Cottage Gardens and House Plants 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 lacklustre.

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 reveal the 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.

On tonight's show Tom Hart Dyke champions the house plant

but first I'm on the cottage garden campaign trail.

What do you think of when you think of a British garden?

Surely it's a cottage garden brimming with flowers,

overflowing with vegetables, the trees dripping with fruit.

But there's a problem.

We're in danger of losing some of those cherished plants

and forgetting the whole ethos of cottage gardening.

Though it's sometimes seen as dated and time-consuming,

I believe this unique style of British gardening

is not only easy but has never been more relevant.

So come along with me, Carol Klein,

on my Great British Cottage Garden Revival.

On my revival I'll be in Nantwich

to get people excited about their cottage gardens.

I love cottage gardening!

I'll discover a breathtaking garden in Yorkshire

growing a rich array of plants.

As a gardener I come into this place

and I just feel so excited by it.

And I'll be showing you just how easy it is to start your own cottage garden at home.

All along those roots there are little nodules, little bumps,

and each one of those is capable of producing a new shoot.

This is the garden at East Lambrook Manor in the heart of Somerset.

By many this is seen as the home of the British cottage garden and you can see why.

One of the most influential gardening writers of the mid twentieth century,

Margery Fish, planted and cared for this garden for 30 years.

She showed a whole generation of gardeners how easy it was

to achieve a wonderful laidback style

and she shared with them her overwhelming love of plants.

Margery Fish's garden personifies what most of us mean

by a cottage garden but none of it was conscious.

None of it was deliberate.

It was much more a question of an attitude of bringing plants together

and putting them so they informally mingled and mixed.

She loved new plants but more than that

she loved to reintroduce things which had almost gone out of cultivation.

Were almost lost.

And she put them all together in this most wonderful melee.

Since Margery died the garden has had several owners.

All of them have made sure that the garden reflects her principles and ideas.

The current owner is Mike Werkmeister

who took on the mantle of East Lambrook in 2008.

It's a very English style of gardening.

It's gardening on a human scale which is why so many people who come here

can identify with this garden

and they take ideas away from this garden

which they wouldn't from a more formal garden.

No, it's very, very inclusive, isn't it?

I mean, you just look at it and think, oh, you know,

I'd like my garden to be like this.

And you look at this and you think I could do this.

It's experimental and it's great

because it lets you express yourself, doesn't it?

You can do anything with anything

and then you suddenly find these lovely plant combinations,

some of which are planned and some of which plan themselves

cos we let things seed here.

Yeah. Margery Fish did that, didn't she?

She did that. She did exactly the same.

She let plants seed.

She let plants do what they wanted to do

which is why it has this sort of magical nature about it.

Margery Fish's informal style wasn't based on the large elaborate borders of country estates

but rather the small practical productive gardens

that have graced rural homes up and down the country since the 15th century.

To visit one of these quintessential cottage gardens

I want to take you to the breathtaking Lake District.

We couldn't really have a more beautiful day or a more beautiful setting for this.

Mountains are in the background. It's misty. It's glorious.

It's the perfect setting to go and have a look at a cottage garden.

In the hills by Windermere you'll find what for millions of people around the world

is the epitome of a British garden.

Heavily featured in some of the most famous children's books ever written,

this garden belonged to Beatrix Potter.

Come on.

I tell you what, the first time you come into a garden, and I've never been here before,

it's so exciting, isn't it?

This is Hilltop House,

where Beatrix Potter lived for over 30 years in the early 20th century.

But I'm here to see the garden filled with plants

mingling and mixing together.

Alchemilla, masses of it. Marjoram, miles of it.

And look at this. This is that soapwort.

They actually used this for washing their clothes

long before all those soap powders and everything were invented.

It's typically cottage garden.

These classic cottage garden plants not only feed you

and help you wash your clothes,

but they also attract pollinators and keep pests away.

Today the house and garden are run by the National Trust

and they've included some real cottage garden heroes.

Lovely phlox.

I think phlox typifies what you mean by a cottage garden plant.

My mum gave me a big chunk of a white phlox which my granddad had given her

and who knows who gave it to him

and these things come down the generations, you know,

swapped between family, neighbours and friends.

You get a wonderful sense of tradition in this garden.

I'm meeting Liz Hunter-MacFarlane, the House and Collections Manager.

It's an iconic view, isn't it?

It is absolutely.

You can recognise the garden from some of the books, can't you?

It featured quite a lot.

That's right. The garden's almost like an extra character in some of the stories.

The plants really kind of get involved

and of course there's that beautiful iconic view looking up the garden path

that's in the start of The Tale of Tom Kitten.

Despite its cultural significance,

this garden was given over to food production during the war

and then grassed over.

A common occurrence with cottage gardens of the time.

But Hilltop's been through its own revival

and today it's been put back to something Beatrix Potter would have recognised.

We have been left a huge selection of photographs

by Rupert Potter, Beatrix's father.

They were taken around 1908, 1912,

and they show us not just what was growing in the garden

but where it was growing and the particular varieties.

Would she have loved dappling around amongst these plants?

-You just get that feeling from it.

-Absolutely.

We've got some wonderful letters of Beatrix's that tell us exactly what she was up to.

She actually confessed that she'd stolen something from every garden in the village,

just about, including some honesty.

Nicking plants or at least taking cuttings was a well-worn cottage garden tradition.

-So have you got a garden?

-Yes, we have, in the Cotswolds.

-And is it a cottage garden?

-It is.

Do you ever steal things cos you know that Beatrix Potter...

-Oh, I never steal.

-Certainly not!

Well, you're not a true cottage gardener then, are you?

Maybe not.

Of course it was the stories that were set in this garden

that attract over 100,000 visitors from around the world every year.

Look, here's the veg garden.

Can't you just imagine Peter Rabbit climbing through the gate?

Look at it.

They would have brought in things like these evening primroses.

Wonderful things which bring in pollinating insects too.

If you companion plant, if you put plants together like that,

you get less pests, less diseases.

You certainly don't need to use chemicals

and you use every inch of space

and things just grow happily together.

I do organic gardening so I do put my flowers with my vegetables

to keep the bugs off them.

So a spot of companion planting which is pure cottage garden, really, isn't it?

I think gardens like this have become rarer

and yet I feel now

that people yearn for this kind of reality.

You can wander around and do a bit of gardening

without it being a question of keeping those edges straight

and cutting that grass.

I mean, no grass here, is there?

Cottage gardens like Hilltop

would certainly have inspired Margery Fish at East Lambrook Manor

and there's no doubt that this garden has inspired me.

I love cottage gardens.

I always wanted one

and eventually when we moved to North Devon I got one

and one of my major inspirations was Margery Fish.

I read every single word she wrote.

I devoured her books.

Eventually we got the opportunity to come here.

I came with my mum and my two daughters.

Imagine how I felt.

I was surrounded by all those plants I'd read about.

In many ways that visit and these plants have defined the way I garden.

To have your own cottage garden all you need is a love of plants

and I want to introduce you to some of my favourites now.

The kind of plants that you see all around East Lambrook now are just the sort of plants,

in fact, in some cases the very same plants that Margery Fish grew.

They really answer that category of cottage garden plants.

They're things which are robust, strong,

really close to the plants as they grow in the wild.

They don't need huge amounts of care and attention,

they just get on with it.

And what's more they get on with each other.

Look at this glorious little aster. This is one called Little Carlow.

It looks nothing now but in a few weeks' time the whole thing

will be smothered with the most beautiful bright blue flowers.

The butterflies will come down and suck its nectar

and doesn't it look just the job with this glorious Rudbeckia.

Big bright yellow stars.

Tough as old boots, this plant.

There are annuals. Things like Cosmos that you can just sprinkle in

and let them mix and mingle.

There are tender perennials too like your dahlias.

This is what a traditional cottage garden is all about

but there are cutting-edge cottage gardens too.

Cottage gardens are always evolving

and I've come to West Yorkshire to see one of the most up-to-the-minute examples.

I've been itching to explore it for years.

Look at that! I think I'm going to love what's in here.

Oh! (GASPS)

Oh, it's beautiful! Look at it!

(LAUGHS)

It just greets you and involves you straightaway. I'm going.

This is Dove Cottage.

A nursery and garden that challenges all those dusty preconceptions of a cottage garden.

This is what my revival's all about.

Look underneath.

You go under here and here's this whole new set of treasures.

These little Sanguisorba heads, little bobbly heads in a big thicket of Yarrow

and they're all sort of pushing forward

but they're not pushing each other of the out of the way.

They're just saying we love living together.

Look at the way they've used this grass.

There's so much movement and dynamism

and energy about the whole place, isn't there?

It's magical.

It's not just the planting combinations

that give this garden its wild beauty.

The garden is clearly allowed to take control of its own destiny.

Look at this. All these separate little gardens that have created themselves.

Eryngium, Sea Hollys and these beautiful knobbly heads of Verbascum.

Aren't they marvellous?

As a gardener I come into this place

and I just feel so excited by it

but I think anybody would.

I think if you came into this garden

and you'd perhaps never gardened before

and all you've got is a little patch, you'd want to do it.

You'd want to achieve this sort of thing and you could do it.

That's the point.

This inspirational space was planted by Kim and Steven Rogers

over 16 years ago when Steven gave up being a butcher

and became a cottage gardener.

What do people think of the garden?

They're usually surprised.

They don't expect to open that gate

and see what they see with the tall perennials and grasses.

It's got this sort of very simple plants that you would find in a cottage garden

and then it's got newer plants that you wouldn't normally see

but they still fit in well together

and they still have this wilder look

and it's all about the insects and everything else that goes with a cottage garden.

So where do you think cottage gardens are going then?

Well, hopefully in the same direction that we're going with our garden.

Which is live and let live

and accepting that plants are going to fall over

and once you start looking with a different pair of eyes

instead of wanting everything to stand up perfectly

and have a gap between everything

then it starts to come and it's taken us a while.

If you were trying to tell somebody about how to create a garden with that sort of feel,

that lovely cottagey feel, what would you say?

Well, a lot of the plants have got to be good self seeders

so that the garden gets a life of its own

so it's not as contrived then.

There's all this spontaneity of plants.

Do you know plants have their own personality?

They want to do their own thing.

-They make you smile.

-(ALL LAUGH)

They do! And you can tell them, you're lovely.

I'm back at East Lambrook

to show you one of the most intimate ways

to form a relationship with your garden's plants.

Growing them from seed.

Watching your seedlings grow into tall proud plants

will transform the way you see your garden.

The first step when you grow from seed is collecting it from your own plants.

All you need is a paper bag.

It's best done on a dry day to ensure your seeds don't get wet.

This is an Eryngium. It's a sea holly and it's from South America.

You can't divide it.

You can't take cuttings from it.

The only chance you've got of making more

is to collect the seed

and if you look here right in the top, in the apex of the plant,

the apical bud,

and that's the one that in almost every case sets seed first.

When the plant is ready to shed its seed,

that's the minute you jump in and collect it.

This is just falling apart now. All those separate seeds.

As long as they stay cool and dry you can keep your seeds in paper bags for months.

This is an incredibly beautiful plant.

It's called Dierama pulcherrimum

and pulcherrimum means very beautiful.

These lovely seed heads are proceeded by big drooping pink flowers.

As the seed pods swell,

they get heavier and they bring these lovely arching stems closer to the ground.

All these have started to open up.

That paper casing is pulling back

and inside you can see all these wonderful little bronzy seeds.

That whole stem there is full of ripe seed

so the best way to do it is just to gently pull it off.

It would make good earrings really, wouldn't it?

And every single one of those is going to make a new plant.

Just like cottage garden plants,

your seeds will come in all sorts of glorious shapes and sizes.

There are so many plants that you can grow from seed

like this beautiful sweet pea.

This is Lathyrus latofolius.

It's one called Pink Pearl.

So it's a sweet pea with these lovely pink flowers

which have obviously been smothering it all summer long.

But it's a perennial so it'll come up every single year.

I'm looking for stuff that's like that

so the seed pods are brown and ripe.

They're just about to burst

and if you actually look inside one of them

you can see it's totally full,

just like a pea pod of these lovely little seeds.

They're still a bit green but they're on their way to being brown.

Seed collection is a wonderful way to get to know your plants

and a great excuse to get into the garden.

Once your seeds are collected you don't have to plant all of them.

You can swap them with other people.

I've come to Cheshire to visit the spiritual home of the Cottage Garden Society.

A society which has seed swapping at its heart.

Clive Lane and Angela Winfield have been exchanging seeds for the last 35 years.

So why did you feel the need to have the Cottage Garden Society?

In the early 80s there was a style called easy maintenance gardens

and lots of cottage gardens in villages were uprooted

and we started to lose the cottage garden plants

so we decided that we should form the Cottage Garden Society

and erm...swap plants.

-Promote the cause.

-Promote the cause, yes.

This has really been our life's work.

Preserving the plants and conserving them

but it really needs people to carry the torch forward now

to ensure that the plants live on

rather than just as pictures in a book.

We're taking some of the society's seed to the Nantwich food and drink festival

to see if there's an appetite for growing plants from seed.

Oh yay! Oh yay! Oh yay!

Visitors to Nantwich here today,

we have the Great British Seed Swap, part of the Cottage Garden Revival.

Come along and join.

It is your heritage.

So are you a gardener, John?

Er, runner beans are my favourite.

Now you can put some flowers with them.

Right. Lovely.

-What are you going to have?

-I'll have a lucky dip.

You pick me five out. I'll have them growing.

No problem. I'll shout at them if they don't grow.

No, just ring your bell. (LAUGHS)

-Are you gardeners?

-I've got my sunflowers. Got my buddleias.

And the butterflies and everything.

I love to see wild flowers. I want to see more.

Right, so here's your opportunity.

I always have some of these in my bag.

What, empty seed packets?

Well, they're just little envelopes and what I do, if somebody's got some seeds

I'll say, "Oh, could I have a few of those?"

You've grown the biggest sunflower in your class?

In your class or the whole school?

-Um, er, the class, I think.

-Yeah.

How big was it?

Erm, about two metres.

That's absolutely enormous, isn't it?

It's higher than I can reach I bet.

(LAUGHS)

What I'm after is a glass of your wine

swapped for a couple of packets of seed.

All right then! That seems fair trade to me.

-Here's to your seeds.

-Thank you very much.

So what's so great about growing stuff from seed, do you think?

They always remind me of other people.

That buddleia is Sylvia.

It's not just a thing that actually attracts all the butterflies.

-It's Sylvia.

-You're lovely.

Oh, thank you, Carol. So are you.

I love cottage gardening! I do.

I do. That's not a lie.

And remember with the Cottage Garden Society

you're not just having seeds, you're gaining friends too.

-Oh right.

-Yes.

Well, my hair's a bit flattened

but everything else including my spirits is really uplifted

because it's been such a splendid day

and everybody seems to be willing to espouse the whole idea

of this way of gardening.

I'm back at East Lambrook,

this stunning two-acre example of a cottage garden.

But not all these plants would have been grown from seed.

Some would have come from cuttings

and that's another crucial cottage garden activity.

Well, growing stuff from seed is wonderfully productive

but you can never ever guarantee just how your seedlings are going to turn out.

If you want to make sure that a plant is exactly the same as its parent

then you've got to do it vegetatively.

All that means is you're producing a clone of a plant.

Something that's identical to its parent.

Well, you can do that with cuttings

but you can also do it with some plants with roots.

Now I've dug up these two beautiful big fat chunks of acanthus.

You've got to remember when you're doing these

that you must have them the right way round.

So the top of your cuttings

and you'll take several from here

must always be the end of the cutting

which was closest to the crown of the plant.

The point at which the plant meets the earth.

Apart from that it's so straightforward

and all you do is take a chunk of this.

Something about 4cm long or so.

Something like that.

And then all you want to do is push this into the compost

so the top is completely flush with that compost.

You just cover the top with grit

and the idea of doing that is just that you stop weed seeds growing,

you retain the moisture underneath.

If you've got somewhere warm to keep them then that's the best place

but they will root eventually, even outside.

Now there's another sort of root cutting

where it really doesn't matter which way up they go

because they're going to be horizontal.

So they're just going from left to right or east to west

and it's an ideal way of propagating things like this Japanese anemone.

This is one called Andrea Atkinson.

A beautiful white one.

Now if you just examine the plant

you'll find that amongst these very fine fibrous roots

there are some thicker ones like that

so if I delve into this

I'm going to find quite a lot of separate roots.

There's a nice piece. Look at that. That's ideal.

Now all along those roots there are little nodules,

little bumps,

and each one of those is capable of producing a new shoot

so you're just exploiting what the plant does in nature anyway.

So just take off a few pieces.

To transform these dainty roots into bold new plants,

simply cut them into 4cm lengths.

Press them down onto the surface of some damp compost.

Cover them with grit and put them somewhere nice and warm.

If you haven't got a greenhouse your kitchen windowsill will do.

Never mind all that washing up liquid and all that stuff.

Get something important in there

and as long as you try and emulate nature

and do exactly what the plant does in the ground.

So for big thick roots, roots going downwards vertically.

The ones that creep along the ground just under the surface, then horizontally.

It's so straightforward, it really is.

Anybody can do it.

I hope my revival has caught your imagination.

There's so much diversity in the plants you can have in your new cottage garden

and in a single species there can be a huge diversity.

This is Surrey and the home of Robin Middleton.

He's created a dynamic cottage garden which has focused on just one plant.

The Salvia.

What I absolutely love about Salvias is that they come in every colour of the rainbow.

There is even a Salvia with black flowers

and there are a few rare ones with yellow flowers.

I don't have a favourite Salvia

because if you ask me every day I'll change my mind

but I can show you one or two now which I absolutely adore.

These are some of the taller Salvias which I have.

They start flowering in July right until the frosts.

They've been here for ten years in this garden.

Cut them back in the winter and wait for them to come up in the spring.

Anyone can grow these.

Robin started growing Salvias over 20 years ago

and he's amassed one of the largest collections in the country

with over 140 different varieties.

I'm trying to create a modern cottage garden

and I think Salvias complement the traditional cottage garden plants very well indeed.

I feel I have a role in the conservation of Salvias

due to the fact that some of them are becoming extinct.

If they do become extinct in the wild,

I'm very happy to grow them myself and to share them with other enthusiasts.

Protecting our cottage garden plants for future generations

is just one of the compelling reasons

for us to take another look at this exciting and simple way of gardening.

Cottage gardening isn't just a style of gardening.

It's almost a way of life.

It's all about friendship, about sharing plants, experiences, associations.

I hope that the places we've been to,

the people we've met and the plants we've seen

will inspire you to take part in the Great British Cottage Garden Revival.

Stay with us for another garden revival.

I am surrounded by some of the most exciting and diverse plant life on our planet

and although many of these species and varieties

are not able to survive in your garden

a lot of them will thrive in your home.

House plants like the cheese plant and rubber plant

have suffered an image problem over the past few decades.

We were once a proud indoor gardening nation

but today our sales of plants like these

are amongst the lowest in Europe.

I want us to fall back in love with the array of plants

we can all grow in our homes

and a tradition that goes back generations.

So I want you to join me, Tom Hart Dyke,

in my Great British House Plant Revival.

As part of my campaign I'll be visiting one of our most famous house plant nurseries.

I literally have tingles.

Everybody in the UK should have a house plant like this.

Something so bonkers.

I'll uncover an awe-inspiring collection of house plants in East Sussex.

To be totally blown away like this for me is quite unusual.

As well as showing you how simple it is to grow begonias.

Easy as pie. Anyone can do it.

This is the home of the Royal Horticultural Society.

Good old Wisley Gardens in leafy Surrey.

The gardens were originally laid out in 1878

but I'm here today to see a rather exciting addition.

And this is it.

A space-age glittering cathedral to indoor gardening.

It contains one of the most important indoor plant collections in the world.

If you think house plants are dated and boring,

reminiscent of your granny's sideboard,

then this incredible building is where I'll be basing my campaign to hopefully change your mind.

This to me is house plant heaven.

Just look at this wonderful glasshouse.

It's the equivalent to ten tennis courts in size

and for me it brings back memories

of travelling abroad and seeing plants in the wild.

Because it was at the age of seven that my influential gardening granny gave me my first house plant.

Actually here from the garden centre at Wisley

and from that one house plant I've never looked back

and expanded my collection in travelling abroad to far-flung climes.

As a plant hunter I've seen many of these plants growing in the wild

but just as big a thrill is seeing them growing in my own home

and that's a joy I want more of us to experience.

Sadly the house plant is not as loved in Britain as it once was

and we're put to shame by countries like Denmark and Norway

where people are five times more likely to buy an indoor plant

and that's just not good enough.

If my revival is to succeed

I need to find out why these wonderful plants have lost their popularity

and to rediscover their proud history.

I'm a plant hunter.

I've been to all corners of the globe

seeing plants in their native habitats.

But for anybody interested in the outdoors, including plant hunters,

this amazing house in north-west Kent is a gardener's pilgrimage.

It's a gardener's graceland

because this was the home of Charles Darwin.

Charles Darwin is best known as a naturalist

but he spent five years as a plant hunter in the 1830s

when house plants were in their heyday.

Travelling the world he would find exotic plant specimens

that he could bring back for people to grow indoors.

This greenhouse is stuffed full of a huge diversity of house plants

and is where Darwin changed the way we saw the natural world forever

and I can't wait to explore it.

Look at all the orchids. They're fantastic.

And then here all these lovely sundews, the Droseras,

through to all of these lovely other insectivorous plants including the Sarracenias.

Darwin is credited with introducing many varieties of orchid into the UK

but this one holds some traumatic plant-hunting memories of my own.

When I was kidnapped 13 years ago,

during our captivity, on the day I was going to be executed,

on June 16th, I'll never forget it,

at five minutes to 12 of the year 2000,

this just turned 14-year-old said,

"You've got five hours, mate, before we blow your...star...star...head off,"

and the minute he turned around to me I thought, right, I need orchids to distract me,

the thought of being executed

and these were the first orchids I saw hanging from the trees around the camp

where me and my friend were looking for these orchids.

We should never have been in this place.

Wow.

The first flowering Stanopea I've seen since that time.

Absolutely amazing plant.

I didn't expect to see that today at Charles Darwin's place.

It was my passion for plants that got me through that harrowing experience

and I believe it is a passion I shared with Darwin

and the huge number of Victorian plant collectors.

I'm meeting Christine Lalumia, a design historian,

who I'm hoping can give me an insight into the relationship

between Victorians and their indoor plants.

For the Victorians, were house plants important to them?

Absolutely essential because when you brought a plant indoors

you were bringing nature indoors

so it was thought to be pleasing

to have lots and lots of green living material in your room

and the Victorians took an enormous amount of time tending these.

Christine, I'm on this revival to get the house plant up and running again.

To get them more popular.

Is there something we can learn, a key thing that we can learn from our Victorian past?

Well, there a lot of things we can learn

but I think probably one of the best is giving something time to flourish.

House plants are meant to be things that you care for

over a long period, develop a relationship with,

and they grow and grow and get better and better with time.

People don't want to spend that amount of thought,

that amount of effort

so cut flowers or other decorative solutions

are often chosen and it's a great shame.

To find out how house plants are faring in the 21st century

I'm heading to the front line of my campaign.

This is Woodcote Green in Surrey.

One of the largest garden centres in the country.

It's a massive 30-acre plot

so I'm expecting big things from the house plant department.

It's an awful immediate response to have

but you do get a little crestfallen once you've seen this collection here

considering the huge size of the garden centre.

To find out why this collection is so uninspiring

I'm meeting Head of Plant Sales, David Beard.

We did used to have a lot larger house plant section

but we used to have a lot of plants that would sit there for months and months.

Plants that people didn't know what they were.

Didn't know what to do with them and in the end we'd have to reduce them

or even worst-case scenario throw them away.

We're very much supply and demand

so if someone wants something we'll get it

otherwise we'll just try and treat the core section of houseplants.

With garden centres shrinking their houseplant collections

surely there has never been a better time for my revival.

Back at the grandeur of the glasshouse at Wisley

I'm reminded of the diversity of plant life we can grow in our homes.

Anyone that thinks house plants are boring

clearly hasn't been here.

I'm meeting the glasshouse team manager Peter Jones

to find out which plants he thinks should take centre stage in my revival.

So, Peter, why do you think we need to revive our love of house plants?

I think it's so important to have something green in our lives.

I think it's just healthy for a human spirit

to have that extra bit of life quality in our living spaces.

And what plants, being surrounded by such a diverse range of plants here,

what plants do you recommend as being relatively easy to grow?

Perhaps a good group of plants which should be mentioned

and brought more into the forefront is, say, tillandsias and the epiphytes.

These are commonly called air plants, aren't they?

Yeah, these kind of wonderful plants here survive off the moisture in the air

so they would be living on trees in the rainforest

where there would be high humidity

but we can take those kind of adaptations

and have them in our living space so something like this would be...

-You mounted them on your cork oak bit of bark there.

-Exactly.

Something quite nice and interesting that you could have in your bathroom

and I mean look at the diversity in shapes you can get.

-Look at this.

-Flower spike!

-You can get this amazing great red flower spike.

I think that's something that people shouldn't be afraid of trying in their home.

Peter, I can see why you so love air plants.

They're so diverse, aren't they,

but for me as a child I've been interested especially in the cacti

and your collection here is mind boggling.

Cacti are crucial players in my revival

and there's an incredible range with over 1500 species.

In the wild some are capable of growing as tall as a five-storey building.

These awe-inspiring plants can survive in some of the world's most inhospitable conditions

so your front room should be no problem.

I mean, the one we've got here.

One of the Opuntia microdasys, isn't it?

-Oh, yeah, yeah.

-They're just fantastic.

Quite spiny.

These little hairs here but so easy to propagate.

You've got to be so careful with those spines cos once they stick in they don't want to pull out.

They can be quite pesky.

Hence the bit of newspaper here.

I mean, what I love about them, look, in just what, 30 seconds,

a bit extra just to allow

for not getting spiked with a bit of newspaper here.

Whacking them in there. Putting it on this end where I made the cut here.

It's callused over a little so it's dried a bit

and carefully, right, Peter, in the centre.

Is that right? In the centre of the pot.

In it goes like that. Three inches in the compost there. Something like that.

It'll produce some roots and before you know it, it will start forming new pads just on the top of that.

It's important to keep the moisture completely dry, isn't it? You're not watering at all, are you?

We're not watering because at this stage it hasn't got any roots.

It's got no way of taking up any moisture.

The only thing that could possibly happen is that water would sit there

so you want to leave it as dry as possible to be perfect.

It can take up to two months for you to see roots

protruding from the bottom of a pot

and then you'll know you've created another cactus for your collection.

I'm on my way to North Wales

to visit one of the few indoor plant nurseries in the country.

Dibley's Nursery is a family-run business

specialising in one of the most awesomely diverse house plants

available to us in the UK.

A stonking favourite of mine.

The African Streptocarpus.

The streptocarpus is the perfect house plant for my revival.

This long-flowering brightly coloured plant from South Africa

is also known as the Cape primrose.

I've seen them growing in the wild and they are absolutely glorious.

But this is the biggest collection I have ever seen.

The diversity of flower colour here.

The tens of thousands of flowers

that are out now is just gobsmacking.

The nursery has been going for 40 years

and in that time they have amassed a jaw-dropping 24 Chelsea Flower Show gold medals

for their incredible plants.

I'm meeting a legend in the house plant world,

Lynne Dibley, to find out the secret to her success.

I think cos we're always introducing new varieties.

We breed all new varieties every year

and introduce some really good long-flowering varieties,

easy-flowering varieties and that's how we keep going.

Lynne is continually revitalising their collection,

offering people something new and exciting.

We crossed one of our hybrids which flowers only in the winter

with one of our summer-flowering varieties

and fortunately we ended up with something which is Crystal Ice

which flowers 12 months a year.

It's one of the few plants you'll ever find that flowers non stop.

-And it's the main reason why it's so popular.

-Yeah. Definitely.

The streptocarpus might take up most of Lynne's time

but she's also trying to bring back some of our forgotten house plants.

Like these triumphant Gloxinias

but there is another plant related to the streptocarpus,

a fellow gesneriad that I'm hoping Lynne can show me.

Ever since I've walked in your wonderful glasshouses today

I've been dying to have a peek at... hopefully you've got it.

-Something called Sinningia leaucotricha.

-I certainly have.

I've got a really nice specimen I can show you.

I literally have tingles. I can't take this.

It is absolutely glorious.

That's it. Not in flower unfortunately.

But that is the core that it grows from.

-Look at that. How old is that?

-That's probably about ten to 12 years old.

It's like a rock face or something.

Is it house plant worthy? Is it quite easy to grow?

Yeah. It's exceptionally easy to grow. It's just unfortunately people don't know it.

It's not a plant that you find very often in the garden centres or written about.

They are just so many plants out there that are excellent house plants that people don't know about.

Everybody in the UK should have a house plant like this.

Something so quirky.

Something so unusual.

Something so bonkers.

I'm back at the glasshouse at Wisley

which helps draw nearly one million visitors every year

to the Royal Horticultural Society's flagship garden.

Underneath this glass roof there are 5000 different plants

and I'd love them to inspire you to start your own collection.

Some house plants are so easy to grow and even more fun to propagate

so why not start your house plant revival in your home

by spreading some botanical love

and give free plants away to your friends and your family?

The perfect plant is a house plant that was first introduced to British gardeners in the 1860s.

It was an instant hit with its colourful foliage and delightful flowers.

Please meet the begonia.

Begonias make such spectacular house plants

and they're relatively easy to grow.

Where they originally come from in parts of north-east India and South Africa

they grow as woodland plants so they're used to low light levels

and this is ideal for a lot of household situations.

The other brilliant thing about them

is they're easy to propagate from leaf cuttings.

So easy. Easy as pie. Anyone can do it.

There are different ways to propagate begonias from leaf cuttings

but for me this is the simplest and most effective.

The first step is to cut a leaf right at the top of the stem.

Flush with the base.

Look at the venations underneath here.

So spectacular and its these venations, these leaf veins,

that are critical in taking a begonia leaf cutting

and you're always cutting through at least one main vein.

It's from these veins that you are going to have your new little begonia babies.

Here, if you like, is your postage stamp of a begonia leaf cutting.

I'm going to put it right at the edge of the compost and the plastic pot

and I'm putting it in lengthways about an inch,

half an inch, into the compost.

This white fluffy stuff in with it is called perlite

which adds drainage but also air

which is crucial for the success of these plants growing away.

I'm just going to do a last little tap down to stabilise them.

A little push down and one, two, three.

Put the label in the pot so you know which type of begonia it is.

Give them a good old soak.

Rain water, tap water no problem at all but not too much.

Just a little splash and dash of water.

The last thing to do, which is so crucial, is get the plastic bag.

If you don't do this you'll find that the moisture still coming through the leaf

will mean these plants will completely and utterly dry out and shrivel up and die.

You've got to cover them in the bag.

Once covered, place the pots somewhere warm and bright

but not in direct sunlight.

In eight to ten weeks you will see new leaves begin to sprout.

If you're still undecided as to whether it's time for a house plant revival in your home

then I have one more compelling argument.

It's time to take my revival to the big city where I'm meeting this man.

Dr Craig Knight is an occupational psychologist.

Measuring productivity in the office,

he has found that a few plants on your desk could make a big difference to your business.

We're very interested psychologically in why people are put to work in spaces like this.

Because business thinks this is a great idea

because there is nothing to distract you in this work surface

and when we've run studies we've found that this is the worst space

you can put people in to work in terms of wellbeing and productivity.

What have the results shown by you placing them on the desks?

We installed £10,000 worth of plants in a firm very close to where we are now

and we increased productivity by 15 per cent on one work floor,

which means that £10,000 worth of plants, if that was replicated across the year,

would be worth one to five million pounds of increased revenue.

With such huge financial rewards in foliage

maybe we should all make our environments a little greener.

Craig, what a transformation!

A bit different, eh?

Look at this place. I mean, 20 minutes ago sitting at this office desk I wouldn't be seen dead

but now, I never thought I'd say this,

but I can feel the grey matter whizzing around

and productivity going through the roof.

Can we convince office workers just passing by

to have a house plant on their desk?

Why don't you try a few people and see what they say?

At your place of work do you have any house plants at all?

-No, I don't think we do.

-No, I don't.

It's actually pretty, pretty plain.

House plants are supposed to also increase wellbeing

and 15 per cent more of your productivity at work.

15 per cent? Wow. OK. Certainly worth looking into.

Sometimes, you know, I just tend to space out

and without a plant I don't know what I'm going to do.

Could you take that under the cover of darkness with a balaclava with a nice big slit

so you can see just about where you're going, sneak it in.

Floor 15 or whatever it is in that building over there on to your office desk

and see what anybody says in the morning? Would you consider that?

That would be a great idea, yes. Definitely.

I'll help you tonight.

I'm really chuffed. I've convinced quite a few people

to get a houseplant on their empty office desk but have I convinced you?

I'm sure you're itching to get hold of some life-affirming indoor plants

so I've come to the UK's largest web-based house plant supplier

and opened a door to a brave new world of indoor gardening.

Oh my golly gosh, what a selection of house plants!

Absolutely awesome.

The revival is not just underway in a small way,

it's underway in a mega way.

This is fantastic.

Mexico. India.

The codiaeum, classic Indonesian plants, these.

Dracaena draco. The blood dragon tree.

The Stags Horn fern, Platycerium bifurcatum.

I've seen these in the wild in north-east Australia

and it brings back plant-hunting-filled memories.

Its absolutely breathtaking.

To be totally blown away like this for me is quite unusual.

This is quality.

This feast of foliage and flowers has been put together by Paul Thomas.

Mate, honestly. The finest collection I have seen for years.

I've spotted quite a few plants from Australia, the Metrosideros pohutukawa.

You're really pushing boundaries to getting people to know

that there's a huge diversity available for people.

-It's really exciting.

-Absolutely, yeah.

Well, in every house there's a wide diversity of areas

and there's no such thing as a bad house plant,

there's just the right plant for the right space.

People really want to bring greenery and something inside

especially if you haven't got a garden, which three million households in the UK haven't.

Many of the plants here can be used as strong interior statements

but Paul also carries a lot of the house plant classics.

Here we have the peace lily.

One of the most well-loved house plants instantly recognisable.

Actually one of the plants chosen by NASA to test plants' capacity to take toxins out of the air.

I mean, the indoor environment has been proved to be five to ten times more polluted

than the exterior environment.

So if you've got the windows closed over the winter

these toxins do build up and plants take them out.

So, Paul, house plants aren't just great to look at for foliage and flowers etc,

they actually are good for you, literally, aren't they?

Literally they are very good for you.

What do you think in your opinion is the singlest thing

that will help to get this revival on the road?

People need to recognise that they can keep them alive.

If you go away every two weeks and you forget about plants, there's a plant for you.

If you water it every day, there's a plant for you.

If you've got a freezing cold hallway where the wind comes through, there's a plant for you.

It isn't to do with you killing it. It's just picking the right thing.

So no one's get any excuse whatsoever.

-No, not at all.

-Brilliant.

For the final chapter of my revival, I'm back at Wisley.

Here all the plant specimens on show are in impeccable condition

but what happens if one of your house plants is feeling a little under the weather?

Well, I've invited some poorly plant patients down to my pop-up plant surgery

to show you how easy it is to care for your plants.

-Hello, Doctor.

-Good afternoon to you.

Please have a seat.

My first patient is a sickly citrus with a common complaint.

It's a classic case of one of the worst pests for house plants, sir,

and that's mealybug.

Mealybugs are a sap-sucking pest that will drain your plants of energy.

But have no fear. There is a cure.

Diluted mentholated spirit applied with a cotton bud should do the trick.

They hide deliberately in the cracks of the nodes here.

This is the best and most practical and most satisfactory way of at least reducing

the population on your citrus here.

I find it extraordinarily therapeutic but I'm a bit odd, sir.

The weirdest plant doctor on the planet.

My next patients are a family of cacti grown from seed.

Now then, tell me about this. What have you got here?

Well, this is a 12-year-old cacti. Well, there are three of them.

They've never flowered and they're still quite small.

Should they grow larger?

These are upright ceri cactus, this comes under a type of cactus called a patchy cereus.

-They tend to flower after about 30 to 50 years of age.

-Oh.

(LAUGHS)

The second bit is it tends to flower at about 30 feet tall.

Right. What I would suggest is to re-pot all three of these

into different pots in a similar compost that you've got

and the sunniest spot that you can in your house or conservatory and let them grow away.

-With a bit of potting up they're going to fly away.

-OK!

In 30 years' time!

The final patient through the door of the surgery

is a peace lily that has discoloured leaves.

Always a sign that things are not right.

Have you got it close to a sunny windowsill or against the glass?

It did used to be for a while.

They are woodland plants. From plants of south-east Asia.

A lot of the spathiphyllums

and I would say is when you're growing them in household conditions indoors

is to keep it away from direct sunlight.

-Do you have it in a pot or a saucer?

-Yes, it sits in a ceramic pot.

I think it's a bit of over watering as well. Hence the tip died back.

Solution, easy.

From around the base of the pot do your watering not from overhead

and let it drain through in the sink for ten minutes before putting it into your saucer.

-Will prevent water building up at the bottom.

-Oh good. Thank you.

-Has that been of some help?

-Yes, definitely.

-Fantastic, madam.

-Thank you. Thank you very much.

-Thank you for coming.

I've always been passionate about house plants

but now I'm convinced even more than ever the need for all of us to rediscover them.

I hope my revival has given you the confidence

to engage with the world of indoor gardening.

These are the plants that inspired Darwin

and I have no doubt they will inspire you too.

And that's a feeling that never, never, ever goes out of fashion.

So let's make luscious leaves and exotic blooms cool once again.

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