Letter L The A to Z of TV Gardening

Hello and welcome to The A To Z Of TV Gardening,

where we sift through all your favourite gardening programmes

and dig up a bumper crop of tips

from the best experts in the business.

Flowers, trees, fruit and veg, letter by letter,

they're all coming up a treat.

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

'Here's what's coming up. Why James Wong loves lavender.'

Absolutely beautiful. Kind of infinite rows

of fuzzy purple caterpillars.

'Toby Buckland on how to look after your leeks.'

Do take care not to allow any soil to fall down into those leaf axils,

cos if it falls in there now, believe me, it's not good for your fillings.

'And learning about lettuces with Alice Fowler.'

You have to start thinning. And you're aiming to have,

on this kind of cut and come again system,

lettuce roughly a centimetre apart.

That's all to come. But first, we look at one of the true stars

of the flower kingdom. Gorgeous, elegant

and with a wonderful fragrance, it's no wonder gardeners find them so irresistible.

'Our first L is for lilies.'

I've been growing lilies for approximately ten years

and I presently have approximately 2,000.

Ten years. Ten years he's really loved lilies.

When you grow one, you see how beautiful they are

and you've got to have more, and that's what he does.

I have got to the point where I'm really obsessive about lilies.

Harry in the garden? Well, from about eight o'clock in the morning,

five o'clock in the afternoon, with about 20 minutes for lunch.

That's how long.

Lilies are almost the perfect flower.

Just what every flower should be. Six petals.

They just look at you and they really say, "You've got to love me because I'm so beautiful."

I can do all the hanging baskets, I can do all the boxes on the house

and I can go and clear up the mess he makes.

But I'm not allowed to plant.

There's no question about it, they have a tremendous wow factor.

Wonderful colours, they grow very, very well,

quite tall, sturdy, they don't flop about.

So they're just a wonderful flower to grow.

-I can touch them, I can smell them.

-SHE LAUGHS

-But that's about as far as it goes.

-SHE LAUGHS

This lily is Conca d'Or.

It's an oriental trumpet. Very easy to grow.

Almost any good quality soil.

My favourite colour for a flower, yellow.

Looks you straight in the eye when you view it.

And I'm also attracted by the anthers, the way they bobble about

when the wind blows.

He just loves the beauty of them, that they are absolutely perfect.

And, of course, they have this wonderful perfume, as well, which helps.

And, I mean, as soon as one comes out, it's, "Come and have a look."

You can spend all day doing that, running and having a look at another one.

At the peak of the hemerocallis season,

I spend in excess of two hours every day dead-heading.

What I love about them

is the tremendous range of colour.

And they are very, very easy plants to grow.

No particular conditions.

And they propagate very easily.

Alstroemeria are quite easy to grow.

They originated in South America, I think Peru.

They like free-draining soil,

flower continuously from late May

right the way through August, September.

When they've finished flowering, what you do with Alstroemeria is

you actually pull the stem completely out of the ground.

This encourages further shoots from underground

and you will easily get second flushes.

If you're very new to growing lilies,

the one I would highly recommend is yellow star.

It's easy to grow, looks wonderful,

everything about it is lovely.

The other good thing about yellow star, it is very easy to propagate

from the bulbils which form in the leaf axils.

And I have had plants in bloom within two years of sowing the bulbils.

Each year, I find that my appetite for gardening is getting greater and greater.

I'm trying to pack more plants into smaller places,

which means eventually, of course, the lawn gets smaller, the beds get bigger.

I just like a garden full of colour and flowers.

His garden is his passion. He loves his garden more than me.

SHE LAUGHS

'Gardening's definitely a passion, as it requires attention, dedication,

'knowledge and skill. Let Monty Don demonstrate.'

I'm making up a mix

for planting the lilies into pots.

This compost mix is bark-based compost

and I've added lots of leaf mould to it.

They prefer an ericaceous soil or compost.

That leaf mould will be fine. Neutral is OK.

And if you don't use peat, which I don't, then leaf mould is a really good substitute.

And if you haven't got any leaf mould, add some vermiculite to a bark-based compost.

Right, that's perfect. And the lily I'm going to put in pots is this.

Isn't that magnificent? This is lilium regale,

which has huge great white trumpets

with a sort of bruised interior.

Now, that's quite expensive. That's about a fiver.

We want to look after it and make sure that we grow it as well as possible.

But it will last a long time, so it's a good investment.

So I've put crocks in the bottom of these pots.

I'll just put some compost in the bottom.

And I can't over-emphasise the importance

of having light, loose compost.

Lilies are woodland plants

and they like a cool root run.

So place these carefully in, not damaging them.

You can see, quite deep in the pot. And not more than three in a pot that size, I don't think.

And these will grow through and they'll flower at their best in July.

One of my favourite summer-flowering bulbs

are foxtail lilies, or eremurus.

They don't look like bulbs at all, but like mad spiders or octopus.

They come from high grassland in the mountainous areas of South Africa

and what they love is really good drainage and lots of summer sunshine.

So I'm adding plenty of horticultural grit to my compost mix.

Doesn't matter what compost you use as long as it's really well drained.

I've got plenty of crocks in the bottom of a big pot,

a layer of compost and then carefully spread these roots out.

Cover it with more grit and then put it somewhere where it can quietly grow

and then I will place it in bright sunshine

to get the maximum effect of the flowers.

Finally, I've got another South African bulb. This is eucomis,

which has got a spectacular green pineapple-like flower.

And it's a bit tender. Not quite as tender as we used to think.

But it won't take a really cold, wet spring spell.

So I'm going to bring it on in a pot and then plant it out probably in June.

I'm using a potting mix with plenty of vermiculite in it,

but if you're going to grow them in pots permanently,

use the same mix as you have for eremurus.

'We'll come back to lilies later in the programme,

'but now we're moving onto a real grower,

'because our next L is for leylandii,

'a plant that's been at the root of some serious hedge rage,

'as John Sargent's been finding out.'

This is a war story set in peaceful Britain.

It's a battle over hedges.

Small hedges are one thing.

But big hedges, really big hedges, can cause conflict.

And the bigger the hedge, the bigger the battle.

'The leylandii are the nuclear weapons of the hedge wars.

'They were first bred here in 1888

'at Leighton Hall in North Wales.

'John Naylor imported rare plants from all over the world.

'Cross-pollination took place

'and the very first leylandii were born here.'

-And that's from the original tree, isn't it?

-Yes.

So how old is it?

That's roughly 50 to 60 years old.

Now, tell me how it started, the leylandii, here.

They were put together by accident

in gardens such as this in large country houses,

-and so you had hybridisation, which would never have occurred in the wild.

-So what were the trees?

That's Monterey cypress from mid California

and then this is Nootka cypress, and that's from south Alaska down to north California.

But they don't get any nearer than 400 miles in nature.

They grew so fast with this hybrid vigour

that they had an obvious potential in terms of timber production.

-But then the garden centres got in on the act, didn't they?

-Well, yes,

because Mr and Mrs Smith come along to the garden centre and say,

"We want something that will give us a hedge in two or three years."

Prior to Leyland cypress, that wasn't possible.

And hey presto, the monster is born. HE LAUGHS

'Once they were accidentally invented, they couldn't be stopped.

'From a blessing to gardeners in need of a quick hedge,

'they soon became a curse to many.

'In the 1990s, legal action was taken

'and the first big case was won by Michael Jones,

'a retired school teacher living in Selly Oak.'

-Right, so this is the famous hedge.

-This is the famous hedge

which all the fuss was about.

Tell me how it started and where it got to.

When we came into the house, there was a fence and a beech,

tiny beech saplings.

And I didn't even notice my neighbour

had planted these ten leylandii.

-OK, so they started like that.

-Ooh, down here.

Right, they started like that. How many years was it before they were right up there?

That would be about nine years.

-And it's now about ten feet.

-Ten feet, yes.

And it was, at the time of the action,

up to 40 feet.

'The long, drawn-out legal battle cost tens of thousands of pounds.

'But Michael triumphed and won the right to cut his neighbour's hedge.

'He turned campaigner, creating Hedgeline,

'a support group for thousands of victims of hedge wars.

'Eventually, the government introduced a law to control high hedges.'

It must've been an amazing, long, drawn-out row, this.

Yes, it dominated our family for years,

you know, 20 years,

and the memory of it still rocks us when we think about it.

The trees themselves dominated our lives.

We tried so hard to come to some compromise.

When I cut the hedge, he took me to court.

-So we all have the right to complain.

-Yes.

But it still can be quite a business, can't it?

The position is now that if you suffer from nuisance,

you can complain to the council.

It's that right that gives the impetus

for the neighbour to take the trees down.

The most significant hedge battle of our time

was fought here and won.

But the battle with the leylandii is never completely over.

Unless you cut it back, it'll grow and grow and grow.

Thanks, John. Still to come,

lavender, lilacs and some home-grown leeks.

But now let's join Alice Fowler for some salad green tips.

We're at L for lettuces.

'And let's see how Alice grows them.'

'Lettuces are crucial in my beautiful edible garden.

'I'm starting to sow them in wine boxes salvaged from an off-licence

'and filled with compost from the garden centre.

'For my patio, I've chosen to sow cut and come again salad leaves.

'You don't pull them up, roots and all, like big lettuces.

'You simply trim off the leaves, which then regrow for another couple of servings.'

Now, you never want to sow out of the packet

cos you have very little control if you do it that way

and you'll sow the best part of the packet in one go.

So you take out a small amount.

And I'm just scattering it across the top of the wine box.

But you just need to slightly tease the seed into the soil.

And then firm it down just so the seed's in contact with the soil.

'And the trick to watering tiny seeds

'is to give them a long but gentle soaking,

'because anything heavier than a sprinkle will wash them away.

'I've also been growing lettuce seedlings in trays of compost

'on my window ledges since February.

'With the arrival of milder weather, those seedlings move to the patio

'for a week or so to adjust to an outdoor life.

'And mid April means they're now big enough to handle

'and so fine for planting into the borders.'

This soil it just so soft from all the spring rain as it heats up.

Come summer, this will be as hard as a piece of china,

but right now, it's so soft and crumbly and ready to give life.

I've got two very beautiful lettuce.

They're both oak leaf type of lettuce. This one's called emerald green

and it's a very big, beautiful, really vivid green

and then the centre's kind of acid green.

The other one is flashy butter oak,

which is a very pretty marbled burgundy lettuce.

They're good enough in their own right just to be there.

That you then get to put them on your plate is genius, really.

'And I'll keep sowing and planting out continually over the next six months

'to guarantee that I have home-grown salad right into the winter.

'Three weeks after sowing, there are baby leaves sprouting.

'However, they are growing too close together, threatening to strangle each other.'

So you have to start thinning. And you're aiming to have,

on this kind of cut and come again system,

lettuce roughly a centimetre apart.

Now, you don't want to waste any of these. You could chop off the roots,

have them for tea,

or allow these to become bigger, maturer lettuce

to grow somewhere else. There's no need to ever waste your thinnings.

And I'm just putting my finger underneath the plant

and then easing it up.

And again. They don't want to come.

'And we stay with greens but move from salads to veg.

'Our next L is for leeks

'and Toby Buckland is showing us one of the best ways of planting them.'

As you harvest your summer crops and dig them from the ground,

that leaves space for vegetables that will come into fruition

during the winter. And one of the best are leeks.

Now, you'll read in books that leeks are members of the onion family,

but unlike their bulbous cousins, they don't need so much attention.

However, if you give them a bit of TLC,

it does make all the difference to how well they grow

and how disease-free the foliage stays.

So I've got a good bucket of garden compost

onto the soil there,

plus... some chicken manure pellets at half strength.

Now, it's getting late in the year to be using a high-nitrogen feed like this,

but because this is new ground

and I only dug these beds over back in the spring,

this'll do my leeks the world of good, give them a boost right towards the end of the growing season.

A quick fork in.

Just to open up the ground. But not too deep.

And you'll see why in a minute.

Now, there's a time-honoured way to plant leeks.

You don't use a trowel, you don't use a spade.

The tool for the job... is a dibber,

made from an old handle from a fork or a spade that's broken,

it's been sharpened to have an end on it.

All you do is use the dibber to make holes down into your prepared ground.

Six inches deep. 15cm between your holes

and 30cm, one foot, between the rows is just about right for average-size leeks.

And more importantly, enough of a gap between the holes

so the soil doesn't keep falling back into the ones you've made.

Now, the reason leeks are planted this way

is that they have very delicate roots.

What I do is try and keep as much of that root in place as possible

by twisting the plant as a drop it down into its planting hole.

And that ensures that the roots are all below the little swollen base.

In she goes. Lovely.

Now, I'm dropping them right to the base of the hole.

The reason for doing this is that if leeks are left just growing in rows that they're sown in,

they don't get very white bases to them.

And it's that lovely white, blanched base of the stem

that tastes so succulent and sweet during the winter.

There is nothing like a boiled bit of leek

cut in half, allowed to cool

and covered with cheese

and cooked under the grill.

It's probably the best way there is of keeping the cold off.

Now, the final thing is a quick watering in.

The art of this

is to water just into the hole

and then as the water drains away,

it just drags down a bit of earth over those roots

that have been carefully twisted into the bottom.

Don't fill over the holes, cos that might be too much for the buried stem to cope with.

Just leave the rain and the elements to fill the holes for you.

And one word of warning - do take care not to allow any soil

to fall down into those leaf axils.

Cos if it falls in there now, believe me,

it will still be there when you're crunching on your grilled sliced leek

with the cheese on. And believe me, it's not good for your fillings.

Lovely.

Thanks, Toby. Now a plant that loves the heat

but adapts very well to the British weather,

a scent to die for, lovely indigo colour. L is for lavender.

'Let's join James Wong to learn a little more.'

Lavender. What does it make you think of?

'Perhaps the beautiful colour.

'Or maybe the unmistakeable smell.

'But there's a lot more to this iconic plant than meets the eye.'

The essential oil found in these little fellows

has been used in all sorts of lotions and potions.

In fact, archaeologists have even found lavender

in the kit bags of Roman soldiers

as part of a very early first-aid kit.

'These days, it's increasingly used for aromatherapy oils

'as well as shampoos and even decoration for cakes.

'Peter Morton is the site manager here

'at the biggest lavender farm in the UK,

'which has been here since 1932.'

Peter, this is absolutely beautiful.

Kind of infinite rows of fuzzy purple caterpillars.

It is a bit like that. It's such a spectacular sight,

I don't think you ever cease to be amazed by it.

Every time you drive into the field in the morning, you just go, "Wow".

-How do you go about harvesting these guys?

-In the olden days,

you had crowds of people out here harvesting it by hand.

-I'll show you one of my weapons of torture that I've got here.

-Wow.

-That's back-breaking. How do you do it?

-You're trying to do a nice stroke,

trying to get a good handful in your fingers to start with,

and then it's an even stroke towards you.

A lot of people just pussyfoot around dead-heading.

-They might just take off the stem like that.

-Yep.

That's not what a lavender needs. You have to get really right into the foliage

-to keep it nice and bushy for next year.

-Right.

Which is part of the problem, really, with the lavenders in people's gardens.

They look stunning for so long and then people get disappointed cos it's gone straggly and spread out.

So I take it this isn't all done by hand now.

We've brought out a new harvester which mechanises it almost completely

to a degree where we've got three people in the field.

'Now it's time to move on to something slightly bigger,

'about 75 grand's worth of state-of-the-art, custom-made kit.'

-Does this mean I get to ride in one of these?

-You do!

-It's a wonderful big toy we have here.

-Yeah, talk about boys' toys.

I've wanted to do this since I was five years old.

Now, I've never driven anything other than a golf buggy,

-and that was once.

-I think you should be OK.

I'm maybe slightly more nervous than I was here now, but no, we should be OK.

'So, with a quick lesson on the controls, we're off and running.'

-And that's it. And your steering wheel.

-OK!

ENGINE REVS

-OK?

-So what's the difference between this and a regular combine harvester?

The main difference really is the crop that we're actually cutting.

Lavenders, because they have flowers going all the way around the side of the plant,

we have to come up with some device that cuts the side of the plant, as well.

Of course. It's like a fan shape. It's a bit like a lavender Mohican,

-it pulls it all up.

-You're getting the right thing on there.

We're going back to our 80s with our flat tops. JAMES LAUGHS

But we're getting short back and sides at the same time.

We do leave some flowers behind. If you looks behind, you'll see a few flowers.

-A little bit left on there.

-I'm not bothered about that,

because you've seen all the bees that we've got the field,

if we managed to cut every single flower head,

we'd just suddenly take away the source of food for the bees and the wildlife within our crop.

-That's a nice load we've got there, James.

-I've never seen so much lavender in one big space.

It seems very harsh when you think of actually cutting this for cut flowers in floristry.

-Yeah.

-And see how harsh and cruel we are to this stuff,

-you know, hurling it around.

-How much oil would you get out of this?

-You wouldn't get much out of this.

-You wouldn't get much out of this?

-No.

-A truck full?

-We might get about half a pint or a pint out of this, that's all.

'The farm harvests 400 kilos of oil a year.

'We're taking this load back to the distillery

'as Peter is testing for quality.

'This has to be done pretty quickly, however, otherwise all the vital essential oil is lost.'

So how do you go from this to a bottle of essential oil

that you pick up in the shops? Well, I'm going to find out

and I hear there's some pretty cool bits of kit involved.

'Now, time for a quick science lesson.'

To me, this looks like a big boiler that you'd get in a kitchen.

Very, very similar to kitchen technology.

In the centre here, we've got a boiler, almost like a giant kettle,

that's producing steam for us to try to get the oil out of the flower heads.

And it surges steam out of the back pipe, down there behind us,

comes in through the bottom, surges up through the flower heads

and what it's doing really, as it comes through,

it's bringing the oil, which is in the flower head, out of the liquid and making an oil vapour.

And coming out of the top, we actually come into our condenser.

If you feel this, it's nice and cool. A lot cooler than everything else around us.

-So all of that hot gas basically gets turned back into a liquid?

-That's it.

By the time we get down to the end here, we've got the separator at the bottom.

The oil comes into the separator and one of the beauties about all oil

is oil floats on water.

-Whoa!

-That's it.

-OK.

-Yep.

-There we go.

-It's a good old heavy lid on that.

-I was about to say, it's like a manhole.

It's on a whole different scale.

-How long does this take to cook away?

-It's just like a big old kettle.

We wait and it doesn't seem like it's doing anything for the first 15 or 20 minutes,

just building up the temperature, before we get steam.

'And while the kettle is boiling, I've got time to find out more about this plant and its uses.

'Dr Tim Upson has been all over the world researching lavender

'and its curious qualities.'

-And as if by magic, you've got a whole botanic garden collection.

-Absolutely.

-Look at that!

-That doesn't look anything like a lavender.

-It doesn't at all,

but I love this one. It's only found on the Canary Islands.

And is this used by people there?

Yeah, they use it in a tea to treat stomach problems.

This one comes from a lot further away, from Somalia.

-And is this used by people there?

-Absolutely.

A lot of the local people use them for gastric problems.

That's interesting. Different species of lavender used all over the world for similar conditions.

So this isn't just mumbo-jumbo. There's actually genuine scientific plausibility

-behind how some of these things work.

-Absolutely.

It's taking a lot of the folklore ideas,

and some of them have very much been shown in practice

from the First World War, when they used lavender oil to treat wounds,

to actually now realising that again they can be very effective

against particularly skin wounds where a lot of normal medicines just aren't effective.

'Back at the distillery, the kettle has boiled

'and it's time to separate the oil from the water.'

If I bring this up a little bit, you should hopefully start to see the water. There we go.

-Oh, look at that!

-That's the water at the bottom with the oil on top.

-So we're tapping it into there now.

-When it goes into that little pipe,

you're basically just skimming it off like you would skim milk?

Yes. So if we turn that up, did I get some? Yeah.

-Look at that!

-And we're talking thimble-fulls there, really.

'Now it's my turn. Coordination and a steady hand needed here, James.'

-Push. Push the lever away from you.

-Away from me?

Yeah. Bring it up towards the silver pot.

And gently, gently now. Raising it up just so it goes up to the top.

-Yay! Look at that!

-Just the oil, not the water, so drop it. That's it.

-This is actually looking a lot clearer now.

-Yeah.

-This is really the way that the oil should be looking.

-So it's all in here, I've just got to release it?

-Yep, hopefully.

-OK.

-Let's see if you managed to catch it.

-Let's have a look at that.

-Is it? Yeah, you did. Look at that.

-Gosh.

-And that's your pure...

-That's amazing. And that's the flowers we picked not more than an hour ago.

That's it. Straight from the field into the distillery.

I think I've found a hidden talent.

-You can always come out here for the weekend.

-A lavender alchemist!

'And this essential oil could end up in medicine, soap or perfume. Who knows?'

You know, lavender might be beautiful, it might be traditional,

but it's when you look at its uses that you suddenly realise

that it's only just beginning to show us what it can really do.

'Thanks, James. And we're back with Monty Don again with advice on growing lavender in pots.'

Now, lavender actually is a true Mediterranean plant

which comes from right round the Mediterranean area.

This is Munstead and this is a particularly nice example.

Now, lavender likes really good drainage.

Bright sunshine, poor soil, and it's happy as Larry.

Now, I've made a separate potting mix for the lavender

because I've added extra grit

and no garden compost.

So it's poorer and much better drainage.

And it is important with lavender especially

to use a peat-free compost, because they like alkalinity.

I want to leave some room for water, because although they need really good drainage,

you can actually kill a lavender with drought.

So good drainage but regular watering.

Now, I've got pinnata here.

And you can see, the reason why it's called pinnata is the leaf shape is pinnate.

This comes from the Canary Islands and Madeira.

Very beautiful. And it's got this slightly grey, milky texture

and these long stems.

Right, that's pinnata.

And there's a third lavender and this is stoechas.

Lavandula stoechas. And, in fact, this is a variety called Regal Splendour.

And the thing about stoechas is that not only does it have these rabbit's ears

at the top that stick out

and they look very distinctive and you get these really rich colours,

but also they grow more upright

and they will tolerate a little bit of acidity.

So if you don't garden on chalk or limestone

but you do have good drainage, this will grow well outside.

'Now we move on to a plant that in spring gives a show of colour like no other.

'Our next L is for lilac.

'And this is lilac-lover Colin Chapman.'

Why lilacs? Like the rose, they're part of our cultural being.

You see, they've got a literature of their own,

they've got a poetry of their own,

they've got an art form of their own.

They remind us of our parents, they take us back to our grandparents.

When we came here 23 years ago,

we found that we had

a stream running the entire length of the garden.

So I decided to construct a lilac walk.

Dense and full of foliage in the summer when I didn't want to see the stream,

but which was an open tracery of branches in the winter

when the stream was looking magnificent.

And so found I needed about 40 lilacs

and I've got the kind of mind that must have 40 different ones,

not 40 all the same.

And it was then that I started looking

and found that there were not 40 lilacs available

and that I would have to search elsewhere

to fulfil the little quest.

So I joined the International Lilac Society to find out.

And so now, 23 years later,

we now have somewhere between 500 and 600 different lilac

in this collection.

And they range worldwide.

If you move away from the common garden lilac,

I would say the ones to look out for

are the incredible lilac called Massena

which has flower heads that are so big,

they look like cheerleaders' pom-poms.

It's a magnificent, wonderful thing.

There's another lovely old one called Paul Thirion

which has brilliant red buds

and those red buds open to give pale lilac double florets

so that the contrast between the two colours is absolutely exquisite.

And it flowers much, much later than most other lilacs.

So if you have two lilacs side by side like Massena and Paul Thirion,

you get the equivalent of six weeks' flowering out of the two of them together.

'Thanks, Colin.

'We're returning to the subject of lilies.

'If you want to get the most out of yours,

'pay close attention to Carol Klein.'

As a species, lilies, you can grow them from seed,

sometimes you can use bulbils,

but by far the best way and the most fun is to grown them from scales.

'Now's the best time to do this.

'Choose a really good, strong plant, and dig it up carefully,

'making sure that you don't slice the bulb in half with your spade.

'Remove any excess soil so you can really see what you're doing.'

So this is a really beautiful, big, fat bulb.

And you can see all these scales quite distinctly.

They're almost fully off of their own volition.

So we're just going to detach these

as close to the base plate as we possibly can

and put them into this bowl of vermiculite.

We can take really quite a number off here without doing this bulb any harm at all.

You can do this with new bulbs that you've bought, too.

So we'll put that one down and just mix this together.

And the idea of the vermiculite is just to make sure that

it keeps all these bulbs separate from one another.

And it's just a sort of neutral medium.

Now, to do this, the best way is to create a sort of mini greenhouse.

So I'm getting handfuls of this mixture and putting them into there.

And then I'm hopefully going to seal this up

and when we get close to the other side,

I'm going to blow the whole thing up with a straw,

cos you want plenty of air in there.

Just put that into there...

And you're just creating a sort of mini greenhouse.

Now, you want to put the bag, as soon as you've done this,

into the airing cupboard, that's the best place,

anywhere where it's warm and very, very dark.

And in a couple of months, each of these scales

will have produced its own little bulbil at the base.

You'll have lots of them. And then you can line them all out,

either into a piece of open ground in a cold frame,

or better still, into a tray of compost.

'Now, there's a particular type of beetle that loves the lily so much

'it devours it from top to bottom.

'Here's Dr Ian Bedford with tips on how to avoid it.'

Lilioceris lilii, commonly known as the red or the scarlet lily beetle,

originated from southern Europe/Asia, but we're not exactly sure where.

But it first appeared in the UK

prior to the Second World War.

But that colony kept a very low profile

and it wasn't until almost 50 years later that the lily beetle numbers started to take off.

Over the past decade, they have spread at a tremendous rate.

Lily beetles are now found in every county in England.

They've recently been recorded in Scotland,

Ireland and Wales.

Lily beetles are extremely good flyers.

Studies have shown that they can detect a lily plant at 30 yards

without actually having any visual contact.

We're finding that it's the chemicals given off by the plant

when it is first starting to produce new growth.

This is what the lily beetles appear to home in onto.

The adult lily beetle spends the winter underground.

They emerge in late spring to coincide with the new growth from their food plants,

which is just the lilium species and their hybrids and fritillaria.

So unless the lily beetles are controlled at an early stage,

that plant will not grow to produce decent flower buds and flower.

If they are left unattended, they'll defoliate it.

They'll then move onto the developing flower buds.

They'll even eat the petals on plants that have actually gone into bloom.

So they are a major pest of lilies.

But the fact that they are so specialist

means that they're no danger to any other plants in your garden.

Some of you who've tried to remove the red lily beetles by hand

may have noticed a strange noise that they emit. It's actually a chirp.

BEETLE CHIRPS

And it is quite amazing for such a little beetle to make such a loud chirping noise.

Erm, we're not really sure why it does it.

It's probably a way of putting off predators that may have decided to pick up a beetle.

The other very interesting phenomenon that the red lily beetle has

is that it can send out these alarm pheromones.

You spot a lily beetle on one plant, you go to collect it,

as soon as you get near it, it sends out the alarm pheromones to other beetles,

and out of the corner of your eye, you see all these little things dropping down onto the floor.

And you go to look round and try and find out where these beetles are

and they've completely vanished because they're no longer the bright red things that you see on the leaves

because as they fall down, they twist, land on their backs

and all you can see then is the black lower sides of them,

which is camouflaged against the soil.

So if you happen to go out in your garden

and you spot a red lily beetle on your plants,

you need to remove it as soon as possible.

Then search the plant for little tiny orangey-red eggs

that will be laid on the underside of the leaves,

and look for those horrible, slimy grubs that might be under the leaves, as well.

And remove those either by cutting the leaves off

or just running your finger down and making sure you squash them.

However, they have a rather disgusting habit,

cos as they feed, they cover themselves with their own excrement.

And for people who know about controlling lily beetles by hand,

this makes the task of squashing these things extremely distasteful.

The other thing you can do is grow them in pot,

because at the end of each year, you can actually dig up the bulbs,

throw away the soil that those lilies have grown in

which may have, over winter, adults in,

and re-pot them into fresh stuff for the next year.

The other option that you have is to use a chemical option,

and there are a couple of active ingredients that do work on lily beetles.

Products that are bifenthrin-based or thiacloprid-based are very effective.

My recommendation, and I do grow lilies in the garden,

is not to grow too many and to keep a very good eye on them.

And, particularly in the spring, daily go out

and see if you can find any of the adults that have emerged from the ground

and are sitting there mating or laying eggs.

Just inspect those plants as much as you can and remove whatever you find on them.

And that way, you should be able to get the plants through to producing flower buds

and have a lovely display of lilies.

'And we finish today with a gem from a 1981 programme

'called The Sexual Encounters Of The Floral Kinds.'

'The African water lily. On the second day of its life,

'quite, quite harmless.

'And what a feast.

'Hundreds of stamens, all capped with pollen

'like giant lollipops.

'And away he flies.

'But what a difference on the first day of its life.

'For only then does the lily have that awful need to kill,

'does it have that inviting pool of crystal-clear liquid in the centre.

'What looks like nectar is not nectar at all.

'It is a deadly poison, and what is more,

'the overhanging stamens at this moment are smooth as silk.

'Dead.

'Just a few last nervous twitches.

'Night falls.

'And the reason for what seemed a pointless death is now revealed.

'Inside the floral tomb,

'the lethal liquid washes the pollen grains from the victim's body.

'Souvenirs of older, kinder lilies,

'they sink to fertilise the eggs below.'

'So remember, if you're going to drop in on a lily,

'be sure to get your timing right.

'It can be more than your life is worth

'to visit a virgin flower,

'as our little hoverfly did.'

A very dramatic end to today's show, but that's Mother Nature for you.

Do join us again for the next A To Z Of TV Gardening.

Until then, goodbye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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