Episode 24 Gardeners' World

Hello, welcome to Gardeners' World.

Plums are one of those fruits that are so distinctly associated

to a season for me.

But there's always a surfeit and the best way to store them is as jam.

And one of my favourites are damsons.

The thing I most like about them, apart from their taste,

is their story.

They were brought over by the Crusaders

back in the early medieval times

and they're called damsons after Damascus.

Of course, humans aren't the only ones that love plums.

Butterflies will gorge themselves on the lovely, sticky juices.

This week, Carol pays a visit to a garden in Kent

where the beauty of salvias is celebrated in every form.

Salvias are one of the largest genera

in the entire kingdom of plants.

Almost all of them are worth growing for their extraordinary flowers.

They say that gardening is one of the best ways of keeping your youth.

Well, here's the proof of it,

because we visit a gardener about to celebrate her 100th birthday

and still gardening with enthusiasm and vigour.

I couldn't live without it. It keeps me going.

And I'm going to be resolving a problem area,

where hedges are shading out the grass,

as well as harvesting a herb that belongs quintessentially to summer

and replacing it with another that does very well in winter.

I'm going to plant one of my favourite early summer flowers,

and that's the foxtail lily, the eremurus,

which grows a fabulous spire of flower.

When it's backlit, it's incandescent and it glows and burns

and yet manages to be elegant and silhouetted by light.

It's a glorious, glorious plant.

Now is the time to plant it.

Don't wait till spring, because this is its dormant period.

So you can move it, get it in the ground -

it'll start growing in early and mid autumn.

So, this is something to do this month if at all possible.

And what you get when you buy the plant at this stage

is anything but a spire of flower.

It's these long rat's tails of roots

with a central boss in the middle,

and that's, of course, where the flower stem will come from.

And these are very fragile,

so you have to be careful when you're handling it.

This, by the way, is a variety called 'Cleopatra,'

which has got a pink, apricoty tinge to it - very beautiful.

And I've got a space in there.

Now, you can see that the soil in there is nice and gritty,

which is good.

Eremurus originates from Central Asia.

That's the area around Turkey, Afghanistan,

and it grows on rocky, baked hillsides

that are grazed by animals.

So it likes good drainage and sunshine.

And the animals, particularly cattle, won't eat the eremurus.

So, they eat all around it so there's nothing shading it.

So, think of all that when you're placing it in the garden.

So, full sun and good drainage, which I've got here.

Now, when you dig a hole for it, it needs to be pretty shallow.

I'm going to put some grit mixed with compost onto that.

Now, one of the slight peculiarities of eremurus

is that you plant it very shallowly. Don't bury it deep.

Just an inch of soil over the roots is quite enough.

I'm essentially putting the roots down like that,

and then I'll just heap the soil up over it...

like that.

I'm just going to put some grit mixed with compost

over at the top and that will protect the roots

and also ensure the drainage because you can guarantee,

between now and next April when it starts to grow,

we will have a lot of rain.

There's one final job that's important.

That is to mark it, because the roots are very brittle

and if you don't mark it and come spring or winter,

you're working in the border, you hear a horrible crunching sound

and that's as my great feet tread on the roots and break them.

I'm going to stick that in there...

And that's it, it's completely happy now.

And it will start to appear and what you get is this sort of steeple,

this cone, that appears above ground,

and, from that, the flower emerges.

Come on.

There's a good boy. Here.

HE WHISTLES

Go on, then. Good boy. Go on.

I bought this salvia, Salvia 'Amistad',

at Hampton Court Flower Show this year

and it's got exactly the sort of intensity

of colour that I love here in the Jewel Garden.

I'd like to grow more salvias if I could,

but they don't really like our heavy, wet soil

here at Longmeadow,

but Carol went to Sevenoaks to meet William Dyson,

as part of her search for the iconic plants that we all love to grow

in our gardens and the people who devoted their lives to them,

and he has an incredible range of salvias.

Come on, mush. Come on.

Salvias are one of the largest genii in the entire kingdom of plants,

with more than 900 species.

Some of them are shrubs, others perennials.

There are annuals and biennials too.

Most have aromatic foliage.

But almost all of them

are worth growing for their extraordinary flowers

in a rainbow range of colours

that brighten up even the dullest of days.

William Dyson holds the largest collection

of shrubby salvias in the UK

and he is the country's leading salvia expert.

So this border is completely composed

of these shrubby Mexican salvias?

It certainly is, yes, quite a sight, isn't it?

When do they start flowering? How long do they go on for?

These will start off flowering typically in early May

and they will go right away through into late November.

And which are the hardiest in all this vast range?

Well, a lot of these are hardy, but the real stalwarts,

bonehardy variety, if you like, would be these two here.

The very dark purple Salvia 'Nachtvlinder'.

-Lovely colour, isn't it?

-Yeah.

And then the plant next to it which is Salvia 'Jezebel'.

People get very worried

because they've got a reputation for being tender, haven't they?

They have.

If you think about the environment where they come from, we are looking

at high altitude, plenty of sunlight, plenty of air and perfect drainage.

So, really, the reason people lose them

is because it's a combination of wet and cold, isn't it?

That's right. Don't try and grow them in clay.

If you haven't got the right kind of soil, try growing them in containers.

I think they look absolutely brilliant in these mixed borders.

But they are a fairly new group of plants,

as far as a lot of British gardeners are concerned, aren't they?

Most people had only started growing them fairly recently.

They have and I think the arrival of 'Hot Lips'

really was the thing that started everybody on salvias,

which is a shrubby salvia.

What do people ask about salvias?

People ask most of all about how do they prune them

-and when do they prune them?

-Yeah.

And the two main periods of the year for pruning are

the early April prune.

Take that maybe down to about a foot,

but always making sure there's new shoots below where you're cutting

and you'll then get a big amount of regrowth.

-A surge of growth.

-A surge of growth.

-Lots of flowers.

Masses of flowers.

And, if you want to keep a good shape to the plant, it's better to actually

prune the whole lot off again by about a half and do it in July.

-We call this the Hampton Hack.

-Oh, right.

Hampton Court time, it's easy to remember.

-As opposed to Chelsea Chop?

-Chelsea Chop, yeah.

And this is going to encourage a new crop of flowers within about four

or five weeks from pruning and it's not going to give you a leggy plant.

And those pieces that you cut off,

can you grab hold of those and make new cuttings?

You can make cuttings out of those.

Better still is to use the growth that comes from the April prune,

take some those nice, soft tips and root those up.

-They will root probably in about two weeks.

-Get off!

-Easy as that.

-Two weeks, really?

-Yeah, and then you've got a good, long growing

season before the bad weather of the winter arrives.

I just love the way they combine with other plants, don't you?

I do. Absolutely.

I mean, they will have been in flower

when all the first perennials were here.

And here they are again with dahlias and fuchsias and this lovely thing.

-That is a salvia too, isn't it?

-That's a salvia, yeah.

That's a herbaceous species which comes from Argentina

and that's going to die down completely to the ground

in the winter and then rocket up from about May onwards to,

what are we there, about seven foot high?

-Yeah. Nearly as tall as you.

-Absolutely.

There's no doubt that salvias are wonderful garden plants

but they are also fascinating when you actually get down to the detail.

They really are.

And, where they come from in Central America,

one of the things that pollinates them is hummingbirds, isn't it?

Indeed. Birds are very, very attracted

to the nectar-rich sauce within the tube here.

But it will come along and in goes its beak.

Oh, look at that!

Astonishing.

So this is the stamen

and the antlers on the end are loaded with pollen, aren't they?

Absolutely, yes. So that will go on to the Hummingbird.

It will drink all the nectar out of the tube

and then fly away to another one.

And he'll go in and start sipping nectar from there

and the pollen might just catch on to the stigma...

That top bit is the stigma.

That's the female part of the flower.

Sort of feathery on the end, isn't it?

Yeah, and that will pick up the pollen grains

and fertilisation will take place.

It's rather wonderful. I mean, why has it got this sort of mechanism?

The whole idea is to broaden the gene pool

so you've got genetic diversity and you're not inbreeding, so to speak.

-Yes, but you don't have any such problems, do you?

-We don't.

-You can cross pollinate.

-We can do whatever we like.

-We can cross anything with anything.

-Yeah.

We crossed this, for instance, Salvia 'Nachtvlinder',

with this one, Salvia 'Dyson's Joy'.

and we came out with Salvia 'Dyson's Gem'.

-Beautiful. Deep purple, isn't it?

-Nice colour, isn't it?

-Yeah.

We are currently trying to work on a very, very dark blue Salvia Patens.

-That's my favourite salvia of all time.

-A fantastic blue.

But that in a shrubby hybrid flowers from May till November,

grows to about, I don't know, two feet tall.

Absolutely perfect. That's what we want.

-So it's already in your mind, isn't it?

-Completely.

And now all you've got to do is create it.

Of course, sage is a salvia,

and a very beautiful one, too.

We always let this flower before cutting it back.

Talking about beautiful flowers and herbs,

the basil is beginning to show signs of autumn and, of all

the plants in the garden,

basil is the best measure of temperature

because it hates cold and as soon as the temperature drops,

the leaves get thicker and the plant gets less palatable.

You lose that lovely freshness that good basil has.

And if there is a touch of frost, just a nip,

it will just blacken and you lose the lot.

So what I plan to do is cut my losses,

say that this will not improve,

harvest all my outdoor basil and turn it into pesto where

I can store it and then use the bed to plant some parsley.

And, by the way, the outdoor basil has been OK this year.

It's been worth growing,

but not nearly as good as the basil in the cold frames.

Basil is a tropical plant that likes lots of heat, lots of water,

good drainage, some goodness, richness in the soil.

To put all that together is really tricky outside.

However, let's make the most of it.

Oh, look what I found.

There's a surprise. You don't want that, do you?

Go on.

The best way of handling basil is to cut the whole stems and take them

somewhere like a kitchen table and strip the leaves off.

This is the last of the crop so the point is to store it

as good as it can be at this stage of the year.

And that means turning it, in our house, into pesto.

Pesto just means paste

and if you use basil, pine nuts and Parmesan,

you have a delicious pesto.

It's really good.

You can freeze it easily and then use it in the middle of winter

and just get that lovely, rich taste of summer flooding back.

This, by the way, is our second sowing of basil.

COCK CROWS

Oh, that's our cockerel. I got given some bantams for my birthday.

They were tiny little things. That's the first time he's crowed.

COCK CROWS

Good on you, boy!

Now just don't do it at four o'clock in the morning!

This is our second sowing of basil. This was sown in April.

This end section of basil is from the first sowing,

which was in February, and you can see,

if I pull that up, that's quite a substantial plant,

whereas, when you buy the herb in a supermarket or wherever,

in a little pot, they sprinkle seed, so you'll probably have

a dozen different basil plants in a tiny little pot

and the leaves will be good and they'll be nice,

but they won't last very long,

because that's what each of those dozen plants wants to be.

So buy a packet of seeds, start sowing them next spring,

space them out nice and widely and you'll get strong plants

that you'll harvest from May right through till September.

Right, well, I've got an empty bed and I don't want that over winter,

so I'm going to prepare this and put some parsley where the basil was.

Although there is added grit in this bed, which is

good for the drainage, I'm adding some compost.

I had added some before

to slightly enrich the soil, because I'm going to put parsley in now,

and parsley likes good drainage and it likes some sunshine,

but it can take some shade and it does best in fairly good loam.

Now, compost is the ideal thing

and you can see I'm just putting it on very thinly.

Because compost works by stimulating

the soil's bacterial and fungal activity.

So, every time I replace any plant in these vegetable beds,

I just dress it with compost and that, literally, is enough.

This is flat leaf parsley

and the more traditional English parsley is curly leaf.

And the essential difference between the two is that this has got a

milder taste and also the texture of the foliage is much finer, whereas

curly-leaf parsley you have to chop up really, but they are both good.

Space it out generously. That's the key to it.

Give them a chance, and what that means, of course,

is repeated cutting.

I tend to harvest my parsley

by cutting the whole thing down to the ground

and letting the whole thing regrow.

And you can probably do that three, four times in its life.

It's not only delicious, which is the main reason for eating it,

but it's actually very good for you too.

It's rich in vitamin C and vitamin K, which is bone strengthening,

in antioxidants, and so,

it's one of those foods that is happily a combination

of medicine and delight and you can't say that about many things.

Well, if I haven't persuaded you to go out and buy some parsley and

plant it this weekend, here are some other things that you can be doing.

Many shrub roses put on a growth spurt when they finish flowering

and this can result in long waving tendrils that can catch the wind and

damage the roots over the winter,

so prune these back so the shrub has an even, uniform shape.

If you're going to water anything in your vegetable plot

or your allotment this weekend give celery,

celeriac and young lettuce a really good soak,

as these are plants that will benefit most,

and, as always with watering, don't water the plant, water the soil.

It's a good time to take Pelargonium cuttings.

Choose a strong-growing tip and cut off between two

and four inches and put this straight into a polythene bag.

Then, when you're ready, remove most of the foliage,

just leaving a leaf or two.

Make a clean cut with a sharp knife and place the cuttings

around the edge of a plastic pot filled with a free-draining compost.

Now, I'll pop these in the greenhouse

and keep the compost moist but not get the leaves too wet

because Pelargonium cuttings like to be kept fairly dry.

Now they say that gardening is the best

recipe for preserving your youth.

Well, here is the proof of that.

Well, my garden's small but I love it.

I know everything in it

and they all mean something to me.

Although, it's not...

a showy garden,

I still love it all.

I've enjoyed my life.

Wouldn't change anything in it.

I don't think about being 100.

I was born 23rd of September,

1914.

I was the fourth of five children.

My father was the head gardener in a large house,

and my mother was parlour maid.

So I presume that's how they met.

They grew all their vegetables,

like peas and beans and carrots...

Potatoes used to last right through to the next season.

You swapped with neighbours -

nothing was wasted in those days, it was wartime.

I like to think I take after my father.

You wonder all your life what he was like.

Early 1917 he was called up,

and he was killed at the end of 1917.

December.

And I would've only been three years old.

None of us remember him, which is very sad.

Something we can't alter...

..but always regret.

Well, my husband was a keen gardener

but, like me, we were amateur.

We learned the hard way.

Right from when we married, we had a garden.

We loved our garden.

We used to spend most evenings in the summertime in the garden.

I always did the flowerbeds

and he did the lawns and the heavy work.

My husband would've liked the beds

more organised than I have them,

but I like them natural.

This is my husband's favourite rose tree, because it was yellow.

He loved yellow roses.

That's my favourite photograph. He's sitting outside his shed.

That camellia, a friend bought me, because it was called Margaret.

And it's been beautiful.

I cut it down. Don't know whether I should.

But it still blooms.

I don't do things by the book.

If I want something cut off, I cut it off, then.

I'm usually lucky. I don't kill them.

These are seeds that I've gathered ready for next year.

That's being optimistic.

Those are cyclamen and these are penstemons.

I like taking seeds and cuttings.

I like a little bit of everything in the garden.

I have my tomatoes every year.

These are called Shirley.

And they're doing very well this year.

And I have had cucumbers - got one left.

But I think there's more coming.

Love cucumbers!

You can forget your troubles

if you go out in the garden for a few hours.

I couldn't live without it.

I think it keeps me going!

Well, all I can say is,

wishing you a very happy birthday on the 23rd, Margaret,

and may there be many more to come.

You're an inspiration.

I'll bet you're glad you're not doing this, though, Margaret,

because it is HORRIBLE work!

This is a strip of ground either side of the path,

and up to five years ago

this was perfectly mowable grass -

just like the rest of path

all the way down the centre of the garden, here.

But in the last five years

the hedge has grown quite substantially -

not up, because we kept it cut,

but the roots have grown out

and you can see as I dig in - you can hear -

I'm just tearing at roots.

And the upshot is that it's mud for half the year

and a dust bowl for the other half.

So I want to make a virtue out of necessity.

You can buy very specific grass and wild flower mixes

for almost every kind of soil and situation.

And if you're not sure where to go for it,

if you look on the internet

and just type in "wild flower mix for hedgerows", for example,

you will come up with all sorts of choices.

And what I'm doing

is preparing the ground to sow seed

for a predominantly wild flower, with some grass in it,

that will cope with shade,

that will cope with the roots of the hedges,

and will look really nice

and then can be mown later on in the year.

And to prepare the ground, all I've got to do is just loosen the soil.

It doesn't need double-digging,

it doesn't even need going very deep, at all - just an inch or two.

And you can do this in quite a small area.

If you've got a patch alongside a fence, a wall,

or a hedge that's a bit shady,

then you can just do a small area - a yard or two -

and that would look really good.

And the other great virtue,

as well as looking good, is it's fantastic for wildlife.

All the unruly growth that you get with wild flowers and long grass,

is perfect, particularly for bringing insects into the garden.

So having lightly dug it over,

it just should be raked to get rid of the worst of any lumps or stones.

Doesn't matter that it's perfect -

this is not going to be a lawn.

It's a nice, even surface.

Now, I have a seed mix that I've ordered specifically for

dry shade along a hedgerow.

And that's the amount

for what I've prepared already.

And you can see there's not very much there.

Hardly any seed, at all.

In fact it works out at about four grams per square metre.

And it's quite important not to sow too much.

There are about 12 wild flowers -

including red campion,

cowslip, wood avens, knapweed -

and some grasses.

The first year there will be more annuals than perennials,

and gradually, the perennials

will germinate, grow and spread.

And by about year three, you have the final mix you want.

So don't be tempted to sow too thickly.

And the reason why you're not sowing too thickly

is because each of these seeds,

even though they may seem tiny and insignificant,

are plants,

and the closer they are together,

the more they're competing for nutrients.

Particularly perennial wild flowers

need to have good start in life.

That's the seed sown.

Now, if this was a lawn, you'd rake it,

but what you need to do for wild flower seed, in particular,

is to make sure it has really good contact with the soil.

The easiest way to do that is tread on it.

Right...

that's the closest you'll ever get to see me on Strictly Come Dancing!

Next thing to do? Water it in.

One of the great beauties of sowing any kind of grass seed

at this time of year, is not only is the soil warm,

but there's usually enough moisture, if not from rain, then from dew,

to help it germinate and grow very strongly.

Next spring it will take off and the first wild flowers will appear

and, hopefully, we'll get the transformation

from a rather bare, ugly path

into a woodland walk, filled with flowers.

Well, the proof will be in the pudding.

Hang around, and next year we'll see,

but certainly, that's it for today.

I'll see you back here at Longmeadow next week at the usual time.

Till then, bye-bye.