Letter A The A to Z of TV Gardening

Hello and welcome to the A To Z Of TV Gardening.

We're on a mission to dig up the best advice

and top tips from your favourite TV gardening programmes and presenters.

So join me as, letter after letter, one by one, we explore everything

from flowers and trees to fruit and veg, on The A To Z Of TV Gardening.

Everything we're looking at today begins with the letter A.

Here's what's coming up.

Alys Fowler finds an apple tree

that produces over 250 different types of apples.

-You no longer have to get stuck with just kind of a cooker.

-Exactly.

Have the lot.

Toby Buckland plants one of his favourite veg.

You can't buy asparagus that is as tasty as the stuff

you can pick from your back garden.

And it's all about alliums with Alan Titchmarsh.

Look at those dead ends on those leafs.

This is the way they grow naturally.

Good green leafs and as the flower spike comes up

so they start to die back.

Just some of the treats we have in store.

But let's start with a fruit we consume in its millions.

Our first A is for Apples. Here's Chris Beardshaw investigating

just why apples are so unpredictable.

Imagine the frustration of those early horticulturalists

thousands of years ago,

stumbling across an apple.

It was the perfect fast food and yet when they sowed the seed

what came up wasn't the same.

In fact it was just as likely to be sour and inedible

as it was to taste good.

The mother tree gives birth to thousands of pips contained within the fruit

and every single pip is genetically different.

And just like children, most grow up to be ordinary,

but once in a while an apple with the most delicious taste and texture

is born.

When you sow the pips

you don't get the original form.

If you sow a Bramley seed, you won't get a Bramley.

If you sow a Braeburn, it won't be a Braeburn that grows.

Or a Cox or a Worcester, or any of them for that matter.

Apples require pollinators.

That's to say, the pollen from one plant needs to be transferred across

into the flower of another,

and that crossing of pollen

brings with it the most wonderful genetic exchange.

Apples generally have 34 chromosomes

and that means that you get 17 characteristics from one parent

and 17 sets of characteristics from the other.

It's part of the excitement of growing them.

And this presented man with a real puzzle -

how to persuade nature to reproduce exactly the same apple tree

and fruit over and over again.

And the solution we came up with was grafting,

a method of cloning the original tree.

The practice of grafting is thought

to go back around 5,000 years,

and to this day

every apple tree in commercial cultivation

is grafted in exactly the same way.

The principle behind grafting is delightfully straightforward

and in fact hasn't change since the Romans played around

with gluing one plant on top of another.

Not apples but, in their case, probably grapes.

And they realised that plants were able to fuse together

for the very simple reason that on any plant there is a layer of growth

immediately underneath the bark.

That area of green is the cambium layer.

That's where the cell division and the cell expansion is taking place.

It's essentially the life of the plant.

And if you can put two of those cambium layers together,

then the plants fuse and become one.

First you need a rootstock.

This is a wild form which has been cultivated

for a particular characteristic.

It will essentially become the driving force behind the plant.

It will govern how much nutrient is taken up.

It's like the sort of engine of a car.

And the principle is to cut the head off the rootstock.

And then to take your scion.

This is the particular variety of apple that you're after.

It's taken from the parent plant and it means that the genetic material

contained within that scion is exactly the same as the parent,

so any characteristics the parents have in terms of the flavour of the fruit, the ripeness of the fruit,

the colour of the skin, are all contained within that piece of wood.

And what we do is literally put that on top of there,

and the two are then bound up with tape

and the rootstock fuses with the scion.

And, in fact, the genetic material

of the rootstock remains in the rootstock.

The genetic material of the scion remains in the scion.

But what we end up with is a scion

which is totally governed by the energy of the rootstock.

And that's what gives us

the particular vigour and height of the tree.

One of Britain's most prosperous and time-honoured apples

was planted 200 years ago in a back garden in Nottinghamshire.

Its clones have generated a £50 million industry.

"The Bramley apple tree was grown from a pip by a young lady, Mary Anne Brailsford,

"between 1809 and 1815.

"It was thought it came from an apple

"grown on a tree at the bottom of her garden.

"One seedling produced very fine apples in 1837,

"when the new occupier was Mr Matthew Bramley."

Fantastic.

HE KNOCKS ON DOOR

Hi!

-How are you?

-What a lovely day.

Well, I've seen better days for looking at apple trees!

SHE LAUGHS

The Bramley tree's proud custodian is 90-year-old Nancy Harrison.

-So you were born in this house?

-Mm.

-And...

-The tree...

-The tree was in the next-door neighbour's garden.

-Yes.

-So you bought the house next door.

-That's right.

-To get the tree.

Yes. I paid £500 for it.

HE LAUGHS

It's a garden typical of cottages of this period.

Long and narrow.

Look at that!

Isn't that amazing?

It's like walking into an enchanted woodland.

You can see where the original has fallen.

The original was planted here and has obviously been blown,

and this piece would originally have been up here

and would have branched away.

You hear people talk about living history and this really is living history.

It's like standing next to a cathedral.

This is a cathedral of horticulture.

And from an historical apple tree,

we move on to an extraordinary modern one,

joining Alys Fowler as she finds out about the incredible results

you can get with grafting and cloning.

ALYS FOWLER: I was amazed when I discovered that nurseryman Paul Barnett

has managed to grow over 250 varieties on just one tree.

I was eager to find out how he'd done it.

This tree is the stuff of dreams!

It's the most wonderful thing I have seen in a long time.

It's looking particularly good this year.

What possesses you to plant 250 different varieties on to a single tree?

The nursery I used to work for had about 80 or 90 varieties

and they would be lined out in quite a large field,

so, not having a large field, I needed to condense it down

into something smaller.

So that's really why there were put on here.

It's fantastic!

-So each branch is a different variety, right?

-Yes, it is.

You've got Royal Gala here,

you've got Crown Gold up here...

And therefore it could be possible to have a tree which had cookers

-and eaters...?

-Yes, it is, yeah.

It's very clever.

What I get quite excited about is, if you had a tree you didn't like,

-you have the potential to have a tree that...

-Just bud or graft it over.

Add any varieties that you like eating on to it.

-So you no longer have to get stuck with just a cooker.

-Exactly.

Have the lot.

It's amazing. I am completely in awe of it.

Paul has worked with apple trees for 25 years

and was happy to give me a lesson in apple budding.

The small orchard at the bottom of his garden was a perfect place

to have a go.

But first I had to choose which varieties I wanted to grow.

This is a lovely-looking apple.

-Which is this one?

-This is a variety called Fiesta.

It's a lovely apple.

Crisp, juicy and sweet.

-Can I try it?

-Yes, you can, yeah.

Mmmm! Really crisp.

Shows quite a good resistance to pests and disease.

Quite an easy one for gardeners.

-Yeah, lovely.

-Very fertile variety.

-Lovely-looking apple as well.

-It is.

-Really pretty.

-What you'd expect from an apple, isn't it?

-Can I have one of these?

-You can.

-This is great. It's like being in a supermarket.

SHE CRUNCHES

I can see one of my all-time favourite apples here.

PAUL CHUCKLES

Now...

-Good old Pitmaston Pineapple.

-Oh...

I have such fond memories of eating way too many of these.

-It's a lovely little heritage variety.

-Oh, it's beautiful.

It's a very late one, isn't it?

-Yeah, never gets much bigger than this either.

-No.

-Anything from memory.

-Be a good one for your tree.

You get the red of the Fiesta

and also the yellow of the Pitmaston Pineapple.

It's a perfect kind of one person quick eat,

-that's what I like about this.

-It is.

Mm, perfect!

Next, it was time to learn the magic of budding.

First, Paul selected and cut off a healthy shoot

from one of my chosen varieties and stripped it of all its leaves.

-So, we've got our material.

-Yes.

-And this is my tree.

Is it a good tree?

Yeah, you've got some nice young, vigorous growth here. It's ideal.

You're looking for two or three nostrum shoots,

which we've got here.

-And about this thickness?

-Yeah.

-So that's the thickness of a pencil.

Next, he prepared the area on my tree where the bud would go.

After clearing the leaves and shoots,

he made a 4cm-long cut with a clean, sharp knife,

deep enough to expose the cambium layer - the green bit below the bark.

Then Paul cut a sliver of the same length from the donor branch.

This contained the bud of the apple I wanted to grow on my tree.

The bud was then placed into position,

making sure it matched exactly.

To keep it in place, it was tightly wrapped using budding tape.

But a clear plastic bag, secured with tape,

would've done the job just as well.

Well, you made that look incredibly easy

but I know that practice is how you get good at these things

and it's a long time. So...

It started well when I made the incision on the mother plant.

Cutting the bud was another matter, however.

But in the end, it seemed to fit... well, almost perfectly.

It would be a nail-biting six weeks to see if my graft had taken.

Now for the moment of truth.

You're not looking for any great...

change at this point,

you just need to make sure that the bud is nice and fat and healthy.

And it looks like it's taken perfectly.

So let's see how the rest are doing.

Well, so far, so good.

And only time will tell with these grafts, but the joy about this tree

is the fact that you have five varieties on one tree.

So even in a small space, I get plenty to eat.

So, now that we know how to clone and bud apple trees,

let's get hands-on.

Here's Monty Don with some tips on picking and storing.

Now, obviously the orchard is where the action is in October.

We've got apples here falling every day, and what I do is

I put down crates underneath each tree and pick up the windfalls

so they don't get too eaten by the chickens and mice and slugs.

But the point about windfalls is, they can't be stored.

They're good to eat and we eat them now, and this, for example,

is a Herefordshire Beefing apple, and you can see lots of windfalls.

It's a very old-fashioned cooking apple.

In fact, it was used for drying.

Whereas, if you want to store apples,

then you really need to look after them.

And storing apples is one of those things that is a treat

because, when you get to Christmas time, next February and March,

you can have an apple that you've grown tasting perfect.

In fact they tend to get better as they store.

And so it shouldn't be just a question of growing your own

but also storing your own.

It's dead easy to do. However, you mustn't store a bruised apple.

It's really a question of handling them with kid gloves.

So, when they're ripe, and you've got an apple here,

this is Blenheim Orange, which is a good cooker,

although, in fact, as it gets older you can eat it.

If that's ripe, I'll know because it will come away in my hands,

so I just hold it like that and twist. Now that's not ripe.

That is not ready for picking, so we'll leave it.

That one there looks as though it should be. Come here, just go up.

And it's just come away in my hand.

And just hold it carefully, treasure it, put it into a basket.

Don't chuck it.

It doesn't matter what it looks like. If it comes away, it's ready.

And the whole point about growing apples is, you're so limited

in a supermarket in the varieties.

But there are hundreds of different apples that you can grow,

a lot of them good, a lot of them have meaning.

For example, in this orchard I've got quite a few apples that

you only get in Herefordshire.

And so as well as... I think I need a ladder for that.

As well as an orchard, which is a lovely thing,

you've got the romance of the apple.

You store it carefully and then when you eat it

you're ingesting part of the history of it.

Let's go for this one.

Now, there are lots of ways of storing apples

but essentially what you're looking for is somewhere cool and dark.

And we've got this shed, we store lots of things in it.

And it's fine for apples as long if as it's not too cold.

And if it is, we have to cover them. But I use these.

These used to be my grandfather's and I inherited them from my mother.

But you can buy similar things and you can make them.

The beauty of them is that you get lots of air and ventilation

and they stack.

And what you're looking for is somewhere that is not too dry,

so the fruits don't dry up.

And just stack them in rows and again don't chuck them on.

And also they shouldn't be touching. So just keep them apart.

And the reason why they don't want to touch is because,

if there is bruising or damage, that will spread from apple to apple.

But if they're not touching, there's no danger of that.

Now if you're thinking, "Why take so much trouble

"just over some apples?"

well, the answer is simple - it's because they taste so good.

Your own apples, grown and stored carefully, are a delicious fruit.

It's not just any old thing that you eat all the time,

they're absolutely beautiful.

And will stay good right through till next March or April.

So I think they're worth taking any amount of trouble over.

Thanks, Monty. That's apples covered.

Still to come, how to plant alliums, award-winning asparagus

and advice from an allotmenteer.

But before all that, A is for Alpines.

And for a quick crash course in all you need to know,

here's Keith Grey Wilson from the Garden Alpine Society.

Many people ask me what an alpine is.

It's, in effect, any plant which grows in high, mountainous areas

above the tree line.

But in gardening terms, alpines can be any small plant which is

hardy, can be grown in the open garden, and can include small ferns,

small herbaceous plants, bulbs and many other types of plant.

Alpines are ideal for today's small garden,

and they provide interest throughout the year.

You don't need to have a rock garden in order to grow them,

they're ideal for containers and pots on the patio.

The majority of alpines need gritty, well-drained soil

and plenty of sunshine

but a few need damper conditions and dappled shade in the garden.

Now that we know what alpines are

and the wide variety available out there, here's Rachel de Thame

with some basic tips if you want some in your garden.

Well, I think one of the first signs of spring, for me,

has to be when the cyclamen are in flower.

Just look at that fantastic magenta colouring. Beautiful plants.

Of course, you might not think of these as classic alpine plants

but the term alpine is used to cover

such a wide range of different plants.

You've got the true alpines,

which come from that area above the tree line, in mountainous parts,

and you've also got other things that might work in an alpine house,

either because they have the right sort of scale

or because they need that little bit of extra TLC,

so they need a bit of protection, and that can be things from

seaside areas, it can be forest or woodland, so there's a vast range.

They all need perhaps slightly different growing medium

in order to do really well

and the key to success is getting that right at the beginning.

So, there's a good general mix which will work for most alpines.

And it's a third each of loam.

And of leaf mould.

You don't have to be exact about it.

And then, because most alpines do like really good drainage

and they particularly hate winter wet, you need a third as well

of either horticultural grit, sharp sand or this stuff, which is perlite.

And very nice and light as well.

So just mix that up. Then, depending on the sort of plant you've got,

you would adapt that slightly.

So, for instance, I am going to plant a dodecatheon,

which is a woodland plant, and that would like a bit more leaf mould,

so I'm going to add a bit more of that.

And just mix it in. If you're planting a bulb,

you'd probably put a lot more grit in and give it even sharper drainage

and if it's a lime-loving plant, such as these little saxifrages here,

then they need something like a bit of ground chalk

to help them along.

-Looks pretty.

-It's coming on, isn't it?

-You know what I like?

Although this is completely practical

and it's keeping the roots...

It's such a good display case.

It's fantastic because it really sets them off beautifully -

when you get this top dressing on, I'm going to get some grit around

the top here as well, that keeps, of course, the foliage dry.

-Practical and beautiful.

-That's what we like.

Really good tips, Rachel. Thank you.

Now, it's not every day that you hear that a spring veg can add

a touch of class to your dining table.

But this one can. We're at A for Asparagus.

Here's Toby Buckland on how to grow your own.

April is asparagus planting time

and asparagus is one of my top five vegetables to grow.

You can't buy asparagus that's as tasty as the stuff you can pick

from your back garden.

And it's expensive to buy as well.

But more than that, asparagus is one of the few perennial vegetables.

That means it comes back year after year,

so you only need to plant it once.

Because once you've got those crowns in the ground,

they'll give you 10, 15, maybe 20 years of service.

And tasty dinners through early summer.

Asparagus - you can buy it in pots

but you're always better to send off for it from a nursery.

It arrives in the post like a present in a box.

It's rather strange stuff.

Because it comes as a crown, as it's known,

with a little bud breaking at the top.

Quite spidery, aren't they? Now, what I do to make sure they're nice

and hydrated is pop them in a bucket to give them a drink

while I dig out my trench and prepare the soil.

And soil preparation is the key to success

as far as asparagus is concerned.

You can't have weeds. Because those roots are so spidery

and spread out through the soil, if there's weeds,

perennial weeds, things like dandelions and cooch grass growing

in amongst your asparagus beds, you can't get a fork in amongst them

to pull them out without damaging your asparagus roots.

So it pays to leave a bed fallow, maybe covered over with some carpet

for a summer season, before you plant.

We'll start with a clean, raised bed, like this one.

And because you can't dig, it always pays to fork in lots of manure

and compost before you plant,

because you can only mulch afterwards to improve the earth.

Now, this trench is something like 15cm, 6 inches deep.

And the way you plant is along a ridge that supports the roots

when you're planting the crowns.

And to make the ridge, you can do it by hand or by running

a spade on its edge along the side of your trench one way.

And then the other.

And that just leaves a nice little pyramid of soil

running along the middle.

I've got an old English variety in my bucket,

it's called Connover's Colossal.

And it is a male and female variety of asparagus,

that means some plants will bear berries and others won't.

And the modern trend in asparagus is to produce plants that are

all male, because they're more vigorous and you get thicker stems.

But this variety, Connover's Colossal, is one of my favourites.

I like the thin spears it produces and it's very reliable,

and I'm planting this so it just sits on the ridge like that,

with the roots spreading down either side.

Now, ideally you want to give your plants 45cm between each crown.

And just shy of a metre, a yard actually, between each row.

You just leave those buds slightly proud of the soil surface.

Then as they grow, you backfill even more

until the soil is nice and level.

Going to leave these plants to establish

and put on lots of leaves to produce a good crop of spears next year.

But I'll only harvest a few, because it's in the year after,

the third year in the ground, the third summer you can start taking spears

in earnest, and then only up to midsummer, because you've got to

leave the plant's time to recover and get their energies back

under the ground to produce more spears the following year.

Lovely.

Four more rows to plant.

Thanks, Toby. We'll leave you to get on with that

and catch up with Countryfile's Adam Henson,

who has joined a veritable army of asparagus gatherers.

It's now the climax of the asparagus harvest.

It needs to be cut as soon as it starts to sprout up.

There's been a surge in demand for asparagus over the past decade.

And it's now grown on a huge scale around Worcestershire.

By mid June, harvesting stops.

So the crop will be ready to grow again next year.

Now, one of the biggest frustrations for asparagus growers is that

limited harvest from April to June.

In theory, the plant will keep growing as long as the weather

is warm but, in order to let it recover,

you need to stop cutting it and let it run to fern.

So if you let asparagus grow, this is what it looks like.

In order to harvest before it ferns,

farmer Richard Caulwell relies on the hard work of migrant labourers

to live on his farm for a few months of the year.

Richard, the field seems quite bare. I imagined there to be more spears.

We get lots of people commenting, you know,

"What are you growing in that field? What's that?"

And I said, "Asparagus." "Oh, I can't see anything."

We cut every day, Adam, anything that gets to 20cm we cut.

So, you know, following behind the workers,

there will be next to nothing.

So these little ones will grow and be cut tomorrow?

If the sun would shine, yes, that would be cut tomorrow.

So how do you know which ones to cut and which ones not to?

If it's the length of the knife, that's 20cm, then we cut it.

-There we go. What's that one?

-That's it. Spot on.

-Just cut it underneath?

-Just cut below.

We're getting left behind. I'm getting the hang of it.

It's quite hard work, isn't it?

'It may be tough but I hope to take some of my harvest with me

'to the annual charity auction in Evesham.'

-So, where is everybody from?

-I am from Bulgaria.

The others come from Romania.

We've got Latvian people, Lithuanian people...

-Amazing.

-Yeah.

So, these Eastern Europeans walk up and down these fields every day,

cutting asparagus.

-Like fitness!

-It's like fitness? Better than the gym!

SILVER BAND PLAYS

The annual auction takes place at the Fleece Inn, near Evesham.

And it has a long asparagus tradition.

It's where workers would come after a hard day's picking.

£42. I'm looking for 42. 42?

For the past 30 years,

they've raised money in aid of the local Bretforton village Silver Band.

But how would my asparagus fare?

Cut it with my own bare hands, packed it, weighed it.

-What do you reckon?

-That's very nice. I ain't being funny.

It don't have to be big to be nice.

-How much a round?

-That's your problem.

OK, so, ladies and gentlemen, a special, as-seen-on-TV asparagus.

It's all for charity.

£5 I'm bid, £5 over there. £6.

6, 10, 12. £12. £12 there.

£12, thank you, sir. 14. 18. We're going up big jumps now. 28.

Thank you. 28, 30. 30 in the middle.

32. Oh, we're racing now!

32 on the right-hand side. 32, 32, any advance on 32?

34, 36, thank you.

36. 36 on the left.

It's going once, it's going twice.

36 on the left-hand side, thank you very much there, £36.

Someone give me £10.

'After some frantic auctioneering,

'my six rounds of asparagus raises over £200.'

Well done to the gentleman in the middle.

I have the distinct feeling he's trying to steal my show!

I reckon we had a bit of money then!

-I'm not having it.

-Might take up an auctioneer's job.

-Thank you, Adam.

Outside of television, you could still earn yourself a living!

British asparagus and especially...

And hopefully after that your asparagus plants will have

prize-winning potential too.

Next on our journey through the letter A, we're at Allotments.

It's time to meet allotmenteer Terry Walton,

a green-fingered guru who shares his knowledge with millions

of listeners over the airwaves on Radio 2's Jeremy Vine Show.

JEREMY: 'Gather you got some weather down there, Terry.'

'I'm standing right in front of my gooseberry bush

'and this is always my barometer.

'And there's little tiny little green leaves unfurling

'and it now looks like a hazy green bush,

'so if that's starting to grow, there's some warmth in the soil.'

I do the Radio 2 Jeremy Vine Show once a fortnight

and it's absolutely a pleasure to talk to him about my plot.

My goal with the radio show is to get people out there,

doing their allotments and having as much pleasure every day as I do.

I was four when my father first brought me in,

gave me a bit of ground.

I raked and sowed a few radishes and I was thrilled

when they came through the ground.

I got the bug and I don't think I'll ever lose it.

I eat well off my allotments.

I can probably eat fresh vegetables off the plot for at least ten months of the year.

On my allotments I've got garlic, shallots...

This will produce a bumper crop.

..strawberries...

These will be some crunchy carrots.

..beetroot...

Look at these.

..potatoes.

Now these are my pride and joy. These are my broad beans

and these are miles ahead of anybody else in the allotments.

We've always got something on the plot,

irrespective of the time of year, irrespective of the season.

We've always got something we can eat.

May is a very busy month. There are lots and lots of jobs to do.

Well, this is known as earthing up your potatoes.

And this does two things - one, it creates an extra bumper crop

of potatoes because there's more potato underground.

Plus the fact it stops the newly formed tubers going green because

green potatoes are a no-no, they're poisonous, you can't eat them.

And I really do love a new potato with a knob of fresh butter.

I'm down here about four to five hours per day.

And I might as well throw the wristwatch away

because, when I'm here, the time just disappears.

I think my wife does despair.

She's a bit more in the habit of joining me on the allotment occasionally now -

that's the only way she gets the chance to see me when I'm awake!

If I was ever cited in the divorce, I think it would be the allotments

would be the other correspondent, I think.

She says it's better than another woman, anyway.

What I'm doing here is actually planting some lettuce seed

and doing these cut-and-come lettuce, some red, some green

because Anthea loves this colour on her plate.

And a good tip when you plant any small seed is originally line

your drill with some good compost

because, like everything else, the soil can be a bit cold and wet.

So I put compost in the bottom, give them a nice little blanket to start their life off in.

And all allotmenteers worth their salt are very, very thrifty.

The last thing you want to do is spend.

We have a big saying - "To become a true allotmenteer,

"what you can't beg, steal or borrow, then you may have to buy."

A friend of mine has started work in a coffee shop,

and she's collecting coffee grounds for me.

And I'm told that slugs and coffee grounds don't mix,

so I'm hoping I can protect these cauliflowers with these grounds.

If this works, this will be truly something

because I will then be 100% organic.

What happened to these tomatoes?

'There's a group of us, the old timers,

'been here for many, many years and we meet up socially -

'when Albie rings his cafe bell we all troop along like milking cows,

'and we sit down there and put the world to rights.

'We talk about gardening, we brag, we boast.'

We can solve all the world's problems.

We do more business in the cafe than the United Nations.

You went off on holiday and left them abandoned!

You've got to be careful with the stem, haven't you?

With tomatoes you don't...

Not usually infected with tomatoes.

You never leave at the end of the day with nothing to take home.

Everybody who has a crop failure, the guy next to him has something which has grown.

They'll always share with you so you'll always go home

and have a feed and that's what brings you back, isn't it?

Having an allotment is all about team spirit

and it's amazing what can happen

when a whole community gets together,

as Joe Swift has been finding out.

The Pilkington Allotments in St Helens, Lancashire are more than 60 years old.

Over time they have become completely rundown,

so a local, Alan Hull, decided to do something about it.

He set up an allotment management committee.

Alan and his team regenerated the site and have let 70 plots.

They've created a beautiful and safe environment for the local community

to be proud of.

It's hard to believe that five years ago this was a dilapidated old site.

And now it's been turned round to a thriving allotment.

What are the keys of the success?

Dedication. Hard work.

-And organisation.

-How important is it now for the rest of the community?

Very important. We've got to become part of the community.

And that's what the regeneration of allotments is all about,

to bring allotments to the 21st century.

So what would you say to someone who is trying to set something like this up?

-Where do you start?

-You start by doing your research.

You look for the likes of Allotments Regeneration Initiative,

and then of course we've got the National Society Of Allotments And Leisure Gardeners.

Go on the internet and find out who can help you

because there is people out there that want to help and can help you.

So as well as your regular plot holders, there's a lot of activity,

isn't there, a lot of different people using this site?

From people in wheelchairs from the day centre, from the learning

difficulties group and also from the mums and tots group.

For beginner gardeners, who is teaching these guys to get going?

You have the services of a little bit of help from the average allotment holder who comes over

and speaks to them and...

-And show them?

-The holder comes over and passes on their expertise.

Allotments bring out the best in people.

It's great to see how everyone just wants to help out.

In fact, it's such a growing trend

that there are over 300,000 plot owners in the UK.

Now we are nearing the end of our journey through the letter A

and we're looking at some flowers that belong to the onion family

but looked nothing like it.

Our last A is for Alliums.

And who better to turn to for tips than Alan Titchmarsh?

Alliums will pick up the baton from the tulips

and run with it right the way through the summer.

And if you look across this border, you'll see they are tremendous

for lifting a planting scheme out of the flat and dumpling, like.

Look at these wonderful verticals that I'm getting there

right across the path and the lawn. I could afford a few more of them.

And, happily, I don't have to reach for my cheque book, because back in

September last year, when our garden was woolly and bulbs were packing our

garden centres, I bought some allium bulbs for just this eventuality.

The trouble is, you may not know exactly where in the garden

you want to put these bulbs just yet. Don't worry about that.

Stick them in compost in plastic pots

and you can take them out and plant them later on.

The mix is half and half of soil-less, multi-purpose compost

and John Innes No. 2, which holds onto the moisture better.

And why can't you buy them ready-mixed? Well, you can, but...

they never do it quite right

and I like to mix my own because then I can feel it and smell it's right.

Oh, all right, just call me old-fashioned,

they'll do perfectly fine in the bought stuff.

And there are more important things to worry about,

like how deep you plant your bulbs.

I'm bunging them about three inches down, giving them some protection

from the elements.

When you're potting bulbs up in autumn,

drying out is unlikely to be a problem.

What is likely to be a problem is waterlogging,

so the best thing to do is to stand them

right by a shed or a house wall and they'll get a bit of moisture

from the rain but they won't get drenched and they won't rot.

By early spring, they're well on their way.

And now, in May, they're just about to flower. Perfect for those gaps.

You're probably thinking when you look at this, "Goodness me,

"he hasn't grown those terribly well. Look at the dead ends on the leaves."

Well, this is the way they grow naturally.

Good green leaves and, as the flower spike comes up,

so they start to die back. But once these are planted in the border,

and I'm not plunging them, I'm planting them,

they'll sink down so much more that the other foliage around them

will cover up the embarrassment of their leaves.

I've chosen two varieties for my border,

to stretch out the season to its maximum.

First on stage, it'll be the tall and stately Purple Sensation.

As handsome as a timpanist's drumstick.

Followed a week or so later by the huge, sparkle-like blooms

of Allium cristophii, with their metallic sheen.

And nobody will ever know

they haven't been growing there all spring.

They'll take a couple of weeks to reach their full glory

but knowing they're on their way is half the fun.

And if you want inspiration for your garden, just have a look

at the allium collection in Harlow Carr's gardens in Yorkshire.

We've got about 4,000 alliums on display on our main borders.

And alliums are a fascinating group,

really large group, around about 700 species in total.

And they come from all around the world, the Mediterranean region,

Asia, Turkey.

And they make fabulous architectural plants within any garden.

The bulk of the collection of the alliums here at Harlow Carr

are predominantly Allium hollandicum and when you look at the alliums

today across the border, you'll see that there are two shades.

There's a darker one, which is Purple Sensation,

and then the lighter one, Allium hollandicum,

just straight Allium hollandicum.

And if you grow them as a combination,

the effect is very beautiful. Very visually attractive.

There's such a wide variety of alliums on this border.

We've got things like this beautiful white allium.

This is Allium giganteum "Mont Blanc".

And as you can see, this one is up to about 4ft in height.

Alliums are a diverse group of plants.

And don't forget that alliums are related to edible onions,

things like chives and garlic.

And if you let chives flower en masse,

you can see the family resemblance.

They will actually set seed.

Don't be tempted to pull them out and mistake them for grass,

which is very easy to do.

If you let them grow and develop, within about three to four years

you should get an established allium head.

What we've found at Harlow Carr is that if you let Allium "Purple Sensation" seed itself,

it will actually come back lighter in colour.

It'll revert straight to Allium hollandicum.

So you have to bulk those up each year to retain that kind of deep colour.

Sometimes people grow alliums and they don't flower in the first season.

And what we've found here is that they like plenty of heat

and plenty of sun.

They will do in shade but they'll thrive better in a sunny position.

Once the alliums have finished flowering,

don't be tempted to cut them back.

Let them dry naturally in the sunshine

and you'll get secondary display later on in the season.

If you're thinking of getting some alliums for your garden,

don't forget to plant them in a sunny spot.

Easier said than done. That's the end of our look at the letter A.

Join us next time for more top tips from The A To Z Of TV Gardening.

Goodbye.

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