Episode 23 Gardeners' World

Hello. Welcome to Gardeners' World.

I shall be making the most of this fading and elegant season.

I'm also preparing for next year.

Carol has got some great advice on how to take your garden with you

when you move house.

For me, and lots of other people I know,

plants are more important than any piece of furniture.

But by using the right techniques you can very quickly

turn your new garden into a home from home.

And Joe is visiting what I think is one of the best combinations

this country has to offer of architecture and planting.

Every time I come here it gets my gardening blood flowing.

It is fantastic, and I love it.

One of the many things I like about September

is that the relationship between things to enjoy in the garden

and things to do, is very nicely balanced

because the garden is never so full as now.

And there is nothing really pressing.

It is not like April, where you feel that jobs just have to be done,

to get on, or even as you go into October and November

and you've got to get things done before winter.

Now is the time of year when there's masses to enjoy

and not too much to do.

And a lot of tweaking around.

All I have to do here in the dry garden is cut away anything

that does not look good now.

Because as a rule of thumb, if it doesn't look good now,

it's not going to get any better over the coming months.

I am afraid, this is it. There isn't a lot of it.

Just some Aquilegias here that have got pretty manky.

Cardoon leaves that could come off.

That is not going to look any better in November than it does now.

However, the good news is, particularly here in the dry garden,

is that most of this will get better and better over the coming months

because it gradually becomes statuesque and stately

as winter comes in and strips it of all its green.

Then it gets frosted and the seedheads look really clear,

and the birds of course love it.

Because this is grown on poor soil, these plants are tough.

That means they are growing strong, upright,

they are not flopping all over the place, they are not bashed by wind.

So this is actually a very good winter garden.

And it is a good tip, if you've got poor soil,

it is going to limit your choice of plants, and limit how they grow.

But if they do adapt, they will survive very well

into autumn and winter.

Just a little bit of tidying up. That is all I have to do.

I like the way that this mullein is holding well.

In this poor soil, it is standing up.

It is not a thing of great beauty but it will get better

and it will gradually and then elegantly decay,

and the birds will perch on it,

and it will sway, and it will get frosted.

And talking about frosted, all these umbellifers,

the fennel, and the teasels, with their heads,

perfect for autumn and winter weather.

I like the grasses too.

The grasses in this soil grow very, very differently

than they do in another part of the garden which has got richer soil.

This is Miscanthus malepartus.

It opens out like that and then the seedheads will fall.

It really looks good.

September is a really good time to be planting bulbs.

We tend to think about bulbs

as being for sunny, well-drained places.

But there are a group that will do perfectly well in light shade,

and woodland in fact.

Oh, you've dropped your apple!

Nigel, by the way, regards apples as balls that grow on trees.

And I'm converting the copse into a woodland garden.

Not a huge change, I'm not going to dig it all up,

I'm going to plant into the ground.

There are masses of primroses and bluebells

but I am just adding to the planting.

And also adding variety.

And of course, all the plants

must be adapted to growing in light shade.

And the first is Erythronium. Dog's tooth violet.

And the reason it is called dog's tooth violet is...

It just so happens we have a dog here to show!

Pretty similar, Nige.

They are long and they look just like a dog's canine.

But they have a bulb that can be planted like any other.

Just budge a minute. Can you move? No? Obviously not.

I'm going to plant them here. You are not supposed to be doing this!

You're not supposed to be!

So, if I plant a batch here, working between the tree roots,

put them in fairly far apart,

because this particular variety, which is White Beauty,

have quite big leaves, and the leaves are very decorative too.

So you don't want to crowd them all out.

One of the things I love about bulbs

is you get quite a lot for not very much money.

So you get a decent effect.

Remember the rule of planting any bulb.

You can scarcely be too deep, but you can plant too shallow.

The deeper the better really. And at least twice its own depth.

So, on a long bulb like that, you want to dig a hole quite deep.

And September, early October,

is a really good time for any bulb planting.

For spring flower bulbs, that is.

Because they start growing,

in the case of daffodils, as early as late August.

And the longer they have to grow in the ground,

the bigger and the healthier the plant will be

and the better flowers you will get next spring.

The only bulb that you can, and indeed should, plant late

and by late, I mean November, December, is a tulip.

Now, I love dog's tooth violet. And they are special plants.

But I have to confess, they are not as special as these.

This is Trillium grandiflorum.

Trillium is one of those plants that has charisma. It is special.

It is called Trillium because it has got three petals,

three sepals,

a North American plant that likes shade, perfect for here.

And this will grow, the white flower, to over a foot tall,

which in spring flowering terms gives it stature.

This is a plant that stands out above the crowd.

It's quite expensive, £2.50 for each of the rhizomes,

and I'll show you.

They don't look very dramatic, like this...

but that will become something very special, so it's worth investing.

Do try and add some leaf mould to the soil if you can.

Don't bury the rhizome too deeply, just cover it up with

a couple of inches of soil and mark the spot so you don't disturb it.

Now obviously there's nothing to see now,

this is all about next year and probably the year after that

and the year after that before they really look their best.

But when you move home you do have to leave plants you love behind.

But...not always.

For each and every one of us our garden's a very special place.

And they're full of memories too.

Lots of plants represent people or occasions,

things we've been given or we can remember in our mum's gardens.

But what happens if we decide to move house?

We've got to leave our plants where they are,

but there are still ways and means to ensure that

we bring parts of those plants with us to a new home.

One of the letters we've had is from Elaine Ford and her husband

who are moving house from Surrey to Devon.

She's been taking loads of cuttings, but she specifically wants

to know what to do to make sure that the lavender cuttings

she's taken get off to a flying start in their new home.

Well, these are the lavender cuttings that I took

and they've made fine, bushy little plants.

They should be very, very well-rooted.

Ooh! Look at that.

I could just leave them in this little pot but if I pot them on

into something bigger it means they'll be much bigger plants

by the spring.

Just try and ensure they keep as much root with them as possible.

I'll put them into a bigger pot.

The idea is they've got a couple of months now where they can grow and

make fairly rapid sort of growth.

Then they can stay in those pots over winter

and go out into the garden or be potted on again.

If I nip these tops and remove some cuttings from the edge,

just taking the top couple of inches from them,

it'll mean all those little side shoots will make big laterals

and the whole bush is going to be really big

and shrubby by next spring.

The advantage of that is I'll get masses more flowers.

If I ever had to move house there's one plant I'd just have to

bring with me and that's this beautiful white Phlox.

I use it all the way through this bed.

It's got huge sentimental value.

My mum Jeanie gave me a bit of this when we first came to the garden

and I couldn't take cuttings from it now, but there are so many

other perennials in the garden that are just ripe for taking cuttings.

Don't you just love this gorgeous dark plant?

It looks like chocolate and that's its name -

Ageratina altissima 'Chocolate'.

"Altissima" meaning it's tall and really chunky.

These plants have only been in these new beds for a year.

They were tiny plants when I put them in,

and they were grown from cuttings.

I can raid this without it having any adverse effect at all.

It's not just this plant that you can take cuttings from.

There are loads of them! Things like Penstemons.

You might have to use a knife

if you're taking cuttings from a big shoot on a Penstemon.

Or you can pull off little side shoots like this.

Asters - you can leave them right over the winter.

Take them with you in the spring, pot them up and then put them

out later into your garden. It's easy really.

Although there are all sorts of plants you can grow from

cuttings, and it's a really exciting way of making more plants,

there's one way that's even more time-honoured -

and that is collecting seed.

It's the easiest way to move your plants from one garden to another.

In these big pots, I've got all manner of annuals.

They look a bit scruffy now because with both my Cerinthe

and these lovely Calendula -

I've not deadheaded them for weeks

because I've wanted them to make seed.

And they have!

The seeds on Cerinthe - big and black - very obvious.

They're the ideal thing,

if you've got a family, for little hands to come and collect and to

take part of their old garden into their new garden and sow themselves.

Moving house can be one of the most stressful events in anybody's life

but it can also be one of the most exciting.

For me and lots of other people I know,

plants are more important than any piece of furniture, but by using

the right techniques, by taking cuttings,

making divisions and collecting seeds

you can quickly turn your new garden into a home from home.

Sometimes you find yourself salvaging plants,

not to take from one garden to another, but within your own garden.

That's the case this year for me with Verbena bonariensis.

Last summer, the Jewel Garden was full of it, we had great clouds

of its lovely flowers, which of course are so good for butterflies.

They just love these little florets.

It's a plant that comes from the Pampas of Argentina and stands out.

It's perfect for a border

because you can mingle it with almost anything.

It works it way through

and doesn't get shielded by it, which is why I want more.

We did have lots of seeds and the fact we put a really thick mulch on

stopped them germinating,

whereas in the grass borders we didn't mulch, it has come back.

Now, I shall sow seed next spring and it grows well from seed

and I might dig up some plants and over winter them in the cold frame.

So they can be planted out after we've mulched next year.

I'll also take cuttings and you can take them

at this time of year from Verbena bonariensis very easily.

We're looking for side shoots.

Not the main stem,

but the shoots that grow between the main steam and a leaf.

Here's one but this is too big, this ends in a flower.

You want one without a flower -

never take a cutting with a flower on the end.

But off this side shoot are further side shoots,

so there's one there.

That will make good cut material.

With side shoots like this you can either peel them off

or you can cut them.

And that just pulls off without any problem at all.

That's the sort of size of Verbena cutting I like to take.

Ideally that, or even a little bit bigger.

The routine for taking cuttings is pretty established -

some really good, well-drained compost.

I've run out of grit so I'm using Perlite.

And act fast.

Take your cut material out.

Strip off the lower leaves.

You don't want to leave too many.

Pop them in.

These should establish roots within a few weeks.

But they will wilt fast if you don't keep them nice and moist.

If you've got a propagator, well worth it.

If you haven't, you could consider putting a plastic bag around them.

Although there is always a risk of it getting too wet in there.

Or just mist them two, three or four times a day.

You can see I'm not cutting the end.

If you cut them, cut them cleanly beneath a leaf node.

Right...

I'll do the others in a minute

but that really does need to be kept moist.

I've got a propagator and I'll put it in.

In this weather that'll just go flop and they will never recover.

You may not consider doing any cuttings this weekend,

but here are some other things you could be doing.

Agapanthus are coming to the end of their flowering season,

but don't ignore them

because next year's flowers depend upon the next few weeks.

So keep them in full sunshine, keep them well-watered and give them

a high potash feed such as liquid seaweed or a tomato feed.

September is the ideal month to cut Yew, either hedges or topiary.

If you're cutting topiary don't try and get it dead right

on the first pass, work upwards and all over the entire piece.

Then when you've taken the general shape off, you can fine tune it.

It's worth checking your apples now

because they're beginning to ripen and fall daily.

If an apple's ripe it'll come away readily in your hand.

If it falls to the ground, it won't keep so use them straightaway.

If you've a lot, simply juice them.

Other than cut the grass and collect the fruit,

we've let the orchard do its own thing.

But Joe's been to a garden that is much more structured.

I think it's a brilliant combination of tight architectural structure and loose planting.

Five years ago,

Hestercombe in Somerset became an RHS Partner Garden.

To be one, the garden has to fulfil three conditions.

It's got to be a good horticultural standard,

a great visitor experience and inspirational to gardeners.

Hestercombe's 18th-century landscape is certainly impressive,

but within its grounds is an Edwardian gem

that I know well and absolutely love.

I first came here about 20 years ago. Well, over 20 years, actually!

And the garden just blew me away, and it was pretty much there and then

that I decided I wanted to be a professional garden designer.

At the time, this was the most impressive

and inspirational garden I had ever seen.

It was completed in 1906 by British architect Edwin Lutyens

and doyenne of garden design Gertrude Jekyll.

Lutyens was famous for his arts and crafts buildings

that imaginatively re-fashioned English country houses

with romantic and medieval features.

Jekyll was famous for her flowing cottage-garden style

and skilled use of colour.

She introduced Lutyens to many garden projects,

and Hestercombe is considered to be their finest collaboration.

When I first came, I was so lucky.

I had the place to myself, the sun was setting,

the light was absolutely magical,

and I felt myself being breathlessly drawn through the garden

into certain rooms and then looking along vistas and wanting to go there.

But it was only after, after I'd left the garden,

that I realised I had no control over it.

I was being manipulated by Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll.

They were doing it to me. And I didn't even know it.

I just love all the stone detailing in this garden. It's so beautiful.

A really good example, this local stone is called mort slate

and then this is just absolutely classic Lutyens set of steps,

the way they fan out, concentric circles,

but they've been softened by Gertrude Jekyll's planting.

Lovely, Cerastium and fleabane softening the rises,

but still keeping it practical cos you can walk all the way up them.

And the whole composition... It's just so pretty.

For 60 years, the garden was left to crumble

until the Hestercombe Gardens Trust took it over in 2003.

All the stone in the garden has recently been restored

but the planting was something of a mystery

until Gertrude Jekyll's plans were discovered.

Head gardener Claire Reid has brought some copies to show me.

Where did they come from?

They were found in the sort of gardener's mess hut,

left abandoned there, really, so we've been really lucky

because we've been able to work with them as much as possible.

We've had to change a few things.

For instance, the huge canners you can see in the sunken garden,

which we call the Great Plat,

they're meant to be variegated maize

and we ordered the seed from France and we grew these maize

but because we're in Somerset, the badgers just went for them.

So that's our change, really.

And what about the gladioli?

They're quite stunning, really. Was that one of her colours?

-Yeah.

-That salmon pink gladioli?

Yeah, lots of people think we've done this wrong often

because people think of Jekyll as being the soft hues and muted tones

and sort of graduating colour.

But here, she described it in her book as vibrating colours.

And another point is

she didn't have that wide a range of plants that we have today either.

-It was much more limited, wasn't it?

-No, it was a limited palette,

but that gives you the balance around the garden.

If you're only using a smaller palette,

you're not bombarding the eye with lots of different things.

It's probably a good way of designing.

There are details in the garden

that hint at Lutyens' and Jekyll's team-work.

Lutyens left holes in the walls to enable Jekyll to plant them up,

and a glorious pergola that lures you around the far reaches of the garden.

I love this pergola. It's about 200 feet long.

Apparently, it's one of the longest pergolas in the UK.

And I love the way the lavenders just billow over the paving

either side of it.

Just lovely and soft but the eye is drawn through the middle.

The garden faces onto open countryside,

cleverly drawing you away from the austere Victorian building.

However, much of the view is blocked by walling and the pergola,

but the design allows you glimpses through the gaps and apertures

that intensify the views beyond.

You're not quite sure what you'll see until you get there.

There's always this excitement of what's round the next corner.

And there you go. Oh, look at that!

Isn't that just beautiful?

The lawns either side and the rill right up the middle,

drawing your eye...

And you're not disappointed when your eye gets there, that's the thing.

It's exciting to walk around this garden as it twists and turns

and delights.

And it's a confident design by two people

at the height of their creativity.

Every time I come here, it gets my gardening blood flowing.

It's fantastic and I love it.

I love Hestercombe, too,

and I do feel that Lutyens is one of the great unsung heroes

of garden design.

And I bet he never dug his own garden!

And I'm digging the beds for the white garden...

..which will be planted up this autumn and next spring.

But preparing the soil is the key to it.

Your plants are only as good as the soil,

so that the better you can get it, the better the plants will be.

It's really a very simple equation.

But of course, you can't change your soil. It has a character.

And it's important to know what it's like,

and digging is certainly a very good way of finding out.

This is a clay loam. As far as I know, it's never been dug before.

So it needs breaking up

because it's the structure that matters more than the facility.

See, look, this has come away in a slab.

So my soil is fundamentally clay that holds together

and if I drop it, it won't break apart much.

In fact, if I leave that all winter,

the rain and the cold and the wind will break it down

and you'll be amazed how next March or April,

that'll be lovely, crumbly tilth.

But if you're not certain how to tell, take a handful of soil,

and first of all, hold it in your hand, toss it about.

If it holds together, it's likely to be clay.

If it was a sandy soil, it would break up.

I have to really squeeze that to break it.

Now, this is a clay loam,

which means it's fundamentally clay but it's mixed in with humus.

It's good soil. It's nice stuff. It does tend to be a bit heavy.

If it was a sandy loam it would break up.

The particles would be really big

and the danger of that soil is all the water,

all the goodness, can just leach through it,

like a sieve. It just pours down, out of reach of the plants.

So what you need to do then is to open it up,

add masses of organic matter,

and that holds it and gives it structure and substance.

If it's a very heavy clay the water and the roots can't get in.

It's a solid mass. Go on, move yourself!

It literally becomes impenetrable.

That becomes solid and hard,

so we need to break it up, add organic matter

so it's loose and open.

And that's the real purpose of digging.

Get the structure of the soil right

regardless of what its basic character is.

Using a spade...

..is a beautifully fine-tuned business.

Quite hard work digging this clay!

This one, which I love and I've had about 20 years,

is a good example of how the angles all work,

so you put it in so it's upright

and automatically that leans the handle away from you.

And then when you put your foot on it, all the force is going down,

so you go down like that and it goes down easily.

And then in this case you pull it out,

chop down that way,

hardly any effort.

Again, put it down straight and just pull it back towards you

and the soil levers out.

And that's easy.

A few weeks ago,

I showed you the effects of blight in this greenhouse.

Never had blight here before, and funnily enough,

it hasn't affected the other greenhouse

where the tomatoes are absolutely fine.

However, I had to pull all these out.

We salvaged a lot of the tomatoes but others had to be burnt, too.

Now, I've had lots of letters. This is Ron Taylor, "sincerely stressed".

Kim Bull in Chichester.

We've got John Rich, and they've all asked the same thing.

How do they deal with the soil or the compost

after you've got rid of blighted tomatoes?

The truth is, there's not too much to worry about

because the blight will only go on living in the soil or compost

in living organisms, and that means tomatoes or potatoes.

No risk of tomatoes going on living in the soil.

There is potatoes. If you're growing potatoes,

you do need to get rid of every scrap

and not grow potatoes there next year.

But tomatoes in a greenhouse,

very, very small risk of the spores living on till next spring.

I shall be sowing a salad crop in here and putting in plugs

because it doesn't transmit to anything other than

tomatoes or potatoes.

Next spring, I'll probably change the soil

but that's a good idea to do in a greenhouse every three years or so,

to stop the build-up of viruses.

And I'll also give it a good scrub. But don't worry.

It's not going to lurk in your soil over winter

and then destroy next year's crop.

That's it for this week.

Next week I shan't be at Long Meadow as we are doing an RHS special.

I'll be down at Wisley, Carol will be up at Harlow Carr.

So we'll see you at our normal time then. Bye-bye.

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