Episode 14 Gardeners' World

BIRDS CHIRP AND BEES BUZZ

Hello. Welcome to Gardeners' World.

I often think that the gardening year is a bit like a journey

up a mountain, and in spring, you're taking on the lower slopes

and you're busy and you're preparing and you're making progress.

But now, with tomorrow being the summer solstice

and the longest day, this is the summit.

This is what we do all our gardening for, so it's important not just

to be endlessly busy, doing jobs, trying to master the garden,

but for once, just stop, take it in and enjoy it.

BIRDS CHIRP AND BEES BUZZ

For many people at this time of year, verdant lawns don't

just conjure up a relaxing midsummer garden, but also lawn tennis.

Joe's been to Wimbledon to meet the team who take

care of their precious grass.

Every single day, every single court,

the guys will be walking over every square inch just to make sure

that everything's pristine and perfect for day one.

Carol is in Cornwall,

meeting a couple who grow a large collection of honeysuckles

from all over the world, including our own beautifully fragrant

native varieties.

It really is the scent.

It's so evocative of a summer's evening.

And as well as sitting back and relishing my garden,

I will be doing a few jobs, including taking some

softwood cuttings to make new plants for free.

This piece of the garden has, for the last 20 years or so,

been the spring garden, and now we're in summer,

it's completely done its stuff. It's spent.

But I've taken the hedge out that lined right across its length.

It's like taking the wall off a room. So now it can't be ignored.

You've got to see it.

As well as being a spring garden, I want this to become a summer

garden, sharing the same shady woodland conditions.

It's amazing to think that just a few months ago,

this was spangled with jewel-like flowers, crocuses and tulips

and hellebores, and it felt precious.

Now, it looks as though it's been trashed. That isn't the case.

Everything is fine.

What I am trying to do is create space

and see where there are gaps where I can plant for summer.

I'm going to start with a shrub.

This is hydrangea, Hydrangea arborescens discolor Sterilis,

and it will cope with dappled shade,

and if I let it grow, there will be a mass of small flowers.

If I prune it harder, we'll get fewer but bigger flowers,

and depending on how it looks, I can make that decision later.

One of the features of this bit of the garden is that it's

full of rubbish.

Presumably, over the centuries, it's fairly near the house,

people have just chucked the rubbish out and it's accumulated.

When you plant anything, you often dig up bits of pottery and all

the broken bits and pieces that were just hurled out the back door.

And there's a piece of pot, glazed on one side and not on the other.

It's probably a mixing bowl from the kitchen with a glazed interior.

Hydrangeas like free-draining soil, but if your soil is very heavy or

very light, a leaf mould is ideal or a bit of garden compost added to it.

What I'm going to do is, before I firm it in, I'm going

to give it a really good soak,

and because the soil will be a bit loose,

it will absorb it better, and when the water's drained down,

I'll come back and firm the soil around it.

While that's absorbing, let's go on to the next layer.

I'm adding an anemone. This is Anemone huphensis, Hadspen variety.

It comes from China,

and it will flower with pink flowers later in summer,

August, September, even on into October, and it's a tough plant.

Will be quite happy in this dappled shade, and I would say that

when you're planting an area like this,

it's probably better to find a plant you really like

and buy half a dozen of it and spread it through the area, rather

than just dotting ones and twos of ten different types of plant.

I want it to work its way down along the path.

Over the years,

it's quite common for Gardeners' World to have been rested

whilst Wimbledon has been on, but we're now sharing the same space,

and so you can enjoy both events,

so we thought it appropriate that Joe should go along

and see not just how they prepare the famous courts,

but also, the huge amount of floral display that accompanies the tennis.

It was a year ago on this very court that history was made,

when Andy Murray finally lifted the Men's Wimbledon trophy

and Britain gained another sporting hero.

In the UK alone, 17 million viewers tuned into that match,

and very shortly,

the eyes of the world will once again descend on these famous grounds.

But it's not just the tennis players who'll be feeling the pressure,

the gardening team have to time the floral displays to perfection.

The All England Lawn Tennis Club is keen to promote the idea

that the Wimbledon Tournament is like tennis in an English garden.

The man whose job is to turn that idea into reality

is Head Gardener, Martyn Falconer.

Hi, Martin. Nice to meet you. Nice to see a hands-on Head Gardener.

-Yeah, I like to get my hands dirty now and then.

-Yeah, I can see!

But your role is different from most Head Gardener's jobs, really,

cos it's all about the exhibit, isn't it?

-It's about trying to get it ready for the day.

-Yeah, that's right.

We aim for them two weeks of the year

when the tournament starts, so we're geared up to be ready for that day.

-So the pressure's really on then.

-Pressure's on.

But you know, we have to do that,

with bringing in lots of colour, trees, containers,

thousands of perennials and bedding plants that come in,

just to give a big impact on the site for the public coming in

to not just see the tennis, but they also come to see the flowering.

And there's a strong colour theme here. You're wearing it, aren't you?

Purple and green. Green's easy enough.

Green's easy, it's the purple, but you know, with salvias,

always looking for something that little bit

different and we learn from things that do and don't work.

And you've got a whole team of gardeners that work with you.

Yep, I've got a crew of eight other guys.

They work hard and keep this place looking good.

So you've got lots to do.

Plenty to do, Joe, so if you want to give us a hand, come on.

I'll give you a hand, but as long as I can have a go on Centre Court.

-I don't think that will be allowed.

-Just a little rally.

-Mmm...

-Come on!

Little knock-up.

This is such an iconic image for me of the horticulture of Wimbledon,

this amazing Virginia creeper, Boston ivy. What do you call it?

We call it 'partho'.

We shortened down the Latin name to 'partho' between the lads.

'Partho' as in Parthenocissus? Exactly, yeah.

I bet in the Autumn, it most go mad colour, must be absolutely stunning.

Stunning bronzes, reds and it's just amazing, it's really good,

and then there's clearing the leaves afterwards.

-I love the red tinges in there already.

-Yeah. Beautiful, isn't it?

So what are your top tips for growing this?

If you want to keep it contained just keep trimming it,

and once it's established, plenty of water and it's away.

We're at ground level, but I see around the corner there,

he's got the cherry picker out to get around the windows.

Exactly. The only way.

It's an unbelievable amount of work, really,

when you think about it, isn't it?

But the Virginia creeper isn't the most famous horticultural feature

at Wimbledon. The grass courts always take centre stage.

Martyn, one thing you're not responsible for are these

-fantastic courts. Neil, nice to meet you.

-How are you doing?

-Yeah.

This is your domain, inside these courts. They are absolute perfection.

Thank you very much.

I bet you get asked all the time, how do you keep them looking so good?

Having a dedicated team.

I have a team of 16 that spend their whole life

almost on all of our courts, and every single day,

every single court,

the guys will be walking over every square inch just to make sure that

everything's as pristine and perfect as it possibly can for day one.

And do you lay them every year?

Yes, pretty much after the Championships,

we shave the surface off, go back to the soil, we re-level it, re-seed...

And for the gardeners at home, what grass seed do you use?

Is it something that people could grow at home?

Yes. I mean, the variety we use, we're 100% rye-grass now,

it's just we select different cultivars that are good for tennis.

For us, it's all about wear tolerance

and drought tolerance grasses, but, yes, the rye-grasses

that we use is something that you can use in everyday gardens.

My advice would always be plenty of moisture, plenty of feed.

-If it's growing, cut it.

-And use a sharp mower as well.

Make sure the blade is nice and sharp.

It just means when you cut the grass, it's not tearing it,

it's actually cutting it, so the grass then heals quicker.

It just means you'll get stronger plant.

You make it sound so simple.

Martin, do you ever get involved in the grass itself?

No, the only thing I do with grass is weed it, take it out.

When half a million tennis fans pour through the gates

during the two weeks of the championships,

Martin and his team will blend into the background.

But they'll always be on hand to make sure their floral displays

are nothing but perfect.

So, what about this year? Andy Murray, he's going to do it again?

Hopefully, he will do the double.

If he does the double, you've got to take some credit for it.

Your floral displays would have inspired him.

Might help, you never know. Might chill him out a bit.

BBC WIMBLEDON THEME SONG

Well, I hope that Andy Murray is suitably inspired

by the flowers in his game on Monday.

But Nigel and I have discussed this, and we think that

Wimbledon would be much more fun if they used squeaky tennis balls.

BALL SQUEAKS

Don't you, Nige?

Good boy.

The herb garden is now growing with real lushness.

And this makes it not only a delicious time to eat them,

but a really good time to take cuttings.

Now, these are softwood cuttings.

And the difference between a softwood cutting and, say,

a semi-ripe cutting, let alone a hardwood one,

is that it's entirely made out of new growth.

So, you can see here on this rosemary,

this growth here has happened in the last few months,

and I can bend it without breaking it.

And the advantage of softwood cuttings is that they take

really quickly and easily.

BALL SQUEAKS

Before you take any cuttings, you need to have a polythene bag

something sharp to cut with, and, ideally, do it early in the morning.

Six o'clock is perfect because the plant is full of liquid,

and it just gives you a bit more time to take

the cuttings before they start to dry out.

And it's the drying out that will kill them. So, we're taking...

..just this year's growth there.

Like that. And, immediately put it in the bag.

And that will have lots of vigour to put out roots.

And if you come over to a plant like this lavender,

it's all herby, but you can do this

on any shrub or perennial plant,

you can see that is a mass of new growth,

and that's perfect cutting material.

So...

OK. Having taken the cutting, you now have to act fast.

I've prepared everything so I can be quick about this.

The minute you cut your softwood cutting, it's wilting.

And if it wilts too much, it'll die.

The first thing we need is good drainage,

so I've got extra vermiculite to go in what is a seed mix,

cos we don't need much nutrition at all.

And we have a cutting like that,

and strip off most of the lower leaves.

And the reason why we pull the leaves off is

because it'll lose less moisture, and also,

when the roots do grow, there will be less demands upon them.

These are the leaf nodes, and I'm going to cut that back below a node.

And, then, using a pencil,

I'll pop that in like that, and there we go.

The great secret of cuttings is that they're not difficult.

So, give them a go.

It will need some kind of protection to keep the moisture in.

Pop a couple of supports in like that,

and put a polythene bag over the top.

Check it every few days, and then just take the top off,

shake it out, any excess water, let air in, and put it back,

cos, sometimes, with some plants, they can rot.

Now, this works very well, if you want to leave it,

but if you are at home, and you're around, and you've got

a little mister,

just misting it two or three times a day will do the trick.

I've got a mist propagator, so I'll put this,

and I'll put all my soft cuttings onto the bench where the mist

will keep it nice and moist.

Now, I've got some cuttings that I took earlier this spring.

This is euphorbia.

You can see, there's nice new growth on that

but a tip is before you tip it out, give it a little tug,

gentle, and I can feel a bit of give in that. And that one.

Which means that it hasn't developed sufficient roots

to get in the soil. So, leave that.

But this, which says "Unnamed Fuchsia", pull that,

there's a lot of resistance. So, if I tip these out...

..we should see plenty of roots. Yes. So they're ready to pot on.

In fact, if I break that open...

..I've got a nice new plant,

lots of roots,

and if I plant that out,

that'll make a little flowering plant by the end of summer.

Now, you may not be taking any cuttings this weekend,

but here are some other jobs that you can be getting on with.

At this time of year, you may notice a mass of small fruits

lying on the ground beneath your apple or pear trees.

Now, don't worry, this is just nature's way of reducing

the burden of ripening too many fruits

and is known as 'the June drop.'

It's also a signal to prune the fruit further.

Remove all but two fruits from each spur.

This way, you'll get two well-ripened, healthy fruits

instead of four or five small ones.

Midsummer is a good time to sow biennials,

these are plants such as foxglove or wallflowers that develop

their roots and top growth in the first year

and then are ready to flower the following spring and summer.

You can so these directly outside, or, as I do,

in a pot or seed tray under cover.

Scatter the seeds thinly over damp compost,

sprinkle some more dry compost over the top,

and place somewhere cool to germinate.

Gooseberries, red currants and white currants are all particularly

susceptible to attack by sawfly at this time of year.

The adult lays its eggs at the base of the bush,

and when the larvae hatch, they start eating their way up the plant.

If you're not careful, they can completely defoliate it

before you really realise anything's wrong.

Prune away all the new growth from the centre of the bush,

leaving an open goblet shape.

This will improve ventilation,

and also means you can see any damage before it gets too bad.

When you're clearing a pond of duckweed or any debris,

tip it by the side of the water

and leave it for a couple of days and that gives a chance

to all the creepy crawlies to go back into the water.

The pond is looking good.

But one of the things that has changed this year

quite dramatically is the size of the hostas.

They're enormous, and that, of course,

is because of the wet winter and spring we've had.

Saturated ground, and they've just grown,

and it just shows you the conditions that hostas really like.

They're bog plants, so if you grow them in a pot,

they're likely to be struggling from the outset.

And that's when they get hit by slugs and snails.

Slugs and snails will always go for plants

that are stressed in some way.

And I've had lots of letters about them

so, for example, I have a letter here.

"Dear Monty, apart from being a softy and not wanting to kill

"the little blighters, I also have pets

"and a very little, inquisitive grandson,

"so I'm loath to put-down slug pellets.

"Can you recommend a deterrent?"

I think nothing will do more to cope with slugs and snails

than a really healthy ecosystem in your garden.

So, if you CAN make a pond, that does a huge amount of good.

It attracts frogs and toads.

Lots of hedges, shrubs and trees.

That attracts blackbirds and thrushes.

All these things eat slugs and snails.

And healthy plants growing strongly tend not to be attacked.

They like damaged plants or young ones.

Now, the young ones are where you DO want to focus

a bit of special attention.

This is the area where we put plants that have come from

the greenhouse, are growing on under some protection in the cold frames,

and then are hardening out on that side.

And we try to keep this area as a slug and snail free zone.

And it's got hard surfaces.

We use gravel, which is dry and abrasive,

and they don't like that. We put down the occasional beer trap.

More importantly, we check regularly,

at least once a week, under every pot and container.

So, I suppose, the moral is put your energy into a slug free zone

which can be quite small. Just a couple of feet by a couple of feet.

And use that to protect plants that really need it.

Now, continuing a look at the plants that have shaped our gardens,

and also the people who have given time,

passion and expertise to developing them,

Carol went down to Cornwall,

to look at a plant whose fragrance

is one of the high notes of midsummer.

As Titania, the queen of the fairies,

says in Midsummer Night's Dream,

"So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle

"Gently entwist,"

there can be no more evocative scent than that of our native honeysuckle.

It's the whole essence of romance and softness.

And, yet, it's an incredible toughy.

In the most inhospitable corners, in hedgerows in gardens,

its twisting, twining stems burst out over pavements

and pathways to share its wondrous flowers and their exquisite perfume.

Liz and Charlie Pridham have spent 30 years bringing together

honeysuckles from across the world to create a fascinating collection.

-Did you initially set out to grow honeysuckles?

-No.

But the one plant, apart from a couple of yew trees

and some apple trees that were here, was a honeysuckle.

And it was growing.

And we were having a great deal of difficulty growing anything else.

So, that was what started us with honeysuckles.

-So, it gave you the clue..

-..That they were going to grow.

Were there any particular problems with the soil?

With the mining around, we've got tin and copper,

but we've also got nickel and cadmium and arsenic,

and none of these things a lot of plants like very much,

so it's great to have a group of plants that you know will cope

with just about anything you throw at them.

But it's not just their ease of cultivation, is it,

-that really makes you love them?

-No, it's the scent.

It really is the scent. It's so evocative of a summer's evening.

-There are honeysuckles everywhere, aren't there?

-There are.

This one is the Lonicera x italica. And it's very early.

It's nearly going over but it starts in April.

-As early as that?

-Yes.

But it is very scented.

It's nowhere near as big as our native honeysuckle.

So, this will be the perfect sort of plant if you're in a town garden?

Yes. One of the ways you can tell it's italica is by its leaves.

The leaf behind the flower is perfoliate.

-That means the stem goes right the way through it.

-That's right.

-Surrounds it.

-Surrounds it.

This is a real honeysuckle bower! Just look at this.

-It's beautiful!

-Isn't it lovely?

It's Lonicera Belgica. Early Dutch.

This one's starting now, early June,

and it takes over from the italica.

-Periclymenum is our own native honeysuckle, isn't it?

-Yes, it is.

Our hedges in Devon are thronged with it,

but they're always cream and yellow.

They are down here in Cornwall as well,

but as you go further east in the country,

they start to get pinker and pinker and pinker.

If you go across into the near Continent, Belgium and Holland,

then they're really quite crimson, but they're all the same plant.

When you have some of these long shoots here,

if you just nip them back,

then they'll make two new shoots there, and they will flower.

So you can really extend the season.

-This must have been an old orchard.

-Yes, it is.

-This is an old apple tree.

-And a fine host for this beautiful honeysuckle.

But this is quite different.

Yes, this is Lonicera japonica

and it's a really gorgeous, glossy-leaved evergreen.

But it's quite rampant, isn't it?

Very vigorous, yes.

Ideal for covering up unsightly things in your garden.

And the scent is glorious, it really is, it fills this bit of the garden.

It's worth having an old apple tree, isn't it?

It's not just us who find the scent of honeysuckle so alluring, is it?

Well, they're not doing it for us, that's for sure.

But we're the beneficiaries.

They're obviously doing it to attract their pollinators which,

in the case of our honeysuckles, are moths, particularly the hawk moths.

You see them in the evenings all over the plants.

And that's when the plant begins to pump out its perfume.

Indeed. They've actually timed it

for the working person to come home from work

and that's when the scent starts!

Ideal for commuters.

Much as we would like them to be, not all honeysuckles are scented.

A lot of the North American honeysuckles have those

lovely orange and red flowers that the gardeners love so much,

they rely on humming birds,

the humming birds lacking a sense of smell, the plants have,

over time, decided it's not worth making any perfume

and, sadly, they don't.

People have been trying for years to get that red colour with a scent

and they've not got there yet.

But if you come into the garden

and you see our native honeysuckle doing its thing,

filling the garden with scent, there probably isn't a better plant

that you could grow in a British garden.

I would agree with Charlie that every garden,

every single garden in this country, should have a honeysuckle.

At this time of year, they are a complete joy.

If you want to go and see their full range of honeysuckles,

their garden is open this weekend. You can get details about it

and everything else in the programme on our website.

Now, this particular honeysuckle was the one

I cut back earlier this spring.

I cut it back to here because it was a complete, tangled mass

and you couldn't get past it without brushing against it.

Where I cut it, there's quite vigorous new growth now.

And on this side, where I haven't cut it, you've got the flowers,

showing how it flowers on the previous year's growth.

So in a year or, maybe, two's time,

it will be back to luxuriant, easy growth that's vaguely manageable.

BIRDSONG

Well, that's it for today.

And I would just say again that, for most of the year,

we're all so busy trying to make our garden look as good as possible,

trying to keep it tidy and organised

and grow all these lovely plants,

but this weekend,

just take a moment and remember this is the top of the year.

So look out from here and relish the view.

And I'll be back here at Longmeadow next week,

half an hour later because of the tennis.

But I'll see you at 9 o'clock on BBC Two. Till then, bye-bye.