Episode 26 Gardeners' World

Hello. Welcome to Gardeners' World.

You know there's an autumnal feel in the air.

You can't kid yourself summer's here any longer.

At least the weather's good because we've had horrible, wet,

cold weather here at Longmeadow.

And at this time of year when the weather's good,

you need to take your opportunities. It's a busy month, October,

a lot to do to make sure that the garden is ready

to cope with a bad winter if need be

and also so it performs as well as possible next spring.

I shall be planting up these herb cuttings that I took

earlier in the summer into the greenhouse to use that space

for its maximum potential over the winter months.

Carol is showing us how we can reinvigorate perennials

and, at the same time, make new plants for free.

It's such fun dividing plants.

What's great about it is not only can you make enough for yourself,

you can make plenty so that you can swap and share.

And Rachel is at RHS Rosemoor looking at plants

that can give our gardens another dimensional at this time of year.

You could be forgiven for thinking

that the visual impact is the most important thing.

But I promise you, the fragrance is the icing on the cake.

And I'll also be planting up lots of bulbs into the grass here.

I grew tomatoes here in the summer and then they got blight.

Now, the soil hasn't been changed.

But the blight won't affect anything other than members

of the solanaceae family, essentially tomatoes or potatoes, and these are herbs.

But they won't be affected by that at all.

And these are cuttings that I took in the summer.

You can see, like this sage, they're coming on quite nicely. I potted them up

and they've been sitting in pots for the last month or two.

And they'll be quite happy to sit over winter in a cold frame.

But if I put them in the greenhouse,

it'll have the same effect as a cold frame but also

they'll grow a little and it will just give a little bit of a supply

over winter.

And then I can move them to the herb garden next May

when I'm ready to plant out the tomatoes.

The fact that the soil hasn't been changed, is slightly exhausted,

is good for Mediterranean herbs - they don't like lush, rich conditions.

What they want is a little bit of hardship as long as the drainage is good.

And I'll plan them quite close, so this is a narrow-leaf sage.

And if I just take that out...

So if I just pop this out on the edge,

put that there like that.

I've got some thyme there, that I dug up from the ornamental vegetable garden,

that were having a tough time of it because they were too shaded.

And thyme hates shade.

So I'm going to plan those out too. And they will do much better.

Greenhouses are good places to grow Mediterranean herbs.

And there it goes.

I've got parsley here too. This is giant parsley, loose-leafed.

This has been grown from seed, not taken from a cutting.

And this will grow quite well over winter

and form quite a decent sized planet.

And I suppose the point about this is that you're using...

the protection that you've got, and use the greenhouse, fill it up.

Don't just see it as somewhere that is for summer plants.

What the Mediterranean herbs really hate here at Longmeadow

is a cold, wet winter. It's a real struggle for them to survive.

Of course, if you don't have a greenhouse, you can do it on a windowsill, in a pot.

Any protected environment you can stop getting too wet - that's the worst thing.

And then a little bit of heat, even if it's just a pane of glass.

And with a little bit of winter sun,

they will grow and, actually at the same time, release that lovely,

oily fragrance that makes Mediterranean herbs so special.

Talking of fragrance, in winter there isn't much to be found,

but it's surprising how many plants have a delicious scent

at this time of year.

And Rachel has been to RHS Rosemoor in search of them.

At Rosemoor, I'm following my nose to find the most perfumed plants

for this time of year for every size of garden.

In the hot garden here at Rosemoor, these late-season perennials

are very much the star of the show, and right in the heart of the thing

we've got this wonderful bergamot, the Monarda prarienacht.

It's absolutely smothered in bees at the moment

and given that we've had such an awful year for bees,

it's been very wet, this in itself is a reason to plant it.

The Monarda has very aromatic fragrance to the foliage,

but when you see them in this setting,

just surrounded by the heleniums and rudbeckias,

all those wonderful purples and oranges and golds,

well, you could be forgiven for thinking that the visual impact

is the most important thing.

But I promise you, the fragrance is the icing on the cake.

I always think of phlox is absolute cottage garden stalwarts,

but of course they're lovely in any border setting.

This is a gorgeous white form, Paniculata 'Mount Fuji'

but they also come in sort of sugared almond shades of mauve

and pale blues. They're very fragrant

and that fragrance is quite powdery. It's quite fresh and clean as well.

And it's obviously very attractive to all sorts of beneficial insects,

including butterflies, bees and, above all, moths,

who have a long proboscis that gets into the tubular part of the flower.

But in this setting, surrounded by dazzling

white flowers and silvery foliage,

well, they positively sparkle.

One of the most surprising fragrances you'll find wafting around

in our autumn comes from the katsura tree.

It's native to China and Japan where, in the wild, it can grow up to 200-feet tall

with a massive girth of 80 foot.

So you'll need a big garden to accommodate it.

But its sweet scent, which comes from its delicate leaves,

can fill an entire garden.

Those leaves, which are sort of heart-shaped,

as they turn to these lovely colours of ochre and gold,

well, the sugars within them break down and then you get this fragrance

and it's like toffee apples wafting across the garden almost to get you.

It's fantastic, and redolent of everything about autumn -

bonfire nights, those lovely, crisp mornings.

This really is a favourite fragrance at this time of year.

There's room in most gardens for shrubby perennials,

and many have outstanding late summer scent too.

The pineapple sage, Salvia elegans, is renowned for its flowers,

but its foliage has the most intense and delicious fragrance.

I think it's beautiful as a foliage plant and these leaves,

which are so good to look at,

they're also intensely, sweetly scented of pineapples.

Plants that produce aromatic foliage, they usually do so as a deterrent

to insects or to grazing animals

as a way of saying keep off and don't eat me.

But I have to say, in a garden situation, spectacular.

The Victorians knew a thing or two about plants and they were big fans

of heliotropes, which they used very often in their bedding schemes.

This one is called Heliotropium arborescens 'Chatsworth'

and it's a particularly good form with intense dark purple flowers

and a good, lovely colour to the foliage and stems as well.

It's very sweet, perhaps even slightly cloying,

and reminds me of cherry pie.

I think here at the front of the border it's absolutely stunning.

If you want the added dimension of late summer scent in the garden,

these are plants both great and small

to fill your senses throughout autumn.

I guess that most gardeners think of yew as this monumental

hedging material that will create a solid green backdrop

to a border or along the boundary of a garden.

But it can make a really good low hedge, and I'm thinking about

using it to replace box if I lose all my box to box blight.

And now is the perfect time of year

to both plant yew and also to take cuttings.

When you're looking for cut material for yews, you want leaders.

You can see here is a good example.

Here we have a nice strong leader.

That's a good 12 inches of growth this year.

That'll make a healthy plant. There's another one there.

But all the way up the stem are one, two, three, four side shoots.

Those side shoots will provide cut material,

but it'll never make a good upright plant.

These are semi-ripe cuttings, which means it's this year's growth

but it's starting to harden off.

It hasn't yet got brown and woody but it's not floppy.

When you bend it, it returns to its shape.

If you haven't got an unclipped yew hedge or access to one,

sometimes it's worth just buying one healthy plant

just for cutting material.

Do as we always do with cuttings, pop it into a polythene bag

so it doesn't lose too much moisture, although evergreens

do lose their moisture much more slowly than deciduous plants.

If you're taking any cuttings at all,

it's worth preparing a compost with extra perlite or grit in it.

And this will make a freer root run so these delicate little roots

have less obstruction and also the roots can rot

and the base of the plant can rot before it roots

if it sits in cold, wet water.

And then there are two ways of taking cuttings from yew.

The first is conventional - you've got a good shoot there,

strip off the bottom half of the leaves,

cut that off, slightly damage it because that will stimulate growth.

And then slide it in against the edge of the pot.

If that roots, it'll provide a nice, vigorous, upright plant.

However, what you can do with yew

is I can divide it up into stem cuttings.

So if I cut there and there,

I've got three lengths.

I can strip the bottom off and I can put these in.

And these will each root and make a cutting that's rather bushier.

This is the perfect time of year to take any evergreen cutting

and if you go to our website you'll see a list of evergreen plants

that are perfect cutting material.

Although you don't always propagate plants to make new ones -

sometimes you have to do it for the health of the plant.

And Carol is answering a question this week on how best to divide

fibrous-rooted plants.

We get lots of e-mails from all over Europe

and of course we share a lot of the same gardening problems.

We've had one from Judith Siegman in Germany who is wondering

what on earth she can do to get her agapanthus to flower.

She says, rather sadly,

"I remember them flowering each and every year around my birthday.

"Now there's just an odd flower.

"I'm at my wits end to know what to do.

"I really miss those masses of blue flowers that I remember so fondly."

Well, you've also sent us some photos, Judy.

And your agapanthus actually look really, really healthy.

Masses of green leaves but, as you say, not a flower in sight.

Perhaps the answer is to try dividing some of these plants

to get them to produce those lovely blue flowers you remember so well.

Well, as you can see,

I'm lucky enough to have this wonderful big pot of agapanthus.

Last year I divided one of my plants that had stopped flowering

and was pot-bound, and I made four big chunks and three of them

have actually flowered this time. So it's definitely worth a try.

The other little point you mentioned is that you keep your plants

in a cellar over winter.

Now, because the praecox group are evergreen,

I think, really, being deprived of light for so long

is also going to work against their flowering so, if you possibly can,

still giving them the frost protection they need, give them more light too.

This time of the year is the ideal time to divide plants with big,

fleshy roots like agapanthus.

Hemerocallis are closely related and they too can be divided now.

There are two times of year when division is a good idea.

One is the autumn and one is the spring.

I wouldn't dream of dividing these beautiful rudbeckias

and these daisies, because they are just coming into their own.

so it'd be cruel.

I divide them in the spring, but there are several plants here

and there are three clumps of one day lily,

which really do need my attention.

It's not just a question of making more plants and doing you a favour.

It's almost like the plants themselves tell you

when they want to be divided.

When their performance, their flowering

and perhaps their foliage is just not what it once was.

It's time to step in, dig it up, and make it into lots of new plants

and just discard those old woody centres.

So you want to get the first fork right into the middle of the clump.

You need a good aim and then with the second fork,

really back-to-back, the two should be touching.

And you can hear that sort of rending noise,

and it seems so terribly cruel, but you're just being cruel to be kind.

All this tatty foliage, you can pull it off,

but I think then it's a good idea to just chop it.

And those roots are a bit long too.

You'd never ever want to fold roots when you're replanting them,

so I'll give them a quick haircut.

So, I'm going to dig a hole, nice and deep.

'These day lilies will over winter in my veggie bed,

'before I plant them out in the spring.'

'In the shady part of the garden,

'I want to make some more of one of my favourite woodland plants.'

This is an Epimedium. This one's called Epimedium versicolor.

I always, always want more of it.

And now is the time to divide it.

Now, you can see here what I'm after is each piece has got to have

one or two, at least, of these fat little pink buds.

Those are what's going to make flowers and new leaves.

'By rinsing the roots, you can see the buds more clearly,

'before putting the plants in pots.'

In the spring, if they've got a really well-developed root system,

you can plant them out.

If not, just hang on for a bit and plant them later.

Well, this time of year, garden centres are full of plants

and a lot of them are going cheap.

It's a great time to be planting new stuff out.

But it's an even better time to see

if you can't get a few good divisions from each plant you buy.

Some things are still in full flow, like this gorgeous crimson Lobelia.

But in this case, it's already making rosettes at the bottom.

If I use these flower stems to just...

push the whole thing apart...

EXHALES DEEPLY

Look at that. Two nice big chunks first of all

and then I can pull these other pieces off too.

It's such fun dividing plants.

What's great about it is not only can you make enough for yourself,

you can make plenty so that you can swap and share.

And in the process, you're reinvigorating all those plants.

FAINT CHIRPING

We've all seen daffodils growing in grass where you get these

incredible blazes of yellow and orange,

almost looking like a huge flower border for a few weeks

in March and April. And that's lovely.

However, you can grow daffodils

so that they grow in the grass like wildflowers

and there is one native, or at least naturalised daffodil

called Narcissus, pseudonarcissus,

that actually grows in this part of the world on the edge of woods

and you see these delicate flowers leaking out into the fields.

And they're like damp, fairly woodlandy conditions

and an orchard is absolutely ideal, but they are slow to develop,

so this is something you do for the long-term.

They're not going to give you a big hit.

But, if I plant them now, which is exactly the right time,

there's a chance that about half of them will flower next year,

and then more and more will flower, and then they'll spread by seed.

There is a technique to making them look natural.

And I've tried every way and I can guarantee that the only way

to do it is just take a handful of bulbs and cast them to the winds...

..and plant them exactly where they land and if they land in clumps

and groups, it doesn't matter,

because that's how they grow in the wild. Having done that,

you then need the right tool for the job.

With these tiny bulbs, if the ground is moist enough,

a trowel will do the job,

but remember, you want to plant twice their own depth.

That's quite deep. With a bigger bulb,

it's worth investing in a stand up bulb planter.

Helps your back and you just push down on it like that,

take out a hole and what it does is create a core and it really,

really saves a lot of time and effort, so I highly recommend these.

And with daffodils, you do want to get on with this,

because they start growing now and the more time they have

to grow in the ground, the more likely they are to produce a flower.

Just pop that in and pop that over the top.

It's a good idea if you're planting a lot of bulbs in grass

to put a hose onto the area for an hour or two.

You'll find the whole process is a lot easier.

And also, after you've planted, if it's dry, water them well.

They need moisture in autumn

in order to produce their best flowers in spring.

This is Narcissus poeticus.

It comes from sub-alpine meadows

down as far south as Greece and on the Mediterranean,

but essentially, this is damp, hilly ground and it's hardy.

So this will grow anywhere in Britain,

and as long as it's reasonably damp and not too dry, it will thrive.

And what it gives you is that halfway house

between the ephemeral quality of pseudonarcissus

and the slightly overpowering muscularity

of some of the daffodil hybrids.

And also if you look at it, it's a great big bulb.

You can pretty much guarantee that this WILL flower next year.

So you're getting an immediate return and display.

I'm going to put some around these individual trees,

in what will be a loose group,

and hopefully they will then mingle and merge

with the pseudonarcissus as they in time spread.

Now obviously, I want these bulbs to look as natural as possible.

But however hard you try,

it never quite looks the same in a garden as it does in the wild.

And perhaps the most incredible display of natural bulbs

in the whole of Britain

are the fritillaries at Cricklade Water Meadows.

'North Meadow is just such a stunning place.

'One of those places you just have to see before you die, I think.

'North Meadow holds 80% of the UK's population of fritillary,

'Fritillaria meleagris,

'which are known locally as snake's head fritillaries.'

Snake's head refers to the way they snake their way

out of the grasses with this beautiful chequered pattern on them,

almost with a viper-like face.

Here in front of me, we've got a lovely display

of fritillaries in their different stages.

So if we look at this one here, it's not going to flower this year.

It probably didn't build up enough korm last year

but the plants can actually survive, the korms, 25 to 30 years.

Just behind it, one that's just snaked up out of the ground

and there we can see it's going to be a purple flower

by the brown on the stalk.

This one, in flower beautifully,

we can see the anthers inside where the bumblebees

are going to go in and collect their pollen and do their work.

Just a little bit further over,

a lovely example of a white fritillary.

You can a see a green stem, that shows it will be that white,

even when it's in bud.

But look at these, where they have that viper-like face

and that beautiful snake's head patterning.

'North Meadow's 110 acres, but on all sides bounded by a river,

'so, the River Churn and the River Thames.

'We don't know how long fritillaries have been in North Meadow.

'We certainly know that they were noted

'as being in the wild from 1736.'

They were picked by their armfuls at one time, but no picking now.

SHE LAUGHS

'This is a standing hay crop.

'It's grown until the end of June,

'so there's no interference for fritillaries.

'They're allowed to set their seed,

'the seed falls to the ground well before the hay is taken.

'Then the cattle come in and graze the land, nice and short

'and the fritillaries at that point are underground, growing their next year's korm.

'Then we may get some flooding which brings on

'the fertility for all of the flowers here,

'including the fritillaries.

'In spring again, up they come and there's no cattle on here.

'Everything here is going to for success of fritillaries in flower.'

'People come and especially on my guided walks

'will ask me how they can grow fritillaries in their garden'.

'The conditions that they grow best in are moist conditions,'

but not on the edge of a pond, they're not marginal plants.

Some people think because it floods here, they need to be in water.

That's not the case.

So yes, they like their moisture but don't put them in too damp an area.

If you've got a deciduous tree, an apple tree or something in your lawn,

plant them around that. They'll get the early light levels,

so they'll come up through the grasses, let themselves seed

and hopefully you will have lots more fritillaries in time.

Just remember where they are,

so you don't give that bit of lawn an early cut.

I think a lot of gardens in Cricklade

have their own little patch of fritillaries.

They're very much woven into the fabric of the community here.

We just love the time when the fritillaries,

when the meadow gets that purple haze on it

and you know the fritillaries are out.

I think those meadows are so beautiful

and I'd really like to go and see them next spring.

It will be nice to have a 100 acre water meadow

filled with fritillaries, but most of us don't have that opportunity.

If you've got a patch of damp, grassy ground

then you can plant the bulbs straight in.

But they also grow very well and look great in a spring border.

But when you look at the border at this time of year,

there's no space to plant them and even if there is a patch,

you're not certain that it will look right,

come next March and April.

So, what I like to do is to plant the bulbs in pots.

Let them grow on and then plant out the young plants

as the foliage appears next spring.

You just need a normal compost, you don't need any extra drainage.

Put a bit in the bottom of the pot, then put one or two bulbs,

about four times its own depth, they need to be planted quite deep.

And you don't need to keep the pot in any way protected.

It's adapted to cold, wet weather.

And then, you can deal with them in spring.

Now, even if you don't want to plant fritillaries,

here are some things you can get on with this weekend.

'If you've got a decent apple crop this year and not everybody has,

'then it's worth taking trouble to store them.'

'And in general, any apple that ripens from mid October onwards

'will store better than early ripeners.

'The secret is to collect them very carefully, handle them gently

'and then store them on racks so they're ventilated

'and in the cool and dark.

'Make sure that no one fruit is touching another

'and check them regularly to remove any that are damaged.'

'It will soon be time to start collecting leaves

'and I regard leaf mould as important as compost.

'So to make room for this year's leaves,

'it's a good idea to bag up last year's leaf mould.

'It can then be stored anywhere you like,

'where it will quietly go on improving,

'or else be sieved ready for use as potting compost straight away.

'Pumpkins are not going to get any bigger from now on.

'However, there is a chance for them to ripen, if we get some sunshine.

'So remove all foliage around the fruits

'so that they're exposed to whatever sun we get.

'And the more they ripen, the thicker their skins will be

'and the thicker their skins, the better they keep.'

Well, this tray of fritillaries can just go here

where they won't get bashed, but they need no attention at all

and when they're growing, I'll plant them next spring.

That's it for this week.

I'll be back here at Longmeadow same time next Friday, so join me then.

Bye-bye.

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