Episode 28 Gardeners' World

Hello. Welcome to rather a wet Longmeadow.

It's been one of those days where the rain sweeps in,

gives you a really good drenching,

you go and try and get dry, and then it clears up, so you go back out.

And then it starts again!

But I'll be persevering, because I shall be pruning

a climbing rose that's got into a bit of a tangle.

Carol shows us how easy it is

to propagate from root cuttings.

In my garden here, I grow

lots and lots of wood anemones. I just love them.

And I want to make loads more of these beautiful flowers.

Joe goes in search of apple trees

that will suit any size of garden.

Here at West Dean, they're growing some fruit trees

in some pretty novel ways

and in a fashion that would suit

the smallest of gardens.

And I shall be planting apples for small spaces too.

If the rain holds off!

This is a climbing rose called 'Madame Gregoire Staechelin'.

It's lovely. It's got beautiful, big, pink flowers

that start in May, and it goes on flowering

right through into autumn, sometimes into October.

And this year, it sort of petered out in September.

And it's made lots and lots of lush, strong growth.

And the problem with any climber is

if you let that strong growth become a tangle,

it's really difficult to untangle.

So it's worth keeping on top of it.

You can see...

..how this differs from a rambler...

..in the way that you have really quite strong, robust growth

growing from a permanent framework.

And the idea is to prune back to that framework every year.

Now, the way that a climbing rose works

is that the flowers are produced off lateral growth.

So you have a stem - I don't know if you can see - going along here,

along, trained along this wire

that I tied in last year.

And that, that, that, that, that and all these behind me

are laterals that either have done or would do...produce flowers.

You can see the hips developing from the flowers.

So all those need pruning back

to one or two leaves. It's not critical.

So that's the first thing to do,

because then you can see the framework easier.

So if I start at this end and I just train them like that...

Even these big ones I'm going to take right back.

You can do this at any stage in the winter,

but I like to do it in autumn,

because if you get bad weather in winter,

all this growth swings around,

and it can damage the plant, it can damage the roots.

And if there are people walking about,

they're pretty nasty things to be flapping about.

So it's a good idea to get this done

before the weather gets too bad.

This is the point where you do need to have a look

at the existing framework and see if you're happy with it,

because sometimes these older growths are getting woody

and not producing many side shoots,

and now is the time to remove them and replace them.

Actually, in this case, I don't want to remove any,

but if you do, use a saw or a big pair of loppers

and cut them right at the base

and train another shoot,

a fresh, young one, preferably from the base too,

to replace it.

In principle, when you're pruning anything,

you cut to something.

And in this case, it's just above a leaf.

So if you just cut above there, you'll do no harm at all.

But don't agonise over it.

This one here...

..if I put that there,

that can train sideways, which is good.

You want to encourage

as much lateral horizontal growth as possible,

because if a stem is growing horizontally,

you'll get more side shoots,

and it's side shoots that produce the flowers.

So all your training should be geared towards

spreading it out sideways.

I like to use soft twine

when tying anything in, because it doesn't do any damage to the plant.

Whatever you do, don't use wire, because all that will do

is cut through the tender, growing stems.

And if you just hold in your head

that you're trying to create this neat latticework

across whatever surface it is it's covering

that is as two-dimensional as possible...

You don't really want anything coming out

more than, say, four, five inches.

That I will tie in there,

and this can go...

here.

Actually, no, I'll tie the bottom one first.

Actually, that's another tip.

Always do your tying from the bottom,

because as you're bending the stems,

you want them to be fixed lower down,

because otherwise there's a risk of them slightly kinking,

and then they can break.

So let's take this back, tie it right down here...

That's good.

That's fine.

A couple more bits to be tied in,

but I've got a decent framework which is set up for next spring,

and then we'll get the laterals, which will bear the flowers.

Now, of course I've got to tidy up,

and that takes as long as doing the job, but while I'm doing that,

Carol is dividing and taking root cuttings from anemones.

Wood anemones, one of our most magical wild flowers.

You walk through the woods on a cold, dark day in April,

the whole place is dreary,

but walk again on the next day, when the sun shines,

and the whole woodland floor is a-sparkle

with their beautiful flowers.

In my garden here, I grow lots and lots of wood anemones.

I just love them, and I want to try and emulate

the kind of feeling that you get as you walk through

those wild woods.

And I want to make loads more of these beautiful flowers

all across the shady part of my garden.

In the spring, this whole area glistens

with the beautiful white flowers of wood anemones.

But at the moment,

they're completely dormant!

They've gone to sleep!

But I know they're in here, and I'm determined to find them.

It's a strange thing, isn't it?

You don't think about roots,

and yet without them these trees and all this beautiful stuff here

just wouldn't be.

And I suppose you think, "Well, propagating from roots?!"

You're used to doing it from seeds and from cuttings,

but there are a lot of plants that you can make more of

just from their roots.

I think I'm in luck.

That's a typical example.

You've got these lovely

sort of mahogany-coloured little rhizomes there

and at the end of them these embryonic buds.

And all I'm going to do

is snap them up in pieces.

Each of them has some tiny, fibrous roots,

and they'll make a new clump by the spring.

Well, I've chosen this lovely little

shady corner.

Just spacing them out

so they're growing along the surface.

If you haven't got wood anemones already in your own garden,

you can easily get them from a specialist bulb merchant

or some garden centres too.

The rhizomes will look exactly the same,

and you just repeat the process.

But there's another anemone

that's at the height of its floral glory right now,

and you propagate that, too, from its roots.

I absolutely love this Japanese anemone.

And a lot of people'd say, "What do you want more of that for?!",

because it is true, once you've got these established,

they very often take over a whole patch. But why not?

I mean, this time of year,

you really do need wonderful colour.

Well, if I root around in this soil here,

I know I'm going to come across some of these roots.

There we go.

All along the root, there are these little teeny nodules,

which are just waiting to be new shoots.

But instead of just putting them into the garden,

by far the best way is to use

something like a module tray.

You can do them into little seed trays as well,

but this way, you know that once they've taken root in here

and you move them on,

there's going to be no root disturbance at all.

The really important point is that you make sure

that they lie horizontally across the compost.

And all you're doing with this propagation technique

is exploiting what the plant does in nature -

always the best policy.

There are some plants whose roots don't grow outwards,

they grow downwards, with a vengeance,

they have great big tap roots.

But you can propagate from a lot of those, as well,

and this is a prime example.

It's a verbascum.

It's Verbascum 'Cotswold Queen'.

-It's got these

-gorgeous

-terracotta flowers,

and I always want more.

So what I want to do is,

with a sharp knife, go in right to the centre of the plant,

as close to the crown as I can,

and just cut it across.

With horizontal root cuttings,

it doesn't matter which way up they go,

because they're just going across.

But with these kind of cuttings,

with big, tap-root, vertical cuttings,

it's vital that you get the right end up.

So always the top of your cutting is the end that was closest

to the crown of your plant.

People get terribly put off

by root cuttings. They worry about it.

But it's simple and straightforward.

Also, I think at this time of year,

you tend to think you've finished with propagating.

You know, you've sown your seeds and you've taken your other cuttings.

But this is the perfect time, from now and right through the winter,

to take root cuttings.

And if you want to know more about the kind of plants

that you can grow from root cuttings,

visit our website.

This is the ideal time of year

to plant out biennials

that will flower next spring.

And I've got a load of wallflowers here that I've raised from seed.

Now, you can buy wallflowers in garden centres and shops

at this time of year,

and traditionally they were sold in hardware stores, in newspaper.

But if you grow them from seed, they cost practically nothing.

A couple of packets of seed here, and I've got about 300 plants.

That makes it about 2p a plant.

Now, this is a variety called 'Blood Red'.

Fantastic, rich, ruby-red flowers.

And what I'm looking for is plants that have got...

..a nice root system and to keep a bit of soil on them.

See, there you are.

That's such a good plant. I'm very pleased with that.

It's exactly what you want to look for

when buying a wallflower at this time of year.

And one of the beauties of wallflowers is

they have a huge colour range,

from almost white to...

almost dark purple.

The weather's a bit miserable.

It's been trying to rain for the last few hours,

but that is really good

for transplanting anything -

wet air, slightly damp soil, perfect, because the plant

is full of moisture and it minimises the damage of transplanting.

I'm going to be planting them in this bed here.

In fact, these four beds. And under planting them with tulips.

Tulips don't need to go in for another few weeks.

It's best to leave those until November.

Take your plant, keeping as much soil as possible on the roots.

And...

..pop them in, not too deep,

same height that they were and then firm that in.

So that's nice and it will stand up on its own accord.

And, as for spacing, I put that about a foot away from the hedge.

Wallflowers do best in full sun, so not too much shade.

This is actually a marginal position.

I grow them here often and they do fine

and I like them here because the scent is so good close to the house.

But, to get the very best from them, give them a sunny spot.

If you've got slightly acidic soil.

In other words if you've got rhododendrons or azaleas

or heathers in your garden, it's a good idea to lime it first.

You can buy lime easily from a garden centre.

Spread it about a week before you plant it out.

You don't need to add any compost or goodness at all.

All you'll get if you do that

is a bigger plant with more foliage, but you won't get any more flowers.

Now this Sunday, the 21st, is National Apple Day.

Lots of gardens will be opening up, orchards,

and give people the chance to go along

and taste as many different types of apple as possible.

Gardeners need to be involved in this because

if we don't grow the rare and unusual apples, they'll disappear.

And Joe has been along to West Dean Gardens near Chichester

in West Sussex to see, not only lots of different types of apple,

but lots of different ways of growing them.

When we imagine a traditional orchard we think of neat rows of fruit trees

with boughs laden with blushing apples and pears

but what if you want to grow a decent crop of fruit at home

and space is limited?

Here at West Dean in the Victorian walled garden,

they grow some fruit trees in some pretty novel ways

and in a fashion that would suit the smallest of gardens.

For the last 21 years,

Jim Buckland and his wife Sarah Wain have been turning this

once derelict Victorian walled garden back to its 19th century glory.

Jim was recently awarded the RHS Associate Medal of Honour

for distinguished services to horticulture

and because, to date, he has made West Dean

as beautiful and abundant as its heyday if not more so.

The redevelopment is impressive

and Jim also has some pretty bold ideas when it comes to growing fruit.

-Hello, Jim.

-Hi, Joe.

These are very unusual shapes.

Are they all Victorian originally, these designs?

Yes, they evolved during the 19th century, yes.

They're really quite funky shapes, I love them,

but it's not just about how they look,

they also produce a lot of fruit, don't they, for the size of plant?

Indeed. Well, most woody plants have growth hormones in them

and most woody plants, most trees,

you think of most trees they have apical dominance

so the tree wants to form a single leader going up and then branch out.

By taking out the central leader,

you slow down the flow of those hormones to the rest of the tree

and it encourages branching lower down.

It encourages flowering, therefore it encourages fruiting.

Not all apple trees will respond so well, will they?

You need spur producers so, spurs being those very short little

fruiting branches that most apples and all pears produce.

If you look in a catalogue it will always tell you whether they're a spur bearer.

Probably 90% of apples are spur bearers.

I think the reason I love doing it is because,

partly because I love pruning things.

I think pruning is one of the most creative things

you can do in gardening, but also it's actually very attractive

and you can imagine this in full flower

and then in full fruit, it's absolutely a joy to look at.

A Victorian pioneering fruit grower was French Professor of Agriculture, Louis Lorette.

He devised wacky ways of growing apples and pears,

mainly as an experiment for intensive commercial fruit production.

Lorette found that by contorting branches

and planting the trees close together he could produce heavier crops

that would be easier to pick.

But how do you get apples and pears to perform these puzzling poses?

So, let's say this has got roots, we've planted it,

and you do something quite brutal.

-We chop all this lovely growth off the top.

-Take that really hard back.

What we hope is we get three good breaks,

so you're taking one branch out...

-One this way. One that way.

-One up the centre.

-One up.

Next year, these two branches will have grown out.

End of the season I've cut back to there, and off we go again.

So is that pretty much, one year, two year, every year?

You're getting something different?

Yes, that's one of the points about this,

is you got to be reasonably patient.

It takes anything up to seven years to make some of these shapes.

Cordons are both an extremely attractive

and efficient way of getting fruit into a small space.

The trees are grown at this angle, the growing tips are taken out

and they fruit all the way down the trunks there.

What's interesting is that here we have 12 metres of walling

and 15 different plants

so you can get a really good variety into your garden.

So if you're pushed for space but you still want

good choice of varieties, cordons could be the answer.

The fruit here at West Dean is grown in all kinds of imaginative ways

that not only produce good crops

but introduce an effective design element into any garden.

These pyramids and goblets are trained onto a simple framework

that not only introduces a sense of fun into the garden

but a strong focal point too.

It doesn't matter how small your garden is.

I think it's important to get height into it through planting

and sometimes structures too.

You don't need a walkway quite as long as this,

just a couple of fruit trees bent over a simple structure will do the job.

It will create a vista, it will draw the eye,

but more importantly, it will make you want to walk through it.

I haven't been to West Dean for ages but I remember when I went there

thinking how amazing all the trained fruit was

and I completely agree that pruning is the most creative thing

you can do in the garden, but it is a bit daunting for a lot of us.

If you haven't got much space and you think it's going to take a long time,

there is a very easy option, which is particularly good

for lining a path, and those are stepover apples.

These only grow to about one or two feet high

and then they stretch out along the path so they're very slim,

very low and, quite frankly, if you can grow anything

along the border of a path, you can grow these fruit trees.

Now, the planting of them is like any tree or shrub.

Make a hole but don't make it too deep.

Now, take it out of the pot, like that.

And you can see that's got a nice root system.

Very nice indeed.

But first I'm going to put a little bit of mycorrhizae in.

Mycorrhizae of course are funghi

and by adding a little bit of mycorrhizae

to the soil and the roots.

It's important that the roots make a direct connection to it.

You get a much better uptake of nutrients.

It acts as a conduit between the soil and the roots.

So, therefore, the plant grows away all the quicker.

I pop in so that the top of the pot is slightly above soil level.

You don't want it sitting down below.

Actually that is perfect.

All apple trees are grafted onto a rootstock.

There's the grafting point.

That determines the size and vigour of the tree

and what's above determines the variety of the fruit.

And, stepovers are grown on a dwarf rootstock.

If you're not certain about them or what a rootstock is,

go to our website. It's all very clearly explained.

Now, this apple is called Discovery.

Discovery is an early apple.

It should fruit in mid-August to mid-September.

Now, the next stage is to create

a supportive framework for it

because we want these branches here to grow as long as possible.

Now, obviously if you buy them already shaped, as these are,

it's easy, but, this does cost about 30 quid.

And you can go about it a different way,

with a much cheaper version, but it does mean training them yourselves.

If you buy a maiden.

That's simply an expression for a plant that's got no branches,

you can train your own. Now, there are two ways to do this.

Jim showed how you can cut it off

and encourage shoots to grow sideways

but I'm going to show you another method which is actually easier.

Now, the first thing to do is to plant it exactly like the others.

Now, that's planted upright, growing to the sky.

So, before I do any kind of training

I need to get the support in.

Just like the other ones.

Now, this applet Egremont Russet,

a lovely, nutty apple.

Quite a thick, leathery skin,

which ripens about now, about the middle to the end of October.

Now, to get the best from this, tie it at the base.

What you do is just slowly train that down,

and you tie a string to the top

and bend it until it's comfortable. You obviously don't want to snap it.

Don't tie it at the very tip, but there,

because you actually want the tip to bend upwards.

Because, if a plant is bending down,

it grows much more slowly than if it's growing up.

The time to do this is not now, but next spring.

It will take about two or three years to get it down to the horizontal,

but it will grow and it will train across to here

and we'll tie it in and that's a really easy way of training it.

Now, you may not be planting apples this weekend,

although it's a jolly good time to do it.

But here are some other things you can get on with.

Hellebores won't start flowering until after the New Year,

but it is a good idea to check through them now,

looking for signs of hellebore blight.

This will show itself as chocolate coloured markings on the leaves.

If you see it remove the foliage and the stem right down to the ground.

And you'll do no harm at all by taking all the foliage off

if you've any doubts.

If you've got a wood-burning stove or an open fire

that only burns wood, the resulting ash

is a really good source of potash for the garden.

Now, it's best to apply this in spring

so either store it in bags or sprinkle it on to the compost heap

and then when you put the compost down, the potash will be there.

Chicory is a fantastic winter vegetable and very hardy.

But it doesn't like wet weather.

It needs good ventilation.

So keep pulling off old tough leaves which you're not going to eat

to allow the air to get to the young, tender growth

which is so delicious.

Well, that's it for this week.

Don't forget that on the 21st it's National Apple Day

so lots of events around the country,

and if you don't know what apple to plant in your garden,

the best way of deciding is to go to one of these events

and taste some apples.

See what you like because, in the end, that's why you grow them,

so that they taste delicious and you can go out in the garden

and pick your own.

So I'll see you here next Friday. Bye-bye.

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