Episode 3 Gardeners' World

Hello. Welcome to Gardeners' World

on a beautiful, bright, frosty morning here at Longmeadow.

These spring frosts can catch some early-flowering plants unawares

but they make this gardener's heart sing.

Suddenly you feel full of life, full of light and full of energy,

and there's quite a lot to do in the garden.

I've just cleared this bed of kale.

I sowed it last March.

We started picking it when the leaves were young in May

and we've in eating it ever since, so a whole year has passed.

You can see, if I pick up a stalk, that...

just a little sprouty bit at the top

but all the way up, these leaves came through.

And the great thing about this kale,

which is Cavolo nero black Tuscan kale, is that it's sweet,

it cooks like spinach, you can use it in soups and stews,

it makes fantastic pasta sauce.

Time now for it to go to the compost heap and I can clear that bed.

Now, in today's programme,

as well as working here in the vegetable garden,

I'm planting an Amelanchier, I'll be working in the Jewel Garden

and sowing some vegetable seeds

ready for planting out when the ground warms up.

Right, these can be shredded.

This week, in his last of three films looking at the garden tree,

Joe is learning how best to prune.

Oh, yeah, that makes a big difference, actually.

And to show us house plants as we've never seen them before,

Nick Bailey goes to the Barbican to visit a conservatory of giants.

This has got to be the classic icon of '70s interiors,

the Swiss cheese plant.

Here you can see the specimen is probably 25 metres tall.

And last summer we visited a garden in Oxfordshire

that is crammed with clematis.

Like most people, what attracted me to clematis was the large flowers

but the more you grow them, the more you come to realise

it's the small flowers that are more beautiful

and so much more diverse.

You stay outside, you two.

This book, The Vegetable Garden Displayed, published by the RHS

originally in 1941 as part of the Dig For Victory campaign,

really fired my enthusiasm for gardening.

I'd gardened since I was seven but it was a chore,

it was a household duty, and I learned a lot

but I didn't learn how to love it.

And it wasn't until I got a copy of this book, I was 17,

and I looked at the pictures and one of them was a celery trench,

and I just thought it was a thing of incredible beauty.

The whole business of growing things was as good as the end result,

and from that obviously you get food you love and so it goes,

and I never really looked back,

so celery has a special place in my heart and I'm going to sow some now.

Now, there are two types of celery.

The celery in The Vegetable Garden Displayed, if you like,

is the old-fashioned type, which is trench celery,

which isn't self-blanching, and I will grow that,

but today I'm going to grow some self-blanching celery

and that can be grown on the level ground.

You sow it in a block or a grid

and you can harvest it from September onwards.

I've got some seed compost

and I'm going to sow a variety called Tall Utah.

Celery seeds are tiny

and the seedlings, when they emerge, are tiny too.

And I will then prick them out into plugs and grow them on.

Now, what I'm going to do is

press them into the compost like that,

and that's to stop them moving around when I water them.

Water them lightly. Importantly, put them somewhere warm.

Celery needs heat to germinate.

Start them now, grow them on, prick them out, harden them off

and they'll be ready to plant outside around early May.

Now, this greenhouse is heated but only to stop it being cold

rather than to make it actively warm.

One of the things that surprised me this year is that

the Amaryllis have loved it.

There is something about coming to a greenhouse on a grey, wet day

and finding plants that are exotic and lift your spirits.

But if you don't have your own, you can go and visit other people's

and Nick Bailey, the head gardener at Chelsea Physic Garden,

has gone to visit a spectacular greenhouse in a surprising location.

This is a stark, stark place, full of concrete.

It's brutalist architecture at its best, or its worst,

depending on your opinion,

but at its centre is a living, breathing organic heart.

The Barbican was built as part of a utopian vision to transform

an area of London left devastated by bombing in the Second World War.

On the outside, it's a harsh-looking vision,

but hidden within is something unexpected and very special.

Wow. This is the Barbican Conservatory

and what an extraordinary space it is. It's a vast, vast glasshouse.

In fact, it's the second biggest in London

and we're totally surrounded by concrete and buildings and city

and noise, and then suddenly you step into this amazing green space.

This place is dripping with plants from all over the world,

from the deserts to the tropics,

yet most are available from your local garden centre.

They're house plants, but maybe not as we know them.

You might not recognise this straightaway

but this is Ficus benjamina.

It's one of the plants you always find in offices or tucked away

at the back of a lounge.

Now, ordinarily in the home, they would maybe grow to about six foot.

This is growing to its full size,

the same size it would grow in the tropics, so 20, 20-plus metres,

but at home you can keep it down to about six foot,

nice sort of tight, tight column.

About the only thing it objects to is a cold draught,

so you need to be careful of that,

otherwise it will keep performing for you.

This has got to be one of the house plants

that virtually everybody knows.

It's commonly called money plant or the jade plant

but its botanic name is Crassula ovata. It comes from South Africa

and it grows in really hot, dry conditions,

so if you want to grow it well at home,

go for a really sort of hot, sunny windowsill.

It will absolutely love it there.

Small windowsill plants are fairly unlikely to flower,

but once they get to sort of above about two foot or so,

I mean, this one is at six foot already,

they'll start to produce these flowers.

What's really nice is, they come in the low season,

so during winter and early spring, when things are a bit sad

in the garden, this is looking amazing on the windowsill.

This has got to be the classic icon of '70s interiors,

the Swiss cheese plant or Monstera deliciosa,

and that name is really pertinent.

It's the delicious monster, so monstrous leaves,

and deliciosa references its fruit

and it produces these conical fruits

which have an almost sort of custard apple,

so very, very sweet flavour to them.

You can get it to fruit at home.

Here you can see the specimen is probably 25 metres tall

and it has such, such dramatic architectural foliage.

I think, bring the '70s back,

we need some Monsteras back in our life!

Nurtured in our homes, these amazing plants totally transform any space

and the great thing is that they can be multiplied

to be shared with loved ones.

You just need to propagate them, which may sound difficult

but it's actually really simple.

This trailing purple Tradescantia

is a perfect, perfect candidate for propagation.

It's a really unusual plant

inasmuch as it's native to the tropical Americas

and it's totally unknown in the wild now,

so you can only get it from garden centres or sharing with friends,

so the way to take the cutting

is to look for some good, active growth,

so that might be long trailing growth

or it might be growth up at the top here,

and then count down the nodes where the leaves break out,

so one, two, three, four,

and we're going to make a cut just at the bottom there.

And it's important to make sure that your knife

and the tile that you're using are as sterile as possible.

That will get rid of any nasty bacterial or fungal problems

that you could introduce to your cuttings.

Now, with the Tradescantia,

what we want to do is just remove these initial lower leaves

and then look at this top section,

so we've got some fairly bulky leaves at the top,

so I'm going to slice those away,

and all that does is just to reduce the transpiration,

so it reduces the water loss from the plant.

You can use a basic, basic all-purpose compost mix,

just make yourself a small hole down the side,

slot your cutting into there,

so it wants to be pushing up against the side of the pot.

Firm it in.

Best thing then, you can water it from overhead,

but much better if you can just put it in a tray of water,

allow it to soak some water up.

In a matter of weeks it will have rooted through.

Cuttings really aren't that hard to do and what can go wrong?

Hidden from plain view,

secret gardens like the Barbican Conservatory

offer two precious commodities - solace and inspiration.

Nelly!

And if you'd like to visit the Barbican Conservatory,

look on our website for opening hours.

I long ago learned to live with the fact that

there are a whole range of plants that just will not grow

outside here at Longmeadow.

However, I've got a plant here that should be very happy here,

and it's a shrub.

Now, this is an Amelanchier.

It's Amelanchier ballerina.

Now, you can see that this has got multi-stems

and I think a useful definition is

a tree fundamentally wants to grow on a single stem

and a shrub is multi-stemmed.

I'm planting it at the back of the border,

but I don't want it to compete with the apple trees,

so I'll keep it pruned

so that it's mainly below the height of the lowest branches.

I'm not going to add any compost or manure to the planting hole

because there's a temptation for the roots to stay within the hole

where the goodness is.

You want it to grow out into the soil as quickly as possible,

but I am going to add some biochar.

Now, biochar is a soil improver that you can buy at garden centres.

It's a mixture of charcoal, mycorrhizal fungi

and some wormcasts.

Charcoal holds nutrients and releases it to plants.

Now, I just need to sprinkle it over the planting hole

so that the roots will come into contact with it.

I'll take the plant out of the pot...

..and I'll turn it as I want it.

Now, Amelanchier ballerina has white flowers in the spring

that will pick up off the blossom of the trees around them

and the foliage has really good autumn colour, so lots going for it.

It's going to add lots to the border and,

above all, the structure.

And I want to be able to see the shape of the stem,

so I can prune it accordingly as it grows.

Now, talking of pruning,

Joe, on his third and final look at the garden tree,

goes and gets expert advice on how best to prune them.

Trees are nature's great survivors.

Left to their own devices, they'll grow happily for many years,

but in your garden, trees often need pruning,

so when do they need a snip or more drastic surgery?

One man in the know is arboriculturist Jamie Saunders.

These are beautiful trees, aren't they?

-Huge line of these copper beech.

-Yeah.

-So what's going on?

What are you doing to them?

We're crown-thinning the trees by about 20%,

so that's going to remove

approximately one fifth of the branches, the secondary branches,

to allow more light to come through to the house and the gardens below,

to reduce wind resistance

so that they suffer less damage in winter storms.

They're very, very dense.

They haven't been pruned for about 20 years, apparently.

Trees don't get pruned in nature, so why do we need to

prune them in a garden situation?

It's different because you have to maintain a safe environment

if you're going to be living in and around these trees.

You might have underplanting that needs more light and nutrients,

so you have to balance the needs of both.

Larger trees may be protected by the local council,

so it's worth consulting a tree surgeon to check what you can do,

but you don't always need to call in an expert for tree work.

There's pruning you can do on your own to ensure

your trees fulfil their potential.

Now, this is much more a manageable size for the average gardener.

How old do you reckon this tree might be?

Probably five or six years old in total

and probably been in the ground about two years now.

OK, but there's lots that we can do now to make sure that this grows

-into a really good shape.

-Absolutely. It should be done now.

It's the ideal time to do it, to just open up

and give it a good structure.

-I think we'll take off these lowest three here, actually.

-OK.

-And that one?

-And that one as well, on that side,

-do you want to do that?

-Yeah, sure.

'These cuts create a good, clean trunk with an even and balanced

'crown of branches above it.'

Right, what's happening in here?

It's quite congested in the middle of the tree, isn't it?

It is there, and you've got this one, two and three branches

all growing in the same direction there, too close together, really,

so it's just a case of spacing those out, and I would suggest

it's this centre one that goes here

cos it will get rid of this slightly crossing branch we have here anyway,

so I'll just lean in there and take that one out now.

I think that looks great and really nicely balanced.

-It's sort of standing up proud now, isn't it?

-It does, it's really nice.

So how often do you need to do this sort of pruning?

Is it annually, every five years?

I would say check it every year,

just to make sure there isn't anything untoward, but generally

every two or three years, it may need some very minor pruning.

'Just like a human, if you cut a tree, its wound can heal,

'but it's important to get the cuts right.'

This is a really lovely ash, isn't it? A great canopy to it.

-It's delicate at the moment.

-Yeah.

Now, say you wanted to take this branch off, because it's quite low

and it's going out at quite a low angle as well,

where exactly should you cut?

So, firstly, you need to take the weight off the branch,

so cut it and leave a stub at first,

and then once you've got the stub you can be quite precise

and you cut it just in front of that collar there

and that will allow the tree to seal up the wound

as quickly as possible

because otherwise it's always going to be an open wound,

an entry point for decay fungi to get into the rest of the tree.

'One way to transform a young tree is to give it a crown lift,

'which can help create space under the branches

'for mowing or for underplanting.'

Right, so how high do you want to go with this?

How much do you want to take off the bottom?

I think these four here - one, two, three, four -

and that's really going to be about one-third of the total height,

and that's a good rule of thumb for crown lifting,

one third exposed stem, two thirds crown.

Now, autumn is definitely the best time with birches, isn't it?

It is, yeah. In the spring is actually a bad time to prune them

because the sap is rising and they'll bleed profusely if you do it then.

-Yeah, OK. So you're going to get that one off?

-This one here, yeah.

OK.

'It's lovely to reveal the stem of a silver birch,

'but they respond best if they are pruned while young.'

There you go. Let's have a little look at that, then.

Oh, yeah. That makes a big difference, actually.

-You were right.

-Looks great, doesn't it?

-You were definitely right.

'And just as transformed

'was the copper beech that Jamie's team had been pruning.'

-That looks so much better, doesn't it?

-Yeah.

It really has made a huge difference.

I mean, the trunk lights up and now you can see the branches

-within the tree and the whole shape of it.

-Yeah.

And the view has opened up completely.

Don't be afraid to prune your trees.

Obviously if they're this big, you've got to call the experts in,

but smaller trees in your garden, you can get your secateurs out,

your pruning saw out and you can shape their future.

I remember on my one and only trip to Japan, though I hope not my last,

being astounded by the extent of the pruning that went on with the trees.

I never once in two weeks saw a tree in a park, a street,

let alone a garden, that wasn't pruned to the point of manicuring.

It was a real insight into what you CAN do, if you want to,

with almost any kind of tree.

Now, far from trees, I want to sow some climbers, annual climbers.

Most of us grow sweet peas, which work very well,

but these are tender, so if I sow them now,

I won't be able to plant them outside until after the last frost,

which here is round about early to mid-May

and I've got some Cobaea here, Cobaea scandens,

which won't even start flowering until late summer.

Last time I grew them, which was two years ago,

the flowers appeared in September,

but they were fantastic

and they went on flowering until the first frosts,

which were in November.

You need to sow the seed now into pots,

so I've got purple here, which I will grow again,

probably in a pot in the Jewel Garden,

and the seeds are fairly large,

and I'm going to grow two to a pot,

so just push them in on their side.

Whichever seedling grows strongest,

I'll leave, and then take out the other

and I'll probably plant three or four plants to a large pot.

I'm using a seed compost

but they are going to be in the pot for quite a long time,

so you may want to enrich it a bit.

A general-purpose compost will actually do fine.

Cobaea likes rich soil, plenty of moisture, good drainage

but they are greedy, hungry feeders and they respond to warmth,

so when you position them, put them somewhere sunny and sheltered.

I'll water those, put them somewhere warm

and I won't plant these out until early June.

These will climb and do their stuff

just for a relatively short season

but, of course, we've grow Clematis

and expect them to reappear year after year.

And most of us have some in our gardens and really enjoy them,

but very, very few people on this planet

will either love Clematis as much as Mike Brown does,

or grow as many in their garden.

I was in the RAF for 30 years

and '67 was when we bought our first house,

and I remember going straight out

and buying Jackmanii, which I still grow, cos it's a wonderful Clematis.

And then slowly, as we moved around, I gradually increased.

But until about 15, 20 years ago, I never got above 40

but now, I don't know, 300 or 400, I suppose.

Come on, Harry.

Like most people, what attracted me to Clematis was the large flowers

because they are so showy.

But the more you grow them, the more you come to realise

it's the small flowers that are more beautiful and so much more diverse.

This Clematis is called Paul Farges.

It's one of very few garden Clematis

that's got Vitalba - Old Man's Beard - as a parent.

Most of them would be much too rampant to grow in the garden,

so you get infested. This one is a sterile hybrid.

It will hide anything.

This will flower for three and half, four months

and there's no work to do at the end.

All you do is chop it back to about 10 or 12 inches.

Here, we've got a couple of interesting Clematis, really.

They're both Viticellas, but very different.

This one is called Betty Corning

and it's one of the best scented Clematis there are,

and it's one of very few where you don't actually need the sunshine.

Provided you've got 20 degrees C, you will get a lovely scent.

The other one has two names - original name was Flore Plena,

but it disappeared from cultivation for many generations.

Eventually, it was discovered again and was brought onto the market

about the same time as they got the ship, the Mary Rose,

so it's come back on the market as "Mary Rose".

Because this area is south-facing, we put pipes in the ground.

These are about 11 inches deep.

These are at an angle, so the water goes down to the root and below.

What you must never do is just water the surface of the soil

because the roots come up for it

and now it's a surface rooted plant

and, as you get a long, hot, dry period,

you tend to lose the Clematis through lack of moisture.

I believe that Texensis is the "in" Clematis.

There's a lovely, diverse colour range,

but they're nearly all an urn shape.

Gorgeous shape, really.

Most of them are totally hardy.

This lovely pink Clematis is called Etoile Rose

and it contains Texensis,

and it also contains Viticella, but being a complex hybrid,

it contains other Clematis as well.

And I find anything with Texensis in it is beautiful.

Most of the cultivars are susceptible to powdery mildew,

but you can minimise it by keeping the root area clear,

so the air can get through it, and never, ever watering foliage.

Small-flowered Clematis are not difficult,

they are beautiful, and they don't wilt.

They get better and better every year.

ROBIN SINGS

Well, I absolutely agree with Mike,

that the late flowering Clematis are my favourite, because they may

start a little bit late, but they go on flowering well into winter.

I haven't got any Clematis here in the grass borders.

Cut them back, so they need a little bit of weeding and mulching.

But we've found two treasures in here.

One, over there, has now walked away, but the other is still here.

It's a hedgehog, hibernating.

Now, I don't know if you can see - I don't want to disturb it.

There you are. I'm sorry, old chap. I'm sorry, just breathe.

It's found a little nesting place,

tucked up against a couple of agrostis there,

pulled the leaves around it and that is secure and safe.

Now, it's really important that we look after our hedgehogs in gardens

because they are disappearing tragically fast

from the countryside,

so gardens are becoming their most important habitat.

And they are the gardener's friend because hedgehogs devour slugs,

and all of us suffer from slugs and snails.

In fact, you can find a list of what we suffer most from, from the RHS.

Today, they've published a list of the top ten enquiries

over the last year of pests and diseases.

Now, top actually was the caterpillar -

the box caterpillar, rather than slugs and snails.

My guess is that's because it's a new problem -

people didn't know what to do about it.

You've got slugs and snails coming second, then you've got aphids

and the usual list of stuff.

But you can go to the website and you can see it.

But what I would say is high-tech is not the answer.

If you want to make your garden healthy,

a pile of leaves, sticks, dry grasses...

This time of year it's great

because you're clearing back winter stuff.

Make a pile in the corner of the garden -

that is brilliant at harbouring predators.

It could range to be as big as a hedgehog,

it could be as small as an insect,

but that will keep your garden healthy

as much as anything else you can do.

Come on.

I'm nearly finished mulching this garden.

This is mushroom compost.

You'd better take that. Go on.

And it works really well on our heavy clay

because it breaks the soil down.

You can use anything, really, that's going to work into the soil -

mushroom compost, well-rotted manure,

garden compost, bark -

they all do the same sort of job.

When you're mulching,

it really matters that you put it on thickly - at least two inches.

And if you've got more, you can go up to four or five inches, even,

and it's going to do three things.

The first is it will suppress weeds.

It will stop annual weeds germinating

and perennial weeds will be weaker as they grow through

and easier to weed.

The second is it will keep moisture in the ground.

And finally, not least, it improves the soil structure.

So, I'd say, of almost anything else you can do in the garden,

mulching is probably the most important, certainly in spring.

Now, I suspect those of you who haven't yet mulched your gardens

were bound to be doing it this weekend,

but here are some other things you can do as well.

If you get perennial weeds, like bindweed or cooch grass

into a border, they can be really difficult to eradicate,

especially if they're growing in amongst your plants.

It's almost impossible to get them out.

However, it is worth trying by lifting the plant,

removing what weeds you can see and as much soil as you can,

and then washing the roots clear of all dirt.

That way you can really see what is weed root and what is plant root.

When you feel you've removed every scrap of weed,

you can replant the herbaceous perennial.

If you haven't done so already, it's time to prune climbing roses.

Tie in any structural growth so it's good and horizontal

and from these grow the upright side shoots.

Reduce them back to a bud or two - this will stimulate new growth

and it's that new growth that will carry this year's display.

The crocuses in the wild garden are loving the sunshine.

They've only just appeared in the last day or two.

They're just making the most of this glorious weather.

And there's going to be more sunshine from Sunday,

because it's the Spring Equinox,

when daylight gets longer than night.

So, not only are the days getting longer, they're getting brighter.

I'll see you back here at Longmeadow next Friday.

Till then, bye bye. Come on.