Summer Life in a Cottage Garden with Carol Klein

I'm Carol Klein and this is my garden

nestled in the heart of North Devon, 15 miles from the coast

and surrounded by this tranquil and beautiful countryside.

I've taken care of my garden for 30 years.

I know every inch of this place and every plant.

Each season brings its own delights. There are plenty of challenges too.

But that's what makes it so exciting and so fulfilling.

Over the next four weeks,

I'm going to share with you a year in my garden.

We'll see how it bursts into life, flourishes, dies and is reborn.

Right now, it's glorious summer.

Each season has its own kind of beauty,

but it's in summer that the garden reaches its peak.

By the time August rolls around, plants are at their zenith.

The colours are packing a punch and the borders are full to bursting.

But it's not a question of just letting it all roll over you

and enjoying it. There's lots to do to try and maintain that peak

and to keep the whole picture going. You've got to be deadheading...

..cutting things back, staking things.

And there are cuttings to be taken of all these herbaceous plants,

because you've got lots of them, but you want more.

The warm days of June herald the beginning of summer,

bringing an explosion of new growth and new opportunities.

This gravel track runs right the way through the garden

and it's the sort of all sorts of wonderful plants

that seed themselves freely everywhere.

And I can remember the very first time I saw something seed itself.

It was a geranium up by the kitchen. I couldn't believe it!

But now, they're everywhere and sometimes these plants

will put themselves into the most beautiful arrangements.

Things you could never replicate.

You could never do this sort of thing yourself.

There's a whole little garden here, you know, full of alchemilla

and beautiful geraniums and then this great fennel in the centre,

this lovely feathery thing and I just leave them,

because not only are they not in everybody's way,

but you know, you enjoy them, they're lovely.

But sometimes they're on a path or in a place

where they're not going to thrive and flourish,

and then you can get in there with your little fork.

This is geranium nodosum in here. Shade-loving geranium.

And just tuck it into a pot straightaway,

put some gravel on the top of it.

And that's it. I'll give it a good water later on.

There's oodles of them here, absolutely masses.

SHE LAUGHS

Such bounty! I mean, that's what the garden gives you.

'I've got two lovely daughters, Annie and Alice,

'and I've named a part of the garden after each of them.

'It's to Alice's garden that I'm always drawn in early summer.'

And her garden is packed full

of all those glorious plants that just remind me of Alice.

There are crimsons, there's pink, there's white

and everything's soft and beautifully sort of mounded.

You just wait till this white phlox starts to flower.

That's Alice's grandma's plant and it's all through this garden,

but meanwhile, look at these astrantias.

There are astrantias of all sorts of different kinds in here,

some of them white, some of them dark, but this probably

has to be my favourite. It's Astrantia "Roma"

and it's a sterile hybrid, so it keeps on flowering

and the place is full of white geraniums

right from spring into the autumn, but during June,

this is the one that's at its best - it's Geranium sanguineum Alba.

And if you have got to choose one plant that typifies Alice's garden,

it's this lovely rose.

It's Rosa Mundi and Alice's second name is Rosamund

and they were planted just for that reason.

It's got these gorgeous pink and white petals

that change all the time, masses of buds

and it's at its best for her birthday month June. Just lovely.

By mid June, some of the early plants, like oriental poppies,

have already finished flowering,

so I just chop them right back to encourage new growth.

Oriental poppies seldom set seed, but along with plants like acanthus

and Crambe cordifolia, they have thick fleshy roots

and can be propagated from root cuttings in early spring.

All you have to do is expose some of the roots,

detach them from their mother plant and cut them into short sections.

Push them into good gritty compost

and, after three or four weeks, you'll get some top growth.

Once the crown of healthy new shoots has formed, new roots will develop.

At this stage, push them out, pot them up and grow them on.

With a bit of luck, the new plants

will be ready to be planted out in the autumn,

or, failing that, in the following spring.

And after a couple of summers, look at what you get -

these magnificent towering stems

covered with a myriad of tiny little flowers.

It's so light and fluffy, it's the pure essence of the season.

Compost is at the heart of all I do in my garden.

Making it is a never-ending cycle.

This is my present compost heap.

I've been collecting all this lovely green stuff, fabulous nettles

and all the sort of leftovers from my chard to put on this heap

and it's a fast heap.

It's only been built during the last few weeks and this is

what I always do in summer and I'm putting this green stuff on

to really speed everything up, and underneath I've got

a sort of lovely brown layer with all manner of stuff.

There are twigs and there's also layers and layers of muck.

When I shove my hand under there, I can feel the heat.

It really is beginning to hot up.

I mean, compost is just, you know, it's the lifeblood of my garden.

I just couldn't grow things the way I do without it.

I'm just going to... SHE LAUGHS

Over the top!

And I'm going to spread it around, make a thick layer of it,

and then, later on, as soon as I've got it,

there'll be more brown stuff on the top too, so...

Those nettles were... those nettles were a bit stingy,

but I'm all right, actually.

And nettles are one of the best ingredients,

cos they bring all sorts of trace elements up from the soil underneath,

but I'll tell you what, some of this chard...

..looks good enough to eat, doesn't it?

Perhaps we ought to have a bit of this for supper.

I have two areas I call my hot borders,

designed to really come into their own in late summer.

They're a mix of overwintered exotics like cannas, dahlias and bananas,

plus some spectacular annuals I grow from seed.

They're all grown on in pots,

but in July, it's warm enough to plant them out. Come late summer,

these borders will be a mass of hot, exotic colour,

but first, I need to make a bit of room.

Getting these two beautiful Geranium Pratense

out of the front of the hot bed.

Now Geranium Pratense is just the best self seeder everywhere

and these two decided to make this their home.

Well, I've given them a chance, I've let them flower,

but now it's time for them to come out.

I wouldn't normally be lifting geraniums at this time of year,

but now, they've got to make way,

cos I've got these wonderful ricinus that have grown on so beautifully.

They're going to be one of the most important features in here,

but if I don't get them in now,

they really won't do their wonderful tropical best by September.

They should be sort of up here, really expansive

and giving the whole place that kind of really exotic look.

And I seem to have been waiting ages to do this!

Way back in January, I sewed the seed and then potted it on,

cos it germinated really well.

And just kept on potting it on until we got these fine magnificent plants.

I've no idea what these roots are like,

but I can see some coming out of the bottom of the pot.

Look at that. So I'm going to lower it very gently into position.

Where it grows, all around the Mediterranean,

it makes a huge great big, well, tree, really.

But because they're tender, they'll never do that in my garden.

But because I'm giving them such a lovely position,

they should really burgeon and become enormous

with these great big dramatic palmate leaves.

And they're going to set the scene for this whole hot border.

Lilies are one of the stars of the July show.

Hemerocallis or daylilies kick off the display.

The individual flowers last only for a day,

but regular deadheading really helps prolong the show.

Later, trumpet lilies provide a splendid boost to the borders.

They're big and spectacular, either grown in the ground or in pots.

When I'm planting up my bulbs, I detach a few scales,

snapping them off cleanly from the mother bulb.

I'm putting them in a plastic bag filled with damp vermiculite.

Then I put the whole lot into a pot to exclude light.

After a few weeks, baby bulbs are formed at the base of each scale.

Then I just line them out in a seed tray full of gritty compost.

Eventually, after a couple of years, they'll make big bulbs

and they'll start to produce flowers of their own.

It's July and the garden is burgeoning,

but at the same time, it's teetering on the edge.

You get the feeling that it's wonderful, but almost out of control,

like one of those hairdos, you know,

that's still all right, but only just.

I mean, take this rose. It's lovely at the moment.

Sander's White, absolutely beautiful.

But already, some of the flowers are beginning to die.

And it's up to me to try and prolong that beauty

and get as much out of it as I can by a bit of discerning pruning.

And you walk along here and, everywhere you look,

you just know that, although you're enjoying it

and it's wonderful at this moment,

at any second... THUNDER RUMBLES

..a storm could come along, cos the weather's so unpredictable in July

and the whole thing could be flattened.

The reason the weather in my garden changes so rapidly is that

we're so close to one of the world's greatest oceans - the Atlantic.

I just love to come to the seaside. It's so elemental.

There's nothing but sky and sea and sand. It's wonderful.

I don't do it nearly often enough, but when I do,

this is one of my favourite places to come.

It's Braunton Burrows.

SEAGULLS CALLING

It's strange to think, standing on these sand dunes, looking out at this

lunar landscape, that my garden is only about 15 miles away from here.

But this is where our weather comes from.

This vast sky and these huge clouds that belt over us at a rate of knots.

And the weather changing so rapidly too. So fast.

One minute brilliant sunshine,

the next big, dark clouds and torrential rain.

It's Atlantic weather, I suppose, and it is what our garden is

influenced by, it's what it's subject to.

It's beautiful.

This is the plant I've really come to see.

This is Eryngium maritimum, a dingy. A true sea holly.

And Braunton Burrows is one of the places where it really thrives

because the conditions are totally perfect.

This is a plant which has evolved with its environment.

It is a very specialist environment

and very specialist adaptations that it's got.

Just look at this. It's incredibly prickly.

You're certainly not going to get any grazing animals

tucking into this. And it's a bad place to have a picnic too!

Each of these cones of flower is protected by these incredibly

fierce bracts. These spines really hurt.

The bracts and the basal leaves are covered in this thick

sort of wax to resist the sea spray,

to protect the cuticle of the leaf

and to allow the plant to go on growing.

Eryngium maritimum is a native plant

so I hoped I would be able to grow it, but no such luck!

It must have pure sand to grow in and, of course,

it loves to be by the sea.

But what I do grow is Eryngium bourgatii,

and it's an especially blue form.

The place it thrives best in my garden is in the raised bed.

It likes high fertility, but it also demands really sharp drainage

and that is just what I give it.

As it's ready to be pollinated, it does exactly what this one does -

all these flowers go from silver to brilliant blue.

But in the case of my bourgatii,

the stems and all the bracts go blue too.

So even though I yearn for that steely foliage,

I am very happy growing that.

My hot borders are beginning to come into their own now,

with masses of exotic foliage

and the hot, hot colours beginning to emerge.

But there is always room for some more.

In this bottom corner of the hot borders

is this ricinus that I've planted, just a matter of weeks ago.

It's really got established. They're almost like little trees.

But look at all this bare soil here.

I want to fill it up and I think these are exactly the right thing.

This is Rudbeckia Rustic Dwarf, all grown from seed this year.

This big wide range of hot colour.

And this little cosmidium, so pretty, look at that.

I've never grown this before, but it is ideal.

It's going to mix in really well.

What do you think?

But this is what I was going to show you. Come and have a look at this.

I put these willows in, just as stakes,

big strong stakes to hold up this fence panel.

But they've taken root and they've grown up to the sky.

They are absolutely enormous.

Meanwhile, I came over to think about sawing them down,

but look what's on here.

Hornets. And they've stripped the bark off some of these.

I don't know whether it's to build a nest -

I doubt it, it's too late in the year.

There's probably some sort of sticky deposit on there, sugary.

And they're tucking in and really enjoying it. They look quite drunk.

Might be aspirin, of course, it's a willow.

Perhaps they've all got a headache.

It's just a couple of weeks ago that I was at Braunton Burrows.

It was so beautiful, I really should go there more often.

In fact, it's tempting at this time of year just to enjoy yourself.

The garden is looking pretty special.

But there are a few things that I've got to do right now,

otherwise they won't get done.

I've got to strike while the iron's hot. That scoop will do.

And some grit.

Taking cuttings of my favourite herbaceous perennials.

This is it.

This is Aster lateriflorus horizontalis. I adore it.

It's this gorgeous dark colour, but it sticks its arms out like this.

You can even make a hedge.

It's one of the plants that I've added to Annie's border.

Look at how this has come on, it's astonishing!

But it's got another sort of era that is just coming on.

All these gorgeous asters.

But before this one starts to flower, I want to take these cuttings.

All you do is just pull a little piece down like that,

with a heel.

You can raid these plants

and you really won't know that I've been here at all.

I'll get several brand-new plants out of it.

It's not crucial what length these are.

Quite sort of short and strong and each with this little heel.

So if I have half a dozen from there to start with,

and then all you do is just strim

these basal leaves off like that.

Between your thumb and finger.

And if there are any nasty little extra bits at the bottom

where you've pulled a bit too much of the stem,

just take a sharp knife and trim them up.

Then you just plant them round the edge of this pot.

You can try this with all sorts of herbaceous perennials.

Anything that produces these sort of side shoots.

Water it well, keep it somewhere nice and bright, but not in full sunlight.

Not so it bakes. They root surprisingly quickly.

They'll be decent little plants if I keep on repotting them.

A bit of grit over the top. I can probably get a few more in there.

I'm always too greedy when it comes to things like taking cuttings.

How's that?

When summer hits its stride, so do my hot borders.

Today, we are going to add some exotic touches

to make them really zing.

Staging day is a big event,

so thank goodness my husband Neil is here to help.

The colours may be hot, but these plants are tender

so I keep them undercover until the weather is hot as well.

Then, just as they hit their prime, out they come.

This is going to be brilliant.

Not too bad, is it?

Then, as we move into August, I add the final touches. I love doing this.

It's like creating a show garden.

The transformation is instantaneous and wondrous.

This is really, really heavy.

I think I will have it up here.

Just make this as intensely red as I can.

This is the last part of staging these borders.

But look how well everything is doing in these hot borders.

All these rudbeckias. Look at that. That cotinus.

And the hedychiums have only been out a couple of weeks,

but they're brilliant.

The crocosmia, that one is actually called Flame, so it is ideal.

All this rudbeckia and helenium,

it's beginning to look really magical.

And sort of what I had in my head. You never really know though.

But this is a beauty. Already, masses of these red flowers.

This one's Bishop of Llandaff.

And I think it's the most fabulous dahlia and perfect for this spot

because these flowers are the most brilliant vermilion red.

They just set the tone for here.

Look how they are going to mingle with all this ricinus...

That's been out a few weeks too, but it's grown elsewhere.

I think it's sort of magnificent.

SHE LAUGHS

To get anywhere in the garden, you really need a machete.

Everywhere is growing so lush and so fulsome.

This border has been brilliant.

Firstly, with Geranium psilostemon

then floriferous phlox

and spiky veronicastrum.

But I want to add a few things because at the moment,

everywhere is sort of quiet and I want

the interest in the borders to continue right the way through.

So I am adding these Nicotiana Langsdorffii.

It's not what you would call a smack-you-in-the-eye sort of plant,

but I love it.

It's got these long green trumpets,

and little blue antlers in here.

It's just such a pretty plant.

And I can remember in March or so, sowing the seed of it,

very fine seed, on the surface of a tray of compost.

It took ages to germinate. But once it did, it moved on quite quickly.

I pricked out all those little seedlings into separate modules

and then potted them on into pots.

Some of them I put out into the garden

when they were nice, chunky rosettes.

But I always save a few and keep on potting them on

so I've got some big resplendent plants

that I can just drop into spaces where they're needed.

I think they are ideal in here now.

You know, July and August, it has been wonderful, really.

There has been such exuberant colour everywhere. Marvellous.

But now, you get up in the morning and you come out... It's shivery.

You can feel the cold and you look up at the trees

and you get this hint of russet and orange.

And that's what September's going to bring.

It's as though somebody has swept across the garden

with a giant paint brush and joined all those colours together

so they all become soft and subtle and mellow.

I'm looking forward to it, but for now,

I'm going to really make the most of this.

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