Episode 1 Gardeners' World

Come on. Come on.

Hello. Welcome back to a new series of Gardeners' World.

Well, we've all shared a fairly long and wet winter

but spring is here and everything is growing

and flowering here at Longmeadow and getting better day by day.

Nigel's here too. Come on, Nige. Come and say hello.

And I've got another little helper who I'll introduce to you later on.

Go on. There's a good boy.

Last summer, we visited the Salutation Garden in Kent

to see how they recovered from a disastrously wet winter.

We lost about 15,000 plants and bulbs,

years of hard work just disappeared.

And Joe has been looking at garden trees

and, in the first of three films, he discovers how to select

the right one for your garden.

In a way, they've got to work really, really hard

to earn their space.

If you can get flower, fruit, autumn colour, perhaps even bark,

you'd be doing well, wouldn't you?

And Carol has been to visit a garden halfway up a mountain in Wales,

filled with spring flowers.

I just think your garden is so magical.

It's like an enchanted wood.

We wanted to go for a painterly effect, especially

in the spring or early spring when there isn't much colour around.

It really brightens things up.

The snowdrops in the Spring Garden are coming to an end.

They were actually at their best about a week ago.

Funnily enough, they weren't really unseasonable this year.

A lot of stuff was early but the snowdrops

flowered at the end of January and into February as normal.

But whatever point they're at,

now is the perfect moment to divide and spread them.

Snowdrops spread by seed very well, but slowly.

So the best way to do it is to lift them and divide them,

either when they're flowering or just afterwards.

For example, this clump here is perfect.

So just dig up a clump.

Be ruthless.

I know it's hard because it takes a while to get them to establish

and you feel you're destroying a precious display

but a clump like that is perfect.

It's got a good root system.

Leave some soil on,

not least because it stops it drying out,

and get ready to move it.

I'm going to take this clump, too.

Actually, if I take this apart here,

gently open it out...

..put that in there, you can see that the individual plants

are all in there,

and you could plant out a little group like that.

If you do this regularly, in about three or four years,

you really start to bulk out

and that's when you get the magnificent display

of sheets of snowdrops.

All the snowdrops in the Spring Garden came from a little clump

not much bigger than that, 25 years ago,

and they gradually spread. Partly by me dividing them, partly by seed.

But I want to take these to establish a new colony

in the writing garden.

Come on.

Here at Longmeadow, it has been incredibly wet,

but it's also been warm

and apparently we've all had the warmest winter since records

began, which was 1659,

so that's bound to affect our gardens.

For example, this area was under water for weeks on end

and the new rhubarb bed loved it.

We've been picking rhubarb since the end of November.

The wet weather has hindered the normal winter work.

It hasn't stopped it altogether. These beds, eight of them,

have been replanted with alliums rather than tulips

and flowers are coming at all times, which are completely perplexing.

For example, wallflowers normally flower April -

starting to flower now at the end of February.

And the beds that we have here,

for ten years, have been filled with salad crops,

and we've picked them in autumn and by Christmas normally,

they'd done their thing, the weather has ravaged them.

Not a bit of it this year. Chicory's still going strong,

we've got lettuce without any protection

and it has broken all the rules for normal winter weather.

The biggest surprise this winter have been daffodils.

Now, I know this has been common right across the country.

For example, the daffodils here in the Long Walk are coming to an end.

They were at their best at the end of January.

I've known nothing like that in my life.

I guess this is something we're just going to have to get used to,

this kind of irregularity.

The Dual Garden has had a quiet winter,

but then it always does. It's been very easy.

Things like the phormiums have needed no protection,

and there have been a bit of irregular growth.

For example, the clematis are just romping away.

This one here, for example, is looking the same sort of growth

that you would normally get in April.

They still need pruning and I'll show you how to do that later.

And this Euphorbia - this is Euphorbia wulfenii - has had these

inflorescent signs for about a month now.

Now how long they'll last, I don't know.

They're lovely but they're slightly at the wrong time.

The whole thing is all a little bit mixed up and out of kilter.

However, Carol has been to see a garden in Carmarthenshire in Wales

that always has to deal with quite tricky weather conditions,

and this year, despite the winter we've had, it's looking fantastic.

Winter.

Moody, atmospheric.

A colourless palette...

..that can be wild.

Beautiful but dark.

And it's after these dreary days,

you walk out one morning into the garden

and realise that suddenly the whole place is alive with jewels,

all this sparkling, scintillating colour.

Julian and Fiona Wormald have created a beautiful garden

full of early spring colour

on an exposed hillside.

I just think your garden is so magical.

It's like an enchanted wood.

-Oh, thank you.

-And I just love the way you use your plants.

We've tried to get in lots of flowers,

particularly insect-friendly flowers,

so we started off just trying a few crocus here.

And I planted the Cream Beauty and they did very well,

-so we thought we'd introduce some other colours.

-Right.

We wanted to go for a painterly effect, sort of impressionistic,

especially in the spring or early spring when there isn't much colour

around, certainly in the landscape, and it really brightens things up.

We are 800 feet up.

-It's pretty chilly. It's extreme.

-And very high rainfall.

-Yeah.

I think that's one of the best displays of cyclamen I've ever seen.

-Oh, thank you.

-Those are all coum at the top, aren't they?

-Yeah.

-Which you think of growing in rocky places.

-Yeah.

-You know, in the sunshine.

-Yeah.

-But, of course, it is quite rocky underneath here. It's shale.

-Is it?

Yeah, and not very deep topsoil.

-There's a little bit of leaf litter.

-Right.

We started off with them along the top of the bank but the seeds

are spread by things like ants

and then we move the little seedlings around as well.

They're quite easy to find. They're just tiny, little, round leaves.

We just put them anywhere we think they might look good.

Certain parts of the garden we can't,

but not to plant them too deeply.

They've got to be put in near the surface.

-That's quite important.

-Yeah.

For the greatest part, these plants are bulbs, corms, tubers.

They have been growing invisibly under the surface of the soil

for months and it's only when the temperatures rise

that they begin to pop up their heads and make their show.

Lots of blues, whites,

purples, lavenders, yellows.

All the colours that bees love.

The great majority of these plants are short of stature.

You need to be if you're not going to get blown this way and that.

And most have tiny flowers.

Big, blowsy petals would be a mistake.

They'd just get thrashed to bits.

The only exception to this is hellebores.

They have big flowers,

but those flowers are not composed of petals -

they're sepals and they're tough

and they can withstand these gale-force winds.

Your hellebores look so pleased with themselves, don't they?

-Oh, they do.

-But there's no foliage.

You've taken all the leaves off.

We start taking the leaves off back in August

when the first hederifolia,

Cyclamen hederifolium flowers appear in other parts of the garden.

-Yeah.

-And gradually remove it until late September, early October,

when we take all the foliage off.

So is it solely to make sure that there's enough light

-for the bulbs that are coming through?

-Yeah, so it's tidy.

I actually prefer to see the flowers without the leaves,

you see them more clearly.

Everything looks completely natural.

That's what we've aimed for, we've always wanted a garden

that sat well in the landscape and complemented the house.

What must be so wonderful is waking up every morning,

coming out here and spotting more and more

of these beautiful little plants.

Yeah - it's fantastic, and it changes every day,

maybe even twice a day, this time of the year.

Thanks so much for sharing it with us.

It's a true inspiration.

-Thank you very much for coming, it's been a real pleasure.

-Yes.

Although, of course, I agree that seeing the garden change

day by day is one of the thrills of this time of year,

there is still a bit of planning to be done.

And what I am planning here in the writing garden

is to have a swathe of snowdrops,

running along either side of the path.

Now, that will take a few years to come good,

but if I start now, it will happen.

That can even be broken down again, I think.

So, small clumps, about that size,

and then just plant them in the ground...so that...

..they are replanted the same depth that they were dug up.

The thing to remember with snowdrops

is they're one of the few bulbs that like moisture,

and after you've planted them,

the one thing that you may have to do is water them.

Don't let them dry out

until the foliage has died right back.

Now, if you don't have snowdrops to divide,

of course, you can buy them.

There is 100 in here.

This costs about eight quid,

so if you buy a couple of hundred for under £20,

you can really set the garden up with a display of snowdrops

that will multiply and give you stock

from which you can then divide for future years.

Now, nine years ago,

I had the honour of opening a garden in Kent called the Salutation.

It wasn't a new garden - it was designed by the great architect

Sir Edwin Lutyens in the Edwardian era,

but it had fallen into disarray and disrepair

and had been restored and opened to the public.

It was fantastic then, and it has got much better since.

It's grown and prospered and thousands of people have visited it.

But it has also had to face and cope with disaster.

The garden is a very special place for me

because of the Lutyens house at the heart of it,

but also because the garden has very strong lines,

being designed by an architect.

But within that, it's become my plant playground.

I became head gardener at the Salutation in 2005.

When I arrived, the garden was virtually derelict.

Most of the planting was missing from the garden by that point.

It had been neglected for about 30 years

and, for a town garden,

it is a little over 3.5 acres,

so it is quite a substantial size

and really, you had to look through the mess and the chaos

that was the garden.

Edwin Lutyens, as an architect here at the Salutation,

his work is evident because of his huge, oversized chimney stacks

that he created, way out of scale with the rest of the building.

The house is very symmetrical, very typical of his work,

but also, it is the way that the house

is nestled into the symmetrical design of the garden.

We decided that, when we were going to restore the garden,

we would, as much as possible,

faithfully recreate Lutyens' original garden plan,

but in terms of the planting within it,

we felt that it wasn't appropriate

to try and recreate the planting exactly as it was.

Instead, the garden would be alive and not encapsulated in history.

The restoration proper had finished

and we were settling into gardening life.

And in 2013, December 6th,

there was a huge tidal surge that came down the English Channel

and up the river next to us here, the River Stour,

and flooded the gardens.

At its deepest point, we were about five feet underwater.

Because the garden is lower-lying than the river,

it trapped about five million litres of mixed fresh and salt water

in the garden that we had to set about,

as quickly as we could, removing with pumps.

The impact on the garden was devastating, really,

and we lost about 15,000 plants and bulbs -

years of hard work just disappeared.

And there was a famous poem by a Frenchman, and he said

that "in the depths of winter,

"there lies in me an invincible summer."

That really helped me through that...that flooding period.

Since the flood, and our replanting, the area I am most proud of

is the main mixed borders that run through the middle of the garden

and frame the view up to the house.

The flood has forced us to reinvent and redesign those borders

and I'm very pleased with the outcome.

So this is classic Lutyens - beautiful red brick path here,

really deep, rich borders, full of a massive range of plants,

typical of the period.

We have a fantastic dahlia here, same colour as the canna behind it,

but very different flower forms, working really well together.

Dahlias are a plant that I am

enormously fascinated and in love with.

They are incorporated into every part of the planting arrangements

through the borders in the gardens here.

My biggest bit of advice for any gardener is perseverance

because no matter how bad things seem,

nature is an incredibly resilient and surprising creature.

It's great to see the Salutation looking so good after my last visit,

and I do know that,

however disastrous a flood might seem,

it's amazing the way that it recovers

and within a few months, everything is blooming.

Now, you may have noticed that there is an extra dog.

Two Nigels - or, at least, a Nigel-and-a-half.

This is Nellie, who is very keen on the biscuit I've got in my hand.

There you go, Nell. There you are, Nigel.

We will be seeing a little bit of her,

but she is completely naughty, unlike Nigel,

so, to a certain extent, you're a bit of a wild card,

aren't you, Nell?

Come on.

This area is the copse - it used to just be grass

and it is just beginning to come into life.

The primroses are coming through to their best, so really,

what I'm trying to do in the garden is mimic a little piece of woodland,

which you can do on any scale.

I bought a job-load of trees at a tree sale -

by accident, really.

I fell into it, spent much more money than I had planned,

and ended up with a whole batch of trees to plant.

Now, that was great, because it gave me a structure,

but, of course, all these trees were small enough to carry in one hand,

and fit in the boot of a car, and even things like this cherry -

this is the wild cherry, or Gean, as it's known.

It started out really small,

and it is great to see them grow,

to be in the garden long enough

to see them develop into full-size trees,

although I would say that the wild cherry is not perhaps

the ideal tree if you have got a small garden,

because they do have a habit of sucking up all the moisture

and all the goodness from the ground.

You can see there are hardly any primroses.

So I'd look for a better tree for smaller gardens.

But you will find them - there are lots and lots of trees,

and even an oak tree...

Be gentle, be gentle with her.

..can work - this is an oak, Quercus robur,

and it is a complete mistake

to think that you can't plant an enormous oak or beech

because you won't live to see it grow.

Every stage of its growth,

from a tiny little sapling

to a monstrous 100 or 300-year-old tree,

is fascinating.

There is a tree out there for your garden,

however big or small it might be,

and Joe has been to a tree nursery to have a look at the selection.

I believe that every garden should have at least one tree,

but the range and variety of these marvellous plants is dazzling,

so how do you know which one to pick?

This tree nursery in Worcester is one of the largest in the country,

and Nick Dunn is on hand to guide me through the choices.

-Hello, Nick.

-Good to see you.

-Nice to meet you.

What a fantastic nursery.

You've got some amazing trees here.

Say you know you want some trees in your garden,

what are the first considerations to think about?

Well, overall space -

where can you allocate a tree to.

Most trees that we grow for gardens specifically

are small, they're not that vigorous, they can be pruned.

There's a tree for every garden?

There's a tree for every garden and every space.

-Can I help? Can we get a little thing going here?

-Lovely.

-Thank you, Joe.

-What about soil conditions?

Most of our trees that we grow specifically for gardens

can tolerate a very wide range of soil conditions...

from somewhat acid to quite alkaline.

Now, the average-size garden is about 14 metres by 14 metres,

so not enormous, but you can get a few trees in there

but, in a way, they've got to work really,

really hard to earn their space.

So what would you be looking for?

If you can get two or three seasons' performance within that tree -

flower, fruit, autumn colour on the leaf, perhaps even bark -

you'd be doing well, wouldn't you?

And there are some trees that'll function like that

-and give you the choice.

-So, what are these? Crab apple or something?

If you look at these crab apples,

the crab apple itself comes in various sizes,

colours, persistency.

Some will mature early, for making crab apple jelly,

others will feed birds late into the winter.

This is just one tree.

And the flowers in spring are beautiful as well.

Oh, fabulous.

From flowers to foliage, trees have so much to offer

and perhaps one of their best attributes

is spectacular leaf colour

that can change with the seasons.

It's mid-September now

and the autumn hues are starting to come through, aren't they?

All those fabulous colours that we expect.

-This is a nice one. What is that, a euonymus?

-It is.

It is Euonymus Red Cascade.

It's got good fruit colour

and a very interesting corky bark as well.

So it's a multi-featured tree.

What about silver birches? They're very popular, aren't they?

They are. These are Jacquemontii utilis forms,

turn white very quickly.

And then, all winter, that bark in the garden,

incredibly sculptural as a tree. Really beautiful,

and a nice, delicate, light canopy over the top.

It's a great feature tree, it's very dynamic.

Winter needs cheering up,

and it will always give you that fresh look outside the window.

And if your garden is truly tiny,

there's still a tree for you.

We've got here a patio range of trees, of all sorts of ornamentals,

and this is a great example of what you can do in pots.

In 20 years' time, it may get up to about a metre,

but it just shows you the variety of shapes and sizes

and growth rates that we've got. Provided you look after them...

OK. Because, in a container, every plant needs to be watered,

-and fed as well, more than in the ground.

-Exactly.

People will often ask,

"Do I pot them on? When do I put them into a bigger pot?"

-Yeah.

-And our suggestion would be every two years.

If it's growing and extending growth, it's happy.

If it's stopped growing,

it still may flower and leaf up and so on

but it won't be truly happy,

so you've got to encourage a bit of extension growth every year.

There's a huge variety of trees to choose from out there.

Do a little research, make your choice,

get excited about it

and I'm sure your tree will reward you for many years to come.

Well, next week, Joe is going to be looking at how to plant trees

so that they thrive and grow as well as possible.

Come on, you. Come on!

HE WHISTLES

At this time of year,

this is one of the most dramatic plants in the garden.

In fact, it's really not much more than a bramble,

but it is one of the loveliest brambles that you can grow.

It's called Rubus cockburnianus,

and as well as this beautiful arching form

with these plum colours shining through,

it's covered with a kind of milky, dusty coating

that makes it look ghostly as the light falls,

and forms these beautiful arching shapes.

Now, that's the good side of it, and it is lovely.

The bad side of it is, it's incredibly prickly

and very invasive,

because wherever it touches the ground,

it layers itself and throws up new shoots,

and if you're not careful, it would easily take over.

So, as the new leaves appear,

which will be sort of end of March time,

I'm going to cut this right back down to the ground

and then you get new shoots and, in time, they'll get too big

and they'll have to be cut back. Now, it's not time to cut that yet,

but here are some jobs you CAN do this weekend.

Autumn-fruiting raspberries should be cut down to the ground now,

if you haven't done so already.

They produce their fruit on new growth,

which will start to appear in the next few weeks.

They differ from summer-fruiting ones

in that they don't start to make any fruit at all

until the middle to end of summer,

round about August, so if your raspberries produce fruit in June

or early July, don't prune them now

because they will be the summer variety.

Although most clematis have put on

a huge amount of growth already this year,

if they are the late-flowering types like Clematis viticella

and flower from July onwards,

they should still be cut back hard.

Reduce them to about a foot of growth

or a couple of buds.

This will stimulate fresh shoots that will carry this year's flowers.

It's a good idea to sow chillies as soon as possible

if you've got somewhere warm for them to germinate.

Fill a seed tray with a peat-free compost,

and sprinkle the seeds thinly onto it,

cover them over and water them,

and put them somewhere warm to germinate,

at least 20 degrees.

They may take a few weeks to appear

but they do need a nice long time to establish good plants.

Come on! Poor Nigel!

Poor Nigel. He's a poor boy.

Don't bully him. Come on, Nige.

Right... The light's coming in. It's getting a little bit chilly,

that's the end of this week's programme,

but, don't forget, on Sunday, it's Mothering Sunday.

I remember, when I was young,

I used to go and pick primroses for my mother

because I always associate primroses with this time of year.

And the days are getting longer

and the weather will get warmer.

And I'll see you back here next week.

Till then, bye-bye.

Come on, Nellie, you naughty girl!

Come on. Come now.

Come now.

Don't forget, I'll be back on Big Dreams Small Spaces

this coming Thursday at 7pm on BBC Two.