Letter Q The A to Z of TV Gardening

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

We're digging up the best advice

from all your favourite programmes and presenters,

so join me as, letter after letter, one by one,

we explore everything from flowers and trees to fruit and veg.

Everything we're looking at today begins with the letter Q. Here's what's coming up.

Monty Don reveals the truth about quinces.

These were the fruit of good and evil. It was this that tempted Eve, not an apple.

We look at the quirky side of gardening.

So this is it. This is your fantastic little garden in a van.

And top celebrities checking out top quality gardens.

You see extraordinary plants that you've never seen before in your life.

Lots to look forward to there, but we're starting with a real treat,

a very rare look at some of the most famous and exclusive gardens in the world

because our first Q is for the Queen's Gardens.

Back in 2004, Her Majesty granted Monty Don

and the Gardeners' World team a special "access all areas" pass

to the open spaces of Buckingham Palace,

so let's enjoy what they found.

Buckingham Palace Garden in the heart of central London is flanked by St James's and Green Park,

both originally hunting grounds for the monarchy.

The garden occupies an area of 39 acres.

The Serpentine Lake is at the heart of the garden

with a lawn the size of five football pitches running down to it.

The lake has been enlarged a number of times

and in the dig of 1827, some of the spoil was used to enlarge this mound

that was created to hide the garden from the Royal Mews.

The Buckingham Palace Rose Garden was originally laid out in the 1960s

by the celebrated rose grower Harry Wheatcroft

and has been continually updated, often with commemorative roses.

This is Royal William, Rose of the Year in 1987.

Silver Jubilee flowers all summer long.

The Queen Elizabeth has been going strong since 1954.

And Gracious Queen was launched at Chelsea for the Golden Jubilee.

And species roses, always a favourite with the Queen Mother,

still thrive around the Admiralty Summer House.

One of the oldest residents in the garden you'll find dotted around in the grass and it's this -

the chamomile, which was first recorded in the 17th century and has been here continuously ever since.

In more recent times, a sand pit, swing and slide were added

for the young Prince Charles and Princess Anne.

The swing and slide have gone, but the sand pit is still there,

its wooden cover now hosting a colony of lichens.

There's also a tennis court.

King George VI was a keen tennis player, even competing at Wimbledon.

Today, the court is used by Palace staff.

And like anybody trying to encourage wildlife into the garden,

the Queen has her own royal bird table.

BIRDS SING

'One of the highlights for most of the guests is the herbaceous border.

'Over 150 metres long and five metres deep,

'it peaks in July.

'One man who knows royal gardens better than most

'is writer and garden historian, Sir Roy Strong.'

I suppose the first thing is how does a herbaceous border fit

into the gardening tradition, let alone a palace one?

The herbaceous border, Monty, was really a mid-Victorian invention.

The great reformer William Robinson

who wrote The English Flower Garden, then his pupil was Gertrude Jekyll,

and the apogee of this form of gardening was really before 1914

with the relationship of Sir Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll.

Mass planting of herbaceous plants in a kind of symphony of colour,

ascending at the back to tall things like delphiniums which we can see here,

and, believe it or not, banana trees.

I suppose you can say they're a symbol of a vanished empire,

plants from all around the globe gathered into this fantastic border here.

Then it's like so many other things.

Once they cross the Channel and they arrive here, we think they're English.

They're part of our multicultural identity or diversity now.

It's nice to see sweet peas because they always make me think of the late Queen Mother

who absolutely loved sweet peas

and all her houses were decorated in sweet pea colours and she always dressed in sweet pea colours.

-I think that's...

-Do you think that's deliberate, a sort of family...?

It's possible. It's a kind of memory of a much loved person.

I mean, do remember that the Royal Family and the Queen live in there

and it does give her something wonderful to look down on.

Then also the border screens what, if I remember rightly, is a little, private walk

because any royal person leads such an exposed life.

I understand that Her Majesty takes the corgis for a walk behind there, which I find absolutely enchanting.

And I do like to see delphiniums that are huge.

I think this trend of breeding dwarf delphiniums seems to be losing the very essence of the plant

-and to see enormous...

-They're quite a fierce blue, aren't they?

Yes, I don't mind that.

And what is unusual about this border...

There's great attention to flower and leaf shape and height.

But there's less attention to colour. Some of the colour is quite aggressive.

If I had to be critical of this, I think it's planted, but not designed.

But in a funny sort of way, the fact that this arrived in the post-war period...

All through the 20th century, you've seen the democratisation of the monarchy,

then more and more accessibility of the monarchy,

and the monarchy in a way responds to that and you can say this is almost a gardening response

because here on a mega scale is what most people have in their back gardens.

They have a border, a mixed border,

but here at the Palace, boy, you have a mega mixed border!

I like that kind of relationship because people can really relate to going along and looking...

A lot of the plants, like the dahlias and the delphiniums, everybody grows those,

so I think there's a very good statement

about the dialogue of monarch and people said through the border.

Fascinating stuff and we'll return for another behind-the-scenes tour

of the Queen's back garden later in the show.

Now to a tree that most of us know as the mighty oak,

but botanists call it by a different name.

This Q is for Quercus, the family name for oak trees,

and here is Will Cohu to get us started.

I feel a big oak is like a wise and welcoming Buddha.

And look how those limbs sweep out and down,

as if inviting children to climb up and up

into the protective embrace of its canopy.

An oak can live up to 600 years

and old oaks feature in legend as the refuge of kings and outlaws,

of wise owls and wily foxes.

Oak was vital to shipbuilding because of the particular shape of its largest branches.

The branches of an old oak are often massive and curved.

Known as crooked wood or compass timber,

these limbs formed the rounded shapes needed for the skeletons of ships.

Small wonder that the official march of the Royal Navy is the old anthem, Hearts Of Oak.

So what is it about the English oak that makes it so supremely tough?

Is it our rich clay soil or our generous rainfall?

Or is it perhaps our bracing, windy weather?

Strange as it may seem, big or tall trees can thrive from a life of exposure to strong winds.

An oak that is tested by a harsh, windy environment will adapt by deliberately adding extra thick wood

where its structure is most stressed.

This is called reaction wood and it gives oak the strength to outlast iron.

It's as if the tree has captured the elemental energy of the wind in its branches

and sucked it down into its heartwood and roots.

I know it may be something of a living Buddha,

but it doesn't seem to be particularly wise in its choice of seed.

Its acorns are extremely tasty to birds, squirrels and mice,

so although a mature oak may produce as many as 90,000 acorns in a year, very few of them will get a start.

Does this strike you as wise?

In fact, the oak has a cunning long-term plan.

Squirrels or birds do eat the acorns, but they also take a few away, bury them and forget about them.

The hidden acorn starts to germinate.

Here, protected by a canopy of nettles and brambles,

an oak can germinate safely

and grow and grow and grow up into wide-open spaces

with all the light it needs to become a massive, spreading tree.

So, the clever old oak has struck a bargain with its predators.

It seems prepared to sacrifice 89,999 acorns

to grow one perfect seedling.

It takes at least a century for an oak to make usable timber

and when oak was the raw material of warfare, there was continual anxiety about supplies.

Hardly surprising when the construction of a single ship required 2,000 mature trees.

And so in 1798, the British government began planting its own oak forests,

one of them deep inside the ancient Forest of Dean.

This was back-breaking, heart-breaking work.

Some 11,000 acres of wasteland had to be cleared, fenced, drained and planted

and all by hand.

Thousands of seedlings died in the horrible, wet and cold winters

and then came the mice.

In one winter, the mice ate some 200,000 young trees.

Pits were dug as traps, catching 30,000 of the hungry vermin.

After 20 years of hard labour, four million oaks were eventually established, but it was all in vain.

In 1862, the first iron-clad ships saw action in the American Civil War.

The age of oak was over

and the trees of the Forest of Dean would never be called into action.

These days, the trees planted for battle have more peaceful uses,

so what was intended to withstand the roar of cannon

may well end up as a cuckoo clock.

CUCKOO SOUND

And joining Will in his admiration for the magnificent oak is Chris Packham.

He loves them and he's been looking at some of the wildlife that loves them too.

Beautiful. What a beautiful tree!

An oak... An oak woodland is an incredibly rich habitat here in the UK.

It supports a vast amount of life and the reason for that

is that these trees have been growing here for longer than nearly any other species,

so lots of invertebrate herbivores, things like caterpillars...

..bugs,

beetles, so on and so forth, have learned to feed on them.

But when I say "invertebrate herbivore", I also mean food for birds

and that's why oak woodland is such a rich environment for these species.

But how do they all live here at the same time feeding on the same trees?

Well, they do that by using niche separation.

They partition themselves,

so that they reduce the amount of competition.

They find different ways of feeding in the same place at the same time.

How does it work? Well, let's start at the bottom.

The ground beneath the oak tree has plenty of insects and other invertebrates living on it -

food for robins,

blackbirds,

thrushes, even redstarts.

Then, of course, there's the trunk.

The trunk itself is home to a couple of our most charismatic members of the oak community -

the treecreeper

and the nuthatch.

Now, treecreepers climb up the tree,

carefully examining all of these little crevices

into which they put their very fine bill to remove their prey.

Nuthatches, they'll go up and they'll go down too,

looking for similar sorts of things,

but their bill is slightly larger and they also eat a little bit of fruit on the side.

Then you've got woodpeckers and if there's any deadwood here,

the great spotted woodpecker will be pecking it open on the trunk

and even excavating a nesting hole.

Well, as we go higher

and the trunk separates into its boughs and branches,

you've got a completely different set of birds that's feeding up there,

most notably, of course, members of the tit family.

The smaller the bird, the further it will go out away from the main trunk

until it's right out here,

hanging on those twigs,

turning the leaves over, looking for tiny caterpillars.

This means that this huge guild of birds can all survive on one tree and its neighbours

at exactly the same time.

It's amazing, absolutely amazing,

and it's why, if you take a walk in an oak woodland at the beginning of spring,

it's bound to be rewarding because it's seething with life.

Thanks, Chris.

Still to come, how to score a gardening gold

and more Monty Don. This time, he's looking at quince.

But now, we're looking at the unique, the creative and the sometimes highly unusual.

We've reached Q for the quirky side of gardening.

And here's Joe Swift with an example of a garden growing where you wouldn't normally expect it to.

I've finally found a garden that comes to me. Raphael!

Hold up, hold up!

Blimey!

Hello, Raphael.

-So this is it, this is your fantastic little garden in a van.

-That's right.

What gave you the idea to do this?

My partner Michael lived in this van for two years

and you have to have a house with a garden.

He drove many thousands of miles and he looked at the glove box

and thought he could do something more creative with that and that was the outcome.

So he made a little garden. What have we got in here? Some sempervirens and some sedum.

We have some Sedum Red Dragon here and then there's four sempervirens making up the rest of the planting.

They're commonly called hen-and-chickens for obvious reasons.

I like the way they're spilling over the front edge. Have you got drainage holes in the bottom?

No, it has no drainage at all.

What this relies on is not being over-watered.

It's filled with gravel and scree.

You're talking maybe ten centimetres' depth of material and into that the plants grow.

All you have to do is treat it mean and keep it keen.

And if "quirky" can mean gardening in a glove box,

there's no reason why it can't also mean botany on a barge.

For any gardener who floats through life aboard a houseboat,

the only option is to plonk the garden overhead on the main deck.

A-har!

I first got involved about 25 years ago.

I got to know the moorings when they were still in commercial use.

Then people came along and were interested in keeping residential barges here.

They're a very traditional part of the river

and it's nice, actually, to carry on with the traditions of the river

and keep the river full of life too. I think that's very important.

It has a lot in common with gardening on a roof garden

where you're not in direct contact with the soil.

These are old Thames lighters, the old workhorses of the River Thames,

so we'd take one of these and put, first of all, insulation on top of the steel deck,

and then earth on top of that,

together with a drainage system.

The soil is 50% topsoil

and 50% well-matured dung.

And it's about a spit deep on all the barges,

although in some places we've made it a little bit deeper for special trees.

And as you can see, the plants that thrive are those which are fairly drought-tolerant

because watering is always an issue on a garden like this.

During the hosepipe ban, we actually did pump river water on to the gardens

and I'm glad to say the gardens thrived on it,

but I think, in fact, the river water is quite nutritious,

partly because when it rains, most of London's sewers get pumped into the river.

We've planted two orchards,

so we have a little avenue of quinces on one of the barges

and we have an avenue of medlars on another.

A quince is a wonderful thing, the truffle of the orchard, I would say.

These gardens envelop the snug, little, floating homes beneath like cosy, green eiderdowns.

They're open to the public, but only twice a year.

And from a barge to a barcode.

Just look at the quirky garden James Alexander-Sinclair found at the Chelsea Flower Show.

On the face of it, this is a formal garden with a little bit more to it.

You've got clipped yew and box wrapped with bits of acrylic plastic,

then grasses sunk below ground level, red Perspex, maybe a little bit Japanese,

then the middle of it is a great, big, abstract sculpture, except this is so much more than that.

This is actually a QR or quick response code. It's like a barcode in a supermarket.

It was invented in 1994 in Japan as a sort of stocktaking arrangement,

but it's only within the last year or so that it's become popular in this country.

What you have to do is take your smartphone and point it not just at this code, but all of the gardens.

The notice will have a little thing. Point your smartphone at it,

and this will link you to that garden's page on the RHS website.

So what this is is, 99 years after its inception,

the Chelsea Flower Show embracing technology and the 21st century.

But even if you don't have a smartphone, you can still look at this as a garden.

It could be an abstract sculpture.

And here is a very wonderful green wall - four species of plants.

You've got a Hart's tongue fern, Asplenium, here,

here's a primula, a white primula,

then tucked in the middle, just here, there's a viola, again white-flowered,

and all the way through it is this froth of Baby's Breath.

So while you're walking around the show, look out for the QR codes, hit them with your smartphone,

but it's not just about technology. It's also about plants.

Now a very quick look at a fruit that's been described as the truffle of the orchard.

This Q is for quince

and that man Monty is back again to sing its praises.

I'm picking quinces.

Quinces, I think, are one of the most romantic of all fruits,

and certainly the best fragrance.

If you just put one in a bowl it will fill the room for weeks

with just a hint of beautiful scent.

In fact, they have an ancient history. These were the fruit of good and evil.

It was this that tempted Eve, not an apple. As a gardener, they're dead easy to grow.

They make a small, compact, but rather untidy tree. You don't try to prune them.

They corkscrew off and grow irregularly.

They store pretty well. The idea is to pick them before they fall and bruise.

There you are. That's come away.

Can you see there? It's got a little downy covering.

Just on here.

And I love the story how in the 17th century

a poultice was sold as a hair restorer.

It was, fundamentally, just mashed up quince. It's got lots of pectin in it

so it's really quite mucilaginous.

And then you slap it on your bald pate and, presumably, it's so you will regrow these little baby hairs.

And it may not do much for your baldness, but you would smell lovely.

'The best reason for growing quinces is that they taste delicious.

'You have to cook them, but they improve any apple dish, are great with roasted meat

'and the combination of quince jelly and cheese is sublime.'

Thanks, Monty. Whilst most of us try to do the best we can in our gardens,

some are the Olympic athletes of the gardening world, constantly striving for gold and silver medals

in our annual garden competitions. So this letter Q is for quality.

A look at who triumphs and what it takes to win those top prizes.

Let's start with Alan Titchmarch explaining what separates the best from the rest.

Luciano Giubbilei has won a gold medal for the garden he designed for Laurent Perrier.

It is his first Chelsea garden and I can't begin to tell you how rare that is,

to get a gold medal on your debut. Two ladies said to me this morning,

"We've been looking at these gardens. What's the difference? Why does one get a gold and one not quite?"

Well, let me try to explain.

For a start, all the designers will submit a brief to the RHS

explaining what they want to try to do. If they fulfil that brief to the letter,

they could get a gold medal. Then there is finish - it has to be absolutely immaculate.

Well, this garden fulfils both these two requirements.

It's fulfilled its brief and is immaculate. Then there's style.

This garden has it in spades.

From the yew and box step down on one side,

the Tuscan paving across, the banks of flowers, the sitting area,

those tranquil pools with the water chutes going into them

and the focal points down this end - five great lumps of sandstone,

a big square of water here and a sculpture on the wall

which is the focal point right down this alley of hornbeams.

It is perfection.

It is a gold.

So now you know. Let's enjoy a look at some of the best of the best.

Here's a selection of Chelsea highlights, all of them of the absolute highest quality.

The first ever garden from the Principality of Monaco is here

and it's been commissioned by the world's most eligible bachelor, Prince Albert II.

This garden captures the interaction between the landscapes and the architecture of Monaco

and shows that even in high-density urban areas, there's still some space for some planting,

be it on the roof or the walls.

I'm a sucker for these exotic plants, but this tree aloe, the aloe bainesii, is absolutely magnificent.

It's the first time ever that we've seen such a spectacular succulent at Chelsea.

When designing a garden at Chelsea, the sky is the limit and the B&Q garden has taken that literally.

With a nine-metre tower, this is the tallest garden ever built here

and it's visible throughout the showground.

But it carries an important environmental message to promote urban gardens.

It's been designed to show that you can grow your own wherever you live, whether in a flat or a tall building.

The best thing about this garden - every single plant is edible.

The Australian entry from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne, is poised to make show history

as the first garden ever to showcase purely Australian native species.

Everywhere I look in this garden, there are plants I've never seen before at Chelsea.

There's a Swainsona, which is rare and threatened in the wild.

Then there's this plant here, the emu bush, the eremophila,

a little plant that emus eat the fruit of. It's incredibly unusual.

The Royal Bank of Canada New Wild Garden highlights an important theme.

This is the first ever full-size 100% rain-recycling garden.

Any rain water that lands on the roof that doesn't get soaked up by those plants

goes down into the gutter and into this pool, which overspills into that planting, which can take flooding.

Nigel, you designed the garden.

A few other things have been recycled, not just the rain water. What about this building here?

It's the ultimate in recycling.

It's an old shipping container. It's been to virtually every continent -

South America, North America, Europe, the Middle East, Far East, China - and then it's ended up here.

What about these insect boxes?

We tried to make a living structure, so we have these panels on there full of recycled materials.

They look fantastic. They provide shelter and home to lots of wildlife.

That was Andy Sturgeon liking what he saw. Another one backing the judges is Rachel de Thame.

With seven gold medals already under his belt and three Best In Show awards,

it seems hardly surprising that Tom Stuart-Smith has done it again.

This is his eighth gold medal.

He just seems to get it right year after year.

This garden really takes as its starting point this bronze pavilion at the back.

Very elegant, very rectilinear. That's followed with this pond.

Extremely serene. Just still water. Very simple.

And it's all surrounded by sandstone, the hard landscaping material throughout.

But for me this is really a garden about planting, sublimely beautiful planting.

These wonderfully sculpted box balls all the way down this wall and again there at the back.

Then you've got the river birches, betula nigra. Beautiful and airy.

And everything is underplanted with iris sibirica, that purple,

and the strong euphorbia, lovely, white and frothy.

It's a beautiful garden.

From a multi-gold medal winner to first-time gold medallists James Wong and David Cubero.

They've really tried to encapsulate the whole atmosphere of Malaysia,

both the traditional

and the very modern 21st century. They succeed brilliantly.

You've got this wonderful dark, reflective pool of water

and across it, stepping stones made of limestone. Pale and beautiful.

They illuminate this area, which is otherwise quite dark.

You can see that in the dark stems of the tree ferns.

The whole of the planting is very lush, very architectural

and, above all, very green. You've got a green wall at the back

and everything else is about the foliage rather than the flowers.

It just proves you can do that and make a garden work brilliantly.

This garden is designed by Mark Gregory. It's his first gold medal for a big show garden here.

I can really relate to this garden. He's designed it with the family in mind, particularly teenagers,

and I've got one of those. It's all about tempting them away from the television. This would do it.

There's this wonderful solid oak pavilion in the middle with a fire pit.

Ingeniously, the smoke goes straight up through a vent in the roof which is covered with camomile,

so it's lovely, fresh and green. There are even curtains to draw round for a bit of privacy.

And then a plunge pool so you can sit, dangle your feet. On a hot day, what would be nicer?

And really clever planting with young people in mind.

Pittosporum along the front edge, which is virtually indestructible,

these gorgeous, dark aquilegia and one of my favourite shrubs, this viburnum plicatum Mariesii.

It's all beautiful.

Beautiful indeed and beautiful gardens attract the beautiful people.

As well as the quality plants at Chelsea, you get some top quality celebrities turning up, too.

-Where do you start?

-It's like living art, really.

Just everything! The vegetables are astonishing.

This rose, these roses.

-So many things catch your eye.

-I'm amazed by the perfume.

I'm fascinated by the sky garden.

We saw the Times and the Telegraph. We only look at broadsheet gardens.

I saw a fantastic red thing. I don't know what it's called.

There's a fish pond in the middle of a table. It's extraordinary.

I like the roses and the sweet peas. They smell good.

I've been past the Monaco garden and just wanted to dive in the pool. It was amazing.

And it's all edible. Yeah!

You see extraordinary plants that you've never seen before in your life.

It's the perfect place to come for inspiration.

You're seeing the best of everything.

But let's get back to the plants and end with some quality flowers,

who are, according to Carol Klein, the real superstars of the gardening world.

Tall, bearded irises are at their showbiz best for Chelsea.

Gently coaxed, not forced, they're at the real summit of their career.

They absolutely shine forth.

Grower Claire Austin returns to Chelsea this year with no less than eight new varieties.

They wouldn't look out of place on Sunset Boulevard. Get out your dark glasses.

Wouldn't you just roll out the red carpet for Evening Drama?

So sultry and gorgeous. Completely flamboyant.

That's what these irises are. Over the top.

They're gone very, very quickly, but while they're there, don't they live well?

Irises put on such a brief, but brilliant show

and here on Hardy's beautiful stand is another shooting star.

This is Papaver orientale, Patty's Plum. Gorgeous and glamorous,

sultry and just delicious.

It doesn't last long, though.

People complain about the way the petals fade, but who cares how it dies

when it lives in such an exuberant and glamorous way?

And here in a supporting role is this glorious gaura Ruby Ruby.

In my book both of them deserve an Oscar.

Tulips have to be the most glamorous of flowers.

Whatever your taste, there's a tulip for you, whether it's totally in your face

or pretty and subtle.

And if this lot leaves you feeling in need of some refreshment,

well, how about this?

This is a brand-new tulip called Ice Cream,

perfect for the intermission.

If you're looking to mingle with the bold and the beautiful,

it seems the Great Pavilion is the place to be.

And, finally, let's return to Q for Queen

and another exploration of the gardens at Buckingham Palace.

Here's Monty Don again, this time looking at the royal lake, royal shed and royal greenhouse.

As garden ponds go, the lake here at Buckingham Palace is huge, 3 acres,

but at no point is it very deep. The deepest point is about 5 foot, which comes up to my chest.

It's great for wading birds, but its history is also connected with its shallowness.

This was the wettest part of the garden, almost swampy,

so the lake was made simply to drain it. In Victorian times, people complained it attracted malaria,

that it was stagnant and shallow.

But it was deepened out, the soil was used to make the mound,

and the lake as we see it has been pretty much the same for the last 150 years.

Beyond there, you can see the trees that are on the island.

An island on a lake in a large garden in a city. The supreme urban haven for wildlife.

The intention throughout the whole area is to preserve that naturalistic feel and make an environment

for animals and insects to prosper. Along the edge, you wouldn't expect to see this fringe

of grasses and reeds, but ideal cover for insects and birds.

And as you face it, you can be forgiven for thinking that this is a country lake

or part of St James's Park.

It's not until you turn away and go back towards the house that you remember where you really are.

I'm always fascinated by the working areas of any garden, so it's back to the yard,

past the potting shed and round the corner is the greenhouse for the Palace.

It's 28 metres long and a really good example

of an Edwardian - built in 1900 - lean-to greenhouse.

It's got the painted timber and cast iron work and lovely mechanisms

for opening the louvres in the window.

And, in its own way, it's grand, but this is a 40-acre garden.

You might think that they would need acres of greenhouses to service all their needs,

but that's to miss the point of what this garden is. This is a town garden.

And town gardens didn't have all the elements of gardens that you would get in the country.

Very few had vegetable areas or greenhouses with peaches and apricots or grapes or what have you.

The people that owned the houses in London would also have country houses

and they would be brought up by train every morning - asparagus and peaches

and flowers for the table, coming in from their country estates.

Buckingham Palace is no different. To this day, if they want flowers and vegetables and fruit,

it all comes from Windsor where its grown. So this greenhouse is a much more intimate affair.

It's used for housing some tender plants, gifts that can't be put outside.

And a little bit of propagation.

But there are details that I love and you won't find anywhere else.

For example, look at that. A pot, monogrammed ER.

That's, of course, Elizabeth Regina.

And it can do better than that. Some of the pots date back further.

Now if I get down on my hands and knees,

under here we've got the pots ready for use.

Crocks to get drainage from broken pots,

stacked out in sizes. And we can see - here we are -

ER, ER, ER on those pots.

So those have obviously been made since the Queen came to the throne in 1952.

But there are older pots as well.

Here we have one at the back with what looks like GP,

but in fact is GR. The bottom bit hasn't come out properly.

That's either her father, George VI, or possibly George V.

I suppose it could be George IV, but that's a bit unlikely.

However, there is a pot here just on the side.

And if you turn it round you can see...

VR - Victoria Regina.

Whilst this greenhouse isn't the biggest around, and the plants aren't special,

what I love is the way that the history and succession from monarch to monarch

is evident in even the tiniest details in this garden.

Really beautiful and such a treat to visit the Queen's gardens.

And with that we've reached the end of today's programme. Join us next time on the A to Z of TV Gardening.

Goodbye!

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd