Episode 23 Gardeners' World

For the next eight weeks, Gardeners' World is extending to a full hour,

and we shall be bringing you the best of gardening

Well, well, well, this is strikingly different from pretty much

anything else you could see in Britain.

This garden is packed full of the biggest flowering plant family

There's going to be so many surprises.

The team has been out and about, visiting gardens big...

I like a rockery where the rocks take centre stage!

Never before have I used a winch to get a shrub out.

There's some real challenges in this border but, in fact,

there's some really, really easy solutions.

..and meeting gardeners of every kind...

but it's also got a great sense of humour.

..as well, of course, as celebrating our most beautiful plants.

Well, it's a new beginning at this time of year.

There is a sense of going back to school, autumn coming in,

summer has gone and everything is changing.

I love the way that the light in September is better than at

any other time of year. It has a kind of fragile quality to it.

added to that is the poignancy that the days are getting shorter

and there is this sense of wanting to hold and treasure every moment

of the days and the hours that we have in our gardens.

And on top of all that, there's masses to do.

we explore unusual gardens in both the countryside and the city.

A group of local people have literally been greening the streets.

And I'll be here in Devon, exploring some surprising family ties.

As well as all that, we've got the weekend's weather.

And we'll also be paying our first visit to Adam Frost's

new garden, and I'm off to Kew. But more of that later.

I've been meaning to get in the pond and give it a bit of

a sort-out, particularly the yellow irises, the Iris pseudacorus,

which have really expanded in the last year or so.

Right, just concentrate for a second...

This is the canna Erebus that I planted a month ago,

the water canna, which seems to be fine,

we've got the flowering rush, and I love the purple loosestrife.

one, because it's very slippery and there are dips and hollows,

and two, I don't want to disturb the frogs and newts I know are in here.

Iris pseudacorus, it's a native iris, and because it's native,

once it gets established, it makes itself very much at home.

These were planted in spring 2012 and haven't been touched,

And at the moment, it's forming a bit of a wall,

And now is actually a good time to do it - the water is nice and

warm at this time of year, so if you move plants or if you disturb

them at all, that isn't going to be a major problem.

Warm water at the roots will quickly grow back.

All this is planted in baskets, aquatic baskets.

The basket's in there, and this is growing out the side of it.

It was just connected to the parent by one rhizome.

If you can see, that's where I cut, there.

What I'm trying to do is clear back through this,

so I can see through these lovely upright leaves.

And I don't want to get rid of them, I love the iris.

They're bright, they're held tall above the water. They're perfect.

So, it's not a question of lessening the value I'm getting from

the plant, it's just managing it so that it fits in well

and compost this, on the basis that I've got too many,

or if I want to replant it in the other pond or give it away,

I can pot this up in an aquatic basket,

and I can either put it into gravel, where it'll be fine as long

as it's in water, or just some ordinary garden soil.

Put this into a big enough basket, an aquatic basket with holes,

pack the soil around it and over it so it can stand upright

without falling over, and that can be lowered into the water

and this will go on and live and, in turn, spread quite happily.

Well, I've created a little mini havoc, but it'll settle down,

which is to be able to see through the iris foliage rather than just

it becoming a wall that's blocking other plants that I want to see.

Now, these aquatic irises come under the Iridaceae family,

as indeed every plant finds its niche in some family or other.

And over the next four weeks, Carol is going to be celebrating

some of those amazing plants in family groups.

We join her down at RHS Rosemoor in Devon, where she is beginning

Most of us think of plants as belonging to one big, happy family.

But they don't - there are hundreds of different plant families.

DNA testing allows us to identify exactly which group

a plant belongs to, but not many of us have our own DNA testing kit!

But we can rely on our eyes to see similarities in the characteristics

between plants and get a pretty good idea of which family they belong to.

Botanists have grouped plants into over 400 plant families,

One of those families is Ranunculaceae,

It's also known as the buttercup family.

The buttercup itself gives us lots of clues

about the characteristics of the Ranunculaceae family.

Lots of them do - clematis, aquilegias.

Most of these flowers look as though they're composed of petals,

The buttercup is one of the few that has both petals and sepals.

If you look at this clematis, this bud is actually formed of sepals.

It protects the inner workings of the flower.

it opens up and becomes much more brilliantly colourful.

At that stage, insects are drawn into the centre here.

They are drawn in both to the pollen,

nearly the whole family have a multitude of stamens -

to the nectar that lies deep within the flowers.

In most Ranunculaceae, the leaves are born in one of two ways.

They are either basal, they come actually from the base of the plant,

or they are coalescent, they are born up the flower stems.

for almost every condition and every aspect.

Perfect for livening up a dank late-winter garden

And for shade, one of the most poisonous of plants - the aconite.

There are no trees within the family Ranunculaceae -

the great majority of buttercups are perennials,

If you've got a small garden, it's really vital to maximise every inch

of space, and vertical space is particularly important.

That's where the clematis comes into its own.

This is a member of Ranunculaceae.

It's a Japanese anemone, a very familiar plant.

so it runs just under the surface of the soil

each of which has little nodules all the way along it

and each one of those nodules is capable of making

a couple of roots that are fairly substantial, pieces like this.

And I'm just going to tease them away from the pot.

All I want to do is cut these into small pieces.

I want to remove any of those fibrous roots at the side of there,

and then I want to cut it in little pieces -

chunks about an inch, two-and-a-half centimetres, long.

When I've got some bits, I'll just get my seed tray

and place them on the top, like this.

I can probably get about 20 or 30 little cuttings in there.

Cover them with some grit, water it really well

and put it in a nice, light, bright place.

Eventually you'll see little shoots developing.

Leave it a few weeks after that, when they'll make root,

and then when you feel they've developed properly,

take them out and pot them up individually.

your root cuttings will flourish and within no time at all,

like this gorgeous Anemone hybrida, Honorine Jobert.

I suppose it typifies the kind of plants that are within this family.

It's incredibly elegant and yet very, very subtle.

Whatever the conditions in your garden,

there's bound to be a member of the Ranunculaceae family

I find it fascinating the way that plants that seem so unconnected,

when you find out they're in the same family

and you start to look into them more closely,

you do see the family resemblance, and that of course does help you

in how you grow them and how you place them in the garden.

Now, the buttercup that Carol didn't talk about,

although she did talk of course about the Japanese anemone,

it's time to think about planting spring bulbs.

And one of the things that I like to do first,

before I start putting them in the ground,

not least cos the ground is often very hard,

is to start planting up pots, and the beauty of growing bulbs in pots

is that it means you can grow any type of bulb,

because you can create the right conditions for it in the pot.

It also means if you don't have a garden,

you can have a fabulous spring display.

Now, Anemone blanda are essentially a woodland plant.

They like light shade and they like nice, loose, friable soil

Now, I've got a general-purpose potting mix

which I use for planting bulbs in pots

and it's a mixture of our own compost,

a little bit of proprietary peat-free compost, some coir,

You can see it's really free-draining and, by and large,

you won't go wrong if you get a peat-free potting compost

The counsel of perfection for the anemone, actually,

If you have got leaf mould, then add some of that too.

So I am going to put a little bit of leaf mould in the bottom,

a little bit of this and then mix it up, just like preparing pastry.

Now, anemone tubers look, quite frankly, like goat droppings.

They're small, black and very hard indeed,

and it's a good idea to soak them before using them.

These have been in here for a couple of hours, overnight is perfect.

Now, when you're growing bulbs in a pot,

you don't need to worry about planting depth too much.

And you don't need to worry about spacing them too far apart.

and you can repot them or replace them next year.

So that will do and we'll put a bit of compost over the top,

like that, and then I will dress it with some grit.

One, it will stop the surface either getting too wet or capping,

and capping is when soil gets wet and then dries out,

and the surface dries out much quicker than that below it,

so it forms a hard crust and the rather delicate shoots

sometimes can't work their way through that.

The second reason is that it stops the water splashing up

after the plants have grown and spattering the petals

with the compost from the surface of the pot -

it keeps them clean and, thirdly, it looks nice.

So we've got that there. I will write a label in case I forget.

And of course, you can get Anemone blanda that are white,

you get them pink and this wonderful blue.

I've got another blue which I want to put in a pot too.

Earlier on, I was looking at the flag iris, Iris pseudacorus.

Well, the same family - Iris reticulata,

and it's one of my favourite iris of all.

It's got such intense colours and this is a variety called Harmony

which has got just a jewel-like blue, that's almost mauve.

and flowers the end of January, February time,

and at that time of year it blazes out

of the late winter, early spring light.

and then when you've done some drainage,

So this very gritty compost is perfect as it is.

you need to have very free-draining soil.

It likes growing in there cos that keeps it dry

or if you've got a rock garden, they will grow.

But I just grow it in pots. Don't worry about spacing, pack 'em in.

And as long as you remember to stick them pointy side up,

Ooh, does that look like it could be a biscuit?

It's not, it's an Iris reticulata, I'm afraid.

I find in pots that they last for about two or three years.

And then they start to feel a little bit unhappy.

They need watering when you plant them

and maybe, at most, watering once a month after that, but no more.

Now, I actually keep these in an open-sided cold frame,

so they're protected on top by a glass top, and that keeps them dry,

then put them somewhere a little bit sheltered.

Don't put them in a heated greenhouse either,

you don't want that - you want them to be fairly cold.

But if you can provide that range of conditions,

they will provide you with just stunning spring colour.

Now, a growing problem over the last 10 or 20 years

has been the very lack of colour in our front gardens.

And that's because, not unreasonably,

people have been increasingly using them

However, there is a slight change in this trend,

looking at ways we can refresh and renew

The RHS Greening Grey campaign has discovered

that one in four gardens in the UK is paved over.

I want to find ways of making the most of our urban spaces

Like many neighbourhoods around the country, it's had its difficulties,

but the community has taken matters into its own hands.

A group of local people have literally been greening the streets

and I'm keen to get some inspiration.

Hello. Hiya. Hazel, hi. Helen. Hiya.

So, what's the story, when did it all start? Um...

it started planting about 12 years ago

in response to the fact that the area was being emptied out

because the plans were for total demolition.

We just basically started to clean up the streets

So why's it so important to green the grey, to grow stuff?

Cos it makes us happy. I mean, it just raises your spirits.

It's almost like an insanity at some point

because if you're living in such a derelict, neglected area,

So you take up a new madness as a cure,

Wow! I love that. The power of planting.

has started the renovation of the houses.

It's been the catalyst for the whole change. It has, it has.

And stubborn women have been the catalyst as well, yeah.

What we'd like to see is it taking off like an epidemic, like a rash,

and we'd like to see rashes of pots and plants

People choose to walk through this street

and you can see people slowing down

as they get to the planter and just looking.

Community spirit, a desire for positive change and planting

has transformed this area of Toxteth

into a colourful and vibrant community.

I've been inspired by what people have done here

and I'm keen to get involved and play my part.

I'm going to demonstrate just how easy it is to transform

I think the best way to do this is with container gardening.

I get to put together some great plants

and create some wonderful combinations for the garden.

My first thing is I want some height, so this is a cotinus,

I'm going to tease the roots a little bit,

just to give them a chance to help them to spread and just put it in.

OK, so next to my cotinus, I'm going to put in some crocosmia.

I want some big leaves, I want some big, bold leaves,

so I'm going to put this canna in here.

So to add another dimension, I'm going to put in fuchsia,

This has got this variegated leaf with a pink tinge on it

and it's trailing as well, so it'll grow

and it will just cascade over the side of the pot.

So this combination looks really exotic,

so a final firm press and there we have our first combination.

I think that's... I think that's great. I love that.

For my next pot, I'm going to put these geraniums in this planter.

that classic Mediterranean, summer plant,

But because we're putting it on the windowsill,

a good tip is to put some grit in the bottom,

just to help to give it some stability,

so I think we'll put three in cos three's always a good number.

It looks really nice and they're in like that.

Geraniums, they have a long flowering season,

So it doesn't have to just be flowers that you plant, actually -

and put together a beautiful combination of herbs

that you can have growing just by the door,

so it's easy, convenient for you to just grab a handful

And now the really fun bit is I get to place all the plants.

So, in this one I've got hot colours.

This front garden belongs to Mojeed and his partner Maxine.

They were so inspired by the way the area

has been transformed that they've moved back.

Hey, hi, guys. Hi, hello. Come outside. OK.

Oh! Wow! What do you think? It's beautiful. Boss, brilliant.

Come round this side and have a look. Oh, it's absolutely gorgeous.

Yeah, that colour is gorgeous, isn't it?

And that's picked up here with the... With the orange.

All the neighbours will be wanting it now. Thank you very much.

My pleasure. Thank you very much. Enjoy, enjoy. I will, thanks.

Oh, thank you. Thanks very much. That's brilliant.

The nurserymen Nick Macer has a passion for exotic plants

and in a new series he's travelling the length and breadth of Britain

to explore some unexpected tropical delights.

over 5,000 islands that make up the British Isles,

boasting a huge range of microclimates,

from wide-open fells like here in the Peak District

to dripping-wet Atlantic temperate rainforest.

This country really is a haven for plants from across the world.

Our nation is bathed by the Gulf Stream, which raises our temperature

above the global average for our latitude.

This means Britain is warmer and more temperate as a result.

I'm here to meet the man who's done something

He's brought the Southeast Asian tropics

to the heart of the industrial north.

This Sheffield suburban house hides the jungle

umbrella plants and 15 types of bamboo.

I've always had an interest in reptiles and amphibia.

I have to admit, Simon, it is quite some specimen.

So, Nick, this is one of my favourite bamboos.

It is Phyllostachys vivax aureocaulis.

I do grow this, I admit, but it is nowhere near as big as yours.

I've actually built a compost heap on top of it,

so a lot of my shreddings from the garden go onto this compost heap

and it creates a really rich environment, which of course

this plant loves and it just romps away.

Now, there are a lot of people, Simon,

who would be very wary about growing bamboo of any sort in their garden,

but I think there is a really important point to be made

here about clumpers and spreaders, right? Absolutely, Nick.

There is a bamboo for every situation.

I've created a jungle effect here with some bamboos which move

about quite a lot, and many of them are unsuitable

for the average small suburban garden.

there are a lot of bamboos which are tight clumpers, and those will

to pick the bamboos for your own situation, using expert advice.

Simon has a wide range of rare bamboos.

The finest of the hardy blue stem species, Borinda papyrifera,

the fantastic knobbly cane Chinese walking stick bamboo,

Even the species which is the favourite food of the giant panda,

For me, one of the great joys here are some fantastic umbrella plants.

Normally seen as house plants or on foreign holidays,

Simon has hardy, mature sheffleras thriving in Sheffield.

What made you think about planting a tropical paradise in Sheffield?

Well, to be honest with you, Nick, I was really enthused by plants,

particularly jungle plants, but I don't fly.

I've flown once and I was terrified, so really,

the chance of me experiencing jungle is not very high.

I decided I would try as best I could to create my own jungle,

so that's what I have attempted to do here.

Some evergreen trees, which I just loved.

The sort of things that come from Southeast Asia,

some very tropical-looking plants, which are...surprisingly,

if they are collected in the right location, are hardy.

you can create a very jungly and a very exotic atmosphere.

So, how does this garden survive in the Sheffield climate?

Well, I think our situation, which is three-quarters of the way down

quite a steep hill, allows for very good air drainage.

So, the cold air is sinking deep into the valley bottom,

past your garden? Yes. You're not sitting in that frost pocket?

I'm able to create, really, what I hope is, what I feel is,

a very jungly and very tropical-looking garden.

Well, I think you have certainly done that, without a doubt.

Wow! Simon, I am loving this huge, hardy snow gum.

The snow gum is a species which originates high on

Like so many plants here, the snow gum is a close relation

But it's one which thrives in the British climate.

To be honest with you, Nick, I grew it from seed 28 years ago. Wow!

So, that has been witness to your garden maturing to the state

Absolutely, it has been here all the time.

What a tree, and what an achievement! Thanks very much.

I always love it when you come across a garden

that you feel couldn't possibly have anything other

than the hardiest of plants and suddenly you find exotics,

completely at home. Mind you, this banana, this is Ensete,

the Abyssinian banana, are really tender.

It's said that you only have to say the word "frost"

and they shrivel up and give up the ghost.

So, I will bring those in probably in about three, four weeks' time

even if the weather is good, because if there's just an overnight

snap and it dips below zero, that can kill them.

Now, if you grow plants that shouldn't survive in your

part of the world, or you are particularly proud of,

because they are exotic, tropical and unusual, share them with us.

You can either post them on our Facebook page or you can

e-mail us a picture and an account of them and you can get our

Coming up on the programme, we meet a man devoted to growing

one of the most dramatic members of the buttercup family.

What I love about delphiniums is their wow factor.

And Adam Frost moves into a new house with a garden that is

full of potential to create a space for all the family to enjoy.

This is more less crying out to make a big herbaceous border.

This could look absolutely brilliant.

There's no question that some of the borders that we have here at

Longmeadow are really big and they take a lot of plants

But when I heard that, earlier this year,

the Royal Botanic Garden at Kew had opened what was the largest

I thought that was something I really had to go and see.

30-odd years ago, when I lived in London, I often used to come

I always made a beeline for Decimus Burton's Palm House,

which is this extraordinary upturned boat of a glass building.

And then walked through the grounds, going down this long,

taking you down to the Palace and the Orangery.

Although it was a lovely place to come to,

and although there were masses of specialist plants, what was

noticeable was the absence of what one might call a herbaceous border.

A mixed border that made it more like a garden,

The landscape architect William Nesfield

with huge deodar cedars on either side.

But it has never shown off Kew's botanical expertise...until now.

After three years of evolution, Kew has finally got it right.

The scale of Nesfield's broadwalk means that the planting

has to be of an equal, extraordinary scale, so what they ended up with

are the largest herbaceous borders ever created in the world.

Richard Wilford is the head garden designer who, with his team,

has created horticultural history here at Kew.

As a gardener, I am fascinated by the logistics.

I mean, preparing the soil must have been a major thing? Well, it was.

this whole border covers, with all the cultivated ground.

We had about 1,000 tonnes of compost to put on it to dig it in.

How many plants? There's about 30,000 plants in this border.

So, the whole border is 320 metres on each side,

It looks as though it is mirroring pretty much? It is.

It is a mirror image on each side of the path.

I see you have these yew cones spaced along.

Were these always part of the plan or did you add them in?

No, they were one of the first things I put in, actually.

I wanted to create that formality that Nesfield intended

and it just brings the whole landscape into the path.

What were the limitations that you had to work with,

Well, this border is seen from both sides.

It's not like a traditional border which is often against

so we really needed to make sure it looked good from whatever angle.

Does that mean you've got your tallest plants in the middle?

Sometimes, not always. I like to mix it up a bit.

I didn't want to just have a big mound so we had to vary the heights

a bit throughout the border but, yes, generally,

the higher plants towards the middle.

What are your themes that you've pursued?

Well, because this is Kew, I wanted to try and link a bit

so I have kind of themed some of these circles,

This one, for example, is a Lamiaceae family,

It's got loads of great plants for summer colour, which is helpful,

like salvias and stachys and perovskias.

Er, but it's also linked to a lot of Kew research

into the essential oils a lot of these plants contain.

You're under great pressure to provide a public display.

Did you have to get in big plants from day one?

No, we actually used nine-centimetre pots,

partly due to the quantity we had to put in.

This was all planted in... last October

I like being able to see this in its very early stages.

Yes, it will get more magnificent in a year or two,

but it's so interesting at this stage.

You can see, for example, the way that the sedums

have a texture completely different to the foliage

of the achillea, let alone the colour you get on top.

And then behind it there's Deschampsia,

so already you're building up a tapestry of texture and colour

that will only enlarge and get stronger over time.

don't be tempted to fill it with a few big plants.

Much better effect, much better value for money.

The closer you look at these borders, the more you realise

I love the way that the purple of the salvia flowers

picks up the chocolate colour on the stems

topped by these glorious plum-coloured flowers.

Just three plants, but you couldn't improve it by adding anything else.

Inevitably, some plants grow faster than others, and at this stage,

they've not necessarily reached their final heights,

but it is interesting to see the way that

you don't have to have the tallest plants at the back,

or even the middle. You can have tall plants like this Agastache

in the front of the border, so you look through it

and pick out shapes and foliage in the background.

These borders are quite unlike anything I've seen before.

They're a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

And if I lived in London or anywhere near,

I would certainly come and visit them as often as I possibly could

and share this remarkable horticultural experiment.

But it's not just in our great gardens

that we find stunning plant collections.

there are gardeners cultivating their own particular plant passions.

And in Hemel Hempstead, Graham Austin has dedicated his life

to growing one member of the buttercup family.

What I love about delphiniums is their wow factor.

A lot of plants rely on real bright colours

to give them the wow factor, where the delphiniums don't.

All the colours blend in together so you've got the dusky pinks,

the blues, the violets - they all blend in together.

One of my favourites is delphinium Walton Benjamin,

Absolutely stunning, and if that was at the bottom of your garden,

it would show off a mile, it'd look spectacular.

There's short varieties - three, three-and-a-half foot high -

You've got the mid varieties, five to six foot,

and if you've got an old Victorian wall,

you've got the six to eight foot varieties,

so, yeah, they blend in all different gardens.

People think delphiniums are difficult to grow.

They're not - they're very tough, hardy perennials.

It's getting the right strain of delphinium.

The most popular delphinium is a Pacific Giant.

Most delphinium florets are semi-double,

Then we go to the doubles, so they have no eye in the centre,

And then you go on another stage to the rosebud doubles.

every other Sunday or something like that,

and I used to love going into this nursery

and the smell of the greenhouse after they'd watered, it was lovely.

And I used to take cuttings off different plants.

I didn't have a clue what I was doing.

My parents' garden is full of old conifers and things that I'd rooted.

Love being outside, I love the nature, the birds, the wildlife.

So the option for me was to be a nurseryman when I left school, yeah.

Delphiniums, they're actually an alpine plant,

If that goes down to minus 10 here this winter,

They go dormant, they rest, and then they've got the energy

to produce this great big spike the next summer.

A delphinium will begin to flower about mid June.

for the whole spike to run out and come in full flower.

But I think the actual flowering lasts about six weeks,

because these florets, as they start to open,

and that's as good as any flower, to me, anyway.

right down to the ground after it's finished flowering,

clear it all out and give it a dose of fertiliser,

usually in September/October you'll get a good second flowering.

They are quite vulnerable to slugs, delphiniums.

You've got to keep the slugs off them, specially at the early stages.

So we recommend when you cut down your delphinium for the winter,

you cover it with sharp sand or horticultural grit.

Some people put it round the delphinium - we actually cover it.

It looks like a load of molehills here in the winter,

and then you've got to use slug control in the spring.

One thing you must do with your delphiniums,

either a young or an old plant, is thin them.

So in March, April, you'll notice that your delphinium will have...

It could have as much as 30 or 40 little stems,

they're potential flowers, but that's too many.

You just get a knife and you cut them down to ground level

In a young plant you'd leave three stems,

and as the plant gets older, you'd leave five, seven or nine stems.

No more than that, really. And that will give you better flower spikes.

Also it lets the air through the centre of the plant,

and it just helps with the overall health of your plant.

After you've thinned your delphinium,

you want to stake your plant. This is very important.

If they're not staked, this main spike will lean over

and then water will get in and the crown will rot.

We use four-foot canes and we do three as a triangle round the plant.

So they're in a cage, really, and they just sway,

they hit the string, and then sway back.

is stake each flower spike separately to a cane tightly,

because the wind would blow and it would just snap.

Now, a lot of these are not really up to scratch at the moment.

This is a very tight double, and I'm quite pleased with that one.

Doubles are not that common, so this one I'm going to grow on

for another couple of years and if it stays good

then hopefully we'll have a chance of naming that delphinium.

I've got two children, so we've got Rebecca,

and that's obviously got to be a pink,

and we've got Scott, so we're thinking a white Arctic Scott.

I'm glad I didn't have any more children!

Last year, no delphiniums were registered,

so we need more people growing delphiniums,

growing them and hybridising them and making them more popular,

because they're lovely plants. They deserve to be more popular.

And Graham's absolutely right - cut them back and almost certainly

they'll regrow and re-flower, like this one behind me,

Longmeadow's a hard place for plants,

and delphiniums seem to thrive on it.

I've got some seeds to sow into the Cutting Garden,

and now is a really good time to sow hardy annuals.

If you sow these, they will germinate, a nice warm soil,

and hopefully establish roots right into the end of October

They will last the winter - they are hardy, after all -

and then they've got a head start and will grow away next spring,

whereas if you leave the sowing until next spring,

they will flower up to a month later.

And I'm going to sow a relative of the delphinium, the larkspur,

This larkspur is a variety called White King -

flowers for a nice long time, about four weeks,

and apparently - because I've not grown it before -

lasts a good long time when it's cut.

And of course when you're choosing cut flowers,

that's an important consideration. It's got to look good,

but ideally keep looking good for up to a week or more.

thinness and wide spacing is a virtue.

A good tip for larkspur is to vernalise them.

What that means, basically, is giving them a taste of winter.

And then they think it's spring when they come out

and they're more likely to germinate.

is just put the packets of seed in the freezer for a week or two.

What I'll do is I'll have these couple of rows in here now

and then I'll sow another couple of rows next March,

or as soon as the ground is dry enough to take them.

These will flower first and then I'll get good succession,

a nice continuous supply of lovely white flowers.

But I also want to sow some cornflowers in here too,

and I've got a variety called Double Blue

And of course cornflowers you think of as a field flower,

and so we can grow them in our gardens as lovely flowers,

and also as a link to the countryside.

They have quite curious shaped seeds.

so give them a water and don't let them dry out,

and then they will germinate and grow up,

so you don't need to mollycoddle them at all.

Now, this part of the garden was originally made

But, of course, before that, it was an empty field

and when we came here 25, 26 years ago,

the only garden that existed was in my mind.

And Adam Frost has moved to a new home in Lincolnshire

where he plans to make a garden for himself and his family.

And we join him as he begins that adventure.

Looking back, gardening has been a big part of my life

I even had my own patch on Nan and Grandad's allotment

with a little sign with my name painted on it.

At 16, I started on North Devon Parks Department

I then went on and trained as a landscaper before my lucky break

which was working for Geoff Hamilton at Barnsdale.

This year, I've taken on my biggest challenge yet.

I moved my family to this beautiful old house and garden

in the heart of the Lincolnshire countryside.

I want to carefully coax and nurture this wonderful old place

into the true family garden that the whole tribe can enjoy.

Back in March, just a few weeks before the family and I were due

to move in, I went to have a look at the new garden.

excited but at the same time nervous about what we were about to take on.

This beautiful old garden is big, but do you know what?

You can really see in the past that somebody cared about this space.

I've got this wonderful, wonderful walled space.

This wall here is south-facing, so for me, you know,

this is more or less crying out to make a big herbaceous border.

Widen these out and have that sort of colour, that texture, that scent,

and right through the summer, this could look absolutely brilliant.

Do you know, I'm so excited about this garden.

I think that's going to be the most difficult thing for me,

There's going to be so many surprises

But I think actually in reality, to get this garden right,

it will be about me sort of gently adding ideas.

This garden's got all the growing conditions you could imagine.

from mini-redesigns to replanting projects.

Every great garden should have a beautiful house and I've got that.

But I'll let you into a little secret.

The reason I took his place on was that wisteria.

I think it must have gone in at the same time as the house was built.

It's Wisteria sinensis, because it grows anticlockwise.

The garden's not just for me. It's for the family as well.

And they all want to get stuck in and grow some veg.

I've got this cracking little extra space that's close to the house

and I think for me, this is going to be the kitchen garden.

But I want to put a contemporary twist on it.

it's light, it's airy, it's right by those walls.

we can get the fruits and we can play with things like that,

somewhere that I can actually get the kids involved, you know.

More than anything, I really want this garden to have,

At first, I always recommend that you wait for your new garden

But there is a job that will unlock the potential of your new patch

For me, one of the first things you need to do when you get

a new garden is really start to understand the soil.

You need to know what you can grow and actually what you can't grow.

So I've gone round the garden and I've collected up five samples,

you can have slightly different soils and make up.

But make sure when you're actually taking that sample

that you're digging down a good couple of inches

before you actually start to take the sample.

What I like to do is pour it out in my hand...

And straightaway, it starts to go into quite a firm shape

which tells me instantly there's quite a lot of clay in there.

So the next thing I do is start to actually run my thumb through it

and now all of the sudden, I can feel sand,

I can feel grit and I can feel that it's slightly silty.

and that's probably had years of goodness

and someone's worked that really, really well.

But if I look at somewhere that's going to be the veg garden,

which I don't know what's gone on in there. It's an old yard.

It could have had animals in there but actually at the same time,

it might have just been a storage yard.

You can see, it's starting to fall through my hands.

It more or less feels like the nutrients

I think that's another thing as well,

when you're understanding your soils - clay soil we all moan about

because we think it's hard work, but actually

it holds those nutrients in, whereas sandy soils - lovely,

easy to dig, but the nutrients drain out, so it tells me

really in reality that when the veg garden's completed,

this soil is going to need a lot of work,

a lot of organic matter, to really build up those nutrients

and put that structure back into that soil.

Whilst you're investigating your soil, for just a few quid,

you can pick up a kit from the garden centre and test

It's a little bit fiddly, but it's well worth doing.

Testing the pH level will make sure you know what plants you can grow.

My soil sample is alkaline which means I can grow an awful lot

of things, but I'm going to avoid choosing those ericaceous plants,

things like rhododendrons and camellias,

Do you know, if I think back to that 16-year-old kid starting off,

I mean, this garden's beyond my wildest dreams.

To think now I'm the custodian of this space is really quite special.

Adam is too modest to mention it himself, but of course,

he has won many gold medals from Chelsea

and is a very, very talented garden designer,

so his garden is going to be something special.

Because here are some jobs for the weekend.

it's now a race against time to get as many as possible to ripen.

And by cutting off the tops of the plant,

down to the top truss with fruit on it,

you'll put the energy into the green tomatoes

so that they ripen as quickly as possible.

from camellias, rhododendrons and azaleas,

especially those growing in containers, it's important

to water them well for the rest of this month.

And this will ensure that the buds, which are forming now,

don't drop off before they open next spring.

Now, nothing affects our gardens more than the weather.

Hello there. It's been another very dry week across the UK, certainly in

southern areas. We are crying out for the rain. We will be in luck,

certainly, on Saturday. Bringing substantial rain to the UK. We could

see further heavy pulses through Wales and the West through Saturday

evening. It is going to feel pretty autumnal. But rain passing out

through the east by the end of Saturday night. On Sunday, a

brighter day with a view showers in northern central and eastern areas.

Feeling a little bit warmer as well. 18-23dC in the south-east. Next

At a time of year when the garden is dominated by exotic plants

from all over the world, you've got bananas, cannas, dahlias,

sunflowers, fabulous orange tithonias...

They all are refining and jostling with each other

But there is one plant that actually I think can hold its own

in the sense that it's been grown in gardens in this country

since at least Elizabethan times, and it's this clematis.

It's Clematis Purpurea Plena Elegans.

And it will go on flowering now right into autumn and will outlast

all these tender plants from more exotic countries and,

But we'll be back here next week for another full one-hour programme,

so join me here at Longmeadow for that.