Episode 5 Gardeners' World

Hello, welcome to Gardeners' World.

I'm just digging over this plot of ground which has been empty

for the last few weeks,

because I lifted the brassica I had growing in here.

And with all the rain that we had in January and February

it got very compacted.

It's amazing how rain will compact bare soil.

And by turning it over, you're opening it out,

you're letting air in and then you can just rake it over,

maybe mulch it, and it's ready to sow.

So, just give that compacted ground a nice turn.

This week, Carol returns to our novice gardeners,

Dan and Dominique, to help them with the next stage

of their year-long garden transformation,

which is laying a lawn.

-Right, who's going to do what?

-I'll go and get the turf.

I'll get the knife.

Yeah. And I'll watch.

Hydrangeas have long been out of fashion,

but now seem to be making something of a resurgence,

and Rachel visits Trebah,

a Cornish valley garden with a stunning collection of hydrangeas.

When you stand here,

the sheer scale of it all is absolutely breathtaking.

Now the grass borders have been freed from the bounds of box,

they are actually looking better already.

It's amazing how, if you remove a barrier,

you just see so much more - even if it was quite a low one.

But at this time of year they've finished their winter display.

Grasses are fabulous between October and the end of February,

but once you get into March

and April they do start to look a little bit tired.

So, before I can think about how I'm going to develop them -

plant some more grasses, plant some more companion plants -

I need to do a bit of housekeeping.

And I've got a letter here from Barbara.

And if I put my glasses on I can see where you live, Barbara.

Right.

You're in Lincolnshire.

Now, "Dear Monty, I made up a rhyme

"to remind me if I should prune grasses.

"Can you tell me if I'm on the right track?

"'If it's green, keep it keen, if it's brown, cut it down.'

"And by keeping it keen I mean I would only trim off any dead grass,

"otherwise leave it alone,

"and if it's brown or dead I should cut it right down.

"But should I be careful of the new grass?

"Please let me know, as there are so many grasses to keep track of."

Well, there ARE lots of different grasses,

which is a good thing, because it gives you lots of choice,

but essentially there are only two ways of dealing with them,

and you're spot on.

And the two different types of grasses are either deciduous -

this is Calamagrostis 'Karl Foerster',

and it has strong, upright green growth,

and then these plumes of flower. But they're over now.

So all of this last year's growth can be cut.

And I could, if I'd done this about a month earlier,

cut it right to the ground.

As it is, I don't want to cut off the new growth,

so I'll cut up about that high.

But this plant, here - this is Stipa gigantea.

Has these wonderful tall oat heads

that typically catch the sun as it slants across the sky.

One of my favourite plants of all.

And this is an evergreen grass,

and you can see that you've got all last year's growth is still green.

Now, there is some dead in it, but rather than cut that out,

what you do is what I'm doing now.

You just put your hands in and pull it out.

So you get handfuls...

it comes away. And what doesn't come away, you leave in.

Combing through like that.

Whereas with the calamagrostis

I need to get a little bit more drastic.

So, we'll cut about there.

But you can see I've left...

..about a foot of new growth.

Now, this is a job to get on with,

because if that new growth grows too high, you're going to be left

with an ugly, awkward mixture of old and new tangled in together.

So, if you're growing grasses and they need cutting back,

do it this weekend.

There's been a robin following me around the garden,

and he's perched there - he's REALLY singing.

Can you hear him?

ROBIN SINGS

Now, all these grasses, whether they be evergreen or deciduous,

are grown for border effect -

they're individual, they're dramatic.

They're plants that need special attention.

But this week Carol has gone down to Gloucestershire to the new garden

she's helping to create to use grass in rather a different way.

This year I'm helping new homeowners Dan and Dominique

create a practical family garden.

They know what they want - a lawn for their daughter to play on,

some flowers to enjoy and an area to entertain in.

Since my last visit, they've got really stuck in.

They've been busy moving their rose beds,

clearing perennial weeds,

had a wall built and set out a new path.

Dan and Dom decided on this straight path

to link the house to their parking,

and it had to be wide enough for a buggy.

What we're doing today is going to make a vast difference.

Today, we're laying a lawn.

Can't believe how much this place has changed!

-So, this is the site of the lawn.

-Yes.

-Mm-hm.

-This is it.

-Yeah.

Last summer was so gorgeous, and actually we couldn't really...

-Spend much time outside.

-..get outside with her,

so it'd be brilliant to be able to eat out here, have picnics out here.

-You've bought turf.

-Mm-hm.

-It arrived this morning.

I quite like the instant gratification of it.

Yeah, knowing what we're... Knowing what's going down.

-Seeing it down at the end of the day.

-Yeah.

-Hopefully.

And it's a good time of year to do it,

-either autumn or spring are perfect times.

-Mm.

So, the first thing to do

is to try and make sure that you've got a level surface.

It won't do itself, come on.

Without preparing the ground properly,

there's always the risk that the lawn could fail.

It's best to dig over the area and firm it down.

Dan and Dom have already done that,

so all that's needed is to rake it over,

get rid of the last stones and bumps, before marking out with sand.

-Shall we lay some turf?

-Absolutely, yeah.

-Yeah.

-That looks good.

-Yeah.

-Just stack them beyond, or...?

-Just start from that end.

I'm a bit nervous!

Right...

The moment of truth.

We're lucky, cos we've got a path to work from.

This is the edge you've got to worry about.

Forget about the other side, cos we can adjust that.

Hey, look at that!

Yeah, and you want... if anything, slight overlap,

but you must make sure that these are really butted up...

next to one another.

Look at that! Can't see the seam.

So, let's use this straight line right the way along.

Newly laid turf is fragile, and shouldn't be walked over,

so to protect it we're putting down a plank.

There's our join, somewhere round here.

Can't see it.

So, we're going to do it just like your path.

We're going to stagger these so you never get two joints in line,

-because then they tend to shrink away from each other.

-Mm-hm.

Turf, please, maestro.

Using turf means the lawn can appear before our eyes.

Sowing grass seed is cheaper,

but Dan and Dom want an established lawn quickly.

It's looking all right.

It's wonderful, you've got a lawn!

-I'm worried about this little bit, though.

-Yep.

Because it's so tempting just to cut a tiny triangle and put it in,

but then you'll have a small piece of turf with three edges -

-it's going to dry, shrivel up.

-Right.

So, I think we ought to cut right back into this one

and get a whole new turf, roll it out and then trim back to our edge.

Right, who's going to do what?

-I'll go and get the turf.

-I'll get the knife.

Yeah. And I'll watch.

-Ready?

-Yeah.

That's it. What a team.

-Look!

-Yeah!

-Very good.

It's great!

We haven't quite finished yet.

Next we tamp down the turf,

making sure all the roots are in close contact with the soil.

We don't want the turf to dry out,

so Dan and Dominique will continue to water it for the next few weeks,

until it's established.

-I think it looks utterly fantastic.

-It looks great.

-Mm-hm

It does, doesn't it?

But that's just the centrepiece.

This is the next task ahead.

-Yeah.

-And a lovely one, too.

Hopefully we're going to grow

all sorts of brilliant big, gorgeous plants in here.

-Yeah. Colour and texture and...

-Various heights, up and down. Yeah.

-Yeah?

-Yeah.

-But first of all we need to do something with the soil.

So, fortunately...!

I've brought you some bags of muck.

Well-rotted manure, garden compost or bags of organic material

from the garden centre

will help open up the structure of this heavy clay soil.

Incorporating compost or muck adds air and nutrients,

giving all the wonderful range of bacteria and creatures

that make soil healthy.

The opportunity to thrive.

Well, what a smashing day.

We've achieved such a lot,

and we've really got the garden off to a flying start.

But it's a special day in other ways, too.

It's Dan's birthday, and I've got a bit of a surprise.

Hey! DAN LAUGHS

Oh, wow!

And what a wonderful way to celebrate -

with their first garden party.

Dah!

We can leave digging the rest of the garden for another day.

But it'll need doing soon, because on my next visit we'll be shopping

for beautiful, structural trees and shrubs

to get the planting started in their borders.

-Cheers.

-ALL: Cheers!

Happy birthday.

-Thank you.

-Cheers!

It's impressive to see how much Dan and Dominique have already done,

but at the rate they're going,

they're going to have a really nice garden by summertime.

Now, I think this is a really nice area.

In fact, it's one of my favourite areas at Longmeadow,

and to develop it and move it on I need to add plants.

And one of the ways of doing that, of course, is dividing

and moving around what's already here.

Now, I'm going to split this calamagrostis.

It is worth stressing that you should not move or divide grasses

when it's cold.

So, if you're in any doubt, wait another month.

I think the soil is warm enough,

but this is the absolute earliest I would do it.

Just cut down around the edge of the plant

and don't divide them into too small pieces.

And I'm just going to halve this.

They will take much better if they're bigger.

Having cut round half of the outside,

I'm simply going to cut across it.

And grasses don't have very extensive roots -

or at least most of them don't -

so you don't need to worry too much

about taking out a great big root ball.

So, I'm going to try and take that out in one chunk.

There we go.

And I'm going to put it in the front of the border,

where the hedge was.

Because I don't want the grasses just tiering up like a pyramid.

I want to have to look through some taller ones from the front.

Don't want it too deep.

Right, when you move any grass, or plant it for the first time,

it is really important to give it a good soak.

It's had a good drink,

I think it will grow perfectly well in its new home.

But it's starting to rain, and the next phase of creating plants

for this border is thankfully going to take place in the potting shed.

Grasses can be quite expensive to buy, but if you grow them from seed

and raise your own plants, you can raise hundreds for not very much.

This cost about £2.

Not a lot of seed, probably about 50 or 60.

If all these germinated, I've got about £500 worth of plants in here.

I like grasses in their own right - I think they're very beautiful,

I think they're very sensuous, I love the sound they make.

But they also make a really good foil for a whole range of flowers

that you might broadly call prairie planting,

and you can grow those from seed too.

And I'm going to be sowing some Verbena bonariensis

on the basis that it's almost impossible to imagine a garden

with too much Verbena bonariensis in.

And it's one of the archetypal plants that goes well with grasses.

So, sprinkle them on the surface of compost.

I've mixed this compost myself, which has got plenty of drainage.

That's quite important.

I suppose a slight warning of verbena,

it is erratic in germination.

Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't.

Sometimes some of them do,

and the rest don't seem to be doing, but they come later.

I've also got rudbeckia in here, Rudbeckia laciniata.

Heleniums go really well with grasses.

Any umbellifer, any tall daisy flower looks fantastic with grasses,

particularly towards the end of summer.

Where you have tiny seeds sprinkled on the surface of the compost,

they're very prone to being spread by water.

If you water them with a watering can

the seeds just get scattered sideways.

So, it's a good idea to water from below,

and put the seed trays in to soak.

Leave them there for about 5-10 minutes.

The compost will absorb the moisture like blotting paper,

and that's all the seeds need in order to germinate.

Now, grasses have become very trendy in the last 10-15 years,

but Rachel's been to Cornwall to look at a plant

which definitely has gone out of fashion in my lifetime.

But perhaps it's making a comeback.

For me, there are very few plants

that conjure up such a sense of romance and nostalgia

as the hydrangea.

Just these enormous blooms in pastel colours,

I remember them in every single suburban garden where I grew up.

They're all about long, summer days.

For so many years,

it was the shrub gardeners all over Britain relied on to provide

beautiful late summer blooms, but tastes changed

and the hydrangea fell out of favour.

These days, we're starting to rediscover it, but if you still

need convincing then Trebah Gardens in Cornwall is the place to do it.

Right at the heart of this subtropical paradise is this

V-shaped valley, and, at the bottom,

a slow-moving river that acts like a mirror for clouds

of hydrangeas along the banks, and when you stand here

the sheer scale of it all is absolutely breathtaking.

The hydrangeas were planted at the height of the shrub's

popularity back in the 1950 by the then-owners, the Martin family,

and they've been looked after by head gardener

Darren Dickey for the last 20 years.

Why have you got so many hydrangeas?

The hydrangeas were actually planted by the Martin family.

Originally planted for a display but also with a secondary interest,

they actually planted them for cut flowers to send up to Covent Garden.

It was a way of generating a bit of extra income to help

pay for the garden team that were maintaining the estate.

-So pretty much almost grown as a crop.

-Pretty much, yeah.

They were harvested, sent up in flowerboxes on the trains.

Why are they so successful in coastal gardens?

I think the great thing about hydrangeas

is they have a deciduous nature in the winter

so when the worst of the winter weather comes in

and you get the salt winds sort of blowing in from the coast

and off the sea, obviously, those plants are in naked form,

they don't need any protection,

so they don't get scorched or damaged by the weather.

Once they start to come through in March and April,

the weather is a little bit more benign and they tend to thrive.

I think one of the things that many people find most fascinating

about hydrangeas is the colour range

and then how you achieve these different colours.

-Explain that a little bit.

-Yeah, it's interesting.

You'll see the hydrangeas at Trebah vary in different shades.

The acidity of the soil is the main contributing factor

to the colour of the hydrangeas.

The soil we have here has an acidity of about pH 6.

So, obviously, you're going to get the good blue colours coming through

but you'll also see a few variations from that.

You'll see them running from blue through to pink,

-even on the same bush.

-Yes.

That's quite often where it's sort of picking up traces of alkalinity.

How can you try and get a bluer hydrangea?

That's something I'm often asked.

Yeah, I mean, you can get a bluing agent, which is

basically aluminium sulphate, which you can add to the soil

but the trouble with that is, obviously, it's going to leach

out of the soil so you're going to have to maintain that every year.

Does it also help to start with either a really good pink or

a really good blue if that's what you want to continue with?

Well, that's a very good point actually, and we often say to people

if they are looking to get the really good blues,

if you start off with a really dark blue,

particularly hydrangea 'Enziandom' which is a really good dark blue,

you're on the right track.

Likewise, if you're going for the pinks,

then start off with a good pink form which will then give you

the best chance to actually maintain it.

Now, this one looks really very different from the ones we've

been looking at down in the valley.

Yeah, this is Hydrangea aspera from the Villosa group of hydrangeas.

It's rather nice, it has a more sort of lax form, lovely little

soft, felty leaves which are very sort of tactile

and these beautiful flowers which attract the insects.

It's one of my favourites.

Hydrangeas did go through the doldrums a little bit, didn't they?

Have you seen evidence here that they're regaining their popularity?

I think there certainly are signs of that.

We've seen that in our plant cells here that some of the more

unusual cultivars have been coming on to the market.

Especially those with very deep colours, ones with coloured stems,

and some of the really deep pinks are becoming very fashionable.

It's hard to choose when you're in hydrangea heaven but this one,

'Zorro', has really caught my eye.

These inky black stems and then you've got

the green of the foliage and rather horizontal, ultraviolet flowers.

It's such a stunning and striking combination and I'm

so pleased that hydrangeas, once again, are gaining in popularity.

They deserve to and there's definitely something for every garden.

I get asked a lot about hydrangeas and the questions are always

based around two things. One is when do I prune them?

And two is why aren't mine flowering?

And the two are connected.

'Lacecap' and 'Mophead' hydrangeas, which are the most common,

produce their flowers on older wood so you don't prune them hard.

In fact, don't prune them at all until this time of year.

Leave the old flowers on, don't touch them over winter,

and then in April just dead-head them.

Cut back to a bud not more than an inch or two

below the flower head and that's all you need do.

If you've got a very overgrown plant,

you can take out the bigger stems right down to the ground

and then it will throw up new stems which won't produce flowers

this year but it'll help reshape the plant.

So, that's the first type of hydrangea.

There is another type, which needs pruning a little bit differently.

I have here a Hydrangea paniculata and this is different

because it produces its flowers on new growth

so these flowers from last year, and you can just see there were

quite a few, all were developed on wood that grew last year.

So, if I leave it unpruned, it'll just get bigger and bigger

and bigger and the flowers will keep growing and growing

and growing at the top, so what I need to do is develop

a framework from which new wood can come.

So, I'm going to tip this back that far and this one back here

so we want to take that off there.

This can just come off there, and that's crossing

so we'll remove that.

Now, what I would stress is that if you've got a hydrangea and

you're not 100% certain what type or variety it is,

just dead-head it now and don't prune it and you'll do no harm.

Watch it carefully and then

if you see that all the flowers are produced on new growth that

wasn't there until the spring and summer,

then you can prune it harder next year.

Now, you may not grow hydrangeas

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

Some plants that are otherwise lovely have a habit

of outgrowing their welcome, and Lysimachia ciliata 'Firecracker'

has done just that in the Jewel Garden.

I still want it but only up to a point.

Whilst you can still move around your borders without doing too

much damage, get in and thin back any plants that are taking over.

Be ruthless, you'll be improving the overall look

as well as creating space for other plants.

The foliage of elders look great in a border.

This is Sambucus 'Sutherland Gold' but you can get elders with

foliage ranging from deep purple to brilliant green.

To get the best from them, you need to prune them back hard

at this time of year.

Cut back to a knobbly stub of old growth

and then the new shoots will bear especially vibrant new leaves.

It's a good time to take fuchsia cuttings

and, if you don't have a fuchsia, it's also a good time to buy one as

the nurseries and garden centres now have the widest range of varieties.

Choose a strong new shoot without a flower bud.

Remove all but a couple of leaves

and place it in a free-draining compost around the edge of a pot.

Put it somewhere warm but out of direct sunlight.

Water it and make sure it never fully dries out

and it should root in a few weeks' time.

Now, I'm going to plant my first potatoes in here.

This is Charlotte, which is a second early, and that's because

raised beds warm up much quicker than open ground so they're ready.

I wouldn't put them quite yet in open ground

because that's colder and the techniques are very different.

For years I planted potatoes in the same way.

I dug a deep, V-shaped trench, put compost along the bottom,

spread out the spuds and then made a ridge over the top of them.

That does take a lot of space.

And if you're short of space raised beds work very well indeed.

The reason why is you can plant them closer together

and you don't need any space between the rows

and all you have to do is just make a hole and pop the potato in.

You can see that these are chitted.

The sprouts are green and quite firm instead of the long,

translucent sprouts you get

when you leave potatoes in a cupboard at this time of year

and, once those are planted and they go in the dark,

they will grow with extra energy.

I'll just pop them in about six inches under and space them

as close as about a foot apart.

The closer you space them together, the smaller the potatoes will be.

Now, for early potatoes, and this is Charlotte as I say,

a second early, small potatoes don't matter.

It's the taste you're going for. For a main crop,

which you'll harvest in September, October or even November,

bigger ones might be more practical so you give them more space.

Just cover them over...

..and unless it's very cold,

and I need to protect them with a bit of straw,

if we have frosts in May, there's nothing else I need to do to these.

And the goal is that by my birthday,

the beginning of July, I'll be able to harvest a delicious meal

of new potatoes and, believe you me, no potatoes you ever eat

are as good as those first ones you harvest from your own plot.

Well, that's it for this week.

I'll be back here at Longmeadow at the same time next Friday

so join me then.

Till then, bye-bye.