Episode 7 Gardeners' World

Hello. Welcome to Gardeners' World, this Easter weekend.

Of course, Easter, for most of us, is the first time in the year

when you get that combination of the chance of some decent weather

and time - time in the garden to really get things done.

And for me,

the personal connotations of Easter are to do with my childhood,

because we always went to the woods to collect primroses

to decorate the church. And I loved the woods then.

I loved the way they were bursting with flower.

I've always tried to incorporate those woodland plants

into any garden I've made.

But none of the plants of my childhood were as spectacular

as these amazing Imperial fritillaries.

This week, Carol is returning

to our budding gardeners Dan and Dominique

to help them with the next stage of their garden transformation,

which is choosing trees and shrubs for structure.

Isn't it exciting! First proper plant in your garden.

-Yeah, and it looks great.

-Yeah.

And Joe visits a remarkable quarry garden in Staffordshire

that was badly hit by the storms this winter,

and is now racing to get ready in time

to open to the public this Easter Sunday.

I like my spade, what's left of it!

Yeah, you've had that a while, haven't you?

No, I just work on rock!

And I shall be planting up a difficult east-facing wall,

and also sowing my beans, which,

as well as tasting good, will look good too.

First, I'm going to refresh the Spring Garden.

You may remember that last winter, I took out the hornbeam hedge

that ran all the way along it.

This has opened it out to the light -

plants are now growing with more vigour -

and also, obviously, opened it out to the eye.

What was a closed wall, the back of the border, is now the front.

So that's what I want to start planting up initially.

I'm going to put in these, Tiarella 'Iron Butterfly'.

It's a woodland plant from North America,

and has got these spikes

of white flowers, touched with pink.

They will grow perfectly well in the shade,

and this will get much more shady when the limes come fully into leaf.

But they do need a fairly rich soil. They do not like dry shade.

That's no good. If you put them in dry shade,

they'll just disappear. I've put a little group of three.

So, let's dig out a block.

I'm going to give them some leaf mould.

The beauty of leaf mould is, it's not necessarily the nutrition,

but it gives really good root run.

It's light, but it also holds moisture.

Just a couple of handfuls in underneath.

Of course, if you don't have leaf mould,

then garden compost will do the job. Just take it out.

That's a nice plant. Got a nice, fibrous root system.

By choosing plants that come from woodlands,

and putting them in what is essentially a woodland set-up,

you know they're going to be at home.

You know that once they've found their feet,

which should happen very quickly,

you can just leave them to get on with it.

I do think that's half the secret of any successful gardening,

to choose the right plant for the right place.

The second plant I'm going to put in is very different.

This is Clematis alpina, 'Pamela Jackman'.

The great thing about Clematis alpina is, it's tough.

It will take temperatures down to -30 odd.

It doesn't mind cold wind.

This end of the spring garden used to be like a dark tunnel.

If you can imagine, a hedge came down this line,

and by May, the light was all out of it.

But now I've opened it out and there's more light.

You can see back and down better, so I want an endpiece here.

I know from experience that once it gets going,

it will climb up the tree and then the flowers will cascade down,

so perfect. Right.

Take out as much soil as I can.

So I've got a nice, deep hole, and I'm going to put some compost in.

It doesn't have to be your best garden compost.

Just get some organic matter in below the clematis.

These early flowering clematis tend not to suffer from wilt,

but as with all clematis, plant it deeper rather than shallow.

You can plant it so that it's buried up to about that point,

so if it does get wilt or damaged,

it will regrow from the stem that is below the ground.

Put that down in there.

Pop that in.

Flowers appear at the end of March in the south,

middle of April in the north

and will carry on for about three weeks

with this glorious spring bloom display.

I shall use the rest of the compost to mulch around this.

It's worth giving a clematis, especially a new one,

a good soak at least once a month for the first year after planting.

And of course, I'll water the tiarella too.

To get inspiration for your garden,

the best way is to go and visit other gardens.

See what other people are doing.

A lot of our best gardens open up either specially

or as the beginning of their season at Easter time.

Joe has been to visit a garden in Staffordshire

which is busily getting ready for its Easter opening.

Stonehill Quarry Garden opens to the public this Easter

to raise money for charity.

But it has been a real uphill struggle to get it ready in time.

The recent storms wreaked havoc,

and there is still a mountain of work to do.

Undeterred, Caroline Raymont is soldiering on

and trying to use this force of nature to her advantage.

So, Caroline, how bad were the winds ripping through here?

Horrendous, and destructive. And I was really despondent about it.

Caroline lost a number of trees. Some have been completely uprooted.

Others have had to be made safe, and some felled altogether.

What are you going to do with these trees?

Well, the cedar's going to stay as a sculpture.

This tree here is left for the visitors to see

what it's like in a quarry garden and how much stone there is

and how poor the soil is for anything else to grow.

So are you behind this year in your gardening calendar?

Yes, I am, very much so.

I've got a lot of borders to do and clearing

and digging holes to put the plants in.

Because your opening is imminent.

-Yes, it is.

-Do you need a hand?

-Yes, please!

When Caroline moved here with her late husband 23 years ago,

there was virtually nothing here.

Even now, it's a constant work in progress.

This is just amazing.

It's magical. You'd never know it was here.

No. It's wonderful.

So this was a quarry, a stone quarry,

-and you've turned it into a garden?

-Yes.

There are lots of well-known spring flowering plants here,

such as primroses, hellebores...

..and erythroniums.

But there are also some more unusual ones.

These woodland spring plants are really loving the conditions here.

They are. I'm lucky about that,

because not all people have got this leaf mould.

You'll have plenty more by the time we finish this!

Such as that plant,

the Cardamine pentaphylla.

-It's a beauty, isn't it?

-Yes.

And the little yellow anemone next to it,

which is lipsiensis.

I like that. They're quite unusual, those two.

What about that one?

There's something under the tree over there, like a variegated leaf.

-It's really brightening up that shady spot.

-It's Hacquetia.

-Hacquetia.

-And the variegated one is called Thor.

-Is it easy to grow?

Yes, it is. But again, in these conditions.

-And you love your trilliums.

-Yes, I do.

-What is it about them?

I think it's the structure, the mottled leaves on most of them,

the colours, the way they're so upright and really quite regal.

Caroline looks after this impressive six-acre garden

almost single-handedly.

It's a race against time for her to open on Sunday,

so I'm more than happy to help.

Nothing goes to waste here.

Caroline has even found a way to make use of her fallen trees.

-This is great. You're using the old birch logs.

-Yes.

And then backfilling it with soil behind.

-Because of the lack of depth.

-Yeah, because here is your rock.

So they're like raised beds,

but they work perfectly with the natural setting here.

-Shall I start popping some hellebores in?

-Yes, please.

-It must be quite tough, gardening in these conditions.

-It is.

That's why I like my spade, what's left of it.

-Yeah, you've had that a while, haven't you?

-No.

I just work on rock!

Right, I might need to get the pickaxe out.

I have to say, a disused quarry

is not the first place you would think of to make a garden in,

but Caroline has shown that with a lot of hard work,

you can make something really special.

Well, Caroline, I hope I've been of some use.

The visitors to this garden will absolutely love it, I know.

I hope the sun shines! Bye.

You can visit Caroline's garden this Sunday.

For details, just go to our website.

And of course,

visiting any garden is always going to benefit your own in some way.

Right. This is an east-facing wall.

East-facing walls are cold and fairly shady.

They just get the morning sun, and that's it.

Not many fruits will like a shady wall,

because they need sunshine to ripen.

But there's one that actively likes a north or east wall,

and that's a morello cherry,

the sour cherry that you need to cook.

And that's what I'm going to plant initially against this wall.

I'm putting up these wires because I'm going to fan-train it.

And the wires are for the canes that will support the fans to tie to.

I've put in strainers.

It's important to use these, because it means you can tighten it.

When you're planting against a wall,

inevitably, there will be footings.

That's concrete underneath the ground

that will be wider than the wall.

So always plant at least a couple of feet away from the wall.

SPADE CLUNKS

Doesn't sound good.

It seems to be a day for rock gardens.

Well, if Joe can use a pickaxe, so can I.

That's not too bad.

Let's get the shovel.

I think that's enough. But the good thing is,

that's subsoil, and the roots will go into it

and the water will drain away.

The cherry, by the way, is this.

Bought partially pretrained.

It's a morello cherry, grafted onto a Colt rootstock.

And if you're going to have a fan-trained cherry

as opposed to an open bush type,

make sure it is on a Colt rootstock,

because that stops it getting too big.

So if we take this over to the hole,

you'll see that I will plant that

roughly like that,

and then I'll train it back into the wires.

But first of all, I need to prepare the planting hole.

Add a little bit of compost.

Not too much, otherwise it acts as a sponge for all the water.

And just potting compost isn't going to be good enough. This is a tree.

It's going to be n the ground for 10, 20, 30 years.

So add to peat-free potting compost garden soil if you've got it,

garden compost, some leaf mould. I've added all three.

But really importantly, add some drainage.

I've got grit in this. It must be free draining.

That will settle.

So I want to plant it at the back of the hole.

I don't want to go too far out, because there's a path,

but that's about right.

The reason why fruit is grown as a fan or a cordon

or an espalier is because of the relationship

between growth of the plant and production of fruit.

You get maximum growth of the tree vertically.

That's why you have a leader.

So the leader is always the tallest, and it wants to grow on up.

You get the maximum fruit horizontally,

which is why espaliers, for example,

are a very good way of getting a lot of fruit in a small space.

But if you want a plant to grow strong and healthily and have fruit,

the answer is to go halfway between the two and go at 45 degrees.

And that's where a fan comes in, because all the branches

are more or less trained at 45 degrees across a wall space.

Now, there is a little bit of pruning to do,

because if I leave this central leader,

that will go on up and up and up

at the expense of the growth of the branches below it,

cos it actively suppresses them.

I think I'm going to cut there.

And that shoot and that shoot will become two more 45-degree fans.

So, we cut like that.

And remove it.

Now, the wires are to support the canes.

Not the plant.

So, that's the basic structure of the support,

and you can see how you want these main stems to grow.

And you tie in the plant to the fan supports.

We're establishing a fruiting tree

that will give us lovely sour cherries,

which are great for jam or puddings,

beautiful blossom, all on a shady, cold wall,

and this is where morellos are absolutely fantastic.

Well, there we are. That's another job done.

Now, Carol has been back to visit Dominique and Dan

to help them in their year-long process

of transforming their garden.

I'm helping a young family in Gloucestershire

create their first family garden.

They started with a blank canvas and they've got a plan.

Next to the house, they want a patio area for entertaining,

a lawn to relax on, surrounded with beautiful flowers,

and a productive veg plot.

Since my last visit, when we laid the lawn,

they've been busy improving their soil with well-rotted manure,

preparing trellis,

and their neighbour has replaced a dilapidated boundary fence.

Now things get really exciting. It's time for plants.

Dom's local garden centre is a perfect place to start.

The first plants to choose when planning any garden

are plants for structure.

They play an important role, giving year-round height,

colour and interest.

A backbone around which to build the rest of the garden.

The most structural thing you can have in your garden is a tree.

We've got a lot of fencing, haven't we?

So, anything that pushes above it would be rather nice.

And goes up to the sky.

The smaller your garden, the more important it is

that you've got a tree that's really going to work for you.

-So, you want something that's great in the spring...

-Yeah.

..wonderful through the summer and into the autumn.

Preferably, you know, with blossom first, with fruit,

with good autumn colour.

I mean, cherries are so very, very pretty in the spring.

But there are a few trees that'll give you even more than that.

-How about these? These are both crab apples.

-They look beautiful.

But look what you're going to get later on.

These gorgeous sort of red and yellow crab apples.

And this one has pure red fruit. Red Sentinel.

And "sentinel" means it's quite an upright tree.

Which would work really well in our garden.

So, look at your trees first of all. Just give them the old once-over.

This is grafted onto a rootstock here.

But just above it, look at that.

-OK.

-There's damage.

So, that's a bit of a no-no. Whereas something like this...

I have to say, I really love the idea of the red fruit.

So, what do you think about that? Has it got loads of buds on?

-Looks great.

-Masses and masses of buds. What do you think?

-That's the one. Let's go for it.

-Yeah!

-First plant.

Dom's got space for one more tree, so we're going for a rowan.

It gives flowers, tons of berries and good autumn colour.

Another way of getting structure into your garden is shrubs.

-Something like this. I mean...

-These look fantastic.

-The colours are great on them.

-These are all forms of cornus.

That's a form of our native one, Cornus alba.

But this is called Midwinter Fire, and that's exactly what it does.

It glows right the way through the winter.

You immediately go to that one

because, actually, it seems to have an even spread out from the bottom.

Yeah, and don't be afraid, when you're buying something like this,

to actually take it out of its pot...

-Oh, crikey. Right.

-..and inspect its roots,

cos the roots are the most important part of the plant, really.

And that's got good roots. It's not pot-bound.

If it was pot-bound, you'd see a lot more roots around the edge, or...?

Yeah, you wouldn't see any soil.

And there's no moss or anything on the top.

-It's fresh, it's been looked after.

-Brilliant.

-It's thriving.

When choosing plants in the garden centre,

always go for the healthiest looking stock.

Check for strong, thick stems, plenty of new growth

and disease-free leaves.

And if it's a flowering plant,

there should be loads of buds still waiting to open.

Now it's back to the garden to get planting.

Can we rotate it clockwise?

-Just about 45 degrees? A little bit more.

-Yeah.

-How's that?

-It's great, yeah.

When you're planting a tree,

modern thinking is that you should make a shallow hole...

It's called saucer planting.

..that the top of your... you know, where this joins the soil

stays at the same level right across the hole,

but it encourages the roots then to go outwards,

which is what you want from your tree.

Normally you might think about eking the roots out.

-But I think that these roots are just raring to go.

-Right.

And also, the less disturbance your tree gets, the better,

especially when it's about to start flowering.

Oooh! Isn't it exciting?

Just a very gentle sort of heel in.

-Oh, very tentative! Absolutely.

-I know. Nervous.

Normally when you put any tree in, you'd stake it,

but I think this is such a sheltered corner...

-We should be OK.

-Yeah.

-So, first proper plant in your garden.

-Yeah. And he looks great.

-Yeah. What a plant too! What's next? Come on.

-Cornus.

-Cornus.

Or dogwood, I would say. Cornus, I'm learning. Cornus.

Cornus, dogwood - both correct.

We've set our three shrubs about two feet apart.

They'll give permanent height through the centre of this border.

Planting most shrubs, the idea there

is always to get them level with the soil.

But with cornus, it's a suckering shrub, and what you want it to do

is produce lots and lots of those red stems.

You give it a flying start, you plant it deep.

Now the structure is in place

and we've watered everything really well,

it's time to start thinking about flowers.

To get Dom and Dan started, I've brought them one of my favourites,

Geranium psilostemon, from my own garden.

This clump can be divided to create over a dozen plants.

I've encouraged Dan and Dom to see what other perennials they can get

from friends or neighbours and to heel them in to their nursery bed.

Next time I'm here,

we can take stock of what they've gathered together

and start planting those borders.

One of my own favourite trees for a small garden

is this cherry - Tai-haku.

It can be quite fickle in its flowering,

because it's very easily damaged by heavy wind or heavy rain,

but this year, it's fantastic.

It's looking as good as it ever has done.

It is lovely to have a bit of time to stop

and just look at things at Easter.

But there are jobs to be done,

and here are some you can be getting on with this Easter weekend.

A few weeks ago, I recommended that you pot up your dahlias

to encourage shoots for cutting material.

Well, now that material should be ready.

Take a plant with plenty of shoots and choose just two or three,

cutting them off as near to the tubers as you can.

Strip off the lower leaves

and pot them up in a free-draining compost.

Put them somewhere warm to root.

And the parent can be put in a sheltered place to grow on

until it's ready to plant out.

Hardy annuals can be sown directly where they are to grow.

You can mark the spot by making them in crosses, circles or lines,

or you can do as I'm doing with these poppies -

just broadcast them in a border.

Spread them where you want,

rake them in and let them grow up at random

and surprise and hopefully delight you later in summer.

Late-flowering clematis

are putting on a mass of new growth at this time of year

and not necessarily attaching themselves securely.

So, tie them into the support with soft twine

and till they get strong enough to attach and support themselves.

BIRDSONG

Good boy! This way. Here. Nige. Come on.

No, no, I need the string. Nigel. I need it. Thank you.

One of the jobs I really like at this time of the year

is building a structure to support climbing beans.

They need a really good wigwam or line

that will take the weight of them.

But it should look good too, and if you build it now,

it's in place for when the beans are ready to need them,

which won't be for another month or so.

This year, I thought, because we're in the Cottage Garden,

I'd continue the rhythm of the wigwams

right round the whole of the garden.

So, some of them will have clematis,

some of them will have climbing beans,

some of them will have sweet peas.

All decorative, some of them tasty.

One goes in like that.

This ground has been composted and rotovated, so it's really rich.

But if your soil is a bit light, or it hasn't had much attention,

you do need to enrich it.

Beans are greedy, thirsty plants.

You cannot give them too much organic material

underneath the roots.

Let's get another one in.

Right, that's the structure done. Now the plants.

Come on.

I'm going to sow into pots Blauhilde, a purple bean,

and it's really important that not only do they taste really good,

but also, they look good.

And I will put three in a pot...

intending to plant the whole pot...

at the base of each of the supports.

By sowing these in pots

and keeping them protected from the worst of the cold,

I'm ensuring that they will grow strongly and continue to grow.

If I put them out in the soil now,

even if we have mild weather at this point,

there is a real risk that we have a cold snap,

and even if they germinate, they can stop growing at that point.

These are equatorial plants. They want to grow in warm conditions.

And when they stop growing,

that's when the slugs and the snails get at them.

Those will germinate in the greenhouse

and as soon as they're growing strongly,

I'll put them in the cold frame and then harden them off,

and in about a month's time,

I'll plant out really strong plants

at the base of each support of the wigwams.

Well, that's it.

Have a really good Easter

and I'll see you back here at Longmeadow

at the same time next week.

Till then, bye-bye.

-HE WHISTLES

-Come on.