Episode 12 Gardeners' World

Come on, Nige.

Hello, welcome to Gardeners' World.

The writing garden is beginning to take shape.

It's only a year old but it's getting a touch of maturity,

which is exciting.

We've had really wet weather here at Longmeadow for the last two,

three weeks.

And whilst that's a bit miserable for gardeners

the garden has become really lush and that lushness is a

beautiful green and the white is a kind of cloud

that floats on top of the richness of the green.

And you've got the Allium 'Everest', the wonderful white of the

foxgloves and then in turn the roses will come through

and the clematis but the constant factor is the green

in all its different shades.

The combination of this time of year and all the rain

and, critically, the fact that my knee seems to be better,

so I'm off crutches and I'm off a stick,

means that there's lots to do and I can crack on with it.

-Go on.

-Where you going with this one, then?

This week Joe goes behind the scenes at the world famous

Glyndebourne Opera House.

Where the gardens have been designed to complement the music.

We try and cater for lots of moods so that

when you come out of an opera like

The Marriage Of Figaro or something and you're buzzing

and you're excited you want an exuberant, exciting planting scheme.

Rhododendrons are looking at their best at this time of year.

Carol meets a man from a dynasty of growers

and learns about the rhododendrons that have shaped today's

popular varieties.

There's 900 different species ranging from these great big trees

to tiny little alpines.

You could spend a whole lifetime and never see half of it.

And I'll be working in my cottage garden where the aesthetic beauty

of flowers sits easily with the very practical virtues of vegetables.

The Jewel Garden, as the name suggests,

is planted to create as intense and rich colours

as we possibly can.

And, at the moment, the irises and the poppies and the delphiniums

are working towards creating that effect

and, in fact, it does go on building till August/September

when it's at its absolute peak.

But the cottage garden has a very, very different feel.

We've got growing - fruit... vegetables...

shrubs, annuals, herbaceous perennials,

all mixed up cheek by jowl.

And the Ruby chard looks great.

We've eaten it all winter and now it's bolting and it's become a

flower with a magnificent red stem.

Now this bed has had wallflowers in them.

A really good, buttery yellow.

Wallflowers are, actually, a short-lived perennial

but I grow them as a biennial and it tends to be the best way to grow it.

And the biennial - you sow the seed one year

and it will flower the following year.

So, now is the perfect time to sow wallflower seeds.

And grow them on, plant them out in the autumn

and they'll flower next spring.

But they've gone and they need pulling out to make space.

If I left them in the ground here they would go on living

but they would get very lush and you'd have masses of foliage

and not much, if any, flower at all,

so it's a law of diminishing returns.

So, by pulling them up, I've got the best of them

and I'm creating space for other things.

Now, these are the plants I've been making space for.

I've grown these first three from seed and, in fact,

this is just half the plants we got from one packet of seed each.

So, very cheap, the most economic way to fill up a garden.

This is a yellow chard.

This is a Purple Kale. Both edible, of course,

but very, very decorative.

I've got a tray of Borage, herb.

And I've bought a couple of packs of Cosmos.

This is a pink mix and the delicate pink will work in with the roses.

So, I've got a flower, herb, a winter vegetable

and then a really dramatic bright-coloured vegetable

which will work through from summer into winter.

And the total costs of these plants is somewhere between

£10 and £20 and there's enough to do both these big beds.

Just got a few chard. They're quite brittle, the stems of chard.

You have to be careful not to snap them.

But they're good, healthy plants.

Now, these will only reach that sort of height when they bolt

so to start with they'll be relatively low

and their mature height will be no higher than the top

of the hedgerow.

I love the way that the roots are yellow of this too.

And you can see that has, actually, got a little bit pot-bound

so tease them out a little bit. Just by breaking them

you stimulate

fresh root growth.

That's enough.

Chard is the perfect cottage garden plant

because it's going to cope well with different conditions.

You can harvest it from summer right through to the following spring.

It looks lovely, it's good for you - what's not to like about chard?

Don't plant it too close together.

The key to it is to let the roots grow

because it will have quite a big, fleshy root

and that's what keeps it going over winter.

There they go, that'll be fine.

If I put the Cosmos in - you buy them in these plastic plugs,

you just push the bottom out.

Now, before planting that...

you can see it's got a large bud on the top

and then smaller side buds coming off.

So, when you buy Cosmos like that

just pinch out the top bud.

That will encourage more side shoots and you'll get many,

many more flowers.

So, we'll pop it in there.

It's so wet the soil is really sticky.

And finally a profusion of kale.

See that is a beautiful plant, even if it wasn't edible, it'd be great.

And this is really robust

and will come into its own after the first frosts,

when that tenderises it a bit, and it's a really, really good vegetable

and will hold its own in here amongst the flowers all around it.

So we've got this funny old mixture in the border

but it's great for small gardens cos you can have a bit of

everything that you fancy, and have the garden looking really beautiful.

Now, Joe is starting out on a new series of garden visits

to prestigious places

with gardens attached that play a very important role

in the whole experience of their use and management.

And his first visit is to the Opera House, Glyndebourne in Sussex,

as they get ready for the new season.

Thousands of people flock to Glyndebourne every year to see

some of the biggest names in opera, and with just three days to go

till the opera season starts, there's a real sense of excitement here.

But it's not just the singing they come here for.

The gardens are as much a part of the experience as the performances.

'Kevin Martin and his gardening team have worked their socks off

'to get the grounds ready for the opening night.

'Over the last few months, they've planted over 7,000 bulbs,

'produced 6,000 plants from seed,

'and spread 50 tonnes of mulch

'across the 20 acres of grounds which are separated into

'several distinct gardens.'

-Hello, Kevin.

-Hi, Joe, welcome.

-Yeah, thank you. Fantastic gardens,

but it must be a real challenge gardening here because

you've got such a range that you've got to deal with.

It certainly is. It's, erm, it's just the areas are so varied,

they're so different.

I mean, working in the jungle garden here, so we use large, big plants.

Some of the areas, we're using finer plants.

-And it's all to complement this amazing opera...

-Absolutely.

-..blasting out behind you.

-As you can hear now, exactly, yeah,

so that's another added bonus of working in this garden actually.

-Yeah. D'you need a hand?

-Yes, please, yeah, we'd love a hand.

-More bananas?

-More bananas.

-Where are we going with this one, then?

-Up through here, Joe.

-Through the jungle.

-Through the jungle.

With this singing in the background,

does it inspire you to garden? How does it make you feel?

It's great, I think everyone has a piece of classical music they love,

and since working here I've sort of recognised a few more bits.

-In fact this is my favourite opera you can hear now.

-Yeah.

So, yeah, it does inspire you and it's incredible to be

working in a garden with live string music, really.

It's been an incredibly mild winter,

and this exotic garden here shows it, doesn't it?

The greatest thing about having a mild winter at Glyndebourne

is that we do get Echiums through the winter,

which makes a big difference.

I mean, we do actually grow them in the greenhouse and plant them out,

and we'll get flowers probably a third of the size of that.

But if they over winter, then they're just magical.

Lovely. Right, what's next?

Oh, yeah, these are lovely borders, eh?

Yeah, very important, this one.

A lot of people use this to enter the opera house, so we've got to

make sure it's looking its best right the way through the season.

So what do you want to do with these?

We're going to do a bit of staking here.

So with the volume of people involved,

does it affect the plants you use?

It does. We have to try and soften up the edges of the path using,

you know, stuff that can cope with a bit of bashing.

Hardy geraniums, we can cut them back.

I find when we do cut them back,

good drink of water and they're back again within a few weeks.

We use the Nigella quite a lot as well which seeds everywhere.

There's also a bit of drama here with the Eremurus,

which again are an amazing plant.

This time of year, do you feel a lot of pressure?

The time they spend on the detail with the productions,

you feel that you've got to compete with them, you know.

-You can't let the side down, that's for sure!

-No, you can't.

-You happy with that?

-I am, that's going to do us proud.

Yeah, that's going to come in nice as it grows through there.

'Kevin and his team work very closely with John Hoyland,

'the gardens' advisor and one of the masterminds behind their design.'

-Gardens are looking great.

-Thanks.

-Have to say I love this exotic border here.

-It's great.

The idea behind this border was it's just before the foyer to the

theatre so we just wanted to have something exuberant and exotic and a

bit jungly, which just hints at the excitement that's going on in there.

But there's a lot of different themed garden areas.

Why has it been designed like that?

What we try and do is that we try and cater for lots of moods,

so that when you come out for the long interval,

cos there's an hour and a half's interval here,

you might just be buzzing just because you're seeing

something jolly and exciting like The Marriage of Figaro,

and you want an exuberant, exciting planting scheme.

But then there's tragedy sometimes that you come out from,

and so you might just want a quiet walk through a shady woodland

or around the lake or through a meadow.

You might just want to be calm and quiet,

so we try and create those different atmospheres.

'And it's not just the audience who enjoy the gardens.

'Whilst on breaks from rehearsals,

'the performers, backstage crew and musicians do too.'

How important are the gardens to you two, as far as your performances?

Fantastic, wonderful.

We're really de-stressed in the nicest possible way.

You can take yourself off into a lovely walk...

We go down by the lake...

..and look at the lillies and the mayflies and the...

..and get all artistic about it.

I think they're rather an oasis of calm

because we're working inside in a subterranean darkened space

when we're in the pit, it's very cramped and it's very noisy.

And it's really nice to come outside and see the gardens

and to smell the flowers and see the reflections in the water

and just sort of normalise again.

HARP GLISSANDOS

-Nearly done.

-Nearly done. It's never, it'll never be completely done

until the actual curtain goes up, but we're nearly there.

-There's a bit of dead-heading to do.

-But you're pleased?

I'm very pleased, yeah, another season up and running.

I think the garden looks fantastic.

They've just got to work on the opera now.

Exactly, yeah. Well, we can hear it,

there's a few tweaks they've got to do, but not many.

Well, I'm no opera buff but certainly that makes me

want to go to Glyndebourne, even if it's just to see the garden.

And if you want to find details

about the opera season there, you can get it,

as with any other details about today's programme, from our website.

Now the vegetable garden has enjoyed the wet weather.

The chard is bolting like it is down in the Cottage Garden

but there's still plenty of leaves to eat

and I'll take those out sometime over the next week or so.

Potatoes, this is Charlotte, the second early, looking fantastic.

Touch wood, I'll be harvesting those in about three weeks' time.

I've done a little experiment here with the broad beans.

Directly sown two different varieties.

This is Witkiem and Eleonora Express.

These were sown in April and you can see

they're both well covered with flowers and they'll be developing

pods in the next few days, ready to harvest by the end of the month.

There are some Eleonora Express at this end of the bed, which I sowed

in pots in January and they are now producing small pods like that.

Then I've got Aquadulce, which I sowed at the end of autumn.

And these have got much larger pods.

That's a really good sized one.

So you can see the difference in size of the pods.

Now, traditionally, if you want early broad beans,

you do sow them in autumn.

The problems I've had in the past is, if you've got frost and snow

and mice, they can really suffer.

But this year, because of the mild winter, they've done well.

And you can see the difference. If I open this pod,

you've got a tiny, little bean in there, whereas

if I open this one, that bean is as big as I would ever want it.

There's the difference in size of bean.

And you can't beat just broad beans, cooked, a little bit of oil,

perhaps some lemon, perhaps a little bit of mint - absolutely delicious.

These radishes mark the spot where I sowed rows of parsnips

and radish and parsnip grow well together

and you can see that the radishes are absolutely ready for harvest

and growing well and the parsnips are coming up through.

There's a parsnip. There's parsnips coming up there.

And they coexist quite happily.

And these, swish them under a tap and they'll be delicious.

And by picking them, of course, letting light,

air and nutrients go to the parsnips, and then I'll sow

more radish for more succession and probably another crop after that.

The trouble at the moment with all this wet is my heavy soil is too

wet to sow direct but it's really good weather to do some planting.

I'm going to plant out some leeks that

I sowed in plugs a few months ago.

Date on the... Yeah, 26th of February these went in.

And you can sow them, as I often do, which is in clumps.

You sow some seed into a plug and you put it on

and it doesn't matter if it's one seed or five seeds.

They then grow as a little group and you harvest them as a group.

Now, the spacing

when they're planted like this can be about eight, nine inches apart.

And I'm not trying to plant them too deeply

cos what I'm trying to produce are young leeks, whereas if you

plant them individually in holes, they are sunk down and in fact only

the tips stick out and that excludes light and you get a bigger, stronger

leek and some will say it's sweeter but I intend to eat these young

so it doesn't matter that they're growing up above ground level.

Over the last few months, Carol has been looking at

the plants that have shaped and defined our gardens

and the growers who have passionately developed them and,

this week, she's gone up to Scotland,

looking at beautiful rhododendrons.

Can you imagine our gardening landscape without rhododendrons?

Yet it was only a couple of centuries ago that they were

seldom or never seen. And even when they became more popular,

they were exclusively the preserve of the moneyed classes.

Now they've become one of Britain's favourite shrubs.

Ken Cox is the latest in a dynasty of plant hunters.

For three generations, the Coxes have been growing

and hybridising rhododendrons here at Glendoick.

The reason that we got into rhododendrons in the first

place was that my grandfather was working in London and he met

Reginald Farrer, who was the most famous plant hunter of the 1920s.

-My hero.

-And Farrer asked my grandfather

if he'd like to go plant hunting with him in Burma.

It doesn't get much more adventurous than that, does it?

They were certainly going out into the unknown

and they will have travelled through rhododendron forests out in Burma.

But what was more important was when he came back

and looked at the valley here he thought that looked a bit like what

he'd seen in Burma and so I'm pretty sure that without the combination of

the seeds and the place to plant them we wouldn't be into rhododendrons

and so Glendoick wouldn't be world-famous for rhododendrons.

But what is it about rhododendrons that YOU love?

I think it's the diversity.

I think the fact that there's 900 different species

ranging from these great, big trees to tiny, little alpines.

You could spend a whole lifetime and never see half of it.

And then, from those 900, people have bred another 28,000-odd hybrids.

-And counting.

-And counting. And so it is just a lifetime of interest.

You'll never get bored of rhododendrons.

I should say, "That's magnificent".

This is what you think of when you think, "Rhododendron."

I think it is absolutely that

and it illustrates everything which is fantastic about rhododendrons,

and the problem, which is who's got a garden big enough to put that in?

Which rhododendron is it?

This is a rhododendron called Sappho

that was bred in the late 19th century

and it was a real breakthrough to get this colour.

There is no wild species that's got this enormous purple

splotch in the middle of the flower.

And that's quite a feature on many rhododendrons now.

But they never told anybody what the cross was

cos they didn't want any of their rivals to make the cross

so we still don't really know

how on earth they managed to breed this thing.

This is ravishing, isn't it?

This is a truly revolutionary rhododendron, I suppose,

called Rhododendron yakushimanum.

It was introduced in the 1930s from Japan from this volcanic

island called Yakushima And my grandfather was

one of the first people to get this when it came back from Japan.

And then, in the 1950s, people started hybridising with it

and they found it produced a whole race of little,

bun-like, low-growing hybrids perfect for small gardens.

So it took rhododendrons away just from the aristocracy

and their stately homes and put them into normal sized gardens.

It grows in really windswept, incredibly cold conditions.

It's a fantastically hardy plant.

You can grow it in Germany, you can grow it in North America.

The most popular parent of rhododendron hybrids ever.

-And totally, totally beautiful.

-It is lovely, isn't it?

The air is just filled with this intoxicating perfume.

-This is what I call an azalea.

-This is a deciduous azalea.

Deciduous azaleas are the hardiest members of the rhododendron family

and they drop the leaves in the winter so they're brilliant

if it's a bit windy. They are good at seaside,

good at salt spray and all that kind of thing.

They're tough old plants.

They're really tough and they don't tend to flower until end of May,

and into June, so if you have a garden that suffers from late frosts,

if you're in an inland river valley, they're a really good choice.

So they continue the season and they're tough.

Most of the antecedents of these plants came from America.

North America, yes. Up and down the East Coast, mainly.

There were really only two other

important species of deciduous azalea.

luteum, a scented yellow one, that comes from Turkey.

And then there's one from Japan, called molle.

So all those azaleas ended up back in Europe

and then people started hybridising with them.

And there is one challenge left, really, which is that the

scented ones are all pale coloured.

And there's very little in the bright oranges and reds

and whatever that has any scent.

So what I'm working on - I'm not that far away -

is to get scent into the really big orange and red azaleas.

I think when God invented azaleas he said it was either/or,

-and I'm maybe trying to prove that wrong.

-You want all three.

-You won't scent and fire and size.

-At the same time.

So, an azalea that has absolutely everything.

-That would be right.

-I'm sure you will.

-That's what we're working on.

Of course, the reason why I can't grow rhododendrons here,

and, in fact, you couldn't possibly grow them on chalk or limestone,

is they need ericaceous soil, a pH of around about six to five.

But if you do want to grow them and you're on chalk, you can

grow them, of course, in a container with ericaceous potting compost.

You can see that the cricket pitch has changed from a great field

of crocuses and narcissi to long grass.

This is now a meadow.

And it won't change much for the next month or so, then,

as it dries back, we'll cut it and mow it and start that cycle again.

Now, you may not have any long grass in the garden

but here are some jobs you can be getting on with this weekend.

'Now, if you've got nettles or comfrey growing in the garden,

'here's an easy way to turn them into a very good plant feed.

'Both of them are made in the same way.

'Gather up as many leaves and stems as you can

'and cram them into a bucket.

'Nettles are good for encouraging strong, leafy growth while

'comfrey is ideal for developing healthy flowers and fruit.

'Top the buckets with water and then put them

'to one side to gently stew for three weeks, preferably well

'out of the way because the comfrey will develop a truly vile aroma.

'Now the nights are growing warmer it is a good time to plant out

'pumpkins and squashes

'and if you haven't grown any from seed you can still buy young plants.

'Give them the richest soil you've got and a very sunny site,

'spaced at least three feet apart.

'And plant them at the centre of a shallow depression

'because this will hold water and you should water them

'well every week for the rest of the season.

'Climbers like roses and clematis are starting to grow

'vigorously now at the same time as they're flowering

'and this can mean that the flowers can be hidden and flop down.

'So carefully untangle long new shoots

'and tie them into support with soft twine.

'This will both protect them

'and also enable you to enjoy the flowers at their very best.'

This part of the garden we call the dry garden because the soil

is very thin and it's very sunny but, earlier this spring,

I dug all the plants out, gave the soil a bit of a revamp,

some extra compost and more grit to make the drainage even better,

divided the plants up and replanted, adding a few bits and pieces.

And now it's started to own the space again.

Obviously, when you revamp a border, you keep adding to it over

a period of months and, whilst I was at Chelsea,

I fell in love with this.

This is Lysimachia beaujolais,

and what I'm looking for is this beautiful burgundy, magenta colour

which picks up with the Geranium phaeum...

..and also the aquilegia we've got there.

So this hint of plum

and burgundy which we are adding into the borders.

And I thought, if I could get this in something like that...

It likes full sunshine, really good drainage,

plus quite a lot of moisture.

Well, this part of the world, moisture is a given,

the dry garden gives it could drainage plus good sunshine,

so the perfect place for it.

I've got a couple more.

I'll put this one in here.

There. I think the foliage of those two will work well together.

Now, although this is a gorgeous plant, it is short-lived.

It's classed as a short-lived perennial,

quite like a wallflower, best treated as a biannual.

And I've heard that you can collect the seed and sow them

but we'll do that later on when the time comes.

So this is a luxury, an indulgence.

It'll only perform for a year or, at most, two.

But a really beautiful year or two.

Well, that's it for today.

I will be back here at Longmeadow

at our normal time of 8.30 next Friday

and I'll be joined by Joe and Carol

from Gardeners' World live in Birmingham.

So, until then, bye-bye.