Winter 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.

In this series, I'm going to share with you a whole year in my garden.

Autumn is over and my garden begins

its descent into the depths of winter.

This time of year plants are dying or going to sleep all around

but it's actually a really beautiful time of year

to enjoy my surroundings.

I just love to get into the countryside during December.

Y'know, in the garden all the time,

can be a very introspective, sort of, experience,

but you come out now at this time of year

and you really appreciate where you live.

I mean all the leaves have come off the trees,

you can see the, sort of, skeletons underneath.

And the hedges, too, and just look at that view.

You can really feel the bare bones of the landscape.

You can appreciate what's underneath the whole place.

It's just lovely.

It's so beautiful.

It's so austere, though.

This beautiful holly tree on the lane.

It's the best one around here

and as I've been walking through here every day,

it's been smothered in berries, absolutely dripping with them,

but the weather's turned really cold and there have been

flocks of fieldfares and redwings

and they've been gorging on those berries, and now

there are more on the lane than there are actually on the tree.

I mean, holly's such an important plant.

And I want some in my native hedge

so I've picked up a load of the berries,

Look here.

Masses of them and I'm going to stratify them when I get home.

That's a fancy word for saying I'm going to delude them

into thinking that they've been through winter.

If I shove these in a bag with a great big load of sifted leafmould,

put them into the fridge for a couple of weeks

then bring them out and sow them in trays and some soil,

they should germinate within a few weeks

and I'll have young trees next year and I'll have my own holly.

It's such an important plant,

but so too is this ivy.

Look at that in the oak.

It's just beautiful.

Ivy's another magical plant - it's got such significance,

and when it's trailing along the ground

it doesn't flower at all, and although it's great cover,

for little mammals and birds,

it's when it starts to climb that you really appreciate it,

because that's when it flowers and these flowers are full of nectar.

They're born in the autumn and they go right into the winter.

And then they're followed by these gorgeous black berries.

I've got some at home, here and there,

I'm always planting it because it's such an important wildlife plant.

I mean, the oak and the ivy support more forms of life

than practically anything else at all.

They're hugely important.

I'd better look for some acorns, too, sometime.

December... It's full of anomalies.

On the one hand everything's dark and dank and dreary

and you just feel like hibernating.

On the other hand, underneath all this seeming death

is this life just bursting through, just waiting to get going.

There's snowdrops appearing all over the place.

My mum's beautiful Christmas rose has already pushed through

and it's in full flower.

It's things like this that remind you,

that underneath all that there's all this energy

and dynamism waiting to get going.

Do you reckon that's stable?

THEY LAUGH

Ish!

How about this for a complete tangle?

I've got two wonderful plants here and the whole idea

is that they grow in sweet harmony,

but this clematis huldine - it belongs to the viticella group -

has completely taken over, and it's actually distorting

and pushing apart this lovely crab apple.

Now, if you're wondering who this bloke down here is,

it's Neil, my husband.

SHE LAUGHS

Ideally, with a clematis like this, I should be able to prune it

down to two buds from the ground, but if I do that,

I'm going to miss the beauty of some of these flowers

at a, sort of, taller level

and although I should prune it when it's dormant,

can you see it's already beginning to come into bud?

So, there's no time like the present.

I'll pull as much of this tangle out as I possibly can

and then I'll try and select a few shoots

to be reintroduced.

I'm going to shut up and get tugging.

Winter can be cruel,

the frosts have done so much damage.

Some of the pots with my tulips in, up at the top

are completely shattered and the plants struggling to survive.

And as for my beautiful brick paths... they're just in pieces.

And amongst the plants, there have been so many deaths

and where things haven't died, some things are maimed so badly.

There really is quite a lot to get over.

Oh!

That's so much better! Thank you for your services.

I thought you were stuck to that ladder!

How about a cup of tea? That'd be lovely.

It's all work, work, work, isn't it, Neil?

Well, what do you think? It's a whole lot clearer now,

I can really see what I'm doing.

Now, can you see there are masses of these stems,

which have actually layered themselves into the ground?

I want to take a few of these out,

want to retain some so that I'll get these lovely starry flowers

decorating the top branches, but look at this one.

That's sort of coming right out onto the track

so I think I'll be able to pull that one out

and I'm going to prune it, just as you would

any classic sort of group three clematis.

So, if you just trace the stem to where it's coming from here.

It's quite old wood, this.

I just need to leave two or three buds there,

probably do it to that one there. And you don't make a sloping cut,

like a rose, because it's got two buds, one on either side,

but meanwhile, where's my shoot? I'd better finish the job,

it's behind me. It's a question of pulling it right out of here,

I feel a bit like a bell-ringer, but here we go!

I might disappear out of sight.

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

they've each got a garden named after them

and I love it when they find time to come home.

This is Annie's garden and it's the site

of the biggest revamp of the year, it's a major project

and before I do anything at all, I've got to clear away

all this debris so I can see what's in here.

I can see where these clumps are and once I can identify everything,

I'm going to lift it all out onto the tarpaulin there.

And having done that,

I'm going to make a quick stock list, see what I've got

and think about what the design of this is going to be.

But for now, there's plenty of work to do.

I suppose winter seems a very long, sort of, season.

It's a time when everything's dormant, dying, dead perhaps.

But although the majority of the garden is brown

and very austere, there are already things starting to happen.

If you look at the ground, there are shoots beginning to appear

and in the hedges, catkins are beginning to dangle.

Those lovely lambs' tails, spreading the pollen if you get a windy day.

But the stars of the moment have to be my snowdrops.

They're the plant that invites us into the New Year.

The dark, dank earth, you can almost hear it being split asunder

as their shoots pierce it and up they come.

The flower is just so perfectly designed.

This great long pedicle, skinny, tiny,

the stalk which actually supports the bell.

And you wouldn't think it could hold that great weight,

but it enables these bulbs to move backwards and forwards

in the thrashing winds that we get in January and February.

Look how it's clumped and moved itself around

and you can exploit that with any snowdrop

by digging it up, just as it goes to ground

as the flowers and the foliage begins to fade

and separating the bulbs and replanting them, straight away.

The other way is to twin-scale them.

You take your bulbs at the beginning of their dormancy,

in June or July, and you slice them vertically

with a completely clean knife,

you must make sure that everything's sterile.

Each piece must have at least two scales

and a bit of a basal plate

and then you put those pieces into a bag

filled with vermiculite and put it away in a nice, warm dark place.

After a few weeks, new bulbs will start to form

and then you can line them out into seed trays in decent compost,

grow them on and after a couple of years,

you should have decent-sized bulbs

and then you can put them out into the garden

to start the whole cycle going again.

I just love this shed.

I love this time of year, because even though it's gone dark outside,

we can still come in here and I can still carry on gardening.

There's so many things to do and...

I don't know, you're so close to everything in here.

I can pot up these primroses, just look at them,

and anticipate just what they're going to be.

You know, the times when they're growing away outside

and how the year is going to progress.

It's not always going to be dark like this.

Eventually, the garden will change and things will heat up,

but for now, it's just lovely to be in here.

That's the very last of that debris from Annie's border.

I can't believe how much I've taken out!

But I'd hoped to come straight down this morning,

shift the last of the rubbish and get right onto lifting those plants,

but not a chance. It POURED down during the night, absolute deluge,

but there are other things I can do.

While I'm waiting for that to dry out,

I think I'm going to take these out.

This is Phlomis lanata,

it's from hot, dry sunny places and it's got very grey, furry leaves,

but they should be grey-blue - at the moment, they are brown

and the whole thing is as dead as a door nail.

Fortunately for me, I took cuttings last year.

I always do take cuttings from all the tender plants

or the borderline plants and they are thriving in the cold frame.

All I did was, sort of June/July, take little side shoots

with a heel or you can get your knife in, right under a leaf node,

nip the top out, put them all around the side

of a pot of gritty compost and they root fairly rapidly.

It's worth doing it two or three times, though, different weeks.

But I think it'll be fairly easy to get it out.

I shall replant some of those plants in here,

but I certainly won't do it yet.

I'll wait until the weather warms up.

Things won't warm up for ages yet, but at least the rain's eased

and finally, I can get on with Annie's garden.

Are you helping?

Oh!

At long last, I can almost hear that roll of drums.

I can get cracking and start taking these things out.

Something tells me, it's going to be a lot easier said than done.

This is a phlox

and it's strange to think,

that when they went in, these plants, they were tiny!

They were minute little things, just look at them now!

And this is one of the smaller ones, too.

And what I'm going to do, when I've got them all arrayed here,

is to divide them, to put some of them into a nursery bed,

to look after them, anyway. I'm sure they'll be fine.

And then I can get to work on this soil,

preparing a really lovely home for my new design.

Some of them are going to come back in here,

but they'll be joined by all sorts of other lovely things.

Each day you come out at this time of year, it's different,

you get days where the sun is sparkling through the trees

and then you'll get other days where it's foggy, really misty.

Traditionally, the shortest day is the winter solstice,

it's the day for putting your garlic in the ground.

But I never do that, because it's SO wet and soggy here.

I prefer to start them off in modules.

That way they're off to a flying start.

Most of the weather in my garden comes from the west

from the Atlantic.

But in February it comes from the east.

Bitter winds bite you to the quick.

They don't go round you, they go straight through you.

It's a wonder anything survives at all.

I'm taking down these completely rickety wattle panels.

The weather's just finished them off, really.

Cos I want to get to this hedge behind here.

This is our native hedge that runs right the length of the garden.

And today, Marcus Tribe, who's an incredible woodsman

is going to come round and help lay this hedge.

Hello, Marcus!

Good morning. How are you?

-Lovely to see you.

-Step across your garden.

Step across. Do you think we could get through here?

Yeah, no problem.

See what's happening.

I spend most of my time going through hedges.

Yeah, I know!

You're good at it.

Well, my maths teacher always used to say...I looked as though

I'd been dragged through a hedge backwards.

-Now you know where it comes from.

-Yeah!

SHE LAUGHS

-Can you get them through?

-Yeah, there you go.

They're sturdy, aren't they?

Yeah, they're good stakes.

It's grown, hasn't it?

Yeah, it's come on nice.

They're good enough to lay now.

-You reckon?

-Yeah.

-You could do a good job with that?

-We can match it in with the rest of the hedge now.

-Fantastic.

We've got two.

So we're just going to pull that one in.

This one, I won't cut this one, I'll...I'll just lay this one in.

Just weave it in.

OK, the idea is, we've got to cut

three-quarters of the way through the stem,

but leaving enough on there so that it stays attached.

We want a little bit of the wood, a little bit of the cambium layer

-and the bark...

-That's the layer that all the sap passes through.

And that will carry on up through there. There's enough there

for it to keep on living.

We just put the billhook in there and split that off.

Right.

And pull it over gently.

And weave it in between the posts.

Just weave it into your big hazel.

And the whole idea of doing this

is that that sap's going to come rushing up here...

Rises up this tree and then it'll also create new shoots

-that'll come off there.

-Right.

So we're going to have all that growing up there,

-plus a mass of new shoots produced at the base.

-That's right.

And in future years you'll layer those too.

And later on we'll layer them again.

This is part of the hedge that Marcus laid about four years ago.

And it perfectly demonstrates what happens.

All these laterals have sprung up, all those new shoots,

and they themselves can be laid too to thicken the hedge even more.

It's a sort of ongoing process.

And it gives me an opportunity to grow a forest full of trees, really.

There are about ten or 12 different native species here,

so we get a really rich tapestry, all manner of leaves,

beautiful flowers, incredible fruit, climbers through here

and of course it's beloved by wildlife.

It's a real sort of corridor.

It's beautiful. I couldn't live without it.

In winter the woodland garden always lures me in

and I love spending time there.

Nestled deep in one corner

there's a lovely little stream, a little let.

And after all the rain and snow it's gushing away.

And of course it's completely clogged up,

so I have to get in there and clear all those leaves out.

I suppose it's over here that the hellebore really introduces itself.

What I think I love most about them

is how different they are, how diverse.

Some have pure white flowers and you've got everything

through a huge range right through to black.

And they're fairly trouble-free,

but one thing I always try and do is cut all the old leaves off

each and every plant. This makes sure that disease isn't harboured.

It also means that light can get into the centre of the plant

so the new growth can really shoot through.

I think when you've got a few hellebores,

one of the most exciting things you can do

is to try pollinating some of them.

And you just choose two plants. From one you collect the pollen,

and you do that either with a little paintbrush

or by rubbing the lid of a biro on your knee

to create static, and collecting the pollen

from the anthers of that plant.

And then, on the plant that you've selected to receive the pollen,

you find a flower which is just about to open

and you pull those petals gently back

and you introduce the pollen from your biro or your brush

onto the stigma in the centre of the flower.

You close the petals carefully and you repeat the process

over three days to ensure that pollination has taken place.

And to identify the flower you've pollinated,

just tie a bit of embroidery thread or a bit of coloured wool

on the back of the flower.

And then come the end of May, the beginning of June, in some cases,

watch your plants carefully

and as those seed capsules start to burst asunder,

move in with your paper bag and collect the seed.

Take it off and sow it directly onto the surface of good compost

in seed trays or big pots.

And cover it with grit.

Leave it outside, water it regularly

and in September or so

these new seedlings will start to pop through.

Keep on potting them on and within a couple of years

you'll see these brand new flowers,

flowers that have never been seen before.

It's the end of February and the long winter's drawing to a close.

It's wonderful to have reached this stage in Annie's border.

We've got everything out now.

The whole thing's been dug over,

forked over, and I'm at the stage where I'm adding compost to it.

This wonderful, fantastic black stuff

that's going to make everything I replant in here thrive.

I never feed my plants. I feed the soil.

Because it's the soil that feeds the plants.

That's the way to do it.

And compost is just such magical material

To think that this is just...

all that death, all those plants that have died down,

all that detritus, that rubbish, and it's turned itself,

magically, with the help of thousands of micro-organisms

and worms and all sorts of things in this lovely process,

into this fantastic black stuff

that's just going to feed my whole garden.

These months, although they move very, very slowly,

they've consolidated the whole sort of beginning of the year.

Laid the foundation for everything that's going to happen afterwards.

And I can already tell that things have begun to accelerate.

There's already that sniff of spring in the air.

I can't wait!

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