Episode 28 Gardeners' World

Gardeners' World has grown to a full hour, giving us even more

time to celebrate the very best of British gardening.

Hello. Welcome to Gardeners' World. Now, if there's any one thing

that defines this time of year, it's apples,

the sight of them on trees, ranging from the slightly furred

browny-green of the russets to brilliant red and even the

dark purple of an apple like Spartan.

But above all, for me, it's the smell,

that cidery tang that is carried on the slightly damp autumnal breeze.

It's the perfect marker of the season.

And when you store them, it needs to be cool, dark and slightly humid.

It's no good, say, in an airing cupboard.

And then, to go to your apple store, take out one of these lovely fruits,

cut it open, and all that autumnal, cidery tang comes flooding back.

Frances continues to look at extreme gardening.

This week, she's on the west coast of Scotland.

This is the protection from the famous Highland midge.

We visit a couple whose collection for acers sets their garden

This is, I think, one of the brightest reds that you get,

and the combination of the trees is magnificent.

And Joe celebrates a rock garden of epic proportions.

This is the rocking stone, and if you just very gently...

try this end, it actually rocks perfectly. Oh, wow!

It's nice to have a sense of fun and play in the garden.

And I shall be planting elephant garlic,

Whilst I love apples and try and eat them for as much of the year

A good pear, exactly ripe, is a supreme, sensuous experience.

It's lovely. But - and it's a big but - to get it exactly ripe needs

a little bit of organisation. Now, I need to get a container here.

Now, this is a variety called Concorde,

and you can see it's got good fruit, they're in a good shape.

And you just take a finger, put it on the point where the stalk

meets the stem, the spur of the espalier, and just lift carefully.

Now, that is not ready to come, so we'll leave it.

Now, that one's come off neatly in my hand.

and then you handle it, like apples, really carefully.

So what I do is I pick them over the course of about two weeks,

put them in the larder on a shelf so they're not touching,

and then I'll take at any one time about half a dozen and put them

on a sunny windowsill, and those will ripen in a matter of days.

And you can tell if a pear is ripe by at the stalk end just press

because it does most of its ripening from the inside out.

A ripe pear is juicy in a way that almost no other fruit is.

The late, great Christopher Lloyd said that the only way to truly

enjoy a pear was to take all your clothes off and eat it in the bath.

And now is a good time to be thinking of planting pear trees.

Bare-root plants have the great advantage of being cheaper

and a much better range of varieties to choose from.

And all you need to do is buy a whip, which is a straight stem,

and then put in some sort of support - and these are just simple

bean sticks, but you could do something fancy with wires -

and just start training the buds that grow to grow along the stem.

At first, that seems like a long journey. It's going to take forever.

In two or three years, you have espaliers,

and in ten years they look as though they've been there forever.

Anybody can grow pears - they couldn't be more domestic -

any garden, anywhere, which of course is a great virtue.

But Frances Tophill has been looking at gardens that are not anywhere,

they're right out on the edge, taking horticulture to the extreme.

And this week, she's gone to little Loch Broom

Where I'm standing is on the same latitude

some places with some pretty extreme and inhospitable weather.

So you might think that any garden laying on the same latitude

will struggle and feel uncomfortable being here.

Not this one, created by Sue Pomeroy and Will Soos.

And in a beautiful setting, as well, but you really are

right on the edge here, so there must be some challenging conditions.

Well, the wind, you get gales up to 50mph on a regular basis.

That's our average norm, gusting up to 80mph,

and sometimes recorded at 120mph. Really?

So you can imagine it does cause a lot of problems.

Everything has to be grown with that in mind.

As well, of course, we have heavy rain. Yeah.

Yeah, on average it's 80 inches a year.

Wow! So that's sort of three times the national average of rainfall.

And how we cope with that in our garden is by putting in

a lot of rills and drainage around the edges of the flowerbeds.

And if you notice, the garden's on a gentle slope,

so it sort of takes the water, hopefully, away down into the sea.

You can see we've created this very large raised bed here... Yes!

It's very sandy and well drained, and it's full of these stones,

as well. All these are from your own garden? Yes. Yes. There's loads!

The idea of this bed was actually to build it as a South African bed.

We've chosen the plants that can cope with extreme amounts of rain.

And also, having the impoverished soil is very necessary for

South African flora. They hate nutrients.

You can find them up in the high mountains.

So those obviously require still quite

And it's really beautiful. Stunning. It's structurally amazing.

'Despite the extra steps that Will and Sue have gone to with

'their drainage, some plants still need special care.'

So, Frances, we're digging out these succulents from this round

bed here because they need a little bit more protection

in the wintertime. They come from a hot area in South Africa, the Karoo.

Right. But this aloe obviously is tender,

but there's another one in the middle. Does that not come out?

It's much bigger. We actually leave that one in, Frances.

It's actually hardy. It's Aloe striatula,

and it's been in position for about three to four years now. Really?

And it's coped really, really well. That's so surprising, isn't it?

You just actually pop it straight into this terracotta pot.

It looks very loose... OK. ..and empty. We don't put soil in with it.

No soil, no gravel! It's a storage vessel for the winter.

And the only bit of watering we do is to actually water the

outside of the terracotta pot, which absorbs the moisture... OK.

..and just keeps it going throughout the winter.

That's all it needs, is that tiny bit of moisture.

But we try to keep it as dry as possible.

So, clearly, as well as the water, wind is a massive consideration.

We've chosen grasses like the Molinia here,

the Molinia Transparent, which actually acts as a fantastic prop

because it's got a central root system.

Herbaceous plants tend to have a spreading root system and grow

around these grasses and grow up through grass.

Oh, so it sort of acts like a stake, but a natural staking system.

Absolutely, yes. Wow. A bit like an anchor.

But the best thing about the grasses, of course,

is we use their movement in the wind.

The wind kind of enhances the grasses' movement.

We also have this beautiful eupatorium which is really solid.

We had an 80mph gale, actually, at the beginning of August. Really?

You would never know, would you, from looking at it? No, not at all.

I think we need to explain what's happening with our faces.

Yes, this is the protection from the famous Highland midge. A-ha.

This is what we have to wear for four months of the summer

when they're out... They're really...

..because of the biting. They really itch, don't they? Yes.

So, what are you doing with this watsonia?

OK. This is the flower here on a healthy plant. Mm-hm.

OK. That's quite a big clump there, isn't it? Yes.

so these are ready for planting out now.

So the reason that you can't just divide that and stick them

back in the ground is what? Because they'd be weaker plants?

Yeah, there's a tendency for them to rot off if you plant

the divisions directly in the ground... OK.

..at this time of year. Then leave them in the pot for a year?

Yes, till they get established and a good root system.

don't give ourselves credit for what we do.

And this is a prime example, where you take

one kind of landscape, which is really quite barren - it's harsh.

But if you put in a lot of hard work,

you can turn it into something like this - completely different.

Joe Swift has been visiting a range of rock gardens and this week,

where the rockery is truly magnificent.

Last time, we looked at how rockeries became popular

with the Edwardians and Victorians as somewhere to display

and cultivate alpines and other similar plants.

But personally, I like a rockery where the rocks take centre stage.

Over the last couple of years, designers have used rocks

to structure and define their gardens, allowing them to give

character to the space and help shape the planting.

Now, as a garden designer, I find that really exciting

where two garden designers, many years apart,

have used rocks in dynamic but very different ways.

Steve, I've got an admission to make -

this is my first time ever at Chatsworth. Wow!

Very disappointing! I should've been here years ago, I know. Yeah.

Now, what is the idea behind this rockery, originally?

So the rock garden was built by the sixth Duke of Devonshire and

his head gardener, Joseph Paxton, and between them they had travelled

across Europe and they had been building fantastic things

here at Chatsworth and they were getting more and more ambitious,

I suppose, so the rock garden was about bringing nature from

the surrounding landscape in and turning it into

a garden feature, but on a monumental scale.

Is that one enormous rock? No. It does look like it, doesn't it?

But, no, it's many rocks and they're stacked up on top of each other

and almost cemented together, to create this wonderful stag.

That's amazing! I mean, the craftsmanship behind that,

and it does look like it's just a rocky outcrop.

How did they lift these two or three-tonne boulders to do it?

Yeah, phenomenal. And Paxton developed a steam-powered crane

that he built on-site to lift the rocks into place.

This is the rocking stone and if you just very gently...

try this end, it actually rocks perfectly. Oh, wow!

This was designed to be a spectacle, something to show off with,

with the guests that were coming round the garden at that time.

It's nice to have a sense of fun and play in the garden.

Now, of course, more domestic-sized rockeries,

some that I've looked at, are much smaller - well, smaller rocks -

but also the approach to planting is completely different, as well,

using lots of small alpines in amongst the rocks.

But how has the planting evolved and what is the approach now to it?

Originally, it was secondary to the rocks - the rocks were

the main thing and the planting was quite natural,

probably reflecting nature but with horticultural twist,

but certainly low-key compared to the rocks.

And over the years, the rockery's gone out of fashion.

Some generations have liked it more than others.

Particularly the ninth Duchess, we know,

wasn't the biggest fan of the rockery.

so she planted it as a woodland with trees -

yew trees, actually. You can still see some today.

In the '60s, the 11th Duke and Duchess cleared

a lot of the woodland away and then they planted in more ornamentally

with herbaceous plants but also with things like rambling roses.

So what we've done in the last five and ten years is started

to remove much of the vegetation, actually.

We've selected the key plants we want to maintain -

just to try and put it back to what we think the sixth Duke wanted.

Do you think someone can take the essence of this

and recreate it in their own garden? Yeah, absolutely.

There's some lovely areas where we've got some very simple planting,

whether they're shrubby or herbaceous, and just a few rocks,

just to create a bit of a stack or a bit of a feature,

and they just provide a foil to the planting.

Of course, perhaps not on the scale of these rocks -

not two or three tonnes - but on a smaller scale,

Last year, one of our most successful

contemporary garden designers used Paxton's Chatsworth garden

as his inspiration at the Chelsea Flower Show.

Dan Pearson used elements of Paxton's designs

and rocks taken from Chatsworth itself

to create a naturalistic rock formation around a water feature.

The Chatsworth garden won best in show.

Now, what did he take from here for his inspiration?

He really loved the trout stream and it's a wonderful feature,

created by the sixth Duke of Devonshire.

He loved the planting that was already established along

the trout stream but then put horticultural twist on it.

That's what we've brought back and added back here, so we've now got

an improved trout stream, thanks to the Chelsea Flower gardens.

So we've got the lovely primulas, haven't we? They're looking great.

It's called Inverewe, and Dan selected it because it represented

the primulas we were already growing here.

And, of course, we've got these rock formations which...

Well, they are classic Chatsworth. They are.

He's used them in a very different way.

Down there is, like, a huge serious rockery.

Here, they're just single sculptural features.

here it's about the stream, about the planting,

and so they're secondary or they're in the background, I suppose.

There's nearly 3,500 plants dotted along the trout stream,

which is a huge number, and you hardly know which ones

have been here a long time and which ones have been introduced.

I remember a very dark iris at Chelsea, an absolute beauty.

A bit further down the stream, we've got Dark Aura

and it has the inky stems and then the wonderful dark flowers

and, yeah, one of the many things that have come back.

The thing is that, you know, people think,

"they're like this currant bun effect."

I'm trying to persuade them that, actually, they can be

incorporated in gardens in so many different ways.

You know, something like this - it sort of connects you with geology.

It does, and the planting's fantastic here.

We've got natural planting around it and ornamental planting behind.

I feel like I'm preaching to the converted, frankly.

you wouldn't want to work here, would you?

I paid my only visit to Chatsworth a couple of years ago

and was bowled over by that rockery. I just thought it was magnificent.

Mind you, the whole gardens are extraordinary

and, like hundreds of thousands of people do every year,

if you can make a visit it's definitely a place to go to.

I've got some plants growing here in the border in the cottage garden

which, actually, will look really good by water

and in amongst rocks, and I want to move them.

and like cowslips, they have a tall stem - much taller than any cowslip.

and they're not really working in the front.

But I grew them all from seed, which I collected from the Damp Garden,

and I want to return them now to the Damp Garden and break them up.

Traditionally, you move and plant primulas in spring

but the way the weather has changed,

it means our autumns are getting warmer and warmer,

so now is a really good time to move plants and to plant fresh ones.

We'll pop that in there. Sorry, Nige!

Hasn't yet hit that high tone of autumn glory,

Now, the idea in here is to add primulas in amongst the hostas.

I've cleared quite a lot of ferns. I've divided hostas.

Cos when we initially planted this, there were many, many primulas,

candelabra types, florindae, bulleyana.

All these lovely flowers which are at their best May, June

and into July and I want to recreate that.

a mixture of leaf mould and garden compost.

That gives it a really nice rich soil.

I'm tempted, actually, to put in a sizable clump because...

that will enable them to compete a bit better and if

you think of the flowers growing up this tall...

they need to be fairly muscular...

If you're moving any plant, but obviously particularly

a plant that thrives on moisture, give it a really good soak,

And that will set it up for winter. The whole point of this is

to have the roots growing strongly over the next month or so.

..it's in a good place, the roots are strong

and can support the top growth. Now, that's a big clump,

I think I'm going to put a smaller amount over on the other side.

I've got a gap I've created in here,

and in fact, I'm going to divide some up

and spread them around. And obviously,

when you divide any herbaceous plant,

..a clump like that, that's a really decent-sized one...

The best way to break this up will be just to

Then, being brave, just force it apart...

And obviously I could break that up even more,

As you can see, there's one, there's one, there's another.

Each one of those would make a separate plant.

And I'll water that well. And I've got another plant here,

One of the very best colours in this garden is

And these leaves, which are starting to turn now,

will be a deep, rich chocolate purple

And the moist dramatic autumn colour that I've got in the garden.

However, not as dramatic as the autumn display in the garden

of Ray and Michele Blundell in Staffordshire,

where their collection of acers fills the autumn garden...

We decided to buy this piece of ground

and we decided to build a green oak-frame house.

"That sounds expensive. I think I could do that myself."

And I got all the grotty jobs, didn't I? Yep!

The garden was always in the back of our minds,

so we asked the digger guy to level all the soil off

and at the same time he dug out a pond for us

and that was the start of the garden.

When I was 13, I worked with my uncle, who was a landscape gardener,

and he really was a big influence on my gardening life.

The garden is about a third of an acre,

so it gave us a lot of ideas to speculate with.

Michele wanted to see particular trees and things from the house

and so...we sat down with a piece of paper, sorted out

the plants that we wanted, and Japanese maples figured

largely in that because they were such wonderful things

with colour in the spring, through the summer, into the autumn

and then the coloured stems all the way through the winter.

The tree behind me is the first acer that I bought.

It's called "Eddisbury". It is a magnificent tree.

but it also has red stems, and to complement that,

we have another striking tree, which is

called "Osakazuki". This is, I think, one of the brightest reds

The one at the back of it is called "Westonbirt Orange".

And the combination of the trees in this group,

This section of the garden was from an idea that Michele

saw at Trentham Gardens, a wonderful combination

it's so ephemeral and it's a wonderful combination

and lasts for a long time, from August through to the autumn.

I lovingly placed all the pebbles around the pond.

I love growing zantedschias from seed

and created this bog garden earlier this year.

This is where I over-winter my young acers.

It's airy, it's light, but it doesn't have the

rain falling onto the acers, which is what you need to protect against

during the winter. They don't mind the cold,

they're OK down to, I think, minus 18.

But it does serve as a sort of a nursery over the winter

This bed here I created to show what you can do with

dwarf acers. This tree here, which is beautiful at this time of year,

is called "Skeeter's Broom". It's about as tall as it will get,

about two metres - this time of the year it's absolutely fantastic.

If we move through here, this is a variety called

"Kiyohime". By contrast, a smaller...

Also a dwarf variety, won't get more than about a metre high.

I planted this about three years ago but the plants themselves,

the trees were looked after for three years probably before that,

from small pots, gradually growing them into larger pots,

protected from the elements because they need time to

grow accustomed to the conditions, the microclimate

if you put them in in the autumn, they sit in the ground

and they sulk, they don't like those conditions over winter.

Whereas, if you plant them in the spring,

give them a few months through the summer to establish themselves,

then you get all the beauty of the new leaves and you find out if

it likes it there. And in the autumn, this is what you get.

The issue with collecting acers is that there are

many thousands. You go further and further afield

and this passion has taken me all round the country

and into Europe...coming back with carloads of trees.

I've now got about 120 different varieties of those thousands...

And you have become quite obsessive about it... Yes.

You can visit the garden on the sixth of November,

And you get all the details on our website.

Now, I have to say, I'm inspired to try acers again.

I did try and grow some here...about 20 years ago,

and the site was very windy and they didn't like that at all.

But now there's more protection, I think it's time

for another bash. So, next spring we will plant some acers.

The colchicums are appearing here in the copse.

They are called "Naked Ladies" because

they appear white...untouched by sun, leafless...

But with these lovely flowers, crocus-like flowers on top,

looking as though they've arrived six months too early.

And they can be planted round about late summer,

so too late now for this year, and the great thing about

planting them under a hedgerow or under a shade of trees

is it does protect them from rain because rain can just

Alan Powers spends a day in the gardens of the

One of the best places to enjoy a herbaceous border

is from right in the middle of it. That's it, yeah!

you're in amongst the architecture of the plants,

..and Flo Headlam has gone to Birmingham to green grey Britain,

and is adding colour to a concrete roof garden...

I've chosen plants that are tough and that will survive, you know,

with very little watering, so they're quite drought-tolerant.

..but first, we catch up with Adam Frost

as he continues his transformation of his new garden in Lincolnshire -

and we joined him a couple of weeks ago.

It's one of my favourite times of the year -

The lovely cool, damp mornings, the perfect conditions for planting out.

The shrubs and herbaceous plants have arrived,

so it's time to get them placed and get on with my front garden.

Early in the morning, out planting, in September -

you have to use your imagination a little bit.

Some of it's looking a bit tired, you know,

but you don't worry about, necessarily, what's on top -

it's what's underneath, it's those roots.

As long as those root systems are good,

that's all you're worried about, this time of year.

This is all edible, so everything that we're using in this space

Things like Scottish lovage, we can use the leaves.

Things like my gooseberry - I actually dug it up

from the old garden, brought it with me,

so it's suffered a little bit through the year,

I've got thymes in here, I've got strawberries in here,

and, actually, as I move away from this space,

it'll be slightly more sort of international, I suppose.

So, as I've got closer to the house, and where you would naturally walk,

I've started to actually mix the gravels up,

I've started to introduce a smaller gravel all the way through.

I suppose just makes it look a little bit more inviting.

Anyway, I'm going to get on planting these plants.

Over the past month, the veg garden has really come on,

and now it's time to get the picking paths finished,

Obviously, on a day like this, what you've got to remember is,

actually, everything's going to dry out really, really quickly.

So, first of all, what I've done is made sure this mortar mix -

which is sharp sand and cement, six to one -

And then what I do, just got a little boat level,

And all I do, really, now, is work my way back.

I'm actually not pointing these bricks -

you'll find, sometimes, you'll see the edge of bricks,

and there's a pointing gap in between.

They'll do a lovely job just as they are,

so, I'm just what we call butting them up.

You know, design-wise, the back wall, here,

and I think that was a nice thing to work on and pick out those details.

So, eventually, when the whole garden's put together,

you'll get that idea that the wall actually really flows

into the space, you know, and it'll have a real reason.

I'm probably just going to tease some of these joints apart.

What I've got to do, cos I've moved those,

I've just got to make sure that I key them all back in.

and I'm haunching along the edge of the bricks.

This will help hold them firmly in place.

The wisteria that I've completely and utterly fallen in love

with has finished flowering for the second time,

so I can now, finally, give it a prune.

I think people worry quite a lot about pruning wisterias,

and actually it's quite a simple process -

and all I'm doing is looking for these wispy old shoots.

Big old shoots - and what we're doing is,

we're taking those back to about five leaves,

so you count one, two, three, four, five, give that a little cut...

One of the reasons that I do this is to clear round the windows

I'll save the structural pruning until the winter,

when I can clearly see the bare bones of the plant -

and I'll also trim back the stems a bit harder,

to encourage the plant to make lots of short flowering spurs.

but, actually, I've just got an awful lot of it!

My two girls, Abbie and Amber-Lily, are absolutely horse mad -

but the upside to their costly obsession

that I'm putting to really good use in the veg garden.

knows that I do not like wasting anything,

so, to be able to re-use this manure is fantastic -

and that's one of the reasons I've constructed these hotbeds.

This is not a new idea, you know, the Victorians were doing it -

even the Romans understood the value of that stuff,

which is, ultimately, pressure-treated timber.

Set the first one up nice and level on a solid base...

..and what I've done is actually, each corner, I've overlapped,

and that just gives it some strength.

All I've got to do now, to finish this off,

simple timber frame, nice glass on top,

I'm filing the hotbeds to two-thirds deep

with a mix of fresh manure and straw.

The manure will break down and generate heat,

and create a warm environment that I can use

at the beginning and back end of the year to grow salad crops.

But it'll also be great for growing heat-loving plants,

After about four months, that heat will start to disappear,

and you'll actually have to clear the whole thing out

but, what you will have is this wonderful manure

that can go straight onto the garden,

so, actually, in reality, you know what? It's win-win.

These climbing beans are called Blauhilde,

and they're a really good colour, and delicious.

They may look like dried-up old husks,

but inside are perfectly good dried beans.

Now, you love a pea, don't you, Nige?

But these are beans, and they're dry, and you won't like these.

So, when you have your baked beans, that's what these are,

so I can just dry them for a few days,

anything where the air can get through,

and then put them in a jar with a screw-top,

I'll pull up the bean sticks, and then take the beans off later,

because I want this piece of ground to grow some elephant garlic.

..out like that, and I can strip it...

It actually does very well in rich soil,

as long as it doesn't get too waterlogged.

However you grow it, garlic usually ends up looking like garlic -

but that isn't true of all vegetables,

particularly not root ones, and a couple of weeks ago,

I asked you to send me any pictures of misshapen

or even rude vegetables that you had grown in your garden.

Well, we got some very rude ones indeed -

And I hope you enjoyed that as much as we did.

Now, elephant garlic, as the name suggests,

..so you can imagine there'll be four or five cloves in each bulb

that one clove goes a long way, but even though they're bigger,

they are actually milder than most garlic. Very, very good for you too.

They seem to be fairly resistant to the diseases

that a lot of alliums can get. I'm talking about rust, white rot...

And white rot is a problem in this garden

and I'm hoping that we won't have it in these borders here.

That is a ball put there by a dog, and not a garlic.

No point in looking at me like that. Go on. Good boy.

That, however, is an elephant garlic that hasn't formed cloves

and the reason for that, and it's quite common in garlic of all kinds,

is because it didn't have enough cold weather in winter

and I like to have it done by the end of October.

Like all garlic, you need to bury it.

The pointy end wants to be at least an inch,

And as for spacing, a good nine inches or a foot apart.

All I have to do is cover these over, label them and leave them.

Keep them weeded, but leave them and they'll be ready to harvest

The important thing is, give them a winter to get cold and that will

vernalise them and then you get those nice, separate cloves.

I've got the garden and beyond the garden are green fields,

and as part of the RHS Greening Grey Britain campaign,

Flo Headlam has been transforming grey gardens with a touch of colour.

This week takes her to the West Midlands.

This week, I'm amongst the rooftops in the city of Birmingham.

Out cities are expanding, populations are growing

I'm wondering, "Will there be spaces for gardens?"

has come up with an eye-catching solution.

Its magnificent roof terraces are essentially

Taking inspiration from the library garden,

I caught up with busy junior doctor Christian Lebee, to see if I could

help him transform his stark, exposed, south-facing roof terrace.

You've got this great space up here, this roof terrace, you know,

looking out over all of this. Do you get much chance to come up here?

I try my best to come up here as much as possible,

but as you can see, it's a little bit dull, a little bit derelict.

Yeah, yeah, we could do with some more greenery up here, I think.

It's a really big space, so I think what I'm going to do is

I'm just going to focus on one corner, so I've got four planters

I'm going to put in here in this corner and they're really easy

to make up and I'm going to show you how to do it.

I've chosen flat-pack wooden containers

because they're lightweight, they're easy to transport,

especially if you have to bring them up to a roof terrace

and you can put them together quite easily.

I've put the ends together, now I'm going to put the long side on.

It's almost done. I just need to put the feet on now.

I've planted up a couple of them already,

but I'll just show you what I'm going to do with this one.

I've lined it with some geotextile material.

The liner is permeable, so it will help keep the compost in place,

but also reduce the amount of rot on the wood.

Now I'm just going to fill it with compost, multipurpose.

It's moisture-retentive. I'm also adding gravel

cos that's going to help with my Mediterranean plants

and with my alpine plants that like stony, free-draining soil.

I'm going to just get my hands in and just turn it over and mix it in.

I know Christian's a really busy guy,

so I've chosen plants that are going to be tough and that will survive,

you know, with very little watering, so they're quite drought-tolerant.

which will be great for his kitchen garden.

I've got some sage, some nice purple sage.

I might just try that next to that one there.

One of my favourites, Verbena bonariensis,

great for attracting wildlife, and some great height as well.

Again, you know, they love that dry, hot situation. Gorgeous.

cos it's always good as part of your kitchen garden.

Christian can just come up and grab a handful and go to the kitchen.

And a beautiful hebe, which is evergreen, from New Zealand,

I'm packing them quite tight, but, you know,

These young plants are all going to need to be watered

every two or three days until they establish,

but once they mature, this particular mixture

of herbs, alpines, grasses and exotics should all cope naturally

They're all great plants for busy professionals.

City centres are often warmer and milder than the countryside,

so I'm chancing my arm with exotics -

a Mediterranean olive tree, Mexican echeverias

and a beautiful silver-leafed Astelia from New Zealand.

They have the bonus of being evergreen too,

perfect for balconies, terraces and window boxes -

the ideal choice for greening grey, inner-city Britain.

I think it's just what the doctor ordered.

Yeah, I completely agree with you, it's really, really great.

It's lovely. You said you wanted something for the kitchen,

so we've got some thyme, oregano, we've got some sage, purple sage.

My favourite is the Verbena bonariensis

and then a wallflower here, so that gorgeous colour which really blends

nicely with the thyme and with the herbs and with the grasses.

Beautiful colours and they will just bring some wildlife

into your little corner here. Lovely.

I'm really excited to invite some friends over,

enjoy the summer, enjoy the weather and enjoy these lovely plants. Cool.

In the first of a new three-part series exploring the work

of his fellow head gardeners, Alan Power has gone to meet James Cross

and his working day begins with a very unusual task.

The swans have been here since about 1870

and it was one of the bishop's daughters in 1875 who taught them

to ring a bell which was placed just outside the gatehouse here.

So the swans ring the bell? Yes, they do. Do they?

But the adults ring it, they teach the cygnets to ring it quite young,

We think we're training them, but actually they've trained us

to feed them every day, just by ringing the bell.

And to be honest, I'm a bit jealous, it's a great way to start the day.

I wish I had this going on in my own garden.

I might be training swans when I go back.

One of the most scenic areas of the gardens is outside the moat.

The well's border runs alongside the reflection pool and is designed

to incorporate the bishop's colours and complement the cathedral.

Hello, Bishop Peter. Nice to see you.

This is Alan, who's come to see me today. Alan, nice to see you.

So what are you planning to do, then, today?

We're going to deadhead these astrantias

Take out some of the deadheads and encourage some new growth.

Well, there's so many people coming through this year.

The word's gone out, these gardens are beautiful, so we need to get

them looking at their best for a long time and that's a tricky task.

It's like polishing a border - you can look back at the end of the day

and although it's a very subtle task, it makes a massive difference.

I'm not going to keep you any longer. Alan, lovely to see you.

You know, when you have deadheads on perennial plants, some of it

looks messy, but actually some of it can be beautifully architectural

and can form really a nice autumn colour,

so it's important not to strip it out completely, isn't it? That's it.

You have to be careful at choosing what you are going to take back.

some of the Sanguisorbas will too, but it depends.

I think this is one of my favourite roses, this Louis XIV,

which is a particularly rich, deep, dark colour.

James takes me on the tour of the garden to get a sense of scale.

What size is the whole place put together?

It's 14 acres altogether, so it's a big area to look after.

And intensively gardened, isn't it? It is intensive, yeah. Yeah.

Trying to keep it all neat and tidy and weed-free.

How many have you got on the team here?

We're fortunate here - I've got four gardeners here,

but then we've also got lots of excellent volunteers as well,

as to what we can actually achieve each day.

And if we're very lucky, they'll bring in doughnuts for us as well.

Well, that's important, cos there's no better motivational thing

for a gardener than cake or doughnuts. That's it, at tea-time.

And James, these hydrangeas, they're quite young, aren't they?

that you've put in over the past couple of years?

Yes, yeah. We put those in about three years ago,

They're more natural, more relaxed out here in the outer gardens.

It feels really different in here, James, doesn't it?

Different styles. It's far more formal,

more of an English Garden style here in the inner gardens.

This hot border really is just about having fun. Yeah.

It's about having as long a season as possible,

So you're kind of using your own expertise,

your own knowledge just to extend that season?

That's it, yeah. Just, as I say, right through from May,

right as far into the autumn as possible.

So, James, how come these Rudbeckia?

Well, these will fill out quite nicely in the next couple of months.

Yeah. And they'll take over from some of the other plants,

such as the Achillea just here, which is just starting to go over.

Yeah. And as head gardeners, we're all thinking about the next season,

and sometimes two or three seasons ahead.

Yeah. You really want people to enjoy being able to see

lots of things at as many times of the year as possible, really,

and that's what we're doing. Giving people more to enjoy as well.

I quite often say, you know, one of the best places

to enjoy a herbaceous border is from right in the middle of it.

you're in amongst the architecture of the plants,

you can smell the scent, and actually,

gives you a really good sense of what it's all about.

On our kind of last walk on the way out,

We've spent a lot of time looking down -

looking at the soil, looking at the plants, looking at the colour -

but actually, just looking around here,

my head is just being pulled up to the trees.

We're very fortunate here. This is a very different part of the garden.

So we've got the gingko tree behind us,

and lots of other ancient trees just on this south lawn here.

It's been lovely to spend the day with you and pick your brains

and learn something from you as a fellow head gardener,

but also learn a bit more detail about your garden.

It's been a really special day, so thank you very much.

Thank you! Thanks for your help. Really appreciate it. Thank you.

We have swans here, and they swim down the river,

and when it floods, which it does three or four times a year,

they swim across the fields and come to the garden gate.

Well, I can't offer you swans this weekend,

but I can give you some jobs, and here they are.

Although red chillies look fabulous on the plant,

it is important to pick them as soon as they're ripe.

but also the red fruits inhibit the green fruits from ripening.

Remove them, you'll get more ripe fruits,

and indeed, more flowers and more fruits forming well into autumn.

and if you're leaving pots out over winter,

it's the combination of cold and wet that does most damage.

Jack up your pots so that they are raised above ground

that will give you more flowers that will last for longer

Put them somewhere warm to germinate and keep them watered,

and then, when the seedlings have emerged,

they can go to a frost-free place like a cold frame

I'm going to take a little bit of honey from my bees.

they will certainly need reserves. In fact, if it's good over winter,

they'll need reserves too, cos they'll be busy.

what the weather will be like for the months coming,

but we do know what it's going to be like this weekend.

Good evening. There has been little significant rainfall for the gardens

this week and there is very little to come into next. Through the

weekend there will be a good deal of usable weather to get out there and

tidy up the gardens. We will be chasing the cloud around. Where the

cloud breaks and we get decent spells sunshine it will feel quite

pleasant. Along the North Sea coasts of the easterly breeze driving in

more cloud across Saturday and Sunday with a scattering of showers.

With clearer skies, we could see the temperatures further north and west

dipping away. So, yes, a chilly start but there will be some decent

sunny spells in the story for the weekend. A scattering of showers

coming in off the North Sea coasts. Temperatures are little subdued for

this time And so they should have made

a decent amount of honey. And if I take that off there -

that's a spacer bar - and give a little puff of smoke

in there... Now, this is the bar

that I took before, and you can see they've made

a complete new comb of honey. And I can just tap the bees off -

there you go, off you get. Another little puff.

I'm going to take two, because I've checked - there is

masses of honey in there for them. So I'm very confident that

whatever winter has to offer... ..they will have the resources

to survive it. And I should stress that I don't do

this alone. I have guidance. And I'm very much in the stages of

learning - I'm a novice. And if you want to

take up beekeeping then the first thing to do

is join your local bee society leaving them relatively undisturbed

and un-traumatised, I've got a reservoir there and this

is a solution, a sugar solution, which they will only use if they

need it to give them some reserves. Oh, it's dripping everywhere,

how fabulous. And put the lid back on,

and they can be left in peace. And I shan't look at them again,

or touch them, There you are, and here I am,

with my honey. There we are - look at that!

That's honey! Well, I should get about five jars,

from that, of honey made from the flowers

in the garden, and I've left plenty for the bees to

enjoy over the winter too. But I'll be back here

same time next week.