Letter P 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 TV 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 beings with the letter P.

Here's what's coming up.

Carol Klein gets passionate about poppies.

There's bound to be a poppy that not just suits you

but thrills you.

Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen is driven crazy by paving.

In London, 12 square miles of British front garden

no longer exists.

That is the equivalent of 22 Hyde Parks.

We've got the pick of perennials with Rachel De Thame.

The great thing about container-grown perennials

is you can grow them really at any time of year.

The downside is that you've really got to keep on top of the watering.

And Christine Walkden is at a heavyweight competition.

And this is the biggest pumpkin ever grown in Britain.

Before all that, we're diving into a place that's bursting with life

and also beautifully calm and tranquil.

Our first P is for ponds.

And Alys Fowler is visiting Snares Hill Cottage in Essex,

but not just because of their gardens.

This is the reason why I really came.

This is just...

fantastic!

So, Liz, Peter, you're the proud owners of this wonderful garden

and amazing swimming pool.

I suppose it's not really a swimming pool, is it?

It's more of a swimming pond.

That's right, yes.

And it has all the insects and the flowers

and the wildlife you'd find in a pond.

First thing in the morning,

the birds are wonderful

and we get kingfishers come down.

They don't recognise you as an individual.

You know, they're not frightened or scared at all. It's wonderful.

Why did you go for a natural pool and not one with chlorine?

I didn't want to spend time cleaning pools

and putting chemicals in.

Friends that have had pools,

they spend all their time throwing money at it

and not swimming in the thing and enjoying it.

All the cleansing is done by the reed beds,

that take all the phosphates

that cause the algae in the water.

And in the same way as...sort of septic tanks

that work off reed beds. It's the same principle.

In terms of maintenance,

what do you have to do in terms of looking after the plants?

Just pull out the dead bits and things.

So when you're swimming round, you can do a bit of gardening

at the same time as swimming. It's really lovely.

I love the fact that you can garden your own swimming pool!

Yes!

There's something really lovely about seeing

water lilies at eye level, isn't it?

The biodiversity of this space is huge, isn't it?

And just by having a body of water, in terms of birds visiting

-and all of that.

-We use it a lot more than I thought we ever would.

I thought it was going to be a five-minute wonder, but it's not.

It's something that we use every day,

when the weather permits!

It is incredibly elegant and beautiful

and most desirable.

I might have to get rid of all my garden now!

Just have this.

And if that's left you craving your own pond,

here's Mike Dilger and Miranda Krestovnikoff,

showing how to build one from scratch.

For me, ponds stir up memories of warm summer evenings,

dragonflies dancing over mirrored water

and frogs croaking to their loved ones.

But how can you create that dream in your garden...

from this?

Well, we're going to show you how.

We're here with the Sherlock family in their urban garden in Surrey.

There's mum Amanda,

with her two sons, James and George.

As we've only got 24 hours, we thought we'd need some help,

so we've brought in pond-digging guru Nigel and his team.

So the first thing you need to do

is to mark out the shape of the pond, so you know what you're dealing with.

Then you need to get digging. But it doesn't need to be that deep -

probably just a couple of feet deep at the deepest point,

because most of your pond creatures actually like it in the shallows.

It's not just aquatic life -

birds and mammals use ponds for bathing and feeding,

so it's important you choose your spot well.

Your pond should have some sunny and shady areas,

but not under any big trees,

otherwise it might get clogged up with leaves in the autumn.

Right, guys. This is where we put action into words.

Or even words into action, Mike!

Dig for Britain!

Your waist is going to have to be at that level

before we can even put the pond liner in.

It's hard to imagine this becoming a wildlife haven,

so whilst Miranda keeps digging, I'm taking the boys off pond-dipping.

So this is a taste of things to come.

A nice sweep along the edge... There we go.

-Oh, look!

-Oh, look at that!

-Oh, wow!

That is a tiny little water snail.

I think it's a ramshorn.

You know, on rams - male sheep - their horns look just like that.

Look what we've got there.

It jumped...

Wow, look at all those water boatmen!

The brilliant thing is, all these things don't have to be introduced into their pond -

they'll make their own way there.

Give it six months, their pond will be teeming, just like this one.

How are we doing?

OK, enough dipping.

Let's get back to the digging.

Look at this!

-Oh, my goodness!

-That is amazing.

Right, I need a volunteer.

Come here. Let's test how deep it is.

-No!

-Yes!

Come on, let's get him in that hole.

You've done it. Two foot depth. Brilliant.

It's time to put the matting down.

Then it's the liner.

And finally, the most important ingredient.

Rainwater is best, but with no water butt, the tap will have to do.

With the pond slowly filling, we're done for the day.

But it's straight back the next morning to make this muddy hole pretty.

So, this is it. This is the final stage - adding the plants

and making sure the edges are all nicely landscaped and smoothed,

so the wildlife can actually get down to the water and take the plunge.

-Mud, mud...

-Glorious mud!

Plants provide animals with a place to live,

somewhere to feed, and even lay their eggs.

Marsh marigold and cuckoo flower

are just some of the plants you can use to make your pond look beautiful.

We're going to have birds, bees,

butterflies, amphibians - the whole works.

MIKE HUMS A FANFARE

It's all going to green up, the plants are going to grow,

and the animals are going to come in. And do you know what?

The first animal that comes in here, we want to see that.

-Will you film that for us?

-Yes.

That'd be really fantastic.

Then we're going to come back a bit later in the summer.

We certainly are. And we won't even recognise the pond.

There we go. We've created an absolute disgusting mess.

Time for us to leave.

Bye!

But now I'm back, three months later,

to hopefully see a much prettier wildlife pond.

Hi, Amanda, hi, boys. How are you?

-How's the pond?

-It's looking great,

but we want it to be a surprise.

Oh, no!

I can't believe it.

-Right.

-You're going to push me in!

-No, no. Stop just there.

-OK. Can I take this off?

-Yes.

Oh, my goodness me - look at that!

It looks a lot bigger, doesn't it?

It just... Oh, wow!

Great.

I can already see the water just twitching.

You've obviously got water boatmen and pond skaters

and all sorts in there.

Now, George, we left you with a video camera. How did the filming go?

-It went OK.

-Yeah? What did you film?

Frogs, newts, dragonflies, damselflies...

That's fantastic! Well done.

We've just seen pond skaters.

The boys also found a water boatman,

a real live frog

and even a newt.

I called it tiny because it's "my newt".

And Dad took a couple of photos of a roe deer coming along for a drink.

Lovely!

And today the pond is alive with dragonflies.

The two that are flying over there at the moment, do you know what they're doing?

-I think they're mating, aren't they?

-They've just finished mating,

and actually, the female, the one at the back,

she's dipping down and touching the water with the end of her abdomen.

She's actually laying her eggs in the water at the moment.

So you, next year, will have dragonfly larvae living in the pond.

And they look like dragonflies underwater without wings.

Oh, something's just disappeared there.

That was definitely a common frog, wasn't it?

Ah, there he is!

Oh!

Frogs aren't the easiest critters to catch,

so we've brought along a pole camera to get an underwater view.

You have got to tell me what you can see. If you want me to go left a bit, right a bit...

..then you just let me know.

Wow, look at these! Pretty cool.

If you could shrink yourself into miniature

and you could actually go for a scuba dive in your pond,

this is what it would look like.

Tell me what you can see.

Um... Algae!

There's that water boatman again,

pulling himself along like an Olympic swimmer.

And all sorts of other minibeasts, above and below the surface.

There's a little snail there - can you see that?

Glistening in the light there.

Now, snails are really good, because they'll eat up all this algae

that you don't like in your pond.

So when you're pulling it out, just check amongst it.

Any snails like that, pop them back in, cos they'll help clean that up.

We're going to try and find...

that frog.

Don't fall in!

-There he is!

-Yeah!

-Yay!

Up a bit, up a bit.

That's it - perfect.

-Got him?

-Yeah.

-Is he swimming around?

-Yeah.

-Fantastic.

-Little bit left.

That's it, that's it!

-Got a good view?

-Perfect, yeah.

-Brilliant.

And all this in just three months.

Amazing.

Over the last 100 years,

our countryside's lost over 70% of all its ponds.

So it doesn't matter how big you build yours -

it'll become a real wildlife oasis for all sorts of different animals.

Wasn't that fantastic?

Still to come, the quest for Britain's biggest pumpkin,

the best way to plant your potatoes,

and an amazing display of peonies.

But now we turn to a group of plants that come back year after year,

regardless of what the weather throws at them.

This P is for perennials.

A really good bet when planting your borders.

And that's exactly what Rachel De Thame is showing us next.

The best thing about buying perennials in containers

is that you can plant them pretty much at any time of year.

You can also go to the garden centre quite regularly

and see what's in flower when,

and then make some wonderful planting combinations.

So I've got a beautiful selection here.

I think these colours - they sort of clash,

but they actually work really well together.

And I'm going to start, I think, with a helenium at the back -

these wonderful, daisy-shaped flowers.

Get those in. They're a little bit taller,

so I'm going to put them near the rose.

And the main tip, really, is to make sure

that the soil is really in good heart,

so I've added plenty of garden compost here.

And you want to get the levels right as well,

so you're planting it to the level it was in the pot.

Now, you can see, if I put it in there,

it will be buried too deeply,

so I'll just shove a bit of that soil...

back in again.

Get rid of the pot.

And then nestle it in there.

And then you're just pushing it back...

around the base of the plant again.

Firming it in.

Now, if you're planting a lot of perennials in one go,

you can just sort of dig out

a whole area,

but I'm going to do these one by one.

It's easy to get carried away when you're planting perennials,

because they look fantastic

when they're en masse,

but do remember that most of them will bulk up quite quickly.

So in a couple of years...

..they'll fill the area.

Now, I think in front of the helenium,

we're going to have a crocosmia.

Just fantastic.

Flowers and also really good foliage on this one.

So you get a good combination

of different...

shapes and textures.

Both in the flowers and the leaves.

And then next to that...

..an echinacea here.

Here we are.

Isn't that beautiful?

And the colour really picks up -

you've got the pink and the orange in the one flower there.

And just firm it in.

And there are perennials that will flower

right the way through the season

from spring, all the way through, well into the autumn.

And these late-summer flowerers...

..are absolutely brilliant for that.

Now, ideally, you'd plant perennials

in spring,

but the great thing about container-grown perennials

is you can grow them really at any time of year.

The downside is that you've really got to keep on top of the watering

until they get established and the roots get down.

But I'm pretty pleased with that.

Now, perennials, when they're grown en masse,

look absolutely spectacular,

and they're also quite easy-going -

they can be grown in a wide range of different soil conditions.

And that's exactly what Kim and Stephen Rogers did in their garden in Yorkshire.

They planted loads of perennials,

and they got really dramatic results,

despite it being less than an ideal location.

The garden's on the north-facing slope of Shibden Valley

in the Pennines.

Quite a cold spot, open to north and northeasterly winds,

and we're on quite a heavy clay soil.

We were inspired with this naturalistic-type planting,

using wilder-looking plants

that'll tolerate a lot on these heavy clay soils.

And it does suit the location as well, having a wilder look.

Tropical plants would just look ridiculous.

We decided that grasses and perennials,

and the wilder perennials with the smaller flowers, worked much better.

The main philosophy is this wilder look to the planting.

And you don't achieve that by putting over-bred, large-flowered plants

into them, that are getting shorter and shorter.

They've got to still have the natural look about them.

It's the depth of the planting as well. It's multi-dimensional

when you're looking through plantings

into other plants and other plants beyond.

We'll vary the heights of the planting

and bring some of the really tall plants to the front

so you've got to peer round them to see plants behind.

Make it more interesting. Bring plants closer to people.

About a third of this garden is grasses,

a third, and there's no lawn.

It's all ornamental grasses.

But they don't self-seed - they just move lovely, like today.

I don't think there are any plants you need to avoid on a clay soil,

but you've got to do the preparation.

Long-term, if you skimp on that first initial preparation

and getting the soil right,

then you're always going to be fighting that clay soil

and there's nothing going to grow well

in that sort of soil, so you've got to work on improving it

either with sand and grit and organic matter.

And even raising the beds.

In a lot of the beds now,

we would grow the more sort of Mediterranean-type things,

like the sea hollies...

..catmints, dianthus,

stipas.

We've had to raise the beds up to get that drainage.

Well, I'm a woman, Stephen's a man, so we split the jobs up

according to who's best

at what they do, and who's stronger.

He's good at making coffee.

I'm good at making tea.

Stephen's great at taking cuttings,

cos he's really fast.

We both sow seed. It's lonely if you're on your own, isn't it,

-so we tend to do a job together, don't we?

-Yeah.

The garden we've created is one that we tried not to intervene too much

throughout the year.

We tend to cut back in April.

You can see the whole of the garden then. It's like a fresh start.

And we cut back, we weed, and then we mulch.

And then there's not a lot of intervention after that.

We tend to try and leave it to its own devices.

We let lots of things self-seed.

Some of the early summer-flowering plants, we tend to deadhead,

so that it all comes together much later in the year,

but apart from that, if we get ten minutes,

and we're not potting and we're not watering

and we're not talking to people about plants,

then we tend to have five minutes, ten minutes in the garden.

And through the winter, we're quite happy to not have any colour.

We just get all the very rich browns

of the seed heads and the grasses,

which we enjoy just as much, because you don't get it any other time of the year.

And as the garden starts to rest,

we have a little bit of a rest

and start to think about the following year.

Amazing garden.

On to our next subject.

And we're encountering what could be

the world's most important and popular vegetable.

This P is for potatoes,

and here's Carol Klein on how to plant your spuds.

There's a lot of mystique about chitting potatoes.

All it really means

is getting your seed potatoes

and putting them in a nice, bright, frost-free place

so they can develop their first little shoots.

Opinions are divided about whether or not it does any good,

but I always chit my potatoes.

Some people like to pop their potatoes in with a trowel.

That's fine if you're on light, sandy soil.

But on my heavy clay,

I like to dig a really deep trench.

Nice and wide and very, very deep,

because potatoes are the tubers borne on the ends of roots

and what they need is as big a root run as they possibly can get.

I make my trench about a spade deep

and about two spades' width.

It's the most wonderful work.

It's deeply satisfying.

When you've dug your trench, it's time to plant your potatoes.

This is ideal.

It's been chitted, and it's got strong, stubby little roots.

These are virus-free seed potatoes.

And never plant potatoes from the supermarket.

These have been specially prepared, so they're much less likely

to suffer from disease.

Just push them into the bottom of the trench.

I'm putting mine about six inches apart,

because these are deep beds.

Here I can grow things really intensively.

Just nestle them into the soil.

Make sure they're comfy and feeling at home.

I'm putting in...

Red Duke of York,

which is a really good eating potato.

Because that's what we're after - flavour.

And a lot of people say flavour's in your soil.

And we stay with vegetables,

as we head to a festival where contestants are trying to beat a gardening world record.

And if this isn't a heavyweight competition,

I don't know what is.

This P is for pumpkins.

And here, Christine Walkden joins the battle for the biggest.

These are the real stars of the show.

We're in the XPG Arena,

which stands for Extreme Pumpkin Growers.

And this is the biggest pumpkin ever grown in Britain.

It weighs in 1,341.5 pounds -

that's nearly 96 stone -

and was grown buy father-and-son team

Frank and Mark Baggs.

How long, Frank, have you been growing pumpkins like this?

Well, we started in 2005.

That's a relatively short time ago.

So how quickly do these grow?

At his peak, he did 177 pounds in his best week.

177 pounds?

That's incredible.

That's the weight of the big man in just seven days.

But impressive though this is,

I've had a sneak preview of a monster growing in a nursery just up the road in Lymington,

which could pose a serious threat to the British crown.

The proud parents are twins Stuart and Ian Paton.

So how do you produce something like that?

-Good seed.

-Yeah.

To grow anything over 1,000 pounds,

really, you need to be inside

and you need about 600 square feet per plant.

You need about a tonne and a half

-of good muck.

-Tonne and a half?

-Something like that.

Do you actually hold a record yourself?

-We've probably got a record for the most expensive seed.

-Really?

Don't let our wives and girlfriends know that!

How much do you pay for the seed?

They're going to find out!

Go on, spill the beans!

-850 dollars.

-850 dollars.

-Bargain!

-So what is it? What's the turn-on?

It's just a laugh, really. It's just good fun.

Now, you say it's a laugh, but I saw a bigger pumpkin this year.

-The British champion. Are you nervous?

-No, not at all,

because it's probably 50/50 whether we beat it or not.

But it's a win/win situation for us,

because it's one of our seeds that they grew.

We still want to beat them.

Well, first they'll have to get it to the show,

and that's quite a challenge in itself.

Last year's rope is too small, boys. We need a bigger rope.

# I like to move it, move it

# I like to move it, move it

# I like to move it, move it

# You like to move it... #

To you a little bit...

# I like to move it, move it

# I like to move it, move it... #

It arrives safely, and Frank and Mark check out the opposition.

Look at this!

-That's a beauty, isn't it?

-It is.

-Do you think this is competition?

-I hope he's lighter than ours.

Come on, you two!

Now then, did you hear that?

So what's your retort to these two?

Unlucky!

What's that knocking sound - is that your knees?

-It looks heavy to me.

-Yeah.

Well, I think this is a case of

let the best pumpkin win.

Definitely.

The tension mounts as all the pumpkins go on the scales.

The tiddlers are no threat.

But remember, Frank and Mark's British champion

is already confirmed at 1,341 pounds.

So who's the king of the pumpkins?

It's the moment of truth.

1,457 pounds!

And do you know what? Since then, they've grown some even bigger ones.

Now, if you'd like to grow pumpkins,

but think space might be a problem,

Monty Don has a few tricks up his sleeve for you.

Right.

There's a decent hole.

Now, I've been wondering for the last few weeks

on where I was going to grow my pumpkins and squashes.

They've been sitting in a cold frame for about a month longer than I would have liked them to have done,

because it's been too cold, and there's no point in putting out pumpkin or squash

if the temperature is cold. They just won't grow.

But now it's warming up, I can get them out.

But I haven't got any room for them to spread,

and then suddenly I thought, "I know - I could grow them up."

I then thought about some bean sticks I had.

They're lovely bits of wood - these are chestnut -

but they just feel wrong for beans.

But perfect for growing a pumpkin or a squash up.

So, I've put four in a bed over there,

and I'm going to put another four in this bed.

I've started by digging a pit,

which I will fill with compost,

because...

pumpkins and squashes are very greedy plants.

Bit of soil over the top.

So that's in position.

And then I'll put up the structure.

And I've got a bar here, so...

Make a hole for them.

Now, if you think about it,

a pumpkin can be a very heavy thing.

So this is no good for pumpkins or squashes bigger than, say, a football.

But perfect for acorn squashes

or butternuts

or any of the Japanese squashes

that come in all shapes and sizes.

Some of them are really quite small.

Nevertheless,

the support does want to be robust and strong.

So...

I've sharpened a stake...

and just drive it in the hole.

Now, that is really robust,

which it will need to be, because with any luck,

we'll have three, four, maybe even five good-sized squashes on there.

Right, let's go and get one to plant.

Now, this is a squash called Blue Ballet,

and I've never grown it before.

But anything with a decorative skin,

anything that looks good, I think, is a great virtue in a pumpkin or a squash,

because in the end, although they're delicious to eat, they're very decorative plants too.

Now, I will tie these trailing stems

up the tripod, so instead of spreading along the ground,

all that growth is being channelled up.

And with any luck,

it'll rise up, respond to it,

and flourish.

And that way,

I get to grow a really big, sprawling plant

in quite a confined, small space.

But I would say, if you're going to do this,

make sure the support is really firm.

Because come October, there will be a lot of weight on there.

Now from things that grow to things that stop growth completely.

According to our next presenter, that is.

We're looking at front gardens,

and the phenomenon that is our next P...

for paving.

There's just too much of it, says Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen.

To me, the front garden is in many ways quintessentially British.

But lately, it's become a bit of an endangered species.

I've always loved the fact that the British front garden

evolved its own horticultural lingo -

roses, hanging baskets,

hedges trimmed with zero-tolerance geometry,

and then for all of those suburban individualists out there,

there's pampas grass and perhaps a concrete donkey

with geraniums in its panniers.

But these days, I'm afraid our suburbs are under threat -

threatened beneath a tidal wave

of hard standing.

Over the last few years, more and more of us are paving over our green front gardens

to provide space for cars, or simply because we can't be bothered

to invest the time that looking after a living garden requires.

Have you any idea how many of Britain's front gardens

now lie entombed underneath concrete or crazy paving?

A quarter. And in fact, hide your face in shame, the northeast,

because up there, that percentage goes up to a half.

It's going to have serious environmental consequences.

In London, 12 square miles

of British front garden no longer exists.

That is the equivalent of 22 Hyde Parks.

Non-permeable surfaces such as concrete and solid paving

also increase flooding.

And they contribute to what experts call the heat island effect.

The suburban front garden.

It celebrated people's liberation from gardenless living

in the flat-fronted slums of the cities after the First World War.

Front gardens were part of a move to mass-produce a golden-hued British idyll.

The way that our streets look

does affect how we feel about ourselves.

Don't forget - the front garden was a statement of pride,

of pride in your home, pride in who you were,

pride in your community.

What a lovely front garden. Can I come in and join you?

-Yes, of course you could.

-Thank you.

It's not all doom and gloom.

There are still some of us who really love our front gardens.

I think that this is, without doubt, the best front garden in the road.

Do you take a lot of pride in the garden? Is it about pride?

It's also pride in the garden,

and I think, when you have a bit of pride,

it's quite nice,

because people admire it.

So is it for the people as they walk by, is it for your neighbours,

or do you look out on it and think, "Wow! That's good"?

It's for myself,

which is more important,

and my wife

and also, when your neighbours have a look at it, they admire it.

I reckon it's not going to be long before you have coach parties stopping outside,

and they're all going to get out, take photographs

and start asking Mrs Henry for a cup of tea.

But there's something curious about the British front garden

that's always interested me.

And that is...why don't you sit in them?

I mean, what is it? Is there some kind of unwritten law?

Is it bad etiquette to hang out outside your own home?

I think it's because traditionally,

the front garden did the same job as the front room.

It was about a space to be posh in.

Traditionally, it was for us to put on our horticultural telephone voice,

to show the rest of the street

what good taste we had.

And do you know what?

I rather miss that.

Why have a car park

when you can have an outdoor front room, like this?

But if you really don't have another place to park your car,

why not add a few flowerpots to your driveway?

If you do, you could fill them with our next pick -

a flower that is just downright beautiful.

P is for peonies

and we're visiting a garden in Shropshire

to see them at their very best.

Peonies go back generations.

They were grown in monasteries for medicinal purposes,

but these were the cottage peony that everyone will have seen.

In the 19th century, the French took them on board

and decided to start breeding them,

so they developed them from a very simple plant

into this glorious array we have today.

They are just so over-the-top.

They're so big and blowzy

and beautiful.

This is Largo. It's a Japanese peony,

but it actually demonstrates how variable peonies can be.

Those are the outer guard petals.

And these are

the creamy petaloids.

But it also, in some cases, has these inner petals,

which don't occur in every plant,

but they just add a different dimension

to the overall blowzy floweriness of the plant.

It's a most magnificent specimen for just focusing

your attention in a border.

A lot of people do tend to ask what is the difference

between a tree peony and a herbaceous peony.

Tree peonies are essentially woody or shrubby peonies.

And we have this wonderful upper growth,

and then when you look underneath,

you get a woody stem

with new growth on the top.

The woody stem doesn't die back in the winter,

and that is simply the difference.

When it comes to looking after all types of peony,

there is no difference.

They all need very well-drained soil.

They like full sun, but can grow in semi-shade,

as long as they have water in the spring

to form the buds.

They really can be left for 100 years and abandoned.

They are very long-lived and very easy to grow once established.

This is Laura Dessert.

It's more traditional in style.

It's a double, but again it has the white guard petals,

much more papery,

and the inner petaloids form a beautiful dome,

which at first are incredibly yellow

and then gradually fade to almost white.

It's much smaller than the more modern ones

and it's incredibly scented.

It's long been thought that peonies are difficult to move.

Rubbish!

I have moved hundreds, if not thousands, of peonies

and we have had absolutely no problem

with them establishing themselves.

They can take three years to flower,

perhaps a little bit more,

but you've got to plant them at the right depth,

and this is the most important thing with moving peonies.

With a herbaceous peony,

you must not plant them deeper than an inch below the soil.

If you plant them any deeper, they can fail to flower.

Tree peonies need to be planted deeper,

because they are most often grafted,

and to form their own roots, they need deeper planting.

I always think, with these big, glamorous plants,

whether it's a peony or an iris,

that you wouldn't want them all year round.

It'd be sort of...

They'd become vulgar.

You'd say, "Oh, it's another peony."

So I love the fact that they have this burst of glory,

a bit like a ballgown.

You don't wear your ballgown all year.

You just have it for that one great event,

and that's what peonies are about.

Finally, one of the most beautiful and popular wild flowers

that comes into its own in the summer months.

This P is for poppies.

Here's Carol Klein.

One family at its exuberant best right now

is the poppy family -

Papaveraceae.

Now, you don't need a great big space like this to grow

a few of these field poppies,

Papaver rhoeas, in your garden.

Any little sunny corner will do.

Sprinkle a few seeds,

and up they'll come, year after year.

These are poppies as nature intended them,

but there are plenty of other poppies

that have been cultivated and selected

just for our indulgence.

Papaver orientale, or oriental poppies,

with their big, blowzy blooms

are familiar to most gardeners.

They come in all sorts of colours and sizes,

from pale and pretty to searing red.

They exhibit many family characteristics,

particularly apparent in their conspicuous flowers.

They're as thin as silk and exotically coloured.

If you garden in the shade,

especially if you garden in one of the damper parts of the country,

then you might well succeed with Meconopsis betonicifolia.

This is a poppy from the high Himalayas,

where it grows out on the hillsides,

but is under constant cloud cover.

So if you can emulate those conditions,

you might have success with this.

Meconopsis "Slieve Donard"

shares the characteristics of most members of the poppy family.

Its petals seem almost composed of tissue paper.

And they open in quick succession

from bristly buds.

And though they fall in just a short time to the ground below,

whilst they're there, they're like nothing else.

From the mountains of Afghanistan

comes the most economically important part of the family.

Papaver somniferum.

It's the source of morphine

and opium,

hence its Latin name - "somniferum" meaning "sleep-inducing".

If you've got it in your garden,

you won't have it in ones or twos,

because it throws itself around.

Like this glorious frou-frou double,

as pink and pretty as a ballerina's tutu.

At first sight, this looks nothing like a poppy,

but it is in the same family.

It's Corydalis flexuosa,

and it comes from wooded valleys in the centre of China.

It loves the sort of conditions it gets there -

damp, moist shade.

And if you're growing it in your garden,

make sure that it doesn't dry out,

because that will mean it keeps flowering

right the way through the summer.

Easy to increase too from the base -

you can move it around and soon have a beautiful drift of blue.

But if red's your colour, your garden's sunny

and you want a bit of instant drama,

then how about Papaver commutatum,

the ladybird poppy?

It's from the Caucasus,

but it brings to mind our ubiquitous field poppy.

From ancient Egypt to Flanders fields,

that poppy has come to signify rebirth,

regenerating as it does year on year.

But wherever you garden and whatever the conditions there,

poppies are such a wondrous family,

there's bound to be a poppy

that not just suits you,

but thrills you.

But usually with poppies, it's the red ones we think of,

and here's a film from 1999

that explores the symbolism of the poppy.

A rare sight now - a field of poppies.

Farming has changed its fortunes.

A beautiful, silk-like flower,

warming the wind, like a blown ruby.

The daughters of the field

that so magically appeared when land was ploughed.

Superstition once held that the picking of poppies

would cause thunderstorms at an edgy time of year.

The irony, then, of the explosion of poppies that appeared on the Somme

just months after the carnage of 1916.

It is now the most poignant symbol of memory and war that we have.

Sad that modern agriculture has all but wiped out

the splendour of fields full of poppies.

And with that, we've reached the end of today's show.

Until the next A To Z Of TV Gardening, goodbye.

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