Letter S 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 garden programmes

and dig up a bumper crop of tips

and advice from the best experts in the business.

Flowers, trees, fruit and veg -

letter by letter,

they're all coming up a treat on the A To Z Of TV Gardening.

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

Here is what is coming up.

It's open season for slugs and snails.

This is like paradise for hedgehogs. It's got everything they want.

And if I was a hedgehog this is where I'd like to be.

Sunflowers - Alice Fowler can't recommend them enough.

There's a reason why it is a much-loved children's plant.

They're easy, they're impressive, but perhaps more importantly than

all of these things, is that they're loved by bees.

And Alan Titchmarsh sheds some light on laying out your garden.

While you're out work all day,

the sun is moving around your garden so that some parts of it

are in sun all the day, some for just a small part of the day.

Just working out which.

Before all that, though,

we look at a flower that is one of Britain's best

and, as you will see,

of particular interest to some of the hosts of Gardeners' World.

Our first S is for sweet peas, and we're meeting Roger Parsons,

the man behind the National Collection,

who's also responsible for naming some of them.

I think there is something addictive about the sweet pea.

You get this sense of pleasure and you just want more of it.

And that's how sweet peas are with me.

I'm probably completely obsessed with them.

I realised in 1998 that

so many wonderful sweet pea varieties were disappearing

and it was important to try and conserve them.

Varieties do come into fashion and out of fashion.

What I am particularly keen to do is to try and extend

the range of colours that we have

so that we've got as much diversity as they had 100 years ago.

The sweet pea was introduced into England in 1699.

The wild sweet pea looks smaller - compact, smaller leaves,

shorter stems, only two or three flowers on the stem.

And that was the sweet pea as it was known

for 150 years or so.

In the late 19th century, Henry Eckford saw the potential

in these blooms, primarily because of their scent.

Eckford called his varieties grandifloras,

because they were so much bigger and better

than what had gone before in these more primitive forms of sweet pea.

One of Henry Eckford's grandifloras is this variety - Prima Donna.

It was introduced in 1898. A gorgeous pale pink colour,

which is thankfully still with us.

And the significance of this variety is that, a few years later,

a spore was found in it which had much longer stems,

bigger flowers and lovely, wavy petals.

And it's from there that all the Spencer varieties

that we commonly see today have been developed.

We went through a period,

from 1900 to really the First World War,

where the grandifloras and the Spencers

were vying with each other for popularity.

But after the First World War the grandifloras virtually disappeared.

A lot of Spencer sweet peas are named after celebrities.

This row represents a timeline of Gardeners' World presenters

that have had varieties named after them.

We have Percy Thrower.

And then we move on to Geoff Hamilton.

And then we end up with Alan Titchmarsh.

Sadly, the variety Geoff Hamilton has disappeared out of commerce.

It's deep mauve in colour, but when I grew it two years ago

I found that there were some pinks and purples,

which shows that, genetically, it's broken down.

And so what I need to do with that variety

is go back to a single plant.

By doing that and re-selecting it, we can re-establish it

and bring back Geoff Hamilton to its deserved popularity.

We've been working on one to name after Monty Don

to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Gardeners' World,

and the one that Monty has chosen is this one here.

Now, unlike the Spencers,

he's gone back to the old-fashioned grandiflora types of Henry Eckford.

It has this beautiful, deep velvet maroon colour

and the most wonderful scent.

The secret of my success is autumn sowing of seeds and horse manure.

The poultry manure, the horse manure

waste plants, everything goes on the compost heap.

I've even said to the wife,

"When I die, chuck me on the compost heap

"and I might finally do some good in the garden."

I think of it as sweet pea heaven.

And, as he's got one named after him, let's turn to Monty Don

for some tips on how to plant sweet peas.

Now, I've got a selection here,

I've got Painted Lady, which is a lovely pink with a fabulous scent.

Cream Southbourne we always grow. It's a Spencer type.

The Spencer types do have fragrance,

but it's not nearly so good as the grandiflora types.

And Cupani, which is the original sweet pea,

really good, and I would always want that.

But let's sow some Cream Southbourne.

And what I do is sow them in these pots,

three or four to a pot, and they stay in the pot.

They grow on through and then, when they're planted,

tip them out and plant all three together

at the base of a tripod or a wigwam.

And you can see that they are nice, big seeds.

And there is a lot of nonsense talked about growing sweet peas,

a lot of ritual, which I don't think is necessary,

just as I don't think it's necessary to grow them in the autumn.

I don't nick them, I don't soak them,

all I do is just pop them in a fairly loose compost.

This is a mixture of a peat-free

bought compost mixed up with a bit of vermiculite

and leaf mould, so it's nice and open.

And space them out,

putting them in and just pushing them down like that.

And then I'll sift some soil over the top.

And I'll grow these under cover until they germinate.

And as soon as there are little shoots appearing,

they'll go first to a cold frame

and then quite quickly outdoors to harden off.

But I won't plant them out until, well, certainly early May,

because it can be quite cold here.

And at the same time as I plant them out,

I'll probably plant some direct, and that will bulk them out.

The great thing about sweet peas is, not only do you have scent,

not only do you have wonderful colour, but height.

And height is so important.

Any flowers that climb and can climb up a tripod or a wigwam

so you can place it where you want that height,

as opposed to being restricted to a wall or a fence, is good news.

Whatever you plant, don't forget to label it.

Then give the seed a light covering of the same compost mix,

put them somewhere warm and sunny and water them in.

Thanks, Monty.

Our next item can be used for shelter, storing,

growing seedlings, you name it,

and for some it's a garden must.

S is for sheds.

And we're visiting a few unusual ones with John Sergeant.

We are a nation of shed lovers,

be they smart, scruffy or way past their best,

and behind the doors of these huts at the bottom of our gardens,

we can find our secret lives.

In my opinion, you don't really know someone

until you've seen their shed.

Ken Elphick loves sheds so much he's not content with one.

Right, well this is very much a traditional garden shed, isn't it?

It is, very much so.

But it is really only used to store implements.

-I have another shed up here where I work.

-Oh, right.

-So you've got... You've got lots of sheds, haven't you?

-I've got a few.

-You've got, what, a greenhouse round here...

-A greenhouse here.

I have a summer house over there, and a shed here,

which is a do-it-yourself shed where I make things

either for the grandchildren or to repair the house.

And what do you need the sheds for? What's the real reason for it?

Well, I suppose it's to escape the challenges of life

and the challenges of the household.

-You can be snug here, can't you?

-That's right.

-Out of the way of everybody.

-Yes.

-Let's have a look.

Well, I have a fire which keeps me warm and a radio which keeps me

in touch with the world and, of course, lots of tools.

All the usual things, nothing exceptional at all.

-Who is she?

-That is Bruges Hilda.

She was purchased for a bit of fun when a group of us went to Bruges.

The beauty is, of course, I've got a number of places I can be

in the garden work, so she has some difficulty in finding me sometimes.

-Your wife does?

-She does.

She doesn't really try that hard.

She gives up after the first shed and then let's me suffer

because my lunch is going cold.

So sometimes you are definitely hiding from your wife here.

Hiding, perhaps, yes.

But she may be hiding for me in the house, as well, of course.

Right. I'll leave you to it.

-Hello, Judith.

-Hello.

-Well, I got some startling news from Ken.

-Oh, yes?

-He has admitted,

-Ken is using these sheds to hide from you.

-Really?

-Yes. Are you surprised?

-No.

He'd rather be out there than hanging around

with not much to do the house.

And what would he be like if he didn't have these sheds?

Goodness knows.

'Ken's shed really is his sanctuary.

'Paul also finds peace in his shed. His way of going out is staying in.'

What is it? I don't know.

It's a pub, perfect.

# Welcome to the house of fun

# Welcome to the lions' den

# Temptation's on his way... #

-There we go.

-Oh, right. What inspired this?

Um, well, I had a small shed originally

and I just decided it wasn't big enough

and, what with my pub collection of memorabilia,

it just sort of expanded and, well, here we are, we have this shed.

Basically, it's somewhere to come and relax and, you know,

-especially when you've been at work.

-And what about the...?

You have a video there, too, haven't you?

That's for re-watching the World Cup rugby that we won last time.

-We've also got a one armed bandit.

-Oh, yeah.

It doesn't have real money, it's just tokens,

so it is a token gesture, I suppose.

Very nice.

The shed next door, I'm going to turn it into an outside toilet.

That will stop the wife moaning at me

when my friends keep going in and out.

This is what many men's dream is of a shed.

Oh, yeah, I should think it is.

It is... Well, it's a dream come true for me.

-Would you like another one?

-No, thanks.

-Thanks very much, I'm driving.

-OK, thank you.

-Thank you.

-Bye.

Goodbye.

Still to come, sunlight, sunflowers and the dreaded slugs and snails.

But first, let's move on to a fruit we consume in its millions,

especially in the summer months.

Our next S is for strawberries.

And Jay Rayner is on their trail.

It's not a British summer without Wimbledon

and, as tennis fever takes hold, behind the scenes the caterers work

furiously to serve half a million visitors with a massive

28,000 kilos of strawberries.

And this is where they all start.

We're in Kent, the Garden of England, and this one farm supplies

the entirety of Wimbledon's strawberry needs.

There's not going to be a problem keeping the tennis fans fed this year,

because the strawberry has produced a bumper crop.

We're mid-harvest at the height of Wimbledon fortnight and making

sure those punnets are filled is nothing short of a military exercise.

Picking starts early at 5am each day,

and the harvest is chilled overnight before loading

the following morning for the journey to London.

But when Wimbledon orders an extra load like they did today,

the rush to get more strawberries

from the fields to the tennis courts is really on.

We do keep picking both before and after,

but the height of the season is the Wimbledon fortnight,

and during these two weeks it's really significant for us.

What Wimbledon really do like is a classic English strawberry.

We grow a variety called Elsanta.

It's not very big and crunchy,

so you can balance it in a bowl on your knee

and eat it with a teaspoon,

and it's very sweet and juicy.

The weather has given this lot a helping hand.

Strawberries thrive on warm days and cool nights

so, unlike many other crops,

conditions this spring have been perfect for them.

I think that's contributing to the very high sugar levels

we have in the fruit now.

It was also very good for pollinators.

So, we had lots of bees flying

and it was very good for a perfect shaped strawberry.

So, my first taste of this year's crop. Let's see what it's like.

Mm.

-It's firm, but not overly hard or crisp.

-Yeah.

Sweet, bit of acidity, tang of strawberry that you really recognise.

-You grow rather good strawberries, don't you?

-Thank you.

Time to take my own punnet to strawberry paradise - Wimbledon.

The tennis championship began here in 1887,

but SW19's love affair with strawberries and cream

is recorded in Victorian periodicals long before that,

eaten at fashionable early summer social gatherings.

Here you are, united at last with your true soul mate.

Even further back, it's said that the Cardinal Wolsey was

the first to put the combination together in Tudor times.

Originally, dairy was considered pauper's food,

but Cardinal Wolsey thought it was much better than that

and first served strawberries with cream to the court of Henry VIII.

But why has the tradition been so enduring?

Part of Wimbledon and it's just part of the day out, really.

-Very nice.

-Sweet?

-Very nice, very sweet, loads of sugar.

It's something that somebody said, you have to have Pimms

and you have to have strawberries and cream,

so I'm documenting it in picture!

Behind-the-scenes, there's frenetic activity

to get the strawberries out on sale.

And to think that these are the very ones

we saw leaving the farm at 7am this morning.

Mm! Those early tennis fans had the right idea.

The acidity of the strawberry cuts through the richness of the cream.

As doubles pairings go, it's good to know

there's always going to be one British champion here at Wimbledon every year.

If that hasn't whetted your appetite, I don't know what will.

Let's look at home-grown strawberries

and join Monty Don one more time.

This is a variety called Gariguette,

which has rather a long strawberry, very sweet and quite early.

Now, in theory, we've made lots and lots of new plants

and you can see, here is the runner,

so it's attached to the parent plant.

And, hopefully, it's developed its own root system.

But once I cut it, it's on its own.

So, we cut that off there. This is the moment of truth.

There we are. Good root system.

Hurrah, I was slightly worried about that.

So, I'll take about three or four.

Now, I've prepared a piece of ground just on the other side of the path,

because I want to plant these in a new bed,

and the reason you do that with strawberry runners

is to stop the build-up of viral problems in the soil.

Strawberries are very prone to viral problems,

especially as they get older.

I'm going to have a couple of rows here,

but if I put one there, there's a temptation

to try and fit a lot in. They look nice and small

and, say, put them that far apart.

That's too close together, much too close together.

In fact, twice that spacing.

That's about right, because these will develop

into decent-sized plants, they're going to stay here for three years,

and also a strawberry will grow, it'll have fruit around it,

it wants light and air and it also wants

to have its roots to have access to lots of soil and goodness,

so be generous with space and it'll repay you with generosity of fruit.

Other than that, dead easy, just bung them in the ground.

I've got enough plants to give myself two or three more rows here

and that builds up the succession of strawberries.

In fact, they won't be at their best next year, but the year after,

it's in their second year that strawberry plants

are at their most productive and healthiest.

Thanks, Monty.

Next, something that's key to almost everything that grows,

in the garden, in the wild, in fact, everywhere.

This S is for soil, and Carol Klein is getting an expert

to check if hers is as good as she hopes.

Professor Keith Goulding

is president of the British Society of Soil Science

and he's here to help me experiment

with my own precious black gold.

It's quite difficult to find soil in my garden!

We've got some, we've got some, so I'll put that down there

-then we've got it for later for one of the tests.

-Right.

Come and have a look at the real stuff.

-Because you can actually see a bit here.

-Yep.

Mainly thanks to the slugs, because they've eaten everything!

Right, well, what I thought we'd do is take some soil from here,

shake it up in water and then we can see

the basic composition of soil.

So, let's take some of that and put it in the jam jar.

-Not too many weeds.

-No, no, that will be enough, I think.

Whoops-a-daisy.

-That's just an ordinary preserving jar?

-Yep.

That's right, and then give it a really, really good shake.

-There you are, you have a go.

-Right.

-It's slippery, so...

-That do, Keith?

-Excellent. That's fine.

Put it down, leave it, certainly for a few minutes,

you'll see things settling out really very quickly.

So, it's already beginning to settle.

You can see some sand and grit in the bottom,

and then there's a thin, silty layer.

-A different colour, isn't it?

-A different colour.

-So, the sand settles first?

-Yeah.

The sand settles first, because the individual particles are heavier

and the clay particles, they're tiny, so they float for ages.

We call them colloidal material, just a scientific name.

Because you always think of clay as just being heavy and solid

and somehow composed of big lumps,

but in actual fact, the opposite is true.

Yeah, it's composed of tiny materials, tiny platelets,

but when they stick together, yes, you get the big lumps

and it's a bit of a nuisance, but as you've found,

if you add manure or compost or organic material,

you can get a better structure, it'll break down slowly,

and you get something like you've got here.

I often talk to gardeners who've moved from one garden to another

and have totally different sorts of soil.

Clay, as I say, is absolutely essential.

You want some, probably not too much, but if you go round Britain

and see the enormous different numbers of soil types

that we've got, some will have a lot of clay, some a little.

In fact, if you go to a country like Australia,

where they've got what they call soil,

but it's really broken rock and grit,

they add clay to the soil to give it a better structure

and to provide the plants with nutrients.

Oh, there are some ideas there, aren't there, for an export business?

-We've talked about the individual components of the soil.

-Yeah.

And we've looked at sand, silt and clay,

but for gardeners it's important to know how those hold together,

what the structure of the soil is.

-Yeah. That's what makes your soil, isn't it?

-Exactly.

But also how you manage it has an impact, as well,

but there are some nice, simple things that any gardener could do,

as long as they've got some beakers or containers.

Either rainwater or purified water -

not tap water in case it's hard and it's got lots of calcium in it,

because that affects the test.

So, let's put some water in these.

-Can I do this, please?

-Yeah, you do those,

and now we will get some aggregates out.

So, what is aggregate, what does it mean?

It's a little lump of soil which, when you break up a bigger lump

in the garden, would naturally fall out of it.

So, anybody could go out into their own garden,

-get a lump of soil and do this test?

-Yeah, take some of these.

Then, the test will show you how well the aggregates,

the lumps are really holding together.

So, we've got some petri dishes,

and we're going to drop these lumps of soil in.

But I've brought some examples of what I think would be the best

kind of structures of aggregates and the worst.

So, this is from a 60-year-old grass, Cloverfield.

That's a really nice structure.

When we put it in water, like that, the air comes out,

but nothing much happens to it.

-It's just staying where it is.

-It's just staying where it is.

Let's put a second one in, so we've got some air coming out.

There's some bubbles.

I've also got with me something that I hope

no good gardener would have, which is...

..some little lumps from a field which has been kept fallow.

We've ploughed it for 50 years, four times a year,

so no plant inputs, no animal inputs,

no carbon or anything, so, as you can feel, it feels solid.

Now you drop that into that petri dish and watch.

-Oh, look! It's disintegrating.

-Yeah.

-It's all spreading out, all those little...

-Yeah, yeah.

-Although it feels rock solid.

-Yeah.

There's no humus there, there's nothing holding it together.

-No.

-So that's a really poor structure, and you can see

it's just essentially disintegrating.

-So, that's the best.

-Right.

-And that's the worst.

But we've got here some little lumps that we picked up earlier.

This is soil that Fleur, the dog, has excavated,

-so it's had nothing done to it, it's from close to the house.

-Right.

This is what you started off with and you've improved, isn't it?

-Yes. I hope I have!

-Let's drop that in there and see what happens.

It's not too bad.

-Quite reasonable.

-What about this?

-This is your improved soil.

-Can I?

-Yeah. Just drop it in.

Again, that's holding together quite nicely like that one.

And, like any scientific test, I'm afraid, nothing is perfect,

so if you've got soil with a lot of clay in it in your garden,

even if you do this test, it might appear to hold together.

But it's a good indicator of whether your soil's got sound structure.

Yeah, certainly if you've got something like that

you've got a big problem and you need lots of compost and manure.

So, if you were in a new garden, you do this,

and that's the kind of result you get, you better get cracking

-and put some good stuff in there!

-Yeah.

Well, we've got compost heaps all over the place,

but these are probably the best examples.

Compost is just a form of humus, isn't it?

There's a difference.

This material is what you're going to put on your garden.

It adds organic matter, but also lots of nutrients, too.

Eventually that will turn into humus,

which is an inert material, jellylike, dark-coloured,

amorphous, you can't really tell what it's come from

or what it used to be.

And there aren't really many nutrients left in it.

That's what cements the particles together, the sand,

the silt and clay, that gives the structure.

That's what we call humus.

But, if you want nutrients for the soil,

then you add this fairly regularly, which I'm sure you do.

So, when that compost enters the soil, taken down by worms...

Yep. But it's the tiny micro-organisms that you can't see

without a microscope, they're the things that really begin

to break it down and release those nutrients.

First of all they take them into their bodies and then they die.

And then when they die they release them,

and that gives the plants the opportunity to take them up.

But the plants have to be quick, because there are other organisms

that want to take it straight back in again,

so you've got a constant battle between those micro-organisms

looking for the nutrients and your plants, as well.

So, far from soil being a dead substance, it's alive.

Like soil, our next subject is another gardening essential.

We're moving on to S for sunlight.

So, put your feet up, as we join

a very laid-back Alan Titchmarsh to find out more.

The first thing you've got to do

is to persuade your family that you're doing research,

because, you see, while you're out at work all day,

the sun is moving around your garden, so that some parts of it

are in sun all the day, some for just a small part of the day.

Just working out which.

Choose a nice, sunny summer's day and sit back and see what happens.

It's important, because different plants

need different amounts of light depending on where they come from.

Those that are woodlanders like shade,

those that grow in open fields like full sun,

and you remember the labels in the nursery, grow in shade, grow in sun?

Put them in the wrong place

and they will eventually get sick and even die.

Hostas, for example, love shade.

Out in the wild they grow in damp, shady hollows,

so find a similar spot in your garden

and it's the right plant in the right place - it can't help but grow.

Sun-loving plants like these need to bask.

Put them in sun and they'll love you forever.

So, while I've been lying here, exhaustive research has shown me

that that border over there gets sun for most of the day,

so it is a sunny border,

plants that are described as liking full sun, will love it.

That one over there gets sun for part of the day,

perhaps a quarter of the day,

so really the plants that are described as liking partial shade

will enjoy that one.

That one over there gets barely a glimmer from dawn until dusk,

so it certainly qualifies for full shade.

It was worth lying down, really, wasn't it?

Research?

That's the best excuse to lounge in the garden I've ever heard.

Now, very appropriately,

we move on to a sun-loving plant that grows so high

that there are even competitions on who can produce the tallest.

Yes, S is for sunflowers,

and we're sticking with Alan Titchmarsh

as he introduces us to Annie Sherborne,

a woman who's dedicated her retired life to them.

I just like everything about them.

I like the little plants, the big plants,

the whole flower.

I even like the seeds to eat.

I've got curtains, wallpaper,

cups, mugs,

jumper, T-shirts...

I'm just always looking for something with sunflowers on.

It takes all sorts, doesn't it? But it's a family affair.

I have three grandsons.

They're quite good in the garden,

and they do help with the digging.

But, for Annie, this obsession

has turned into far more than just a hobby.

My tallest so far has been 16 and a half feet.

I'm determined to beat that this year.

I'm trying my very best to beat it.

And I would really, really love to get a very, very tall one.

It's got to be the ultimate challenge this year.

So, with the target set,

Annie will need to be close to a record to stand any chance of

winning at our village show, but what are her tips for growing a champion?

I think my secret for tall sunflowers is good soil,

plenty of manure mixed in, plenty of compost,

talking to them,

but I usually tell them just to grow big and strong.

Well, with the arrival of summer,

Annie seems pleased with her progress so far.

My sunflowers are now in flower, and they are wonderful.

I feel so happy that they've grown, they have lovely yellow flowers,

the birds and the bees are on them.

They just look wonderful.

They're just happy flowers.

I suppose they're my big babies, really.

And yet Annie's starting to have doubts about

whether her sunflowers will have the height to win the competition.

I would like it to be taller.

It's got a few weeks' growing yet, so we'll keep going.

I must be fanatical about winning,

cos I wouldn't keep having a go at it.

I would desperately like to win and say,

"Yes, I've done it, I've actually done it!"

And she did do it, with a 15 feet and 9 inch tall sunflower.

Impressive! But normal-sized ones are just as lovely.

Here's Alys Fowler.

April is one of those truly busy gardening months.

You sow now, the dividend's later, and if you live in a house like mine

and you have no shed, pots junk up your life.

So last year I decided I'd go pot free

and find something that I could recycle at the end of the season.

I went through all the obvious ones, like toilet roll holders

and yoghurt cartons, and then I came up with the tin can.

And I found this really neat trick.

If you take the top off - and it has to be a ring-pull type -

and then you open the bottom, like this...

..you have this really neat false bottom which allows

drainage to come through, but also, and perhaps more importantly,

when you come to take the plant out,

you have this false bottom

which you can push the plant up and out through.

And I've even become a bit of a tin-can snob, because

I've found that, if you favour the ones with white insides -

and those are the kind that have tinned tomatoes, sweetcorn,

fruit salad, stuff like that - then it doesn't rust.

If it rusts like this, then the roots seem to stick to the rusty bits.

And you just merely fill the can up with compost

like you would any other pot, and then you're ready to go.

And this is a really good time to sow sunflowers.

If you want great massive, huge drifts of sunflowers,

it's probably easiest to sow them out in the ground.

We'll show you how to do that in two weeks' time.

However, if you just want, say, half a dozen, I think

it's easiest to raise them in pots.

Sunflowers are loved by slugs, and this way you can protect them,

get them to a semi-decent size,

get them outside, and they're ready to go.

And for that reason you do need a deep pot,

because they have quite an extensive root system,

and if you sow them in something too shallow, they don't like that.

Now, there's a reason why it's a much-loved children's plant.

They're easy, their impressive, they're comedy tall.

It's very good at screening out ugly things in your garden

and it's very cheap, but perhaps more importantly

than all of these things is that they're loved by bees.

And the interesting thing about sunflowers

is that they're going after the nectar, not the pollen,

so you can grow pretty much any sunflower you like,

and that's why we're going to grow so many this year,

because we want to put them out in our urban meadow.

And I'm growing Pastiche. I like Pastiche, because it's one of those lovely mixes.

It comes in a lot of lovely muted shades,

and it makes a particularly good cut flower.

And all you need to do is just plant one seed in the middle,

press it down, cover it over, and you're good to go.

But, whichever sunflower you choose,

you're looking at about two to three weeks for germination,

and then again say another two to three weeks

before it's a good size to plant out, and it's truly as simple as that.

I'm using the sunflowers that I sowed a couple of months ago,

and they'll make a perfect, very cheap, very colourful hedge.

They'll grow a bit taller than me, and they're multi-headed,

and they'll just be very jolly when I come home,

and they'll screen out the worst of what's behind here

while bringing in lots of insects and life into the garden.

By staggering them,

I get just a bit more thick kind of hedge-like appearance

than if I put them in a straight line,

and these sunflowers are very ready to go out,

so if you've got sunflowers, now's the time to do it.

Out they come.

And because this soil is not the greatest soil anybody's ever seen,

I'm going to have to make sure that they're really well watered in

so they can establish as quickly as possible,

because it is going to be a bit of a shock.

This variety is Pastiche, which comes in lovely kind of muted

evening shades of red, yellow and buff.

And it's a multi-headed form, which is good, because it doesn't grow

too tall and will branch out just that bit more.

And all that really matters now is that I remember to water them in

just until they settle, so in this nice hot weather

I'll water them in every evening, and once they look like

they're getting going, they can battle it out on their own.

And, from a flower that makes most of us smile,

we move on to one that is good for your health,

or at least that's what they thought in Roman times.

This S is for salvia, and we're meeting Peter Whately,

a man who has a healthy obsession for them.

When people think of salvia,

they generally think of either

culinary sage, which one cooks with, or bedding plants,

which I used to see as a child in municipal planting,

just the little red salvias,

and that's their limit of experience with salvias.

Salvias come from all over the world, from South America,

from California, a lot of European salvias, China and Japan,

and they grow in a vast array of different conditions.

The garden is about an acre,

and I would think a third of it is given over to salvias.

There are 200 or more varieties in the garden -

some hardy, some tender, some winter-flowering.

This is a new salvia bed created for this year.

Starting at the end there, we've got Salvia chionophylla,

lovely sprawling habit, nice blue,

great for a rockery or a sloping bed.

And going up to the end here we've got guaranitica,

"Blue Enigma", which is a nice tall, dark blue perennial,

can grow up to about four or five feet,

and will flower from the end of July through to the frosts.

They do cope with certainly a fair amount of bad weather,

but they do like sun, especially as they're about to flower.

Another favourite is Indigo spires,

purple, very, very deep purple.

It comes from California, long flowering,

flowering from end of May through till the frosts, really.

When the flowers have finished, you get this wonderful

almost black seedhead on it,

which really reflects and picks up the light against the purple.

Very attractive to bees, as well, this one.

This is Salvia oxyphora,

which is a new, exciting salvia for me this year.

It's from the Peru, Bolivia regions,

and, unusually for a salvia, the flower smells of

a sweet, sugary taste, and not the foliage.

Most sages have aromatic leaves.

A good example is Salvia elegans, otherwise known as pineapple sage,

which can be used in desserts

or flavourings or fruit salads.

It also looks good in pots,

which I think maybe is the best way to grow it.

We have blackcurrant sage, which is Salvia lycioides,

or the common sage, which is used for cooking.

I think anyone can grow salvias.

The leaf form is so different, the colour range is so different.

They range from shrubs to perennials to annuals.

I mean, what more can you want out of a species, really?

And, after all that loveliness, we round off today's programme

by taking on some of a gardener's worst enemies.

S is for slugs and snails,

and we're joining Adam Henson

to meet one of the best teams for the job.

This band of hedgehogs have been training for weeks.

They've been nursed back to health after being found

struggling in the wild, and now they're ready for action.

Their mission - to protect the estate's kitchen garden

from attack by slugs and snails.

They'll do what they have to do.

They'll eat slugs, they'll eat snails,

they'll eat all sorts of bugs and things which would obviously

cause a lot of damage in a place like this.

The hedgehogs will operate nocturnally, from dusk to dawn,

picking off slugs and snails one by one under the cover of darkness.

So, how will this band of mercenaries fare?

How easily will they get back into living in the wild?

They'll go back into the wild quite easily and quite simply.

We've had them in outdoor enclosures now for a good few weeks,

so they're quite capable of fending for themselves.

This is just the final stage to get them used to this particular area.

So, you'll hold them in this pen here

before releasing them into the full garden?

They'll in this pen for maybe a couple of days, that's all,

and then we'll just take the fence down

and they've got all the garden to explore.

And do you give them some supplementary food rather in here?

Yes, they'll be fed. We've brought some food with us,

the same food that they've been used to at our place,

and also, the people who work here, they're going to keep putting

food down anyway, just to help them along, in case they struggle.

After completing their reconnaissance work

on getting used to their environment,

it's open season on slugs and snails all over the garden.

This is like paradise for hedgehogs. It's got everything they want.

And if I was a hedgehog this is where I'd like to be.

The hedgehogs will hibernate from November to March,

and before that they'll be feeding themselves up for the winter.

Hedgehogs are omnivores.

One can keep an average garden free of pests by eating

up to 200 grams of insects and molluscs each night,

but if you want one for your garden, the more organic you are the better,

as they don't like their rival - the artificial pesticide.

But, if you don't have those little fellas at hand,

here are a few suggestions.

-Masses of beer traps, everywhere.

-And they die happy.

I pick and release. I can't squidge.

You can see we put eggshells round these seedlings.

We use a garlic spray.

It irritates their nervous system.

Put them in a bucket, take them back and stamp on them.

-But the coffee is working?

-Coffee definitely works.

And I throw them over into the other field across the way.

For some reason, they absolutely hate copper.

Hair clippings - they hate that, and they won't go over that.

If they do go over that, it's curtains.

-So, did the children decide what to use?

-They did.

Pointed sticks, holly leaves.

Jam was the best.

We think they'll be so busy eating the jam

that they won't touch the lettuces.

-And did it work?

-No.

I don't think we'll make our fortune quite yet!

Well, it's time to end today's show.

Do Join us next time for another A to Z of TV Gardening.

But for now, goodbye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd