Episode 30 Gardeners' World


Episode 30

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Now, most of us have taken a bit of a battering over the last few weeks.

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It's been very wet almost everywhere.

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It's been pretty windy in a lot of places, too,

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and our gardens are beginning to look a bit wrecked.

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The last few months we've been holding on to summer,

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we've been talking about it fading away.

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Well, it's gone. It's over.

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And actually, that's a good thing, because this is a new beginning.

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Now is the time to start planting and acting for next year.

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This week, Joe is finding out why recycling

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is at the heart of designers Wayne and Geraldine Hemingway's garden.

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Well, I was expecting a designer garden,

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It will be quite hard to leave it.

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And Carol visits Coughton Court to explore

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the history of the most romantic plant to be found in any garden.

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Who could afford to be without an old rose or two?

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Not only will it bring you glamour and wonderful fragrance,

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but it'll be a living piece of history right there in your garden.

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There you go.

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Now, the cottage garden is slowly coming into being.

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Used to be all vegetables in here, and over the last year or so

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we've gradually introduced more and more flowers,

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We've got an empty bed now,

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and a great chance to start introducing some flowers.

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And the bones of any flower border are shrubs.

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This is a really good time to be planting shrubs of any kind,

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and particularly roses.

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Now, I want to plant three groups in this border,

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and I'm introducing a new colour, which is yellow.

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Do you know, I've never planted a yellow rose in my life?

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What I'm planting here is a rose called The Pilgrim.

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It's a modern rose, introduced just in 1991,

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and has the most beautiful,

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soft, ruffled, primrose-yellow flower

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with a slight flush of pink at the base.

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And a really distinctive fragrance of myrrh.

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What I like to do with roses is dig a really substantial hole

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and put them all in the same hole,

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so what you end up with is one whopping shrub.

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But there's no need to add compost or manure directly

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to the planting-hole.

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Now, if I loosen the bottom so that the roots can work their way down...

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What I will add is some mycorrhizal powder.

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And it's very easy to buy - every garden centre sells it.

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Sprinkle it on, just as I am here.

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The fungus acts as a conduit between the soil and the roots.

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Plants will build that conduit in time themselves,

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but by supplying it from the outset, they take nutrition quicker.

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So, they establish more quickly and strongly,

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and therefore you get a healthier plant.

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Now, obviously,

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planting three roses where one eventually would do is extravagant.

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A shrub rose like this will cost you

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somewhere between ten and twenty quid, and, you know, that adds up.

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What watering does,

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as well as providing moisture for the plants,

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it's just as important

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that it pushes the soil in and around the roots.

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Mulch is important for two reasons -

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one, because it will feed them, to a degree,

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and two, because it will keep moisture in.

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And then they can be mulched again, if need be, in spring.

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There you go.

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Planted.

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Now, this is a new rose, introduced 20 years ago,

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and it's new to me, new to this garden.

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But Carol has been looking at the history of old roses.

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And their beauty, too.

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The Persians, the Medes,

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the Egyptians, the Romans, the Greeks.

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They didn't just admire it in the wild, they wanted it closer to home.

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They brought it into their gardens.

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It wasn't just part of their culture,

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but their horticulture, too.

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Almost certainly, the rose that Romans grew

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in their villa gardens was a form of Rosa gallica.

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Now, this is Rosa complicata,

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and it has gallica as one of its parents.

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And it gives us a real idea of the sort of roses you would have

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seen if you'd walked into one of those gardens.

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There's a fresco from Pompeii

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which clearly shows a rose tied to a cane.

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But it seems to have extra petals,

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a sure sign that not only were they cultivating roses,

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Gallica roses would have been grown by all those ancient civilisations

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across the region, but eventually they made their way to England.

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This is one of the first of those gallica roses on record.

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This is rosa Rosa mundi.

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It's documented as being around from Tudor times

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but it probably dates back to centuries before that.

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It's said to have been named after the fair Rosamund,

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the mistress of Henry II.

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They lived in the 12th century.

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Sadly, she was put to death by Henry's jealous wife.

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But this rose remains, as a tribute to her beauty.

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here's one story that rosa Rosa mundi

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may have been brought back from the Holy Land during the crusades.

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Many roses were cultivated in that area.

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And it wasn't just gallicas, it was roses like this beautiful damask.

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This is a rose called Ispahan.

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It's named after an ancient Persian city.

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These roses were particularly valued for their scent,

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their delightful perfume.

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In fact, attar of roses

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was distilled from these wonderful flowers,

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and conserves and confections were made from it too.

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Things like Turkish delight.

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You can just imagine the taste and smell of those things.

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Their flowering only lasts for a few short weeks.

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The hunt was on to try and ensure that roses flowered all summer long.

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We tend to think of all our ancient civilisations growing roses,

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but of course, roses is a hugely widespread genus.

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The Chinese have been growing roses, cultivating them,

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treasuring them for hundreds of years.

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And it was a serendipitous meeting between East and West

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that really played a huge role in the development of the rose.

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In the middle of the Indian Ocean lies the Isle de Bourbon.

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It was here that French traders

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and Chinese traders brought their wares, including their roses.

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More imports from China flooded in, including yellow roses.

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The stage was now set

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for the kaleidoscopic range of roses which grace our gardens today.

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It's been a mild autumn, but even the courgettes are coming to an end

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and time to clear them away.

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In fact, it has been a really, really good year for courgettes.

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And that applies to pretty much all fruiting plants.

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which was very late, everything caught up.

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I think this year has been a really good example of how you need

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to both respond to what the weather is actually doing,

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rather than doing everything by the book,

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and also spreading things a little bit,

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so if you sow all your lettuce seeds in one go

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or all of your peas at one point

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and then you get a really cold snap, you are going to lose them,

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or they will not do very well, so look at succession.

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Divide seeds up into two or three lots and split them up

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and the chances are, if one lot fails, another will succeed.

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Most of us move house at some time or other in our lives,

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The first thing that attracted us to this house was the garden.

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We moved here in August 16th of 1985,

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which now makes it 28 years that we have been here.

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We absolutely loved it.

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The first thing we did do was the garden and not the house,

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just got stuck in with it, really.

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We always loved gardening,

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even when we were extremely young.

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I do like roses, and I also like clematis in particular.

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I like most plants, to be quite truthful.

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Every time something is in flower, that is my favourite plant.

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That's how gardening is, really.

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It will be quite hard to leave it, but we have got to be sensible.

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It will be nice to be a bit more relaxed with a smaller garden.

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We'll be taking plants with us,

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we had to leave all the plants in the borders

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because that is part of the sale, but we have so many plants potted up

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already that there is quite a number coming with us.

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I decided I would divide two or three of the perennial plants.

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I can take a section with me

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and also, it will rejuvenate the plant which we put back in place.

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This one here is Aruncus aethusifolius. Strange name.

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It's a dwarf Aruncus, really nice plant. One that I want to have.

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This is the one that is going to Cheshire.

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It doesn't look much at the moment, but it will soon take.

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At one time, we had hundreds of begonias in the garden.

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For the new garden, we will want more permanent plants,

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but however, I do like this particular begonia.

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It's Royal Renaissance Flamboyant.

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I will dig them up, dry them off in the greenhouse

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and then we'll take a few tubers with us.

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It is secluded and in the summertime, it is just really nice.

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Rudi, the cat that we had before, he is buried up in that garden,

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that was his favourite place.

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He was a big, brown Burmese, a beautiful cat,

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so I just like being there.

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I usually say "Hello, Rudi"

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every morning to him when I pass.

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I came across a peony called "My Pal Rudi"

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and because the cat was called Rudi,

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I bought the peony and it is really nice as well.

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It's a big, blousy bloom, but it is beautiful, perfumed as well,

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which is nice.

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That is one plant that has to come out of the border.

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I am sure the new owners will understand we had to take that one.

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It's looking a sorry state, but I'm sure it will come away nicely.

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Whoever buys that house is getting a beautiful garden as well.

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I've got it here, Nige!

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This is my asparagus bed, and it is not happy.

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I planted this in the spring of 2011.

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By now, I would expect the ferns to be all six foot tall

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and really thick and strong.

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They're not. This is as good as they have been since I planted them.

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I think that is as much as anything else

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to do with the weather over the past few years.

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If you remember we had that miserable, cold, wet summer of 2011,

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that was the first one after planting.

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2012 wasn't a lot better, and then a very cold spring this year,

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just as the asparagus was expected to get going.

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It just hasn't established properly. In a way, that is good news,

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because it means there is nothing wrong with the crop,

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nothing wrong with the way I am growing it, it is just bad luck.

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For the first few years of any asparagus,

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you don't harvest it at all.

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You let the roots establish.

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And part of that process is letting them die back in autumn,

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because that feeds into the roots, and then cutting them back

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and mulching them heavily.

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is one of life's great, great delights.

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Now, not everybody grows asparagus

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but here are some jobs that you can all be doing this weekend.

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I suspect that we've all got too many packets of seed

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that are either past their sell-by date

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or have been half-used for more than a year.

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It's a good time to go through your seeds and ruthlessly sort them out.

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Any that are more than a year past their sell-by date

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should be discarded.

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And if you have far too many of one type,

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you know what not to order next year.

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Artichokes are hearty, as long as they don't get wet and cold.

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The leaves are streaming off the trees by the day.

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But it's important not to waste a single one.

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Rake them up. If you can chop them by mowing them, so much the better,

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and store them in a loose, open-sided container.

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Make sure they're damp and then leave them for a year,

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and they will turn into lovely leaf mould,

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which is a superb addition to potting compost,

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as well as a useful mulch.

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Wayne and Gerardine Hemingway are famous for the range

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and the distinctiveness of their designs,

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running from shoes to public housing projects,

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and this summer, Joe went to visit them at home

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to see how they applied their skills to their own garden.

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and his wife, Gerardine. Their leafy Sussex garden is dedicated

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to bringing the indoors out.

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You really live out here, don't you? It's an extension to the house,

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so there's a series of different, what I call "rooms" outdoors,

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from the circular lawn here

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to all the different elements in the garden.

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It's just so many different places you can go.

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She actually has to keep building and designing,

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so we've probably reached the extent

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of any planning permission we could get for this house,

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so the next stage is these outdoor rooms, isn't it?

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Did you draw it and is it part of a master plan,

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or has it grown more organically than that?

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A bit of the two, really.

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The basic for the circular lawn that we're stood in now

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was master plan and then it was a case of

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everything else sort of evolved.

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Can we go and have a look at the garden?

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Yep, we'll go and have a look at the first installation.

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This is our outdoor tepee.

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When we first built it, it's quite architectural.

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It's made out of recycled telegraph poles.

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It's got a lovely, jungly feel in here, I have to say.

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The wisterias are beautiful.

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I think we've got about 12 varieties of wisteria in the jungle walk

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and the evergreen, jasmine and clematis. It smells good.

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I can smell the wisteria. The scent gets contained.

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Just the right time of year, isn't it?

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Because you're looking out onto quite a manicured lawn, as well.

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This is sort of a reinvention

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of a classic pergola structure in a way,

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which had roses and wisteria, but it would have been much more formal,

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whereas it's just a bit looser, isn't it?

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I think because gardening is not my full-time job,

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it's a hobby, so it has to fit in with the time that you've got

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so if you try to be too pristine about things, it takes too long.

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But it also gives a lovely, relaxed style to the garden, as well.

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Some gardens are quite formal

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and you're not those sort of people, I guess.

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He wasn't going to sell it,

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he was just going to get rid of it, so we thought we'd take the lot.

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You've got a huge hedge of it there.

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You're got a massive hedge of it here.

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Gera harvests it every year for poles for your...

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Staking up the veg in the veg patch. Things like that.

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The chicken hutch through there, the chicken pen, it was the Wendy house

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the kids had when they were young, and that was built by Gera's dad.

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And he had a similar philosophy.

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Free-range kids, that was a term you've always used.

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Yeah, we were both lucky enough to be free-range kids.

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We both lived in working class areas but with access to outdoor space.

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So I'm getting a sense that some areas are more yours,

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and some areas are more yours

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in the garden, as far as ownership is concerned.

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Yeah. Say that's right?

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Yeah, I mean, Gerardine spends a lot of time doing the detail

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and knows about plants and loves plants

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and I like doing things that men like to do

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to prove we still are men. Hang on, what are you talking about?

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Flowers... The creative side of things.

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The planting and things like that.

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And the order. And you've got a vegetable garden.

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And the vegetable garden, as well.

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Oh, this is beautifully kept.

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Do you get any help with this or do you do it all yourself?

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No, I do it all myself, actually.

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The only help I get is when I need more compost bringing round.

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Wayne will go and fill the barrow with compost for me

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and bring it around.

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I absolutely love my compost heaps.

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Come and look at the compost. Proud of his compost heap.

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Beautiful stuff.

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I like digging into this and we've got three big piles

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which are over three years.

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The bottom of that's going to be five years old because...

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Five years old? So what we do is, we have three different piles.

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Lovely stuff. Lovely.

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We get somebody in once a year to turn it.

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Everything's sort of got that designer touch

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but it's also about the practicalities, isn't it?

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As a designer, you can actually live what you do

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in your work as well and you can bring all that together.

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You get things right.

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We don't design outside of our life and our knowledge base.

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When we're doing housing and when we're doing landscape,

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this is the perfect place to experiment, really.

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MUSIC PLAYS

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MUSIC STOPS

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There are times, at this time of year,

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when it's too wet, too dark or just too miserable

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to do anything outside,

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so this is when all those inside jobs can be tackled.

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One of the least glamorous,

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but actually really useful, is cleaning labels.

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We get through hundreds, if not thousands of labels every year.

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and it's not hard work at all,

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the writing of this supposedly indelible marker comes off.

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Hey, presto, you've got a new label.

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There are scores and scores more to be done, and it will take ages.

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But we shall be back next week for our last programme of this year.

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So I'll see you then. Bye-bye.

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