Herbaceous Borders and Kitchen Gardens Great British Garden Revival

Britain has a long and proud gardening heritage.

And a passion for plants that goes back centuries.

But all is not well in our once green and pleasant land.

Front gardens paved over.

Our lawns lack lustre.

And rare wild flowers on the brink of extinction.

So we need you...

..to help us...

..in our campaign...

..to help rediscover...

..our passion for gardening.

We're going to give you the best gardening tips.

And revealing British gardens that will quite simply

take your breath away.

-It's time to plant...

-..and prune...

..and sharpen your shears.

Let the Great British Garden Revival Begin.

MUSIC

On tonight's show,

Alys Fowler is on the campaign trail for kitchen gardens.

But first, I want to celebrate the herbaceous border.

For me, the very essence of a British garden,

its heart and soul, is best described by these.

Herbaceous borders in full flow. Festooned with blooms and foliage.

The sheer number of plants, the composition, the space required,

not to mention the maintenance,

means that these borders in recent years have fallen out of favour.

But I firmly believe with a little understanding of the horticulture

and consideration of the artistry involved,

this symphony is achievable in any garden.

So join me, Chris Beardshaw, for my revival

of the Great British herbaceous border.

In my campaign, I'll be exploring the creativity

involved in designing herbaceous borders.

We can see the flow, the dynamics of movement through the border.

I'll be taking a closer look at one of the most versatile

herbaceous perennials to place in the garden.

If you're looking for something that's interesting,

that's going to lengthen your season, asters are a must.

As well as celebrating

one of the most famous herbaceous borders in the country.

And I'll be giving you tips on how to keep your plants healthy.

To start my revival,

I've come to the extraordinary Arley Hall and Gardens in Cheshire,

home to the Warburton family since the 15th century.

The imposing house we see today

was built by Rowland Egerton-Warburton in the 1840s.

So what looks like an Elizabethan palace is actually early Victorian.

While the house was being finished,

Rowland and his wife, Mary, began redesigning the formal gardens

and I've come to see one particular feature that would change

the landscape of British horticulture forever.

And it's this.

A garden of double herbaceous borders,

originally crafted in the 1840s.

The oldest and earliest known example

of horticulture of this style anywhere in the world.

These borders are made up of herbaceous perennials.

Non woody, fleshy plants that erupt to life in spring,

producing a chorus of colour.

But then retreat to below ground in winter

to create a living barometer of the seasons.

Sourced by plant hunters from around the world,

it was here at Arley these well travelled plants

were given their first home in a formal garden.

Such was the drama created,

it not only ignited the world of horticulture,

it lies at the very heart of the British garden.

These borders have been an important part of our gardens

for generations but are perceived as labour intensive.

Sure they need to be controlled and orchestrated

and in the late 20th century

it seemed we simply fell out of love with them.

Unless we start replanting now,

this essential component of our gardens will be lost forever.

In order to convince you of the rewards and satisfaction

in growing herbaceous perennials, I want to start my campaign

by showing you a garden that is a true labour of love.

This is the Manor House at Upton Grey in Hampshire.

A spectacular private house and garden.

30 years ago, this garden lay in ruins

and the task of restoration fell to Rosamund Wallinger

who bought the house in the mid '80s,

knowing precious little about gardening.

What was it like when you first came here?

The garden was almost invisible.

There were no borders in the rose lawn at all.

It was weeds. The garden had turned into a complete ruin.

Investigating the history of the house,

Rosamund soon discovered the jungle in her garden

hid an important piece of our horticultural heritage.

It had been designed by one of Britain's

most celebrated garden designers, Gertrude Jekyll.

She was born at a time

when plants were coming back from around the world.

First introduced at Kew and then distributed through

the great new nurseries that were springing up all over England.

She was using new plant material in an artistic way.

She called it painting the land with living things.

Using Jekyll's original plans,

Rosamund slowly put this important Edwardian garden back together.

As with many Jekyll gardens, the highlights of this garden

are the carefully crafted and highly dramatic herbaceous borders.

There's a wonderful sense of anticipation

as you come up the step.

You're never given a full blown view of the border

until, actually, you get to this point

and suddenly it just opens up in front of you.

Yes, that's true.

It's difficult when you look at this to imagine that there was a time

when people didn't want to embrace herbaceous borders

and yet they fell out of fashion so quickly.

Why do you think that was?

Well, we had two World Wars and labour was diminished.

Financially, a garden that was run by one or two people

after having been run by eight or nine people

was bound to have to economise on the difficult.

But you need this contrast.

You need the excitement of these amazing herbaceous plants

at the end of the year

and they make the whole garden season alive.

To conduct this symphony of colour, Rosamund follows a score

written over 100 years ago.

It's lovely to see the plants in her handwriting.

-Even the way she has written it.

-Yes, absolutely.

So we can see not just the tiering but we can see the flow.

It was the ability to be able to not just appreciate the plant

but to weave with that plant. It's a tapestry that she's created.

Yes. It's lovely looking at it through your eyes instead of mine

who's the one who's sort of the digger.

This garden is one of the most accurate

and best preserved Jekyll designs in Britain.

And central to its success are the herbaceous perennials,

which makes Upton Grey

a critical part of our heritage and a vital component of my revival.

Back at Arley Hall, the stunning herbaceous borders

are an inspirational living work of art.

There is a real sense that these borders are framed

just as a masterpiece would be.

The wall on one side, the hedge on the other.

They serve to focus our attention

on this wonderful indulgence of planting.

But more than that, the structures provide shelter for the plants.

They come from many climates around the world

and they all revel a wonderful growing environment.

To unlock the secrets of how these borders are composed,

we simply need to take a closer look at the individual plants.

Laying out herbaceous borders starts at the back

with the structure or framework.

In this case, a wall,

but a home that could easily be a fence or a hedge.

It provides the shelter, the protection,

the back drop to the whole performance.

Then when we start thinking about plants,

we start with the tall and robust.

Just look at that Rudbeckia.

Beautiful yellow umbrella-like flowers

and boy does it achieve some vigour.

A wonderful example of a clump forming plant

essential for the back of the border.

Big rounded drifts are allowed to really prosper.

As we come slightly further forwards,

well, the plants get a little more delicate.

For instance, this monkshood.

The top of the flower is said to resemble the hood

of a rather sinister looking monk.

It's a wonderful plant to use because it has a different form.

It's upright. It's like a rocket disappearing off into the sky.

It adds an energy and a vibrancy to the whole scheme.

As we come further forwards, well, the plants tumble in size.

Plants like the crocosmia or montbretia

with its sword-like leaves that squeak when they're wet.

The shape of the leaf gives us a completely different texture.

The orange flowers radiating out in low light levels.

It's a great performer.

Very resilient and grows in almost any soil.

And then right at the front, well,

you use the plants which move and mingle.

The socialites. Like the Jerusalem sage down here. The phlomis.

Yellow blooms in early summer.

Don't be in too much of a hurry to cut those off.

Once they've faded, these structural and architectural heads

will persist right through the winter months.

It's plants like this that will move and migrate.

They allow the whole border to marry together.

They are the glue between all of these other plants.

The next consideration is colour.

Just look at the repetition of yellows

down the full length of this herbaceous border.

Now it doesn't matter if your border is 200 metres or two metres long.

Just a simple repeat of a single colour

will be enough to draw you into the depths of the border.

If you're looking for a plant to extend the season

through to the mists of autumn then there's one obvious candidate.

The aster.

This is the family-run Old Court Nursery in Worcestershire.

The nursery holds the national collection

for autumn flowering asters and they've amassed over 400 varieties,

making this one of the largest collections of aster

anywhere in the world.

I'm meeting mum Meriel and daughter Helen

to find out about a plant that's often over looked.

The nursery has been here a considerable length of time.

Well, yes. It was started by Earnest Ballard in 1906

and then my father-in-law came as manager in 1947

and he bought it and carried on.

What is it about the aster that really fascinates you?

Why did you want to revive its particular interest?

Because I think it's got such versatility.

So, as a garden plant, if you're looking for something

that's interesting, that's going to lengthen your season,

it's the perfect plant. There's such a range to choose from.

The aster was once a garden favourite

but in the mid 20th century, enthusiasm began to wane.

If it weren't for the Picton family,

diversity within the species could easily have been lost.

To prove their validity, the Picton's showcase their asters

in herbaceous borders that would grace any garden.

It's a lovely looking border, isn't it?

Yes, and you can see how they work

in amongst all the other plants as well,

which is how I like to see them.

From the very low ones down here

and then you work all the way through the border

to the sort of mid height,

all the way up to the very tallest ones that you can see.

The aster can deliver colour in your garden from midsummer

right up until the beginning of December.

And by examining the flowers,

another important attribute of this diverse plant reveals itself.

We've got the petals around the outside edge

but then each one of these little sections, if I break that apart,

there's a single flower there just between my thumb nails.

So they're fab for the insects.

Instead of having to visit many different flowers

and use up all its energy, it can visit one

and get multiple nectar sources so asters are a must.

There isn't really anything that's going to beat them

which is why I love them quite so much.

There's an aster for every situation

and even better than that, they ignite interest in a border

at a time of the year when just about everything else

in the herbaceous plant world

is starting to breathe a sigh of relief.

That's the point when asters get excitable.

Here at Arley Hall, herbaceous borders grow

with such enthusiasm and vigour they need to be tamed.

High maintenance is one of the reasons

why spectacular borders like these began to fall from favour.

But I believe the investment of time and effort

on these beautiful plants can result in

one of the most rewarding experiences in horticulture.

I'm working with Head Gardener Gordon Bailey

for a spot of dead heading on the border

just to see how much work goes into creating perfection.

Deadheading work on these astilbes is one of those tidying up tasks.

It's all about aesthetics really. Keeping it looking clean and tidy.

It is.

You don't want one plant distracting your eye from the plants around it.

It's finished flowering but there are still others around

that are in flower or are going to flower.

When do you do your major prune back?

When is it you reduce the canopy of the plants to ground?

First decent frost and then we'll start cutting plants down.

We start quite early because we like to get on the border.

Quite a bit of work is going to be done.

We've made notes through the year of what we want to move.

What we want to divide. What we want to reduce in size.

So we want to have plenty of time through the winter months

to actually get that done.

It strikes me that most people's opinions of borders like this

would be they love the look

but they're not quite so keen on the maintenance.

Do you find yourself overwhelmed by it?

I do enjoy working in the border. It is a participation sport really

so you get in and you do,

which is one of the things I love about being a gardener,

is that you're always working with the plants.

And the trick here really is to impose yourself on the garden.

You're in charge. You're in control of the plants.

They will perform but if you don't carry out the maintenance,

-you're in danger of losing control.

-Very much so.

One of the things that will happen is the big thugs will take over

and they'll run through and they'll swamp and strangle out the smaller

and sometimes more delicate plants.

And very often they're the precious ones that you want to have,

so it's got to be kept in its place.

No one plant at any time has centre stage.

It's all of the different plants working in combinations

as they come and go throughout the season,

leading right the way up to the very first frost,

it will still look good and there'll still be plenty of colour in it.

What is it that you find particularly interesting

about herbaceous borders? Why do you fall in love with them?

I think it's the diversity of plants that you can use within the border

and the combinations

and the fact that the border changes throughout the growing season.

So it's not just one hit.

A plant will look good for a while, it will fade away

and then something else comes in and takes its place.

But also there is that ability to move plants around

and re-gig if you don't like the way things work.

So it's a very interactive part of the garden

and you never reach that point

where you stand back and go, "That's it finished. We've done."

-It's work in progress?

-It's always work in progress.

It never seems to come to an end.

Just one of the jobs Gordon and his team have to keep on top of

is the weeding.

In such a fertile space that promotes such vigorous growth,

the weeds that break through can be pretty vigorous too.

It's worth remembering that not all herbaceous plants

are good news in a herbaceous border.

For instance, plants like this,

the bind weed or convolvulus, are a perennial weed.

They're rather lazy plants.

They emerge out of the ground in early spring,

climb their way around your prize specimens

and then literally throttle them.

Now it's very tempting to grab a hold of these and yank them out

but in fact, that just helps the weed

because they've got deep tapped roots

which penetrate several metres in and across the ground

and all that will do is just help them propagate.

So to get rid of it, if you very carefully untwine it

from the plant it's trying to strangle.

And you can see it's quite a long specimen.

Put a stake in the ground...

..and then rewind your bindweed around the cane or stake.

But the point is that you're isolating the weed

from the plant it was inhabiting

and then when it's dry,

you can sneak up on it and treat it with a systemic herbicide.

That's a herbicide which you apply to the foliage

but then finds its way down the stem

and kills right back to the heart of the plant

and all of its root system.

This is a great way of ensuring you treat the bindweed

and the bindweed doesn't kill your prized specimen.

And these are exactly the sort of plants you've got to get rid of

from your garden before you start to plant your herbaceous border.

If you don't get rid of them then there's only one victor

and that's the perennial weeds.

This is Waterperry Gardens in Oxfordshire.

Here they maintain a border that was designed

to teach horticultural students how to care for herbaceous perennials.

I'm meeting Nursery Manager Lizzy Glaser

to find out more about this magical place.

When the sun strikes the border it's just majestic.

Such a bold statement.

It's a beautiful, beautiful border.

It's there to give real bursts of pleasure

over three periods from May until the end of October.

And there's a real history to this border

and we know that it has great integrity.

It has because, of course, it was started by Miss Beatrix Havergal

who took over the site here at Waterperry in 1932

and set up her horticultural school for young ladies.

And this was where she arrived with six students and two tutors

to train future generations of very successful women gardeners.

I just wish I'd been one of them.

Today the gardens still runs courses

but most visitors come to catch a glimpse

of the 60-metre herbaceous border

diligently kept to Miss Havergal's design.

For people who perhaps haven't encountered herbaceous borders

on this sort of scale and with this grandeur before,

what advice do you give them about having a go?

What confidence can you provide for them?

Have a go. It's really, really good fun.

I didn't know anything eight years ago. I knew absolutely nothing.

I just was a lady that lunched and enjoyed looking round galleries.

I'm mad about this because somebody persuaded me to have a go

and it's easy.

Do you think it's possible to have a British garden

without a herbaceous border being present?

Would it have the same energy?

No. Definitely not.

Everybody needs to have a tiny little bit of herbaceous border

in their own garden.

Undoubtedly, Miss Havergal designed this border

to excite her student's about a career in horticulture.

To see if the border can still inspire,

I've invited two non-gardening Oxford University students down

for a little experiment.

How do you react when you see gardens?

What do gardens provoke in you?

Fear.

Why? See, I think that's interesting.

What's fearful, what could possibly be fearful about a green space?

What's lurking in there?

Erm...

I just don't know anything about it and I feel like I should.

What I want you to try and do

is to draw and document with diagrams and words,

however you see fit,

the secrets to the composition of this border.

We should be able to do that. Easily.

We'll have a go.

And when I say easily I mean, not definitely easily.

But we'll have a go.

While Matt and Loren get to grips with this traditional border,

I explore another important piece of herbaceous design.

I'm not the first person to try and reinvigorate

and revitalise herbaceous borders.

The last time it happened was in the 1970s.

And in a break away from those long straight traditional borders,

this is the response.

Island beds.

They're using essentially the same plant material

and arranging them in a very similar way

but in a bed that you can walk all the way around.

It makes much better use of space.

If you've got a small patch of garden

and you really want to give it that expansive feel,

it's an interesting choice.

These may work in smaller spaces but for me,

the traditional border is the most dramatic element of any garden.

I wonder if Matt and Loren will agree.

Structurally, I've seen more clearly the sort of frontal lobes

of stuff that's about to come through

and then the middle section of the flowering stuff

and then the back, a pure mystery.

-Mystery behind the wall.

-What do you mean by mystery?

Erm, well, as in it feels like there's a lot of empty space there.

The mystery that you talk about is actually a service path.

It's a path to allow you to get access to the back of the garden

so that you can maintain and manage the plants.

And Loren, describe how you saw the border.

It seems to work as a flattened landscape.

A lot of Claude Lorrain's paintings, he tends to manipulate space

and guide the viewer very specifically

into different parts of the painting.

That's very apparent in this border as well,

which perhaps is what a lot of gardening is about.

I think you're absolutely right.

What the designer is doing is playing with colour

in exactly the same way as an artist is playing with colour.

Trying to get your eye to move in a very deliberate way

to appreciate the space which is being created

and when you consider that that's just the view today,

you come back next week and it's a completely different view.

So it becomes this constant orchestration and choreography

where one plant is coming to the fore and the next plant is receding

and their performance changes day on day, year on year.

Next time I see a border,

I'll be looking a lot more at the composition which is good

because before I just walked straight passed it.

More than a happy accident, these borders at Arley Hall

are a wonderful example of painting with plants.

It allows us to be drawn into the heart of the garden

and gives us wonderful views out to the estate beyond.

If you want to keep your herbaceous perennials vigorous, vibrant

and healthy, there's one simple technique you'll need to master.

Plant division.

One of the rewards of growing herbaceous perennials

is the speed at which they establish themselves.

In many cases, it's just two or three years

before they've completely filled the space

and that's very much the case with this achillea.

It's called the pearl because of its tiny white flowers

that persists right through the summer months.

And yet here, it's outspilt its space.

That may sound like a problem but as with anything in gardening,

it can be turned to your advantage

because if we dig it up,

and you can be fairly rough with the fork underneath,

give it a bit of a tickle and what you're trying to do is

to take out as much of the plant as possible.

If I grab hold of it and take a chunk out...

There we go.

And we can see these white stems here turning upwards

and becoming green shoots,

which will give us that wonderful burst of growth next spring.

Now this plant can be given a bit of a haircut.

You would normally do this once the plant has started to slip

into its winter or autumn dormancy.

But it can be done as late as spring.

Even as late as the young shoots coming through.

So a bit of a haircut and then,

what you need is some fibrous root

and some shoots and some stems.

and then you can divide the plant as much as you wish.

Now the traditional way of doing it,

if I can find my other fork,

is to get two forks, put them back-to-back

and just prise the plant apart.

It looks quite rough but...

..you can see that we've instantly got a second plant.

Plants can become a little bit lazy if you allow them

to become too large in a garden.

By constantly lifting and dividing,

usually on a three to five-year cycle,

what you do is encourage extra growth.

Extra flowers, more vigour and better performance.

This is typical of the sort of thing

that I started doing in horticulture.

As a 13-year-old boy, I walked into a nursery

and my very first job was lifting and dividing herbaceous perennials.

And there's something rather rewarding about the whole process

because this whole clump can provide us with three or four new specimens.

Left outside, they're perfectly hardy

and then next spring,

they can bed planted out as part of your ongoing painting masterpiece.

I hope I've shown that herbaceous borders are an important

and beautiful part of our garden heritage.

You don't need a country estate or a huge garden to have one

but what you will need are plants.

A great place to pick up a spectacular herbaceous specimen

for your garden is at one of the UK's many plant fairs.

Here you can get advice and meet growers like Martin Blow.

Growing herbaceous perennials is really important to us because

we can grow the plants that perhaps the garden centres don't cover.

The garden centres don't like growing tall plants quite often.

They're difficult to manage.

Where as we can do it on a small scale.

You can come out to a plant fair like this and get great advice.

These people are passionate about the plants.

They're really keen to preserve the old varieties

and make them available to the public.

-That one?

-Yeah, that's lovely.

-Lovely.

Thank you, so that's, er, six and five is 11.

See, I'm glad you can do the maths because I can't.

I think events like this are important

because you get a mixture of specialist growers

that you wouldn't normally perhaps go and see.

There's so much choice. Plants that you've never seen before.

I mean, people might feel a bit daunted trying to do

a herbaceous border in a small space but it's not too difficult.

You can get some nice easy plants to do to start with.

Put them in the garden. If it goes wrong, it doesn't look right.

You don't like it, then move them around. It doesn't matter.

It's a chance to get outside and do some exercise.

It's a chance to become artistic

and it's also a chance to help wildlife as well.

It really is a good thing to do in your garden.

Herbaceous perennials offer unabashed and unrivalled beauty

and personality that fill the senses.

And when arranged in herbaceous borders like this,

they produce the most fantastic carnival atmosphere.

I hope you feel inspired to step outside

and create your own personal horticultural master piece,

the herbaceous border.

Stay with us for another garden revival.

To me, there is nothing more rewarding or attractive

than a kitchen garden full to the brim

with lovely fresh organic produce.

But the shocking truth is that we buy over 80%

of our fruit and vegetables at the supermarket

and 60% of them are imported.

We're losing a huge array of our traditional British varieties.

I want to revive our passion for kitchen gardens.

I'm not talking about the veg patch at the bottom of the garden

or allotments, I'm talking about proper kitchen gardens.

Places of great ornamental beauty that provide us

with food year round.

So join me, Alys Fowler,

for the Great British kitchen garden revival.

On my campaign, I will be revealing the secrets

of one of Britain's oldest traditional kitchen gardens

that is fighting to keep our horticultural heritage alive.

The kind of wealth of food at our finger tips in the UK

is to match and rival anywhere else.

I'll be showing you edible plants that take your breath away.

One of my favourite hangover cures.

When you say one of your favourite hangover cures,

is it because it's going to be so shocking

you forget you had a hangover?

And up and down the country we'll be meeting people

who are turning unused spaces into super productive kitchen gardens.

Plants are like kids, they want to be good.

And veg wants to grow. They'll grow anywhere.

They love it.

I grew up in my mother's kitchen garden.

In fact, my very first garden was underneath the fig tree.

I learnt to hide between the asparagus beds.

I ate my way around that space and played on top of the walls.

For me, the kitchen garden is home.

When I think of gardening I always think about food.

So what better place to start my revival than here at a garden

that supplies one of Britain's most famous restaurants

with exciting seasonal food.

These are the gardens of Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons

in Oxfordshire.

Home to the acclaimed kitchen garden

of two Michelin-starred chef Raymond Blanc.

The cutting edge food here is made of fruit and vegetables

grown in these beds.

So this is the famous garden.

Restored 28 years ago when the restaurant first opened,

Head Gardener Anne-Marie Owens has been managing

the organic kitchen gardens ever since.

None of this is lip service?

All of this is going to end up in the kitchen?

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, the whole point, we've only succeeded

when these vegetables, herbs, are on the plates,

so we're just like any other supplier.

They're looking for top quality with everything that we do.

Do the chef's just come down here

and pick what they want or do you take it to the kitchen?

Absolutely not. No. We harvest everything for them.

Chefs do two tours a week to have a look at everything

and taste whilst we're down here so that menus can be altered.

It sounds like you're so involved with each other.

From start to finish, everything we do is a team effort

from the thought process, the planning process,

the preparation of the soil,

the sowing, to the chef, his creation of the dish.

It is lovely to come here and realise that flavour matters

so much to a group of people

because as a grower of food it's the thing that kind of,

I get up in the morning and go to my garden with that exact desire.

The reason why I do it is because I know I can get flavour here

I can't get anywhere else.

Freshness is the absolute key.

That's what we should all be striving for.

Even if you just put a little pot of something on the window sill

you'll just notice the freshness.

The grow your own movement maybe alive and kicking in the UK

as recent demand for allotments shows

but the traditional idea of a carefully planned kitchen garden

providing an abundant supply of fresh fruit, vegetables

and flowers all year round has died out.

But around the UK, our great country estates are now working hard

to bring this tradition back.

At Tatton Park, an 18th century manor in Cheshire,

they have recreated

what is now one of the oldest kitchen gardens in Britain.

Head Gardener Simon Tetlow has been working

on the revival of these gardens for 15 years.

Today, it's almost a complete recreation

of how it was in Edwardian times.

So what exactly would have been grown in a kitchen garden

traditionally for the period?

The easiest way of explaining, Alys, would be something like

what we expect when we walk into a supermarket now.

You now, there's ranks of fruit from all over the world,

there's vegetables from all over the world.

That same choice is what owners expected

from these places 200 years ago.

And how many people would it have expected to feed do you know?

There'd be a family.

You know, large family who had kind of requirements for banquets

and the usual large social engagements.

We know that the family sent food down

to their London house at Grosvenor Square.

So, there's a kind of demand for sort of high quality fresh produce,

you know, 12 months of the year.

But this wall garden wasn't just dumped here really, was it?

-It was very much chosen?

-Yeah, yeah, it was.

You know, the books and the manuals for kitchen gardening tell you

exactly where to lay your garden out.

Which angles to face the sun and which walls to set for certain

crops like peaches and nectarines and this is almost textbook.

You know there's a nice gentle slope to the west.

There's a nice shelter belt in front of us there and its just that

attention to detail that allows you to grow things here that you

would have expect to grow somewhere like 80 miles south of Paris.

But, you know, using the same principles of site and aspect

and soil and use of cultivars, you know, you could be growing

any of this at home quite easily.

After the First World War,

a smaller work force and an increase in mass production agriculture

meant the excessive cost of kitchen gardens in our grand country estates

was no longer worth maintaining.

Simon and his team are conserving our British fruit

and vegetable heritage by planting traditional varieties

that are no longer available in our supermarkets.

Including an array of beans, herbs,

salads, beetroot, kales

and an incredible 82 varieties of apple.

The kind of key to growing,

whether it's on a small scale or a large scale,

is the use of variety and I think using varieties to grow things early,

grow things late or to keep for storage.

You know, beetroot isn't just a beetroot. There's ones that store,

there's ones that are fresh for salads, ones for boiling.

Horticulture allows you to, kind of, play and experiment with

your own cooking, what you like to cook and what you like to eat

and not be dictated to.

I often think people are very disparaging about the British diet

but actually what they're talking about is the post-war diet.

And before that we ate

-just as well as anybody on the Mediterranean, didn't we?

-We did.

The kind of wealth of food at our fingertips in the UK is to match

and rival anywhere else and that is really what we're trying to do here,

is to egg people on to have a go themselves

and that's really what good gardening is about.

This is grow your own on an epic scale

but what we need to take away is not that you need huge space

but that we need to grow varieties of vegetables

because if we don't grow them they'll be lost.

The expansive kitchen garden at Le Manoir covers almost two acres

and is rammed with 90 types of fruit, herbs, flowers and vegetables

thanks to its clever design, gardening techniques

and choice of varieties.

The good news is I'm going to show you that even with a smaller plot,

you can create a stylish and sustainable kitchen garden

that is full of beauty and bounty.

If you've always wanted a kitchen garden but don't know quite

where to start the simplest design is to use four quadrants.

Now, in terms of garden history, this is the oldest design out there

and there's a reason why it's a classic.

It just works aesthetically.

The tradition of dividing the space into four planting areas

goes back centuries

and has its origins in the earliest Persian gardens.

The upper class Victorians embraced it as an aesthetic

that showed off their wealth of exotic fruit, vegetables,

plants and flowers from far flung places.

And then how you edge these quadrants is up to you, so,

if you wanted to be incredibly formal,

you could do box edging

or if you wanted something a bit more perfumed,

you could choose dwarf lavenders.

If you didn't want something so permanent,

you could put parsley or chives.

If you had a huge garden,

you would then make each quadrant into a single vegetable group.

So, all cabbage family. Roots such as parsnips and carrots.

But because we have much smaller gardens, we're going to

squish it in together but still keep it looking very attractive.

So, you could be very clever with your space

and create an archway so your beans could grow underneath the path

with your beans hanging down so they're easy to pick.

And then along the wall or fence,

perhaps you could put some apples and pears.

If you don't like apples, maybe you could grow a vine or a fig.

It's really making the most of the space

to keep the aesthetic kind of really tight.

The idea is to make the beds look very similar.

Not necessarily with the same vegetables because that would

limit how much you get to eat, but the aesthetic of the design.

It's a good idea to make sure you don't grow the same vegetables

in the same place every year.

Because what happens

if you do this is you tend to get a build-up of pests and diseases.

Also, you don't have to be limited to just growing vegetables.

It's really important to have flowers in your garden

because they're going to attract all the beneficial insects

and pollinators into the space.

From experience, I would suggest that you always put your herbs

as close to the kitchen as you possibly can,

even if that means in pots around the back door

because once you decide in the middle of a dish

that it really would be so much better

if you had a little winter savoury or some nice thyme,

walking in your slippers through a wet path

down to the bottom of the garden just never happens.

But for me, one of the joys of having a garden like this

is that it really changes the way you cook

because instead of having this idea that you're going to make a certain

sort of recipe one evening, you just walk through the garden and go,

"Gosh those beets are really ready,

"I know I'm going to work with them tonight."

Or, "Look at the lovely fresh herbs I could be using."

The garden lends as much inspiration to the kitchen

as the kitchen does to the garden.

Whatever the space you have available,

planning and planting a successful kitchen garden

can bring immense pleasure and put food on your plates.

You don't always need to buy

the same variety of produce from the supermarket.

Instead, grow things seasonally and enjoy the fruits of your labour.

And, in the London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea,

people power has convinced the council to help make this happen.

This used to be a disused tennis court

but now its more a case of game, set and patch

as it's been turned into kitchen gardens for more than 80 people

and I'm really excited to see what's being done here.

The council have installed 47 specially constructed

raised wooden beds at this garden alone.

Terry Oliver is the man who was instrumental

in championing this project four years ago.

I'm really interested in the fact

that you're not calling them allotments

but calling them kitchen gardens.

Is there any reason behind that?

I suppose the main reason is that we wanted them to look nice

and with the community kitchen gardens,

what we do is try and encourage

the residents to grow a mixture of fruit, veg and flowers as well.

Because it's a very densely populated area,

a lot of the gardens are overlooked.

So it's important to make them look nice.

The council really have invested quite a lot into the garden schemes.

We've got 42 kitchen gardens across the whole borough now.

Nearly 1,000 people growing their own fruit and veg

and the more gardens we put in, the more popular it is.

It's an incredibly kind of progressive attitude

for the council to take and it's just great to see.

This beautiful productive kitchen garden

has obviously had a huge effect on the local community

and the people who come here every day, rain or shine.

I wonder what it means to you to have a space like this.

Well, it cuts the food bills for a start.

I mean it does actually, sometimes when, you know,

you haven't got enough money for the week,

you come and pick a bit of produce here and have a stir fry

and it's fantastic.

I didn't know anything about gardening.

This was my first exploration into gardening

because I live in a top floor flat

and what's nice about these plants is that we quite often exchange.

-There's a lot of swapping, I'm sure.

-Yes, so that's good.

-This is my strawberry.

-Strawberry patch.

-Strawberry patch.

Oh, look, and you've still got strawberries. That's amazing.

You always see in gardening books,

get a wine box and grow strawberries in it

and then all of a sudden you think, "Oh, wow, I can do that now!"

We've made real friends through the garden and lasting friends

and they're our neighbours and we've all lived around here

for, you know, 25 years plus and we didn't know each other.

I can't imagine life without it now. It's made an immense change.

The gardening they're doing here is inspiring

and I'm going to give them some of my own favourites

to add to their bumper crop next year.

For me, kitchen garden is all about embracing

some kind of new things to grow each year,

so I was wondering if I could persuade you

to take on some new seeds. Some of them are quite familiar.

Some of them, hopefully, you haven't seen before.

Does anybody have a preference for something immediately

that they want to have a go at?

Yes. I'll have that one.

OK. So that's pattypan, which is a summer squash,

and if you don't keep on top of picking them,

they go from this to flying saucers quite quickly.

-So, yeah. That's pattypan.

-I'm looking forward to that.

I think if you're in a really sunny position

then you should try the white aubergines.

-Have you grown aubergines before?

-Er, no. No. No.

They need good fertile soil.

The sunniest spot you can give them

and they need more water than you'd imagine.

So this, this is an heirloom cucumber actually

and it's called crystal apple, this one.

We always thing cucumbers have to be long and green

but actually they can be yellow and they can be short and dumpy.

Right.

And then this is a really fantastic and I guess maybe also

it will be a good idea to collectively grow it,

which is strawberry popcorn.

-You can open them up like that.

-Oh, wow. Fantastic.

Yeah, and because this is, erm, isn't, you know,

because you're not trying to eat it at sweetcorn stage,

once they feel firm and hard, they're ready.

And then you know you can chuck them off, put them in a frying pan

and they'll pop.

So they'll be good for a community party.

Not only are people in this borough now getting to eat fresh food

from their own kitchen garden

but they're also making their community stronger.

But a thing to take away from this project

is that you can do it absolutely anywhere.

Whether it's in the corner of your garden or in a disused plot.

At Le Manoir, the menu is influenced

by what's at the peak of its season in the kitchen garden.

With the range of beetroots and other root vegetables at their best,

Head Gardener Anne-Marie

has had an order to harvest them for today's specially designed dishes.

We've had a nice, sort of, early autumn rain.

They've swollen beautifully.

There's so many different varieties and colours to them

I really would not be put off by the pickled beetroot

that everybody seems to go for but to have them roasted.

Absolutely beautiful vegetables. Very sweet.

Sweet and delicious and you've got other varieties here, haven't you?

We have. We've got the white here. That's a lovely one to...

I think the white is so under used.

I think its one of those ones which has really been forgotten

that you can have this beetroot that doesn't stain everything,

that is so super sweet.

The thing about beets is not sowing them too early

because if they get in very cold wet soil

-they don't like that much, do they?

-It's a relatively easy crop

and I think instead of just sticking to one variety,

get a few packets, mix them up and pull them out.

It's a really good trick,

if you've got a small space, to do exactly that

and mix up the seeds.

Do the same, I often do that with radishes as well,

so that in one row you get a pink, a red, a white.

That's it.

-Do you think we have enough now?

-I think we do.

I feel like I could carry on pulling.

The great thing is you can grow many different varieties of vegetables

to cook with throughout the year.

Experiment with what you enjoy eating

and always check the seed packets to learn the best time to plant.

And with the final request for sage, I'm off to the kitchen

to see this amazing produce turned into a two Michelin-starred

autumn inspired heritage beetroot dish.

Development chef Adam Johnson has been working at the restaurant

creating seasonal dishes with Raymond for nine years.

So, tell me what are we going to cook?

OK. So we're just going to finish off a dish now,

an autumn vegetable dish,

so all of the things we've picked in the garden.

Right, is this the first time you've worked at a restaurant

where there is such a relationship with the garden?

Yeah, this is a very unique place

and the chef's here get more in tune with the seasons.

Everyone is used to seeing strawberries all year round

and asparagus,

so when you come here the gardeners are very in tune with the chefs.

They're constantly saying, "Oh, we've got his coming up next.

"We need to think of the menus."

You're getting excited thinking of all the dishes we did last year

and how we can improve it and looking forward to that season.

This is when you get to do the chefy bit, isn't it?

Yeah, no pressure. No-one's watching.

We've just got a little bit of spinach and chard.

Again, the gardeners dictate what we have on the plate.

If they say we're running out of spinach

and we've got a load of chard coming on then, then we'll move onto that.

Now, here we've got a few beetroots.

That looks like golden ball, one of the golden varieties.

Yep.

And we've got these lovely ruby beetroots

-which will get your fingers very mucky.

-Yeah.

So just to finish off, we've got a little bit of deep-fried sage leaves

and then just a few little bits of parsnip as well.

It's lovely.

It's like a beautiful manifestation of what autumn is, isn't it?

The colours, the flavours, everything.

And I love the fact that there's

lots of different varieties of beetroots here.

Just kind of bringing home that idea that flavour is not one variety.

I am one gardener who thinks entirely with her stomach.

Happy?

This is such a wonderful celebration of everything

that is good about a kitchen garden.

Fantastic soil, great varieties, Great growers and amazing chefs.

A kitchen garden is not just for Michelin-starred chefs.

We can all create a glorious space on a smaller scale

and grow food all year long.

I want to show you that with a bit of imagination,

it's not just about the amazing range of British varieties

of fruit and vegetables.

There is also a whole world of edible plants we can grow

that are decorative and delicious.

I've come to meet Paul Barney, who,

like the Victorian plant hunters before him,

travels the world to bring unusual specimens back

to his nursery in Berkshire so that people like you and me

can buy them to plant in our kitchen gardens.

So if you never thought to grow a sort of unusual edible

that was going to come back year after year,

what group would you start with?

Well, I would start with the enormous range of the onion family

and alliums generally.

They are a fantastic big range and they really are very tasty

and great for insects and really beautiful.

Now this, this is new to me. What is this?

This is Allium hookeri 'Zorami', quite a mouthful.

It's an allium I found in India in the markets

and you can eat every single bit of it, pretty much.

-Can I try a bit?

-Of course.

Mmm.

Really crunchy. Great flavour.

It's quite, erm, it's a little bit of garlic

but quite a lot of chive in there, isn't it?

I mean, that's one of those plants where you look at it

and think, "My gosh, I get to eat that

"as well as it looking that attractive in my garden."

-That's a huge bonus really, isn't it?

-It is, yeah.

Once you've started experimenting, the possibilities are endless.

There are even edible plants with health benefits.

So what's this lovely thing in a pot?

Well this is a Schisandra chinensis.

It's a vine from China and Japan.

It's a really good liver tonic.

I mean that's why the Chinese and Japanese rate it so highly.

-Are these what I should be eating?

-They are. You give those a try.

One of my favourite hangover cures.

And when you say your favourite hangover cures, is it because

it's going to be so shocking that you forget you have a hangover?

No, because you can feel it's doing so much good for your liver

and it's so refreshing.

Mmm, oh, wow.

-That's...

-It zings you, zings you back into...

Yeah, that's a bit of everything isn't it? A slight peppery note.

A lot of citrus.

THEY LAUGH

Is this the sort of height it will grow to or does it grow much bigger?

It's not a very big climber.

It's a small climber which likes to be in part shady conditions,

-so very handy for a small garden.

-Very useful, yeah.

So, basically, there should be one outside every pub in England.

THEY LAUGH

And Paul's also got the ultimate British plant

for any novice kitchen gardener.

No excuses. Anyone can grow the traditional Babington leek.

How do you cook with them?

Well, I use these like garlic but a lot milder.

They give you a lot of good crunch to a stir fry.

I wish people would really embrace kitchen gardens

for what they really can be,

which is like an exciting sort of store cupboard of your garden

and move beyond that idea of just growing potatoes onions and carrots.

HE LAUGHS

At Le Manoir, they use organic gardening techniques,

growing both old and new varieties.

What's more, there's a lot of ideas here

that we can borrow for our own kitchen garden

to keep them going all year round.

At this time of year, the vegetable garden is often groaning

but there's always other tricks to be had

and these runner beans are a really good example.

Because they've become big, they've become stringy

and nobody wants to eat them any more.

However, if you furtle about you'll find

there are these older, drier pods and when you open them up,

you'll see that there's beautiful beans inside.

Now, this is a variety called Czar.

What you want to do is take your beans indoors,

put them on a baking tray somewhere light and airy

where they can continue to dry out

because what you want to be able to do is press it

and no longer see your thumb nail imprint in the bean.

That means that they're good to store and you just put them

in a jam jar and they will store all winter long.

So these are great in soups and stews

and that way you get this whole extra crop of something

that you didn't think you were going to get another meal off.

Now it's not just the runner beans that are desperate to set seed.

Many of the annual veg are now racing against the season

before winter comes

and two of my favourite in my kitchen garden

is this purple orach and also this lovely Mexican tree spinach.

Now both of these are fantastic spinach substitutes.

They grow into these massive tall, tall plants

with thousands upon thousands upon thousands of seeds.

However you don't have to waste all the seed.

You collect it when it's gone this buff colour and its dry

and then you can take this seed

and sow it for micro greens over the winter.

Now micro greens are just a fancy name for baby leaves.

They are perfect for using as a garnish or for making a small salad.

So here, I've got some sorrel,

some French sorrel, so that nice lemony flavour.

And then this here is a red radish,

so it's going to have a slightly mustardy hot spicy flavour.

Now the great thing about the orach or the Mexican tree spinach

is you get so much free seed that you can have greens all winter long

and all you need to do is get a seed tray,

fill it with some good quality compost

and then just liberally sow the seed across.

You can get away with really packing them in.

Then you tempt them into the soil

and then cover them up.

You don't need to cover them too thickly.

Just sort of anchor them into the soil.

Give them a good water.

Leave it on a warm window sill

and literally within days you'll see growth

and then when they're about sort of five or ten centimetres or so high,

take a pair of scissors, chop them off

and there's a really fantastic super easy meal

from something that was in your garden.

I'm not alone on my mission

to revive the Great British kitchen garden.

Six years ago, Mary Clear and her neighbours

in Todmorden, West Yorkshire,

decided to turn their whole town into one.

They made it their mission

to get the community excited about gardening

with the added benefits of being able to eat locally grown produce.

I don't have any horticultural background

and I don't believe you need it.

I believe that plants are like kids they want to be good.

So what do they need? They need sunshine.

They need muck and they need water and that's it, Bob's your uncle.

We've got such a variety in this country of vegetables

and I grow veg wherever I can,

whether it's a tiny space, a big space, a roof,

an empty bucket or someone's tin hat.

You know, a veg wants to grow, they'll grow anywhere.

They love it.

She even managed to convince everyone from the local scouts

to the community college to have a patch of green

and grow some fruit and vegetables

and the local bobbies to convert the beds outside the police station.

People from different walks of life,

they volunteer, they give up their own time to come here

to plant these vegetables, tend them and harvest them.

It's brought the police and the community closer together,

breaking down barriers and we're proud to be part of it.

I'm really passionate about growing vegetables

because it crosses all the cultures, class, age, creed.

Everybody knows something, a tiny bit, about vegetables.

Every culture has got its own vegetable history and background

and, not only that, you can cook them afterwards and celebrate.

We have such a strong tradition of kitchen gardens in this country

but it is a heritage that is seriously in danger of being lost.

So my message is simple.

Let us celebrate our kitchen gardens by growing more.

More beautiful vegetables.

More fresh herbs, more wonderful flowers.

Let us have gardens that are good to eat and beautiful to look at.

Let us have a Great British kitchen garden revival.