Episode 16 Gardeners' World

Hello. Welcome to Gardeners' World.

Now, the writing garden which, of course,

is mainly white, as it is all year -

although, in fact, there are the odd dastardly dash of pink

of foxglove and poppy that have sneaked in -

is dominated by big plants at this time of year.

You've got the onopordums, these giant ghostly thistles,

all silver prickles, just sort of triffid-like.

Spectacular plants.

But the stars here in July are the rambling roses.

This is one called Wedding Day, which is a great froth of white

with touches of yellow at the centre,

and over the writing shed is one called Felicite Perpetue.

It only flowers for about ten days in July and then it's gone.

So it's a brief show, but it's glorious while it lasts.

And also, we have a plant

which I'm particularly getting a lot of pleasure from,

which is a bit unusual.

We tend to think of hydrangeas as being slightly clumpy plants,

blue or bright pink,

but these white panicles, born on new growth,

belong to Hydrangea paniculata,

and the way that it's light and airy against the dark green background,

I think, is pitch perfect.

This week, Rachel is visiting a superb production

by Cameron Mackintosh which is his garden,

Stavordale, in Somerset.

-What on earth is that?

-Ah, that...

-A horse.

-..is from Carousel.

And I wanted to see it galloping through the trees.

It's a fabulous beast.

And most of us think of hostas as plants with large, lush leaves

that are irresistible to slugs and snails.

But this week, we visit a man

who has the national collection of small and miniature hostas.

They're just sweet, and when they start to flower, they look...

Oh, they look like jewels.

They look like little wonderful sweets that you want to take home.

And I shall be giving a masterclass on wildlife gardening

as well as choosing plants for dry shade.

Last year, I made this garden with a clear brief in mind.

It had to be good

for as wide and varied a range of wildlife as possible,

but also be a garden.

That's quite a tricky brief

because, inevitably, you have to make compromises.

But I think it can be done.

And that does mean knowing what you want

and then apportioning areas to it.

So, for example, here, I've got a patch of nettles.

Now, to most gardeners, these are weeds.

But to certain butterflies,

they are the perfect place to lay their eggs, so really important.

You need a pond in a wildlife garden.

Now, this little pond is the ideal place

for frogs and grass snakes and newts,

so I would leave it exactly as it is.

I don't want to clear it out, I don't want to tidy it up,

but I do want to share and celebrate the animals that are enjoying it.

However, this border was planted

to attract bees and pollinating insects,

and it does look a mess and it does need clearing up.

This is comfrey. Big plant, the bees love it.

But the flowers are over now, it's flopping everywhere,

doesn't look good,

not much else is getting a benefit from it, so cut it back hard.

And, of course, comfrey is ideal on the compost heap...

..and the compost itself is great for wildlife,

even though you can't see it,

because it's nurturing bacteria and fungi.

You can see straight away there's a bit of space.

Now, what has spread this year is the annual geranium,

Geranium dissectum,

which looks nice in spring.

This time of year, I think we can just pull it up.

Right.

I've created bare soil, which I don't want.

I want to fill this up.

When you're planting for bees in particular, but insects in general,

the key is to keep a supply of pollen going

for as long as possible.

And if you want to know more about creating an environment

for pollinating insects in particular,

there is a government initiative called Pollinator Awareness Week,

and if you want to know more details, you can go to our website

and you can follow the links to find out how you can do your bit

to get pollinating insects into your garden.

But, essentially, it's covering what I'm doing now,

which is to create cover

and also flowering plants that insects can have access to

for as long a period as possible.

I'm going to add three new plants to this border.

The first is an echinops.

All insects, but particularly bees, just love echinops.

These round, blue heads can be smothered in bees,

just gorging themselves on it.

This is Taplow Blue.

So I'm going to pop this in the back here.

Let's position that like that.

I've got some cerinthe, which I've grown from seed.

This is Cerinthe purpurascens.

And, again, fabulous for bees.

Not nearly as big as the echinops, but look at that colour.

A good, strong colour, lovely glaucous leaves.

So we can put a group in there which will work with the sedums.

Sedums are brilliant.

Late summer, autumnal flowering plants for bees.

One of the very, very best.

And, finally, I've got this gorgeous Achillea - Terracotta.

It's a broad flower head, insects love it,

and the colour is superb.

So, we'll pop that in like that. Get the sun.

And I've got a couple of others,

but just let's get those in the ground.

This kind of succession planting is easy to plan

and it means bees in particular

will have a steady supply of pollen.

You will also have a steady supply of beautiful plants.

Now, a plant that I do want to add to this border,

certainly next to the pond, are hostas.

But the great big hostas I've got down by the other pond

in the damp garden wouldn't be right at all.

I need something smaller and more delicate.

And we went to see Jonathan Hogarth,

who holds the national collection of small hostas

and, in fact, showed at Chelsea for the first time this year

and won a Silver Gilt.

Hostas come in all different sizes,

but the particular type that really take my fancy

are the small and the miniature ones.

They're just sweet, and when they start to flower, they look...

Oh, they look like jewels.

They look like little wonderful sweets that you want to take home.

There's always that one plant you can't resist

when you're out shopping.

You think, "Oh, that's nice, I think I like that," so you buy it,

which is out of control, yeah, OK!

When I got the collection,

it was something that was suggested to me

that we should split the plants up, so that should anything happen

in one area where the plants were displayed,

that the other area would still save that particular plant.

By splitting the plants, that's when the problems started.

I took a good-sized plant that was about six years old, and I split it,

and both plants died.

They'd lost that spark to live.

Once you got to a point where you were splitting them,

they were just too small.

I needed to find an answer, and quick, really quick.

This is the kit. It's not that expensive.

It takes a penny a day to run it, but the results are wonderful.

The plastic cover, when it comes off, reveals a tray.

Underneath is the water pump. It's got six little sprayers on it.

What this does is,

it creates a moist atmosphere underneath and dry at the top.

This promotes the roots to start growing,

and that is how the whole system works.

There's no secret. It's just tap water.

Right, well, the first step would be to cut the flowers off.

What you're doing is, you're sending the information now

to the plant that it's time to make roots,

rather than the flowers.

Hold the plant with your fingers and tip it out this way.

And I will then just simply gently tease out the root system.

Each one of these can, in fact, become a separate plant.

The genetic information that you need

for this plant to be this colour and this particular type

is, in fact, stored in here,

so it's important to grab quite a bit of it.

Over probably the next two weeks,

buds will actually start to burst out here, which are root buds,

and from there, that will then start to produce the plant.

Here's your cutting.

I'm now going to put that into there,

and I'm going to put it up to its little collar of the top

so the top is now going to sit into the water

and the damp atmosphere there.

The top is going to stay dry.

And you leave it there for two to three weeks.

So this one is now two weeks old.

The roots are starting to grow again.

The existing roots - there were three there originally -

they were half that size when it went in before.

The fact is that that is ready to pot on.

What I'm going to do is, first of all, take the pot,

and I'm going to put a little bit of soil into it.

And then I'm going to take the magic ingredient - the micro riser.

Now, the micro riser is a fungus.

The fungus grows in the wild,

and it will then extend the plant's capability of absorbing nutrients.

I'm going to add some grit on the top

and make it more difficult for vine weevil

to lay its eggs into my nice new plant, and that is it.

There is nothing else to it.

Well, that's 251, so that's 251 reasons

to actually prove that you can take cuttings from small hostas,

and here they all are.

I've never tried taking cuttings from hostas.

I always propagate them by division.

But I will now, because I love them.

Now, my hostas tend not to be eaten by slugs and snails,

and I put it down to the fact

that if you have a healthy plant growing in good soil,

it's much more resistant to any attack.

Whereas if you have a hosta growing in a pot or in poor soil

or erratically watered, that's the one they're going to go for.

Come on.

Well...if the most common question I'm asked about

is how to deal with slugs,

close behind it comes how to deal with dry shade.

I've got an area here in the spring garden

which exactly fits that description, and I've got three plants

which actually make a lovely, delicate composition together

which will thrive in dry shade.

The first, with these white flowers, is called Gillenia trifoliata.

It comes from America, grows in woodland,

not prone to any pests or diseases.

And these beautiful, floaty white flowers.

There's a fern - Dryopteris filix-mas.

A lot of ferns need moisture,

but dryopteris will be quite happy in dry,

and almost all ferns love dark, shady corners.

And finally, this is Epimedium sulphureum.

And this has little yellow flowers

that are held above the foliage in spring.

So I've got a couple of dryopteris,

and I'm going to put these right back in there,

and I think we can come back here where there's almost no light.

But I want the gillenia to have a bit more of a prominent position.

So if I put that like that, and I put a group of them...

White works really well in dark shade.

And when you have delicate white like this, with this pale foliage,

I think it's a perfect combination that shines out of the dark,

but in a subtle, rather alluring way.

OK, plants put in.

Now, even if you have a plant that positively thrives in dry shade,

when you put it in the ground, give it a good soak

and don't let it dry out until you see it actively growing.

Well, I think those have had a good start

and they will thrive in this situation

where a lot of plants will struggle.

Now, Cameron Mackintosh is one of the most successful

theatrical producers in history,

but you may not know that he and his partner, Michael,

also have a superb garden, and Rachel went and paid him a visit.

Oh, my goodness.

This is incredible.

Absolutely incredible.

That's Wedding Day rose just coming into bloom.

This looks like it's been here forever.

-Has it?

-That was the idea.

I mean, I always dreamt that I wanted to have a folly

because there are a lot in this area, and I also wanted,

because of the Roman connection in this area, to have some mosaics.

So do these mosaics have meaning? Because I've spotted cats.

-Oh, you're very good!

-Is that relevant?

-It is.

You have to tell me if you see any other shows.

That looks like a candelabra. Yes.

What show of mine has a candelabra in it?

-Phantom.

-Very good.

-Yes!

MUSIC: The Phantom Of The Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber

-What on earth is that?

-Ah!

-What is that?

-That is...

-A horse?

-..Bob Crowley's brilliant horse from Carousel,

and when the show run ended, it was outside the Shaftesbury Theatre.

I couldn't bear to throw it away, so I said,

"I know exactly where I want to put it."

I remembered these trees and I wanted to see it

galloping through the trees. It's a fabulous beast.

-Magnificent.

-It's great.

Cameron, you're going to miss your train if you're not careful.

-And I can't take the horse?

-No, you can't.

No. Goodness me. Well, we're carrying on, aren't we?

-Absolutely.

-We've got loads more to see.

-All right, I'm going to go. Bye-bye. Lovely to see you.

-Bye-bye.

It's quite a statement, isn't it?

We've got an even bigger statement over there.

It's the elephant from the Les Mis movie.

MUSIC: I Dreamed A Dream by Anne Hathaway

Of course, you're so fortunate

because you've got this incredible setting for the garden.

Tell me about the building itself.

Well, a medieval priory church that obviously stopped

being a working priory due to the dissolution of the monasteries,

then a farm for 500 years, and then an architect called TE Collcutt

was commissioned to turn it into a gentleman's residence around 1900,

whose other claim to fame was building the Palace Theatre

in the West End, where Les Miserables ran for 15 years.

So it was meant to be, you were meant to find this house.

I think we were. And also, the previous owner,

Georgia Langton and her husband, she's a garden designer,

so she took a very ordinary garden and put all the structure in there,

all the block shapes, the yew, all the topiary,

the Portuguese laurels, and it's that structure that we have taken on

and developed and filled in and enjoyed.

And what structures.

I mean, this is like a coco de mer, or perhaps a peach.

-No, we call it the bums.

-You just go straight there.

-Yeah, I'm afraid so.

-Well, you know, I couldn't possibly comment.

MUSIC CONTINUES

How hands-on are you?

Well, look at the scars, fingernails, the knees.

It's not exactly an opening-night outfit, is it?

And I've got my secateurs here.

-That's proof indeed.

-Ready to go.

-Proof indeed.

Look at this. This, to me, shows such a masterful use of colour.

It's interesting, because I never draw any plans.

I just get the plants and I find what feels right.

For example, this Scabiosa Blue Butterfly,

that was in the nursery bed till last week

and I just thought that colour worked really well

with the variegated Miscanthus Morning Light.

The general tone along here is much calmer and softer.

For example this Geranium Blue Cloud, which I love,

when it comes up, you see the cut leaf rather pale,

and that's when the stick supports go in, because it really...

We're only in June now.

You can imagine, by the end of the summer, it's up to here,

and then it is a blue cloud as opposed to a complete blue flop

if you don't put the supports in.

MUSIC: One Day More by The Cast of Les Miserables

Oh, my goodness.

Lovely...moisture-loving planting.

I mean, this rather mad cacophony of colours, but it works.

Absolutely. We're really lucky, cos it's such a heavy clay soil here

that the pond stays as it is, and then I just dig down,

remove the clay, put in good soil, compost,

moisture comes up and the plants absolutely love it.

Look at all of them here, all the different Candelabra primulas,

the persicarias, iris, the zantedeschia.

And that survives. Those can be quite tender,

but because it's really deeply planted, it does survive.

This is one of my favourite views of the garden, through the gate,

down the rill to the bench at the end.

I love this, Michael, this sort of froth and effervescence

of the grasses and the wild flowers there.

But actually, this feels like quite a formal space otherwise.

It does, because we have the crocuses coming through here,

and once they've finished flowering,

we let the grass all grow up and the roses bloom.

This is Rosa Complicata, and it floats above it.

-There's a support in there.

-Yes.

-It's quite clever.

One of the wonderful things is the emotional impact I feel

in this garden seems to be reflected in the visitors as well.

-Yes.

-They feel something when they come through here.

And I just think that's the most magical thing about this garden.

It's infectious.

The geometry of these box hedges, this is absolutely immaculate.

This area does have a very special atmosphere.

It's funny you should say that, because 22 years ago,

this is the first part of the garden I saw properly

and I virtually burst into tears.

And the wonderful thing is that 22 years later,

I think, "Wow, I live here!"

I can well believe it. And, look, thank you so much

for showing me around. I feel like a very lucky girl.

-Come back.

-I will!

Well, I was lucky enough to visit Stavordale in early autumn

and it looked fantastic and it's lovely to see it again in midsummer.

A really special garden.

Now, Stavordale has a fabulous structure,

not least from the building and grounds.

When we came here to Longmeadow, there was nothing,

it was just a bare field, so all the structure has to be built up.

One tends to think of structure as being horizontal, hedges,

but think vertically as well as horizontally

when you're planning your garden for structure.

Here in the Cottage Garden, these Irish yews are really,

really important, and they've become

a vital part of the garden's structure.

Now, you may not be planning to do anything vertical at all.

In fact, you could try and be as horizontal as you possibly can be,

but not until you've done these jobs for the weekend.

If you grow chillies, you'll have good-sized plants by now

and they'll be starting to produce fruits.

To get maximum performance, they will need feeding.

A basic tomato feed is ideal, and liquid seaweed,

and give them this once a week.

This will encourage lots of flowers

and therefore fruits for months to come.

Although it's still a little too early to cut hedges,

because of the risk of disturbing young birds,

it's not too soon to clip topiary, whatever shape it is.

By cutting it now, you're effectively summer-pruning,

and this will hold the shape crisp for the next few months,

and then it can have another light trim before winter.

To get the very best from your sweetpeas,

it's a good idea to pick all the blooms every nine or ten days.

This will result in really good performance in your borders.

It'll delay them going to seed

and also give you wonderful bunches of flowers to decorate the house.

Sometimes in the vegetable garden you just have to cut your losses.

This is a lettuce called Little Gem.

Delicious, sweet little lettuce, but you can see that these have bolted.

By bolting, it means it's setting seed,

and if I strip these outer leaves off like that,

you can see quite clearly a stem is underneath there.

Now, as soon as it does that, the lettuce becomes bitter,

and the reason why things tend to bolt

is because they become stressed,

usually by too much or too little water.

It could be too much or too little heat.

However, not all plants have to be ditched.

I've got some chard here.

This is ruby chard, which I put in a few months ago.

It's grown very well, but you can see that there

has developed a stem, and we want the leaves,

and behind it there is another stem. In fact, a lot of them are bolting.

And if you cut it back, fresh leaves will grow.

It won't necessarily bolt again, so the thing to do

is get in there, cut nice and low and cut the stem off.

These leaves will not be bitter,

they'll be perfectly edible, so you can keep those,

but if we get there, cut that out...

..we can harvest it and stop it bolting.

Now, whilst I can salvage that...

..the thing to do with this lettuce

is pull it up and put it on the compost

and plant something else in the space.

What I'm going to plant in there is a few Florence fennel.

I've grown these from seed,

and Florence fennel you grow for the fleshy base of the leaves,

which should be really nice and big and juicy.

Now, I sowed these on 18th April.

It's not too late, though, to sow seeds now.

Florence fennel will grow fast. They respond to heat.

Sow them direct where they're to grow or in plugs or seed trays,

grow them on and you'll be harvesting them in late September

and October, and they can be very good at that time of year.

To stop these bolting, I need to keep the water supply continuous,

so just steady water. I don't flood them every now and then

and let them dry out, but just make sure that the growth is unbroken.

If I get my watering right and we get a bit of heat,

those should be ready to harvest round about the end of August,

early September. Now, a harvest that will come much sooner than that...

Hello! Where have you come from?

Do you want a pea? Dogs love peas.

I've got blauwschokker, the purple-podded peas that I sowed...

..and you've got the wonderful, chocolaty, purple pod.

If you open it up like that, inside, a neat row of green peas.

And...

..peas from the pod are so sweet.

That's why you grow peas.

And I'll tell you what, Nelly, because you're good,

you can have one. Good girl.

That's it for today. I'll be back here at Longmeadow

at the same time next Wednesday but, until then, bye-bye.

Come on. Good dogs. Come on, then!