Episode 3 Get Up and Grow

Fabulous flowers, luscious lawns, verdant veggie plots and back yards.

What does your garden say about you?

If it's crying out for an overhaul

or you simply need help to get started,

then we're here to inspire you.

-We're happy.

-Is that a good shot for you?

-'I'm Chris Beardshaw,

'passionate horticulturist, landscape architect

'and mad-keen cyclist.

'I propagated my first seeds when I was four and haven't looked back since.'

Atchoo! Excuse me.

Is that broad appreciation?

And I'm Colin Donaldson, builder, landscape gardener, and mad-keen biker.

For me it's about the property and the landscape working together,

and if there's heavy machinery involved, then all the better.

Are you trying to get a tune out of that?

'We're on a mission to help six families transform their gardens.

'So let's Get Up And Grow.'

Bill and Anna Eggert are trying to live on a very beautiful

but very exposed part of the coastline at Portmuck.

We say "trying" cos they're in the middle of building a house, the house of their dreams.

And you, Chris, had the, um, bright idea of building them a ruin

as the first outpost of the garden.

Look how much you enjoyed moving all those rocks.

Hmm, not sure "enjoy" is the right word, but let's see what Anna and Bill think about it now.

-How's it been living with a finished part of the garden, somewhere to sit and relax?

-It's wonderful.

Many times, we've just come here to get away from it there and have

a wee picnic, have a cup of coffee, just sit and enjoy the countryside.

It's all worthwhile when you're here and realise how beautiful it is.

What sold it to you was me lifting all those stones and putting them there.

Now that my hernia's recovering,

we should go and have a look here because there's plenty more to do.

'The situation of the new house and garden is pretty challenging - for people and plants.'

The biggest challenge for me is to have the surrounding landscape and the building

interacting through what we do with the garden.

Let's be honest,

there is no relationship between the garden and the house.

I don't believe that at any point in the architectural design process

has anyone looked out of a window.

The house has been built with the view obviously in mind,

but nobody's lined anything up to say,

"Well, let's take it in this direction or that direction."

One of the most important things before we go to town on design is to

get a feel for how you see the site at the moment and what your aims and ambitions are for the site.

Because there's little point in investing time and energy

in creating a building

that suits the way you live without reflecting that out in the garden.

And not just this piece, but the entire garden space.

You have more ideas than I do, so I'll be briefer.

I don't have a great imagination about it.

Something that doesn't take an unbelievable amount of work would be a good idea.

Secondly, we can't lose the shelter.

We need this protection here, even though it's overgrown,

it's gone to the dogs, we need to keep the height so we can sit here.

Even if you move a few metres away, once you're out of the shelter,

it's amazing how much wind there is, so shelter is key.

Look, and you've got fuchsias and you've got hebes.

You've got the two best plants for shelter in this part of the world, so I wouldn't do anything with that.

I think that's perfect. And the height is just right,

because there's three metres approximately of shelter here,

and when you work out the maths, whatever the height of your shelter,

if you times the height by five and lay that distance down, that's the distance of shelter that's afforded.

Now, what's interesting is this pile of planting here

not moving at all in the breeze - just a little bit of a tweak.

Look over here.

Look at the way these things are moving.

This is 15 metres from that shelter.

And this side, where we have screening as well,

would work as shelter. We want to remove this now.

You can't have everything, otherwise you'll be living inside a box.

In the end, we'll have a garden as far as the eye can see.

If we take out chunks of hedge, it channels the eye to the direction

we want it to go and it makes it so much more interesting.

Are you proposing that all of that would go?

No, we certainly want to open up view lines.

You've got some spectacular views there and there's no point in covering those up.

If you open those views up, it will transform not just the quality of the view but the quality of life,

your life, in the house and in the garden.

The other thing which is really important

is the way that the height of the land rises from the building.

There is something very sinister about a garden that rises from the house.

So we have to do something about changing the dynamics

of the spaces down here, because it's rising from the windows here.

You know, the ground level is almost at window level.

I have a big question over how you enter the garden,

what entrance you make there, and then how you move from one level to the next,

because the other problem is that my mum is a wheelchair user

and we want to make this garden accessible as well.

We'll be able to set out a few lines and just let you see that.

Talk to them about car parking, because at the moment you're parking cars down here,

which is kind of compromising everything, really.

Vehicles are coming up from down the lane there and currently

you're coming up and pulling up pretty much here.

I don't want the car to block the dining room window. That's very crucial.

And I don't want it to block this guest bedroom window either.

Which is a light issue as much as a view issue.

I was thinking of creating something here but lower so that it's not in the view.

Unless your car is your pride and joy,

why on earth would you want it in the middle of the garden?

Which is what's going to happen if you stick it there.

It's our job to give vision, because sometimes they can't see the wood for the trees.

The site is telling you something very straightforward, and that's that a car should not be here.

So let's turn this into a garden of some sort,

a garden that if your mum's in a wheelchair, she can access the garden.

Raised beds on a concrete platform - perfect.

Which then raises the question - what does happen here?

This is now part of that garden, so this is no longer driveway.

This is a part of the garden.

That sounds good.

-OK.

-Are you convinced not to put your car here?

Well, we need to find a place to put it,

but, I mean, to me...

While you continue to try and persuade them, Chris, I'll start the big clear-up job.

That's why they get paid for being the expert and we don't!

-We're just punters.

-Yeah.

There's some work going on round the back of the house,

it's worth just coming back to this idea, returning to the idea of where do we put the cars.

Is this not a car park?

-Yes, it is.

-Yes.

-It may be a huge problem to you where to park a car.

To us, it's beautifully straightforward.

Let's concentrate on the task in hand, which is creating a fantastic paradise garden.

So all that's before nightfall?

-Yeah?

-You're going to be busy, aren't you?

A cleared site means we can get to grips with levels and a basic layout.

Could you get me a square off that, please?

Just marking out the lines, getting our angles, taking the squaring off the step so we can get the paths in.

This can come down by 200.

That'll work.

Not that the angle police will come and get us, but it will work out OK.

I have learned that you sometimes have to destroy things

to make something nice and better.

We're going to walk them through it.

That's to gauge a reaction, and from that we'll decide

if we proceed with this or we'll make a few tweaks here and there.

So you can see from up here

the idea of cutting through the screen there suddenly reveals

that fabulous rock stack in the distance and it connects the house with the distant coast.

And start to come down into the heart of the garden on to a gravel path.

This then becomes a flat and level manicured lawn.

This area here is large shrubs, not as tall as these ones,

but providing a bit of a buffer and shelter for the lawn area.

If you come through this piece, we've got a path going off down there.

-This is a wheelchair access path - gentle slope down to Mum's garden down there.

-Great.

Come through here. On this side we've got herbaceous border,

so this is a traditional kind of cottage garden.

On this side we've got some of the structure shrubs being reintroduced

with, again, some of the roses,

really starting to pepper that with fragrance and colour and flowers.

The interesting thing has been the revelation as time has gone on

of what they see in the place

and how that matches with what we envisaged, to what we would want.

It's looking fine.

I would like it to be a little bit more levelled.

A little bit more work could have been done today,

but we are where we are.

We will be giving more in the garden and I think that is a big difference to before.

I think there's a kind of polite acceptance,

but I'm not sure that they're completely

au fait with our style and what we're trying to do.

Creating a great garden is all about context. And look at this.

Craggy coastline, beautiful colours.

And that is Bill and Anna's house just peeping out.

Beautiful colours?

Looks like rain to me. Better crack on with the clearing.

If you just scrape off the scruff to start with.

Clearing the scruff? So that means just clearing the whole site.

This is a huge job, Chris.

I'm not sure if Bill's convinced yet, though.

But more importantly, Anna is - and she's the boss.

Bill and I stood on the balcony and looked down and thought,

"Yeah, this will be really nice."

We could picture it. Suddenly it all fell into place

and I can already imagine what it will be like when it's finished,

so looking forward to that very much.

It's about laying out the basic pattern and then seeing

if you can achieve the levels you're after.

One of the things to bear in mind is that this path coming off the bottom

across to the old ash tree, that's got to be reasonably level

because what you don't want is for the path to go out and then suddenly go up in the air.

You've a good eye, yeah? You must have, doing this job.

Only one good eye!

Now Chris has okayed it with Bill,

we have to define the levels by putting in pegs.

-So that's only a marker peg?

-Yeah.

We need to just grade everything down from this finished level.

Then you get a nice even grade on this as well as an even grade that way

and it should be so slight, you shouldn't see it.

You just need that to be a nice clean line because the next step

is to put the tanalised pegs in to then take the boarding.

OK. So how far back does it go?

We just need to go where the spade is.

We're just going back to there, just a straight line, straight through.

-So this will be the patio?

-'No, it'll be the terrace!'

Really tough clay,

solid clay.

'I'm not a particular handyman.'

I know what to do if somebody tells me what to do.

-The top of the stake's got to go to where the bottom of the board is.

-Down quite a bit.

If they say, "Lift that, tie those two bits together, nail that," I can do all those things.

How many pairs of hands have you got?

If you can tie that string off nice and tight on that nail,

it'll give us a line straight through.

'Anna has escaped from the building site,

'down the lane to the ruined garden.

'She really seems to be adopting it.'

'It's great to see her connecting with the space.

'It's all a learning process.'

It's very wobbly. I wonder, can you eat it?

I don't think I would like to.

I enjoy being here. I haven't done much weeding, as you can see.

But whenever we were working on the building site,

I really enjoyed coming and just sitting here.

I would bring my picnic and just sit here, right here, look out and enjoy myself, you know.

SEAGULLS SQUAWK

Hear the birds?

They're amazing.

Watching Anna appreciate the garden and landscape makes our job worthwhile.

I want to grow things that I like and make sure that

what I grow...

will sort of...

take over rather than the grass taking over.

So, Aquilegias from the other garden,

just like these.

These should be ready.

Just going to scatter them and see what comes of them.

Let's hope for the best.

But nature was here first. SHE LAUGHS

THUNDER RUMBLES

We are getting wet.

'I remember this day.

'Even the cows went in out of the rain.

'But I don't see you here, Colin.'

'I had important business in Tuscany.'

I feel sorry for everybody who got soaked.

We're in Ireland, after all, and it's July,

so the month with the most rainy days, statistically speaking, I believe.

Yeah, July does have a lot of rain, most of it today.

That is now one very muddy...

I don't know.

Hippopotamus pit is what we have out there now, you know!

There are elements of aquatic nature

which are seeming to appear in our scheme.

I don't think you've seen anything like it, have you? Be honest.

This was how we left the quagmire that day.

Wouldn't you know it, once Colin was back...

BIRDS CHIRP

We've been so lucky with the weather up here.

What happened when I was away? Did you all go to the beach?

LAUGHTER

I think that's a nice thought

and Speedos would have been the perfect attire.

How is your sunburn now, by the way? My trench foot's nearly cleared up.

Captivating jobs where it doesn't matter how much you do,

you can always go back and do a bit more levelling.

People often think the most important view is from the house to the garden,

but it's just as important the other way round.

For the best results, try tying the materials

using both the building and the garden together.

You've got the contemporary building coming and looking into this piece of garden,

when you're in the garden, that's what greets you.

The surfaces you use have to relate to the architecture.

For inspiration for your surfaces,

look at the materials on your building.

You've got the render which is a light-coloured render,

you've got steel, galvanised,

you've got slate, which is quite strong

and that's a dark, very well-cut slate.

Any of those things would work

and you've also got exposed timbers as well.

That gives you your palette.

I'm beginning to get...

to get it.

I think there's so many products on the market for everything,

whether it's paving or whether it's planting or seating.

You have to maintain that purity of approach and if in doubt,

stand and look at the building and say,

this is the building the garden is having a conversation with.

It has to have the same conversation.

You put anything else in which is contradicting

what the building's saying and it's going to look odd.

As Chris says, choose something that's already used on the site.

That'll be enough. You'll unconsciously take that in.

Before planting a new garden,

get inspiration on what will grow well for you, by looking around your neighbourhood

or visit a garden with similar conditions.

In this case, I took Anna to a garden that, just a few years ago,

faced exactly the challenges she does.

This is a eucalyptus.

It's going right up through this Escallonia.

-You see the top up there.

-This isn't eucalyptus.

I was looking and wondering, "What is it?"

From this area, what I'd be looking at taking,

are things like the birch and the mountain ash.

You can plant it virtually on a rock and it'll find its way there.

They're as brutal as you like, they grow on the mountains.

This is a contrast to the woodland part of the garden.

I think this gives you a good idea of where you can go

with that more open area of your garden around the lawn,

if this is what appeals.

That's what I really wanted to get from you,

does this feel like a garden that you want to be in?

What you need to ask yourself is, can I live with that chaos in the planting?

I love chaos, don't worry. I love chaos.

I love the way it has different levels, different heights of things.

I love the different shapes of plants.

The colours, this feels autumnal

and yet the variety of colours in here is amazing.

Agapanthus, the blue one here. The white Agapanthus here.

-Look at this, the Sanguisorba.

-St John's Wort.

Hypericum which you've already got in the garden.

Geraniums tumbling down there.

You've got roses as well, shrub roses.

Then again, look what's behind.

The birch doing that really hard-work job,

protecting all these plants.

You can't feel the breeze in the garden, yet look at the trees blowing.

If you plant the right plants, prepare the ground in the right way,

create the shelter, two years and it'll be looking just like this.

Two years?

With herbaceous perennials, grasses

and the vigorous shrubs in here, two years will do it.

Time for a recap then, Chris.

The main challenge here has been to marry the landscape to the building.

The landscape is pretty challenging in itself.

First, we had to refine the shelter belt and in doing so,

we were able to celebrate the views and break the wind.

Ah, I always say it's good to break wind in the garden!

The site was all over the place levels-wise,

and that took a bit of maths and a whole lot of heavy work to sort out.

Then we tried to get the shapes of the garden

and the materials to match the building.

With the paths in, turf and terrace -

that's patio to you Colin - laid,

it's all beginning to look like a garden.

There's no need for a big mug of tea, is there?

A nice little continental espresso is perfectly appropriate.

Mr Donaldson could learn from this, I think.

'As you know, delicacy is one of my strong points.

'Well, as delicate as you can be with a digger.'

'We wouldn't need a digger had you not driven on my soil and compacted it!'

'Do you not have a date with a lawnmower?'

'Yeah, but look - Bill and Anna taking the initiative,

'starting to tend their new garden.'

I think this area will be remodelled several times

before, you know, it'll just grow with us.

Here's something to get Colin out of his comfort zone -

the arrival of some romantic planting.

Even if he doesn't appreciate it, the local wildlife does.

I, of course, come equipped with either fur or a T-shirt.

LAUGHING

No in between.

Do you want to get a pick?

Don't make me laugh, I can't dig a hole if I'm laughing.

I like the tree Cotoneasters, because they're more graceful.

You don't really often think of them as being trees, Cotoneasters.

Most of the time you see them they're in supermarket car parks.

They are also very flexible, very whippy,

so they'll bend in the gales rather than getting stressed.

This is a garden where, whatever the weather's doing,

you get loads of it, and that's great, because it means you can

create that sense of enclosure, you can create a little hideaways.

Easy!

A poor beetle just got it.

You just have to have a lot of them, so whatever direction the wind

and the weather are coming at you from, you've got somewhere to hide,

or somewhere to sit and celebrate the weather.

-The whole hole needs to go that way.

-The whole hole?

-Uh-huh.

There you go.

We're not creating a hedge, it's not about one level.

It's important to have different levels.

And a bit of animation,

because, remember, a plant that's moving is a plant

which is also breaking up the wind, whereas a stiff, solid plant

is just accelerating the wind, in the same way as this bank of trees

and shrubs that were here was causing the wind

to spill over the top and then that eddy effect.

So, what we're trying to do is put in that first line of defence, of structure first,

which is created by the tough trees on the outside

and the more delicate trees on the inside.

Once we've done that, the next step is to go for the shrubs,

as the second line of defence, then the herbaceous as the third.

So that's how we're thinking about laying them out.

It's important to create layers of shelter from every direction.

And it has to be that staged effect to take the energy out of the wind.

Chris is...

the man who knoweth.

Chris, I asked a question and they told me to ask you it on camera.

Go on then.

What have we got here? What are the plants?

How long have you got?

25 words or less.

Well, at the moment you've got a mix of trees,

for instance, this one here is Amelanchier,

quite a well-behaved, large shrub or small tree,

which is why I've got a pair,

but then you've got plants underneath of that,

things like the Weigela, which is more of an open-spreading shrub,

then going around through things like the Cotinus, the smoke bush,

and the other one with the purple leaf is Physocarpus diablo.

Seeing we haven't got five hours, tell me what this one is.

This is a Phormium, New Zealand flax, and it's a good punctuation plant.

The art of gardening isn't complicated -

except when gardeners get involved.

That's when it becomes complicated,

because we become hung up on the details.

You don't have to be, enjoy it.

There's a mix of shrubs and ground covers going in at the moment,

but also I'm dropping in a few edibles, as well, so for instance...

-There are raspberries.

-Exactly.

That one is called Fool's Gold.

-It's a yellow raspberry.

-Yellow?

-Yeah, they're very sweet.

-Wow.

The yellow raspberry's beautifully sweet.

It's got all the sugars of six or seven red raspberries

all shoved into one little yellow raspberry.

You very often find that yellow fruits and yellow versions of fruits

and vegetables are much sweeter than the red versions, and this is

Malling Promise, which is a really good red version of the raspberry.

Lovely.

So it's not all going to be there to look at,

some of it is there to eat and enjoy as you walk round, too.

This makes sense now.

I don't know the names of the flowers and plants,

and if you tell me them I'll forget them again immediately.

-Same here.

-The point is that there's a logic to it, it's do-able.

Everyone really enjoyed getting stuck into the planting,

and, contrary to what you believe, Chris, I love it.

It was three or four hours, so many people working,

it was just an amazing transformation.

Just every time you turned round there was another bit of the garden

looked like a garden, rather than like a rubbish heap.

It's great.

Landscaping is all about preparation,

and the only thing you see is the finished result that sits

on top of the ground, but 90% of the work lies beneath.

So, that's why it probably appears that it's come together

very quickly at the end, where's it going, and then, boom -

the finished article.

'The garden's almost there. Time to take stock.'

I always think it's nice at this time of day

when you get the last, low-level sunlight on the garden,

because it brings out the colours, doesn't it?

This will involve a lot of maintenance

to keep it looking right,

but it'll be worth it.

It should be a part of enjoying the garden.

-That's the enjoyment, really.

-It is.

But the general edging, grass-cutting,

there's a very, very basic set-up you have to...

Duties that you have to perform every week.

From a wind-ravaged derelict site, to a home and garden in harmony

and rich in floral potential with romantic views.

There needs to be more consideration about where budgets are spent

when people embark on projects like this -

the price of a garden like this is about the price of a bathroom.

What would you rather do?

Sit on the toilet and look at a bathroom? Or sit here and look at that?

-And once you start to...

-The toilet?

-LAUGHTER

Now I can come down out of the house,

down the balcony right into the garden,

the stairs lead into the garden, it's part of the living space now.

Anybody that knows this house is going to come up now,

they're going to shake themselves to say, "Is this the same place?"

Because the transformation is so total, it really is so total.

Spectacular, absolutely spectacular.

One of the things that struck us straight away when we came

into this garden is that it almost had its eyes closed.

It was looking at the world like that, it just didn't want to

interact with the outside world.

Eyes closed...

to eyes wide open now.

The shrubs and also herbaceous is the under story that will be

performing every week of the year so that the view from the house

or when you're walking around the garden,

you'll never become tired of.

The views are wonderful from here.

We've more views than we had before.

Yeah, and more space than we had before,

even though we have so many more plants now.

You have to come back next year.

You have to see it when all the bulbs come out and things have matured,

I think you should come back, definitely, and see it.

I can't wait.

-And who does the gardening at your house?

-Me, of course.

Me and the three gardeners that come in!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

E-mail [email protected]