, is potato blight,

the fungus which can turn potatoes to mush

and completely defoliate them,

and it affects tomatoes because tomatoes are cousins of potatoes.

So, having seen the damage,

I then stripped all the foliage off the plants,

thinking it would stop the spread

and that the existing fruit would ripen.

Well, you can see the blight has spread to the stems,

really clear here, and, even worse than that,

has spread to the fruit, so these are blighted fruit.

If I leave these, they won't ripen and the blight will get to them first,

so my only recourse is to harvest the green ones

and make green tomato chutney,

harvest any ripe ones that seem to be unaffected by blight and eat them,

and then the plants and any blighted tomatoes I will burn,

and if you can't burn them, you could bury them.

Bury them, but at least about a metre deep

and that will rot down, or just bag them up

and take them to your green waste disposal unit,

but I'm afraid that's it. That's my tomato crop a goner.

Sooner or later, most gardeners get round to growing annuals from seed,

but it seems to be another leap to grow perennials from seed,

plants that will mature, like this monarda,

and come back year after year,

plants which typically you go and buy

from anything between about £5 and £15 each,

but they will grow from seed and often very easily indeed.

What you need is a pair of secateurs,

you need some brown paper bags or envelopes -

I've got both here - paper, because that way, it can breathe a bit.

If you put it into polythene, you get evaporation,

and moisture will not enable the seeds keep.

This Monarda..."Raspberry Wine", that's the seed head.

Just take it off like that and push it seed head-down in there.

Now, that's ready for sowing now if I want to,

but it will keep in a cool, dark place

for weeks and sometimes even months.

You can see this, by the way, is just one plant,

so if I have 20 seeds in there,

think of the display that you can get.

I'm having to creep through here

because I don't want to crush my favourite plants.

These are Meconopsis sheldonii,

and you can see they've set seed these beautiful seed heads,

and although they don't necessarily come true from seed,

these are wonderful, rich blue.

I'm going to try and grow them.

If you want them to be exactly like the parent,

better to propagate them vegetably,

but if I collect these seed heads...

and raise the seed, there is a chance

that I could get dozens of fabulous meconopsis.

And they really are royalty amongst plants.

Rachel and I planted these primulas.

This is Primula florindae, the Himalayan cowslip.

Really, really successful, and you can't have too many of these.

So let's cut that.

Oh, that's caught in, so I'll do that at the same time...and that.

Now, once you've collected your seed,

you can either sow them straightaway or store them.

On the whole, it's easier to store the seeds until spring,

sow them then, and then as the ceilings grow,

they can be moved on and planted out.

And if you're storing your seeds,

the basic conditions is a cool, dry place.

Now, we actually store our seeds in here.

Just keep them in the bag exactly as collected

and we just line up the bags, and this shed is perfect.

It does get cold in the winter, but the seeds don't suffer

and they come through perfectly well.

If you don't have a cool, dry shed,

resist the temptation to put them in an airing cupboard -

they don't want to be warm.

In fact, the best thing to do is air dry them for a few days,

then put them in a sealed container in the fridge.

And in a fridge like that, they will keep for months

and have the by-product of vernalising too,

which means give them a winter period of cold,

which is the trigger they need to germinate next spring.

For the majority of perennials,

saving and storing seed for a spring sowing is fine,

but some seed likes to be sown fresh as ripe or green seed.

Now, I'm going to store the monarda,

but I'm going to sow the meconopsis and the primula.

Meconopsis is not that difficult to grow from seed,

as long as it has moist, loose compost.

Now, we've got our seed pods there,

and I've made up a compost with really lots of grit in it.

Ideally, this would be an ericaceous compost.

Now, I don't use peat, but there are alternatives.

If you haven't got an ericaceous compost, it doesn't matter terribly,

but you will have to move them on into ericaceous conditions.

So...

As with all seeds, don't be tempted to sow too thickly.

You're better off with a few healthy plants

than a mass all cheek-by-jowl in there.

And now I'm ready cover it with a layer of grit,

which will protect it and keep the moisture in

but won't block the light.

And of course label it.

I tried sowing Primula bulleyana last year in the green,

i.e. when they were completely fresh,

and I had no luck whatsoever - and these are green seeds I've got here.

I think the mistake I made was I kept it too wet

and also - and I'm sure this - I kept it too warm.

I put it onto a heated bench.

Now, this is a species plant

and therefore will come true. Remember that seeds from a species -

that's a plant that is not crossed with any other -

will nearly always come true to the parent,

but seeds from a cultivar or a hybrid -

that's a plant that is the result of a cross between two others -

will carry the characteristics of both parents.

So therefore will be variable and sometimes very variable.

Now, my cold frames at the moment are having a revamp,

but this just amounts to a sheltered corner

and it's a perfect place to put meconopsis and primula.

Now, I'm going to have to keep those watered,

but I'm going to cover one of the primula pots with clingfilm.

A, that'll mean I won't have to keep watering it so much

and B, it means it really will not dry out.

And I won't cover the other, and it's a little experiment

just to see if it makes a difference.

And I was reading about this tip over breakfast this morning,

and I thought, "That's timely - we'll give it a go."

And rather like hosepipes, I'm one of these people

who can take a sheet of clingfilm and reduce it to a crumpled rag

in a space of a millisecond.

There we are.

And I'll do all the rest of those seeds in due course.

I'm often asked what my favourite plant is,

and there is no real answer to that, but you can't beat

the massed white foam of cow parsley

running along a hedgerow or by the side of the road.

And I do love all umbellifers in whatever form they make take,

and, of course, an umbellifer is a plant that has these umbels of flower

and then a flat top and they're perfect for insects,

perfect for a garden.

And Carol has been to see glorious umbellifers,

both in the wild and in the garden.

People cherish the sight of Daucus carota, the wild carrot,

up and down the country in late summer.

This is a time when it makes these wonderful platforms of flower,

mixing itself with grasses and other wildflowers,

but when you get down here and examine it,

this flat platform is actually composed

of hundreds of little flowers, and as those petals begin to fall,

the whole umbel folds in on itself like a shell closing.

While these seeds really set and ripen,

it makes this almost wire-like structure around the edge,

which gives it one of its other common names - bird's nest.

But who'd want to invite a carrot into the garden proper?

Surely they belong in the veg plot.

But this is such a wondrous and multifarious family,

you'll find that once you bring one umbel into the garden,

you'll be greedy for more.

You'll want to fill the whole place up with them.

Here at Bury Court, with the backdrop of this classic oast house,

plantsman John Coke has created an exquisite garden

that pays homage to the spirit of the wild,

and some of the most significant players on the stage are the umbels.

So many umbels, John.

-I mean, they play a pretty important role here, don't they?

-They are.

Partly because they give a very strong connection with the wild.

We see, don't we, in any hedgerow or a meadow,

-cow parsley kind of plants.

-Umbels all over the show.

Yes, it's almost trying to get

a sort of dream-like evocation of the natural world.

Exactly. I suppose all the great plant explorers

were intent on collecting shrubs and trees and climbers.

They wouldn't have given umbels a second look, would they?

Not in the slightest, no.

Gardeners would have seen something like that as a weed

to be yanked out and tossed onto the compost heap definitely,

but now I think they are virtually my most valued garden plant.

It's got the structure of a tree or... Hasn't it?

Some great woody plant. What is it, John?

This is Peucedanum verticillare.

-Verticillare obviously because it's so, sort of, stiffly upwards.

-Yes.

Talk about a plant erupting out of the ground,

because that does in spring and it's got a fantastically long season,

this plant, because right from that moment when it does erupt

up till deepest winter when all you see, in fact,

is the skeleton which is left,

but it's very sculptural shape, you know, right into the winter.

And it just says very proudly,

-"Look at me. Aren't I a wonderful?"

-Yes, exactly.

In this part of the border, Angelica gigas.

These plants are used to great effect.

They kind of punch their way right the way through

all these great mounds of different perennials.

They're real punctuation marks,

and further down the border, he's used it with another umbel

to achieve a completely different sort of feeling.

If you wanted to introduce...

a ferny, frothy mass of a plant in your garden

then you couldn't possibly do better than Selinum wallichianum.

One of the virtues of umbels

is that they seed freely all over the show.

But occasionally, you want to decide just where you want to plant,

and then it's worth buying an established plant in a pot,

digging a hole and putting it in.

No point trying to divide them, though, because basically,

under the ground, they're all carrots.

All have a big taproot and they're impossible to divide.

If Angelica gigas and Selinum wallichianum

are at the dramatic end of the umbel scale,

then surely this plant,

Ammi majus, is at the opposite end.

It's light, airy, almost frivolous.

It gives this sort of ethereal effect,

especially when it's used en masse.

If you wanted to introduce this light touch, perhaps to a bed

where you've got lovely, dark plants like this beautiful Echinacea,

you can sow the seeds of ammi in the spring

or even in the autumn previously.

Prep them out into modules or individual small pots,

and then dot them right through the planting.

Bury Court showcases umbels in all their glorious magnificence.

From the daintiest of annuals to great statuesque giants,

all of them a-buzz with pollenating insects.

Umbels bring something special to every bed and border.

They bring structure and shape,

and no garden can possibly afford to be without them.

Now, from time to time, I do ask you to contact me

if you've got any gardening queries,

or if you've got a similar experience to my own.

And I've had lots of letters regarding box blight.

From the north east of Scotland, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire,

right across the country, it does seem that box blight is endemic,

and I'm afraid this tale of woe is depressingly familiar.

By the way, if you've got any queries at all,

We do like to hear from you. Contact us.

But as far as box blight goes,

there really is not a lot of choice in what you can do,

because what it does is completely rips away through box plants.

You can see down in here that...there,

you get this dieback, this chocolatey, brown,

sometimes a bit mouldy dieback, and it can kill the plant.

And you have to remove all traces of it.

However, there are box varieties

that seem to be more resistant to blight than others,

and one of them is "Handsworthiensis".

This is one of the biggest growing boxes,

and you can see that right next to where there is blight,

we've got plants growing here that seem to be untouched.

And that's because they have an extra-thick leaf.

They're really much more robust.

So, I'm going to take cuttings from the "Handsworthiensis",

and any thick-leaf box will do, grow them on, so at least I've got

new stock that will be more resistant coming on,

because if this weather continues,

box blight is going to continue to be a problem.

It's not going to go away.

Now, when you're choosing material to take cuttings from,

you want to look for nice, strong new growth that is upright,

healthy and vigorous.

And you need a top, you need some leaves and you need a stem.

Down the bottom.

Also, always with all cuttings, have a polythene bag.

That will stop the transpiration of moisture

and make it more likely to strike.

When you're making cuttings of anything,

you want really good drainage,

so as well as a normal potting compost,

add something to improve the drainage.

Grit is fine or I've got perlite here,

which you can get from any garden centre.

It can be up to as much as 50/50 of perlite and potting compost.

Mix it in well.

Lightly fill the pot, like that. And that's ready.

Now, you take a cut material, let's take any one out.

There we have the cutting. There are far too many leaves on that,

because that will lose moisture before it develops roots,

so the first thing I'm going to do is take off the lower leaves,

simply by going like that. You leave too many, it'll dry out.

Too few, and there'll be nothing to feed the roots.

Now, that's a little long, so I'm going to cut that down,

and ideally, cut below a leaf node.

Leaf node is just the two sides where the leaves come out.

Clean cut across.

Then put it in the pot.

It's best to put it against the edge of the pot,

so I'm going to put one in each corner, down the edge like that.

Now, if you don't take your own cuttings,

and if you've got some boxes, I really do urge you to try it,

it's incredibly satisfying.

But, someone gives you a box or you buy it,

it's not a bad idea to put it into quarantine for about a month.

Keep it in its pot, set it to one side,

because it just might be introducing blight into your garden.

Now, in three weeks' time,

we're going to RHS Wisley to do a special programme from there.

So one of the things that I shall be asking them

is not only how do they deal with box blight

but also what alternatives they're using,

what other plants are taking the role

that box has performed for the last 400-500 years in so many gardens.

And of course, you may not grow any box at all.

You may not be taking cuttings,

but here are some other jobs you can get on with this weekend.

The strawberry runners that I potted up a few weeks ago are now

ready to be separated from the parent plant and re-planted.

Choose a site that hasn't grown strawberries

for at least three years

and has been well manured over the last year.

Space the young plants in rows or grids at least two feet apart.

This will look rather wide spacing,

but it gives each individual plant the opportunity to grow

as big as possible and bear as much fruit as possible.

We're all hoping for an Indian summer,

and our flowers to look as good as possible for as long as possible,

and this includes containers.

The best way to do this is to give them a feed now.

It wants to be high in potassium to maximise flowers,

and this will come from homemade comfrey, liquid seaweed

or a general-purpose tomato feed.

Dilute it according to instructions and give them a feed now

and again in two weeks' time.

Just because we're coming to the end of summer,

it doesn't mean to say that the weeds won't go on growing,

and it's important to keep on top of them right through into autumn.

And in a heavily planted border,

the only solution is to get in there and hand-weed.

There are probably more flowers in the garden at this time of year

than any other season, and one of the things I love doing

is going out and just cutting a small bouquet

to bring indoors into the house.

These, for example, are seed dahlias which I grew last year,

kept the tubers. It was a mixed batch of seed,

and I kept the colours I liked and then lined them out.

And the beautiful thing about dahlias is the more you cut,

the more flowers are produced right up till the first frosts.

And I love dahlias,

but I probably don't love them with the same passion and intensity

as Geoff Hoyle in Cheshire.

Whatever position you want to put it, there is a dahlia that will fit.

I love the different sizes and shapes and colours.

For starters, you've got every colour but blue.

Then you've got big ones

and you've got the miniature pom-pom dahlias,

so you've got a wide variety of sizes.

And you've got different shapes as well, and also even heights.

You've got some that will grow to eight foot high

and others that only grow to two foot.

I was brought up to be a gardener, and my dad was a keen dahlia grower,

and when I was a lad he used to have me crawling around under his dahlias.

When we first came here, it was just one long piece of grass,

so I got into flowers and as time's gone by, I've realised that

dahlias give me more colour and more interest than any other plant,

and so I've thrown out all the shrubs and everything else.

The lawns have got smaller. Really, it's taken over my life, I suppose.

Well, I plan everything by height.

I go around each autumn and measure how high each dahlia has grown.

I keep records, and then when I put my stakes in the following spring,

I try to allocate a tall dahlia to a tall stake

and a short dahlia to a short stake, so that it gets a tiered effect.

There's a dahlia there called "Ryecroft Delight"

which always grows to about eight or nine feet, and so I know

I can rely on that dahlia to grow that high the following year.

I tried doing a colour scheme one year

where I had a red bed, an orange bed, a yellow bed,

and it didn't look right at all.

So now I just go on height. The colours look after themselves.

I tend to go for brighter colours

and just have the odd white or cream one here as a contrast.

I love this dahlia. It's a miniature decorative

called "Blyton Lady in Red".

I like it because of the strong colour,

the fact that it's got very strong stems

that make sure it stands above the foliage,

and I also like the lovely form of it.

This one is a dark leaf variety called "Happy Wink".

It only grows about two foot tall,

has loads of flowers, beautiful colour. The bees love it.

If you want really strong flowers, the best thing to do to produce

a strong growth and a bigger flower is to take out the two side shoots.

So you just get them between your fingers and chop them off like that.

For the novice, it might be better to try a miniature variety,

because they tend to have smaller flowers, stronger stems,

and you'll see for example with "Weston Spanish Dancer" here,

I'm going to let three flowers grow under one stem,

and it will be strong enough to support it,

so I'll leave it to its own devices.

The main thing that I do is keep on top of the deadheading.

At least twice a week, but I do it more often than that, I would say.

So, you go round and chop off anything that looks as though

it's about to die, or it has died,

and discard them onto the compost heap.

And you'll find that by the following day,

there's plenty more flowers anyway.

I'm quite ruthless. People say, "Take that home

"and put it in a vase," but it's on my compost heap.

It does take a lot of my time. Is it worth it? Absolutely worth it.

I mean, when you get to times like this

and you look around and think, "I've done that," yeah, it's worth it.

Geoff's garden is open this weekend on the National Garden Scheme,

and it is amazing. So much colour.

In fact, so much colour, I'm told that you can see it

as you come in to land at Manchester Airport.

But better to go along and see the garden for yourself.

Now, I'm making a new garden here.

This is a writing garden which I had tried to develop

with the long grass and growing umbellifers, bulbs,

even perennials through it.

But in this wet weather and with our heavy soil, the grass has dominated.

And it's really difficult to lose that rather lank, over-lush feeling.

Mind you, there is a moment in May

which lasts anything from ten days to three weeks, if you're lucky,

when the cow parsley dominates

and it's a lovely, light, airy, white froth.

And that's the spirit that I want to capture.

The very, very best of May.

If we can get that from April through to October,

then I'll be delighted and that's how I'm going to plant it.

So it's going to be a white garden,

very light, very airy, ramblers climbing up the apple trees.

Lots of scent.

Very full and easy, nothing formal about it at all.

So, we've lifted the turf. Now, I'd like to pretend that I've used

my grandfather's old turfing tool, which I have used a lot in the past,

but it's horribly hard work.

In fact, we hired a turf cutter.

So if you want to lift more than just a little bit of turf,

I can recommend it. And if you're taking up any amount of turf,

don't throw it away. It's not rubbish.

If you stack it, grass face to grass face, and build it up as a block,

that forms the best potting compost or top soil if you need it.

So value every little bit of it.

And I've got myself a project.

I'll be working on this right through autumn

and probably well into next year as well.

Now, that's it for this week.

Next week, I'm back but at a different time.

Gardeners' World goes out at 9 o'clock next week on BBC Two.

And I'll see you then.

Bye-bye.

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