Episode 10 Gardeners' World

COW MOOS

LAWNMOWER WHIRS

Hello, welcome to Gardeners' World.

You know, you can study horticulture for years,

you can become as experienced as you like,

but you very rarely will make anything more pleasing

than a mown path through long grass, particularly at this time of year.

I love that contrast. It's a beautifully simple, elegant line.

This week, Carol returns to help our budding gardeners,

Dan and Dominique, create a cottage garden border from scratch.

-What do you want this border to be?

-Colour, and just craziness.

Everything, you know, full, cram-packed would be brilliant.

Sophie Raworth will be at Chelsea Flower Show with me

for the first time this year,

and she takes us around the garden that she grew up in.

This is what I love and it makes me feel very at home.

So, the alliums, I've got, Hydrangea 'Annabelles',

I've got climbing roses, euphorbia.

-You're coming on!

-Coming on.

You've got it all and I'm trying to keep up with you, Mum.

And I shall be planting up my sweet peas.

And talking of sweet,

I'll also be sowing sweet corn

for a harvest later on in summer.

I love the change at this time of year

as the coppice goes into the next phase.

And you've had all the early flowers and now this.

It does prove to me that that combination of trees,

shrubs and flowers is perfect for gardening.

You can do it anywhere.

And they just work well together in this dappled light.

As you move further into the copse, the planting changes.

Bit more shady, and actually a little damper, too.

So, primroses, violets, the wood anemones,

and bluebells make this intense tapestry of a border.

And most of it has finished now.

And as the leaves get thicker, they'll go dormant.

And this is the perfect moment to divide primroses.

After they finish flowering,

primroses develop this really vibrant foliage,

which feeds back into the roots.

So, if you dig it up now and replant it, you'll capture all that growth.

Right, so we just dig around...

with a trowel, taking out this clump.

They don't mind that. Here we are, that's perfect.

You can see that we've got plenty of material to divide there.

And a good root system.

And I chop it, initially...

..in there, like that. There we go.

Already I've got myself a couple of plants but if I...

put that down, I can now break it up

into a whole number of plants.

But if you buy a big, healthy primrose, that can be a fiver.

So, if you go to a garden centre now, go to the reduced section -

cos they've finished flowering - buy the biggest plant you possibly can,

and divide it up.

You can be quite tough about this.

There we are. And I could take it down even further, if I wanted to.

We'll pull - there we go - even more.

And this way you can start to build your own stock,

because in two years' time,

that will develop a clump

as big as the original one that I've taken out.

And that then can be lifted and divided.

And very quickly you can go from buying one large primrose,

to having literally hundreds.

I've got a good spot here.

It's a bare patch where there was a pile of wood.

And you can see it's at the base of a tree,

but it's got sunlight coming in,

and to establish a clump to fill an area like this,

you want to plant four or five separate plants

about six inches to a foot apart and they will fill in the gaps.

Those leaves are a little bit wonky and bashed,

so what I'll do is quite happily take these right back, like that.

That won't do it any harm at all.

And we'll get new leaves growing from the base.

We'll plant this one in here. Just like that.

With a good soak, these will grow almost instantly.

And spread the established theme of this area of the garden.

There's nothing new going on here.

I'm just tinkering with it to keep it alive and keep it moving.

This is very different to what Carole has been doing

with our first-time gardeners Dominique and Dan.

She's been visiting them regularly throughout this year

and will continue to do so right through the growing season

as they start to create their garden.

This week she's helping them to plant up a cottage garden border.

Spring has definitely sprung in Gloucestershire.

And Dan and Dom have been making the most of it.

At the beginning of the year they created

a plan of their dream family garden.

And after loads of hard work it's starting to take shape.

The structural plants Dom

and I planted this Easter are settling well.

And since then they've been busy collecting perennial

plants from neighbours and friends.

They've laid some more lawn and after much discussion,

we've also come up with a low-cost

but high-impact solution for the patch of earth we're yet to tackle

next to the lawn.

It really is beginning to look like a garden, isn't it?

Look at that blossom.

That's marvellous. And I love this grass.

I think it's great how we have a continuous sweep coming round.

It brings the two sides together

and then that gives the opportunity to have a continuous border, as well.

-What do you want this border to be?

-Colour and everything just full.

Cram packed would be brilliant.

So what you're after really is what people call a cottage garden.

One of the great things about cottage gardening is you grab

stuff from everywhere, you beg borrow and steal

and you've been doing just that, haven't you?

-We have. We've collected a few little bits.

-Shall we have a look?

Yeah, come see.

-I think this looks splendid. All this stuff you've been given.

-Yeah.

I think you've got a marvellous selection. I really do.

You've got astilbe, meadowsweet, fabulous

sedum which is going to be one of your best autumnal wildlife plants.

Butterflies love it.

You've got daylily over there. What shall we start with?

This is rudbeckia.

You've got quite a nice lot of that

so we ought to be able to do something rather exciting with that.

-What else do you like?

-I really like this one.

-It's a thalictrum.

It's probably one called aquilegiifolium.

It will end up being really tall.

-Let's have that phlox, don't you think?

-Yeah.

That's such a cottagey garden thing, isn't it?

Phlox delivery, fantastic.

Just the job.

-Do we have a little holding area down here?

-In the middle.

First things first.

If we started with the rudbeckia because it's such a stalwart.

Big daisies with a black centre.

One of its common names is black-eyed Susan.

Why don't we start this as a big swathe over here?

You don't just want a plant in one place even if it's a swathe.

You want to repeat it somewhere else.

So you establish this whole sort of rhythm.

-Continue it around then?

-Yeah, I think so. Somewhere over there.

If you plant them a few inches apart but we break these clumps up a bit.

You'll find by the end of the summer, hopefully,

you'll have a great big chunk of yellow.

This thalictrum sustained slight injury over here.

I'm not going to take sole responsibility for that but maybe.

I think the whole thing about tall plants is everybody wants to

put them at the back.

And have this sort of staggered look.

I think we ought to have them right at the front here.

Somewhere like this.

Because then you create these little recesses, you know?

These little secret places.

About 18 inches to a foot apart, something like that.

Two phlox, one each. I think she gave you the smaller one.

-I think so.

-I'm no fool.

Maybe if they come up here you can have one either side.

So you establish the link between one side

and the other. You can buy a few more from the garden centre.

Just so you establish this kind of rhythm.

Come on. There's more plants. Tools and plants, thank you very much.

We're setting all the plants out on the soil to make sure

the design will work before we start getting them planted.

By autumn these plants will have established themselves.

And be ripe for propagation.

Allowing Don and Dom to fill up the rest of their borders.

-Give them a good old soak. Are you pleased?

-Looks amazing.

Until then we've come up with a beautiful,

cost-effective solution to create big impact this summer.

What about this area now?

-We've got these guys. The mini meadow.

-The mini meadow.

Instead of being a wild flower mix, which would be great

if you had poor, dry soil. It's a mix of annual flowers.

That will give you the same billowy, soft, romantic effect

but will love growing in this kind of soil.

Right now is the time to sow it and I think you ought to use this

time-honoured method so putting some of your seed into dry sand.

For two reasons.

A, you can see exactly where you've sown

and B, it distributes the seed more evenly.

Yeah, lovely.

With this area now set up for summer,

it's time to turn our attention to the veg plot.

Because next time I'm here we're going to fill them

and create a plot that should keep them in veg throughout the year.

It's nice to see people catch the enthusiasm that gardening gives you.

They're getting the bug.

These are streptocarpus I bought at Malvern.

Now, I've never grown these before.

So I thought I'd give them a go.

I've seen them growing in the wild in the Drakensberg

mountains in South Africa.

And I've seen them growing in rocky wooded ravines with the mountain

streams pouring down and the streptocarpus growing on the banks.

So they like shade, they like warmth,

they like it moist but not wet.

They can be quite tricky.

One thing that is not right is to grow them in a hot, dry greenhouse.

So if I grow them in here,

I will put them underneath the staging.

And when you water them,

you don't want to water directly onto the leaves

but either just into the compost or underneath.

And they want to be fairly pot-bound.

If you put them into too big a pot

you'll just get masses of leaves and no flower.

This is a variety called Crystal Ice,

which flowers more than most varieties and will go on flowering.

As long as you keep deadheading it, new flowers will be produced.

Now, I want to make new plants

because you can take cuttings from them quite easily.

And you do it by taking leaf cuttings.

And this plant here -

the leaves are strong, standing well

and that's perfect cutting material.

Leaf cuttings, like root cuttings, need a well-drained compost.

So I'm going to use a seed mix which has got lots of vermiculite in it

and I'm going to do the cuttings in three different ways.

As much as anything else to compare how they get on.

The easiest way to take a leaf cutting from these

is simply to take a single leaf,

that one will do.

We'll cut that off at the base, like that.

And just cut about two thirds down

with a sharp knife

and stick it in compost.

And leave it like that.

The second way to take cuttings from these

is slightly more complex

and slightly more risky.

So we will take another cutting.

Let's take this big one here, like that.

And cut it into sections across the leaf.

Now, it's important you remember which way up they are

because they have to go into the compost the right way up,

so to speak.

Put that in, like that.

And what this will do is encourage new little plants

to grow from the base.

That will give us more plants from one leaf

but it's going to be a greater risk

of the plants not surviving the cutting process.

The even riskier way to do it,

but if it works much more successful, is this.

We will take another whole leaf.

And I wouldn't want to take any more leaves than this from this plant.

And then, putting it on the ground,

I'm going to cut out that main rib.

And to do this you do need a very sharp knife.

You don't want to tear it.

Now, these can be put in on their side, along the cut edge.

If that works, and there's about a 50% chance,

we will get new plants growing all the way along the length,

which can then be cut free and potted on.

Whichever method you use,

you do need to put it somewhere warm but not exposed to too much sun,

otherwise it will scorch.

And then water the soil well.

And you'll know that it's taken

because you'll start to see the new growth.

Right, if those cuttings take,

the young plants should be flowering within 21 weeks.

So if you can get it to happen,

it's a great way of producing new plants.

And we are producing new plants every day, now,

and by the end of the year

we will have got thousands out of this one small greenhouse.

That takes quite a lot of organisation

but it's a very cheap way of making the garden look fantastic.

However, one thing is for sure,

you can't just grow plants in the protection of a greenhouse

and then take them and put them straight out into the garden.

And it is a good idea

if you're growing anything in the greenhouse

that is intended to go in the garden

to harden it off gradually.

And that means for at least a week and preferably by degrees.

So pretty good protection and then a little bit more exposed

and finally, when it's ready to go out,

it's properly acclimatised.

And this applies if you buy plants, too.

If you go to a flower show or a garden centre

and you see a marvellous plant,

the chances are that it's been mollycoddled and protected

so it DOES look marvellous.

So a really good piece of advice is to,

when you buy a new plant, put it somewhere fairly protected -

out of the wind, out of the worst of the sunshine -

let it sit for a week, then plant it out.

Now, I've got sweet peas here,

which have gone from seed to cold frames

to this standing bed

and now are completely ready to be planted out.

Sweet peas like rich soil, plenty of moisture.

So before you plant, it's a good idea

to put lots of compost or soil improver beneath the wigwam,

if you're planting them on a wigwam,

or on a line if you're planting them against a fence.

And they don't need unbroken sunlight.

As long as they get sun for half the day that's absolutely fine.

I plant a pot at a time.

So I've sown three seeds, three plants have grown.

Knock it out of the pot

and the whole thing goes at the base of a support.

And when these are planted they will need a good soak

and they need to be soaked regularly.

So if it hasn't rained, these should be watered weekly.

Do not let them dry out.

Sweet peas are common garden plants, I suppose.

They're absolutely lovely and none the worse

for being in millions of gardens across the country.

Now, next week is Chelsea Flower Show.

And for anyone exhibiting, it's the absolute peak of the year

and for every gardener it's one of the major highlights.

I'll be there along with Joe and Carol and Rachel

and, for the first time, Sophie Raworth.

Now, Sophie was brought up in Twickenham

in a beautiful garden.

This is where I grew up.

We came here when I was six years old and my parents still live here.

And I come here all the time.

My parents have always been really keen gardeners,

as were their parents, my grandparents.

And gardening and plants and horticulture

has always been so central to my family, to my parents.

And it's just something that has run through the generations, I suppose.

When my parents bought this house back in the 1970s

it needed a huge amount doing to it.

And there was a beautiful space here but very little in it.

And they could see the possibilities that this garden held.

This is my favourite part of the garden.

So much of my childhood happened here, on this lawn.

I mean, everything from revising for my O-levels

lying on the lawn, here...

We had my childhood birthday parties here.

When we were kids,

my sister and I used to have tea out here with my mum.

It was a wonderful space

that was created by my parents for our family.

It's looking amazing, Mum.

Just doing a bit of staking.

People often say, "It's your mother's garden."

But actually it's not at all.

My dad is the absolute backbone to it.

He did the beautiful lawns and he planted all the hedges

and my mum is in charge of the plants and flowers.

Flowers at the moment I really love are the, I mean,

that poppy, there - 'Medallion' - is fantastic.

And I think the plant has got at least 20 buds on it.

And the tulips have been wonderful, 'Spring Green'.

Look at those camassias there, they're beautiful.

And also, there, there's the white hesperis.

Now, that is a lovely scented plant and that's gorgeous.

-And the roses, of course, which are about to come out.

-Yes.

This garden when the roses come out is spectacular.

My garden is, compared to this, miniature.

But the flowers that I have in my garden, I have to say,

-I've slightly copied my parents. I mean...

-Oh, you do. You do!

You go and see a garden and you get ideas from other gardens.

And also this is what I've grown up with

so this is what I love and it makes me feel very at home.

So the alliums... I've got Hydrangea Annabelles,

I've got climbing roses. Euphorbia...

-Oh, well, you're coming on!

-I'm coming on, you know!

You've got it all. I'm trying to keep up with you, Mum.

This is the knot garden, but it is one of the parts of the garden

that has changed the most over the years. When we first moved here,

when I was six, we had a Wendy house and a swing.

They weren't very pretty, though, so I'm afraid we burned

-the Wendy house and the swing was got rid of.

-Yes.

We weren't very pleased about that.

No. Then, I kept bees. I had two huge hives here.

And we used to produce over 200 pounds of honey.

And we took it very seriously.

Mum and I used to go to bee-keeping classes, in Twickenham.

Yes. And there was a film made about us on Nationwide and there is

a very funny shot of Sophie standing there with long, lank hair.

That was my first appearance on television,

on Nationwide, with Mum and her bees, looking very gawky,

standing right here, in this garden.

This wisteria is fantastic. It's the first thing you see when you walk

into the gates here and it was here

when we moved here in the 1970s. It is very much my dad's thing.

It has grown up and it's come down again,

because Dad cuts it back. It used to reach the top of the house.

Wisteria grows like mad.

I have to prune it at least three times, sometimes, four times a year,

in order to keep it trim.

And the last pruning, which was maybe in January, February,

where you cut it back to two buds and that, sort of, makes it flower.

That's the most important thing.

But the thing that my dad is most proud of is this -

the cotoneaster, 'Queen of Carpets', understep planting,

which Dad reckons is probably the longest in the country?

-Is that right?

-I think it is right.

It is 20 metres. Two lots of ten metres

and it is the most prostrate cotoneaster that there is,

I believe. There is hardly...

It lies absolutely flat and it's gone along

the Yorkstone gaps that we have here.

That is your mission, isn't it, to cover the whole sunken garden?!

The added bonus is that it has

-a pretty white flower.

-And red berries in the autumn.

It's got a hole here, Dad. I'm worried about the hole.

-I've just seen that, yes.

-LAUGHTER

It is just something I have grown up with, I have a really strong

affinity to and it is a, sort of, family passion and something that

Mum and Dad have very much passed on to me. I'm really excited to be part

of the Chelsea team this year. I have been there many times

as a visitor,

but I have never spent a substantial amount of time there.

I am really looking forward to talking to all the garden designers

and the plant growers and taking away tips and ideas for my own garden.

BIRDSONG

I have been to Richard

and Jenny Raworth's garden and it is staggering.

And you could go and see it, too, because it is open, under the

National Gardens Scheme and all the details of that and anything else

today can be found on our website.

Now, how about this? This is Viburnum plicatum mariesii.

It is a fairly common shrub, but uncommonly beautiful,

and this is its supreme moment. As well as this fabulous

flower, in spring,

they have some of the best autumn coloured-foliage that you could

possibly find.

Now, you may not have a Viburnum plicatum, but here are some jobs

that we can all be doing this weekend.

Although you should not be cutting hedges at this time of year,

because it will disturb nesting birds, it is a good time

to lightly trim the vertical ends of hedges.

It is only a small job, but it has a really big impact

on tidying up the garden.

Just as trimming the vertical ends of a hedge tidies things up, so does

keeping the edges of grass neat.

If there is already an established edge,

you can just trim it with edging shears, although they must be

really sharp. If, however, you have got matted growth,

use a board

and cut into the growth, to establish a neat line.

Then, in future, you can just trim it with the shears.

If you grow strawberries, your fruit will be forming and even ripening,

so now is a good moment to mulch them.

Straw is traditionally used, but anything that keeps the fruit clean

and dry will do the job.

And while you are about it,

it's a good idea to cloche some of the plants.

This will encourage them to ripen earlier and spread your harvest,

but keep the ends of the cloches open, to ensure good ventilation.

BIRDSONG

I am sowing some sweet corn. Sweet corn is one of these vegetables

that is tender and it is no good sowing it in cold conditions.

If it does grow, it won't grow very well and we can't

reliably reckon on warm conditions for another few weeks yet.

So, I am going to raise it in the greenhouse.

These will be ready to pot on, as soon as they start growing and get

a decent root system. By the time I have harded them off,

they should be about a foot or so high. By that time,

it will be, ooh, the middle of June, the nights will be warm

and they will grow fast. And they will be ready to harvest

round about August time or even September.

And home-grown sweet corn is just SO much sweeter than anything

you can buy. It's a fantastic treat.

A buttery cob, with the juices smeared over your face is good fun.

That can go into the greenhouse.

Now, I'll water that in and I've put it on the heated bench,

because sweet corn needs heat to germinate. And it is great to have

that facility. In fact, I have got a letter here from

Sharon Camp, asking me what warming bench I have got

and how does it work. I can tell you, Sharon, I bought that bench for

about £700, 16 years ago. It is, essentially, just a deep tray

filled with grit,

with cable, like an electric blanket, running through it.

It is quite an investment, but it is about the best thing

I have EVER bought in this garden, because it's saved me

tens of thousands of pounds, really. And the secret of successful

propagation is controlling light, water and heat.

Now, a much cheaper way to do that is to get a heated mat.

I've got one under here. For about £100, you can get a decent size

and it gives you that gentle heat underneath.

You'll find that your seeds will germinate quicker

and, better, cuttings will take better and you'll very, very quickly

make that money back.

I would say it's well worth the investment of some kind of gentle

bottom heat for propagation.

Well, that is it for today. I shan't be here next week,

because I will be at Chelsea.

Chelsea programmes begin on Sunday night.

But I will be back in a fortnight's time, so I will see you here

at Longmeadow, then.

Bye-bye.