Letter X, Y & Z 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 begins with the letters X, Y and Z.

Here's what's coming up.

Why the world's priciest spice might just be worth it...

When you eat something with saffron, to me, it's like a very good wine

and you suddenly feel a lift at the back of your palate.

You think, "Oh, I like that!"

The plant that gets Hugh Dennis reminiscing...

We had a massive yucca in our garden

and I used to ride my bike obsessively round the kind of track.

And what to plant when your garden is a zoo...

I think people forget that zoos are about plants as well as animals.

We should look at the environment as a whole.

And certainly here at Twycross, we're looking at the bigger picture.

Just some of the treats we have in store.

So, let's begin with X.

In our first subject, we look at a type of gardening that deliberately

keeps water usage to a minimum, with plants that don't get very thirsty.

This X is for "Xeriscaping".

'And to show why it can make sense, Steve Backshall went to

'one of America's hottest destinations, Las Vegas.'

Las Vegas is the fastest growing city in the US,

with over 4,000 people moving here every month.

'And it's the residents of Las Vegas that use most of its water,

'for drinking, washing, sewerage, dishwashers, washing machines.

'But the biggest user isn't inside the house.'

In the summer, 90% of domestic water is used outside.

And the greediest culprit of all? The humble lawn sprinkler.

'This water never returns to the waste water treatment plants.

'Much of it simply evaporates into the air and is blown away.

'It's lost for ever to the people of the Las Vegas Valley.'

'But it IS possible to have a garden in the desert

'without wasting so much water.

'The McDoniel Elementary School has planted a new "xeriscape",

'or desert-style garden.'

'Hilary Robinson of the Southern Nevada Water Authority explains.'

What did it actually look like before?

Well, these front areas here were all covered in grass, which

here in the desert, requires a lot more water than we get through rain.

So these desert plants are much more efficient and they can survive here

in the desert with an efficient amount of water.

What's the traditional attitude of the people living around here

towards water and the use of water?

We have had such growth over the last ten to 20 years

that people come from different places

and they don't understand the desert environment.

They want to bring with them the plants and the shrubs

and the trees and the lawn from wherever they came from.

They don't understand what it's like to live in a desert

and how important and crucial water is to life.

And how limited a resource it is.

Mmm. So why chose to set up a project here, in this school?

The school is a perfect place for education.

The young people take tours of the garden

and learn about desert plants,

learn about how important water is here in the Mojave Desert.

ALL: Woooaaah!

-That's a big one!

-OK! Now we're talking, huh?

What's going to happen

if people carry on using water the way they do now?

If they continue to use water as they do now,

we'll be in a lot of trouble.

They need to cut back and to use less water and continue

the quality of life that we've been able to enjoy here in Southern Nevada.

ALL: Wooooahh!

'Thanks, Steve.

'Some of the best plants to use in xeriscaping are cacti.

'Shortly, Alice Fowler will show us how to grow a cactus.

'But first, let's meet Brian Fearn,

'who knows all about what's out there and how to handle them!'

'A cactus is a plant that's lost its leaves and the function

'of the leaves has been taken over by the stem, which has become green.'

'The spines that it's got are to prevent animals from getting

'at the water that the plant is storing.'

'And the ribs are to prevent the plant from bursting

'when it takes up water rapidly. So it acts like a concertina.

'I was about ten, I suppose, when the fascination first hit me.'

We were on holiday in Scarborough.

There was a greengrocer's shop

adjacent to where we were staying, which had cacti in the window.

And of course, they looked distinctly different from anything else.

'These plants have got the lifetime of trees.

'They will live to 250 years, plus.

'And indeed, some of the plants I've got,

'I can trace their history back to Victorian times.'

This plant, I found ten years ago as one plant in 20,000 seedlings.

And I grew it up and it's produced this beautiful,

variegated plant, which is unique.

There's not another one in the world like it.

The island of Madagascar has probably more weird and wonderful plants

and animals than anywhere else in the world, and this,

called Didieria madagascariensis, is probably one of the weirdest,

with its long, narrow leaves and long spines.

I mean, it's just a weird plant.

One of the biggest myths with these plants is that they never flower.

But if you follow a few simple rules,

then they will perform for you every year.

You water then once a week, all through the summer.

That's a good soak. I mean, use a hosepipe.

No water at all from October to March, and that really is no water.

Now, if you water them in the winter,

and you keep them warm in the winter, they won't flower for you.

It is as simple as that. Keep them cool and keep them dry.

If you have a whim to water them in the winter,

take a watering can and cut the bottom out.

And then you can go through the motions of actually attempting

to water them, but never doing so!

So I'm going to sow some cactus seed for our dry garden.

Now, the truth about cactus is it's a bit of a long-term relationship.

And it's going to be really quite a long time before I have

cactus like Brian's.

So I guess the question is, why would you bother from seed

when little cactus, as we all know, are very, very cheap?

And I guess the reason is,

there's nothing more satisfying than being able to say, "I grew that.

"That's my cactus from seed."

So, with that, I'm going to try.

Now, you need to use a really, really free-draining potting compost.

So I've got regular potting compost over here and to that, I'm going

to add a quarter sand so that it's a really free-draining mixture.

That's really essential.

Because it's so free-draining, you're going to put a little bit of mesh

at the bottom of the pot, or else it will just run right the way through.

And then just fill the pot up to the top.

Now you need to let that soak in water

until it's all completely wet.

It's only at that point can you sow.

This is rainwater and I'm using rainwater

because cactus generally don't like tap water,

it's got a very high calcium level.

I'm going to sow one of these.

This is Echinocereus reichenbachii baileyii,

or the Woolly Hedgehog to you and I.

It's a really sweet, little cactus.

Eventually it does get bigger than this.

It's winter hardy in the UK.

Now, cactus seed are very, very small

and, because they're small, like all seeds which are tiny...

..you only sow them on the surface,

you never cover them.

Really fine seed can just be tapped

off your hand while gently moving...

..around the pot.

Cactus grow in semi-desert conditions,

so you've got to think it's really, really dry, free draining, baked

and then suddenly there'll be this downpour of rain

and it's in that period that the seeds take

advantage of the sudden moisture from the environment

and have to get to work really quickly.

I'm going to spray the surface of the compost

with some more moisture because it's all about keeping

the humidity high, which is going to make this seed germinate.

To really, really lock that moisture in,

I'm going to cover the whole pot with a plastic bag.

It's a really good idea to put a label in the middle of the pot

because that just keeps the plastic bag from collapsing in on itself.

Then wrap it with a rubber band to lock the moisture in.

In this way I'm going to recreate really humid conditions

and you'll be surprised they're quite fast to germinate.

It's thereon in that they start to grow very, very slowly.

They need a daytime temperature of roughly 25-30 degrees Celsius

and a night-time temperature of, say, 18-20.

That's going to be the hot end of this greenhouse

or, say, a baked windowsill.

Thanks, Alice. Now X isn't the easiest letter to take on, as you can imagine,

so we'll be using a bit of artistic licence

and, for our next subject,

we're joining Chris Beardshaw on a trip around south-west Ireland

because he's looking at X for "eXotic" plants.

This area is so unique because of one thing, the Gulf Stream.

Its warm currents originate in the Caribbean,

wash across the Atlantic and then straight

up the deep, glaciated valleys and into the gardens of West Cork.

The effect of the Gulf Stream is that exotic plants rule in the garden.

It's all the result of temperatures here

being an average four degrees higher than in mainland Britain.

That may not sound like a lot,

but, if you're a gardener, it opens up a wealth of horticultural opportunities

and the proof is right here. This is Fota Arboretum.

This land was acquired by the Smith-Barry family

back in the Norman period

but it was their Victorian ancestors that really started to take

an interest in the gardens.

Like all Victorians, they had a passion for collecting

and their particular passion was horticulture.

So much so that they sent plant-hunters worldwide,

looking for unusual species.

But while most Victorians had to grow their newly-introduced, tender exotics

under glass or in conservatories,

the Smith-Barrys were fortunate the weather here is so mild

they could just stick their plants in the ground.

But these tender plants don't just survive,

they positively thrive.

Let's take a look at this, the Canary Island date palm.

This plant's been here for over 100 years

and it's reputed to be the tallest and oldest in Britain and Ireland.

And, what makes this arboretum absolutely unique

is that here you'll find tender exotics thriving

from every continent in the world.

Left alone these exotic plants find their own natural habitat

and if gardeners learned to read the microclimate as well as their plants do,

the most extraordinary things result.

One person who really knows about their landscape lives right down here.

In fact, it's right on the edge of the beach.

Hi, Mary...

'Despite being on such an exposed site,

'Mary Walsh has become an expert in tender exotics

'and all because she understands her microclimate.'

-Was this just one, constant slope and you've cut into it?

-It was, yes.

It was pretty disastrous-looking in the beginning, yeah.

The rocks actually come from this plot and give out so much heat

and, then, the summers have been so good

and, then, winters haven't been bad, either.

You are the first gardener I've ever spoken to who hasn't complained about the weather.

Every other gardener always says, "The winter wasn't very good,

"that's why my plants aren't looking very good."

Now this, shouldn't be growing outside, should it?

It's supposed to be a conservatory plant.

How long's this one been in?

That was one of the first ones and, when it did so well,

I realised that there was a potential for more exotics here.

It blooms way into the winter, until about February.

-It's a fantastic flower, very rich colour.

-Yeah.

Presumably your agaves stay outside all year?

Absolutely, and look at all the babies it's had.

I can put exotics outside, even just during the summer

but they always come in and they always look a bit sorry for themselves.

Yours stay outside all year round

and there's not a sign of a blemish on the leaf at all.

I think if you can leave them out, it's so much better

because they just form such a natural path for themselves

instead of just planting them back out again, you know.

Do you find that even after a few years,

you are still learning about the conditions in the garden?

Presumably, it's not the same across the garden from the lawn

up on to the top terrace?

You're absolutely right, it's not the same

and I've discovered, quite recently in the past year, that down here,

that bank there, I can grow much more tender things there.

They get the heat from the rocks, and the sun.

They have the protection of other shrubs from the south winds.

It seems to be the ideal place. So, there'll be lots of changes.

-You'll be taking all those things out over there, aren't you?

-Yeah.

And it's not just plants and flowers that can be exotic,

Here's Joe Swift checking out exotic vegetables

at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show

and getting some cooking tips, too.

Hampton Court doesn't stop at showing you ways to grow new fruit

and vegetables, there's also daily advice on how to cook them

from a range of top chefs and growers

in the growing taste theatre.

One of the things I've been keen to learn more about this week

is how to include some of the exotic vegetables at the shows

into recipes at home.

So, who better to ask than Adam Gray?

He's the head chef at one of London's top restaurants, Rhodes Twenty Four.

I know you're really keen on your seasonal vegetables, aren't you?

Yes, I am. I mean, we use a lot of seasonal vegetables.

-Look at these cabbages, they're absolutely amazing.

-Yeah.

I'm after something a little bit different, a bit more exotic,

so shall we go and have look at some stuff?

Show me around, it sounds great.

-What are these, then?

-Chinese asparagus beans.

I'm going to pick one and we've got a special dispensation to pick and eat.

You don't come down to Hampton Court and start picking your own veg.

-Snap it in half.

-Thank you.

-I'll just go for it.

-Yeah.

Excellent.

I think it would work well with some broad beans, some peas

and a salad, maybe some natural yoghurt, a little bit of mint.

Your imagination is flowing already!

I'm just thinking, it tastes like a nice bean.

What about these okra? They're a really pretty plant, aren't they?

I'm thinking of the aesthetics, already.

The foliage, I'm looking at first.

Could you still eat them when they're that big?

Definitely, I'd probably slice them very thinly

and then saute them very quickly in hot oil, so they don't go slimy.

Add a little bit of chilli and a little spices. Fantastic!

Adam, Medlar trees, I know they're not particularly exotic

but they are quite weird and unusual these days to grow as a crop.

The fruit of this wonderful tree, Mespilus germanica, is the Latin.

-I'm going to teach you something at the same time.

-Thank you very much.

-What do you do with the fruit?

-You wait until the fruit is over

and starting to rot, cook them off, they're like apples

so you'd make a Medlar compote to go with pork, or a Medlar jelly,

you could serve with cheese, that type of thing.

I must give that one a go as well.

This polytunnel in the home-grown area is packed full of exotic stuff.

Look at this radish.

Enormous radish, Dragon.

You can eat these flowers with these tomatoes.

-What, the flowers of the radish?

-Yeah.

-I haven't tasted the flower of a radish.

-No, so...

-Just pick one?

-Pick one.

Are they going to be hot, or what?

-It's a little bit of pepperiness with the tomato.

-Cheers!

-Cheers.

-It's nice to get a bit of the pepper coming through from the radish flower.

-It's quite hot, actually.

-It's very nice.

-What a beautiful combination.

-Beautiful, eh?

-Delicious.

What about these chillis then, eh? They're quite big bushes.

They are big bushes but the chillis are really small. I think they'll absolutely blow your head off.

Go on, you go first, and I'll have one second.

No, I think I'll give it a miss. I like spicy food but these look deadly.

-OK.

-Do you want to have a go?

You know what, I think I might give that a miss, too. I'll take your word for it!

Cowards! And, there's a bit of an eating and gardening combination in our next subject, too.

This X is for "eXpensive".

And, Lucy Worsley is on the Welsh borders looking at saffron,

both spicy and pricey.

The local baker, Wyn Roberts, has been making something special for me.

Something you wouldn't expect to find in Wales.

-Hi, there, Wyn.

-Hi.

-So...

This is what I've come to see.

How would you describe the scent of it?

What's it like?

-Like a sweet-sour, earthy.

-It's quite hard to categorise, isn't it?

-Very hard.

-There's also something a bit rough and wild about it.

'We're making buns with saffron, the most expensive spice in the world.'

-Oops.

-Oops.

Do you know, it was really, really common in Medieval and Tudor diets.

They loved it.

'Believe it or not, this saffron was grown just up the road from here in Wales.

'It's a spice we associate with exotic, foreign places,

'but actually it has long, British history.'

Why does this feel rude? THEY LAUGH

'England was once a major grower of saffron

'and entire towns made their name from it.

'By the 16th century, Chipping Walden in Essex

'was so famous for the spice, that it became known as Saffron Walden.'

Look at these lovely buns.

'It's a spice whose taste nearly defies description.'

-There's enough taste on them.

-Yeah, definitely.

There's something exotic about it. Very nice, indeed.

'Autumn crocuses hold the secret of saffron.'

They've been cultivated by humans for 5,000 years.

'The only reason they're growing in this corner of North Wales

'is Caroline Riden.'

What's the correct picking technique?

Well, you want to go as far down the stem as you can,

not picking a leaf.

-Like that?

-That's right.

So those are its three red stigmas.

Female organs of the plant, the bit we want.

The yellow stamens, male part of the plant.

-That's right.

-We don't want.

-Yeah.

Saffron is the product, not of nature but of thousands of years of hard work.

The crocuses have been so extensively bred for their stigmas

that they are now sterile. They can't reproduce without our help.

It may have come over with the Romans.

They introduced so many things, didn't they?

But, because saffron is human dependent,

saffron dies out in the land and it has to be reintroduced.

We have surges of historic reintroduction of saffron,

for quite different reasons.

Edward III, when he wanted the wool to develop into a cloth trade

encouraged dyeing and saffron then became one of the big dyes.

By the 19th century, British saffron was in decline.

It was labour-intensive and the expanding Empire

sucked in ever more spices.

In saffron's English heyday, it was grown in the hot,

dry soils of Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk,

not wet, old Wales.

When we started growing it in '85, we didn't know how to grow it.

We've got rather nasty clay soil here and it prefers a chalky,

sandy soil. But we've added quite a bit of sand and compost.

It likes a very hot summer

and then a drop in soil temperature to trigger flowering.

Harvesting saffron is so delicate, that it's almost always done by hand.

What happens to the red stigmas next? What we do with those?

Take a flower

and gather together the three

and then you get the end and you see how far

-you can pull it down the stem.

-Ah-ha. Oh, OK.

We've got to dry them. The whole secret of turning...

This is called wet...

Into hay, which is the spice, is in the drying.

And there are as many ways of drying saffron

as there are of picking it, probably.

It's a painstaking process but when a spice costs £4,000 a kilo,

it's worth it.

I got a bit daunted by the fact that you need 150 crocuses

to produce just one gram.

But, actually, one gram is a lot of saffron, isn't it?

-One gram is between 450 and 500 threads.

-Yeah.

If you're having between ten and 20 threads a pinch,

you're going to get between 20 to 40 meals out of that, aren't you?

-Out of one gram, only?

-Yes.

It is very good value because you only need a very little bit of it.

And do you like the taste of saffron?

Yes, I do. It's more a sensation than a taste.

When you eat something with saffron, to me it's like a very good wine

and you suddenly feel a lift at the back of your palate.

You think, "Oh, I like that."

What I really like is the colour.

Yes, it's a beautiful, clear yellow, isn't it?

There's no colour like saffron. Sunlight yellow.

Thanks, Lucy. That's it for the Xs.

Let's move on to the letter, Y,

and we start with a tree that's got some dark connotations.

This Y is for the "yew tree".

Here's Will with a look at its bad reputation.

I've been trying to convince you that trees are our good friends.

They shelter us and they feed us and they help to make

the very air that we breathe.

But, like us, they have a darker, and more dangerous side.

There is one tree, a familiar tree in everyday village life which has

an enduring association with death.

It is that shaggy, evergreen inhabitant of churchyards,

the ancient yew.

CHORAL SINGING

To some it's the most spiritually important of our native trees,

but, to others, it's a graveyard ghoul.

Why do old yews and old churches seem inseparable,

as if the tree germinated when the foundation stones were laid.

Some believed that the early Christians built churches

where yew groves had once marked places of pagan worship.

The yew trees power to regenerate from an apparently dead stump,

chimed with the Christian belief in life everlasting.

Yews can certainly live a very long time,

comfortably more than 1,000 years

and legend puts some yews at 3,000 years old.

But, dating ancient trees is tricky because they tend to go

hollow inside and there are no growth rings to study.

Is this tree a ghoul?

Certainly it likes to send its roots far down amongst

the bones of long gone generations.

We have a natural suspicion of living things that enjoy

the company of the dead, particularly if they have taste for blood.

Gardeners have long known that the yew likes of bit of blood and bone

and, oddly, yew wood is blood red at its core.

Such vampiric stuff may be fanciful,

but the yews' deadly reputation has a basis in fact.

The yew contains poisons which cause vomiting, nausea, coma and death.

There is no antidote.

Now which part of the yew do you suppose is the most poisonous?

I'm imagining that you would think it's these lovely attractive

red berries here and, whilst it's a perfectly natural assumption, it is, in fact, wrong.

Because, while the pip, or aril, at the centre is toxic,

the red flesh is edible.

In fact, the most poisonous part of yew is the soft green foliage, here.

A few handfuls of that would probably do for me.

This tree does not like to be hacked, or eaten.

It often kills grazing livestock.

Though, there is some evidence that deer may even get a kick out of eating it.

Like a double espresso.

The good news is that we have learned how to live alongside the yew.

There's not been a case of fatal poisoning in Britain

since records began.

As it happens, the yew has saved many more lives than it has taken.

Because extracts from the foliage can be used to make drugs called taxanes.

They destroy the ability of cancer cells to divide and spread.

While these are not miracle cures,

the yew has resurrected the hopes of many people who've been at death's door.

As so often in nature, what kills can also cure.

Today, big yews are rare, possibly because their reputation

for toxicity is at odds with our risk-averse world.

But the departed can come to no further harm.

And as for the living,

little can be more beguiling than the shaggy green of gnarled yews,

clustered protectively around an old churchyard.

Well, you heard Will saying that yew berries aren't poisonous,

and with more on that, here's Chris Packham.

Look at this. This is truly beautiful.

You don't often see this density of fruit on a yew tree.

What's unusual about this particular harvest is that every single

part of this tree is deadly poisonous bar one,

full of alkaloids, taxanes which would kill anything that ate them.

The one thing though that is edible is this

jelly-red cover to the actual seeds.

And it's designed to attract birds,

because what they do is they eat it,

and digest it, but the kernel inside,

this bit in the middle here, is deadly toxic, but it's sufficiently

tough to pass through their guts and get pooed out somewhere else.

So, the tree has come to a fantastic evolutionary compromise.

It has made one bit of it non-toxic

so that the seeds can be spread around the woods.

Fantastic.

One thing is for sure, I can't lick my fingers.

And I'm serious about that.

But let's not just focus on poison and graveyards, because here

is Joe Swift again, finding out why yew is top when it comes to topiary.

Packwood House is a Tudor manor house owned by The National Trust.

The late summer borders are looking spectacular,

bursting with colour, combining ornamental grasses, perennials,

and half-hardy annuals just beautifully.

But topiary is what this garden is really famous for.

This part of the garden is just so simple

and has only two elements in it.

The fresh green sward of the lawn contrasting with these yew pieces,

the dark, textured colour, and these are like living architecture.

But it's the scale of them that's so impressive,

and the whole garden feels like a church or a cathedral, so it

doesn't surprise me that actually, they are laid out to represent the

Sermon on the Mount, complete with twelve Apostles and four Evangelists.

With over 100 trees and up to 40 feet high,

it takes a bit more than snippers and shears to keep them in check.

SAW BUZZES LOUDLY

Whoa! This is a labour of love, isn't it?

-Certainly is.

-How long does it take you to do the whole caboodle?

It's about four and a half to five months, depending on weather conditions.

Right, so that's nearly half the year.

You end up with arms like an orang-utan after

about three months of it!

Most people don't have huge pieces of sculpture like this.

How do you get them nice and tight to start with, and keep them in shape?

What are the golden rules?

If you've got a good sharp pair of shears, that's pretty much

essential, because you've got to make a nice, clean cut.

There's less chance of diseases getting into the plant.

You don't really want to be cutting in the middle of winter, because if

you do cut below freezing, then you can be in quite a bit of trouble.

You might get a lot of dieback.

And should you trim them every year, to shape them up?

You'll keep the crisper shape and you'll keep the shape you want

if you're cutting them once a year.

That's the beauty of them. If you've got something like privet,

you've got to cut it two or three times a year.

Yew is wonderful. It's like the Rolls-Royce of hedging material.

They're pretty tough, aren't they? They can take it.

So, Mick, most of the yew are looking really, really healthy.

There's one or two that are looking a little bit dodgy, let's face it.

-Yeah.

-Like this one. What's the cause of it, do you think?

Yews like to be in good, well-drained soil.

They just don't like their roots at all in standing water.

Now we seem to be looking at another problem, which is

a fungus-like pathogen which is known as Phytophthora,

which we think may be exacerbating the problem even further.

But again, we're not 100% certain because just recently,

we've had to drain this area.

And we've noticed over the last two years, a slight change

and the growth does seem to be coming back.

So, it could be a combination of things,

-because they don't like really heavy clay soil, do they?

-No.

Let's have a look at the draining system,

because it's quite a serious project, isn't it?

-Yeah, it really is.

-You're draining this whole area of the garden.

-Yeah.

The contractors are digging down to about 600 mil

and they're putting a pipe which is about 100 mil pipe, perforated,

on top of the gravel,

and then the remaining gravel goes in, to fill in the area.

And does each tree drain into this central system?

We decided that, in order to get oxygen to the roots,

every tree would need a branch of this drainage going to them.

So, is there any signs that this work has started to

benefit the yews at all? That they're looking up?

We expect, with the new drainage system,

it taking about three to five years before we see a real change

and the yews looking nice and green and lush again.

Fantastic. Some of them have been here for 300 years.

You've got to keep them going for another 300, Mick!

-Yeah, so there's no pressure there then, is there?

-No pressure!

We say goodbye to Y with a little treat

from Mr Hugh Dennis, fan of the yew,

but not of another Y, the yucca.

I like gardens, I really like gardens.

And I like the kind of British obsession with gardens.

This is the Cleve West garden.

Cleve West is a garden designer, not,

as many of you probably imagine, a suburb of Cleve.

He's an actual man.

I like this topiarised yew, as I believe it is called,

with the little pom-pom on the top.

I've got this tremendous urge to kind of do that with one

of the tops, but I'm slightly worried that if you push down on the tops

of one of these, somewhere else in the garden, something explodes.

That's a yucca. That brings back memories.

We had a massive yucca in our garden

and I used to ride my bike obsessively round

the kind of track which went past this yucca tree and...

Most days, I fell off into it, it was right on the corner,

and a yucca tree is, essentially, like nature's upturned knife block.

I wouldn't have one in my garden now, obviously,

to protect my children.

Excellent. That brings us nicely onto our final letter, Z.

We're looking at a plant family whose members,

at first glance, don't look that closely related at all.

This Z is for "Zingiberales",

and here is Carol Klein to take us through the family members.

Each week I'm looking at different plant families,

a sort of Who Do You Think You Are of the plant world.

But this week,

I'm looking at small groups of plants that are distantly related.

The groups might be small,

but the stature of the plants certainly isn't.

Today, it's the gorgeous gingers

and their totally tropical cousins, cannas and bananas.

Beautiful perfume! These are Hedychiums, ornamental gingers.

This one is gardnerianum, and this is the plant that you would have

found in Victorian conservatories, where it was grown both

for its stature, but particularly for its perfume in the evening.

Now, this plant has worked its way right the way through my hot border.

It's perfectly at home.

And all I do to protect it, and all the other Hedychiums

in my garden, is just pile soil on top of the rhizomes

during the winter.

This is Hedychium densiflorum "Assam Orange", which gives you

a real clue to where these plants come from,

in the foothills of the Himalayas. And when you're in here,

especially if you close your eyes in the evening,

you can almost imagine yourself there.

Anybody who loves exotic cookery will recognise this immediately.

It's Zingiber officinale, otherwise known as culinary ginger.

And if you want to do a bit of an experiment

and grow your own ginger, then this is what you are looking for.

It's not hardy, of course, you couldn't grow it in the open garden.

But you can try and start it into growth in a pot.

Just fill your pot right to the top,

because you're not going to bury this rhizome.

Now, that's a really handsome rhizome

and I reckon I could get a couple of plants out of that.

I want one of them, though, to be big, really big and substantial.

So, I'm going to plunge it into the top of the pot now

and just press it down,

so it's in close and intimate contact with that compost.

Just firm around the edge.

Then, the idea is to put it in a warm, bright place, but with a bit of

luck, you're going to have a really exciting ginger of your very own.

Well, cannas, like Hedychiums are rapidly-growing plants.

All the plants in this family group are from the tropics or the subtropics.

Cannas originate on the other side of the Atlantic, in the Caribbean,

and Central and South America.

And they're grown mainly for this fabulous foliage,

and for these wonderful, shot-silk flowers,

which look as though they've been pulled out of a magician's top hat.

And if you want to go the whole hog, why not go for a resplendent banana?

Bananas come from South-East Asia, but they're grown

for fruit in more than 100 countries right around equatorial regions.

This plant is completely tender, so when frost threatens, get it inside.

Thanks, Carol.

And now, let's explore the role plants play in a very

particular place, because this Z is for "Zoo" gardening.

Here's Ben Potterton explaining why it's important,

and how a trip to Hampton Court Palace could help inspire him.

Twycross Zoo is the World Primate Centre, and we've been here for

45 years, and we've got the largest collection of primates in the world.

Monkeys aren't the easiest things to work with from a horticultural

point of view, they eat and jump on things,

but the site's got so much more.

We've obviously got elephants, giraffes,

we've got a good bird section.

People forget that zoos are about plants as well as animals.

We should look at the environment as a whole.

Certainly here at Twycross, we're looking at the bigger picture.

Some of the areas, like the flamingo pool,

we're trying to plant geographically.

We've got Chilean flamingos in there, so we're trying to plant Chilean plants,

or broadly, South American plants.

In enclosures like this, it's very important to have a range of natives and non-natives.

We've got plants like Gunnera manicata, the giant rhubarb,

which is obviously a South American plant which is

found in the same area as flamingos.

But also, we're surrounded by Flag Iris. Behind me, you got things

like docks and stinging nettles,

which we don't mind at the back of an enclosure

because they're good for insects.

So, obviously, we try to garden the front, but leave the back natural.

It's also important that we grow plants here

for food for the animals, and we're very interested in browse.

Now, browse is shrubs and trees that we cut and give

to our elephants and giraffes and monkeys species, so a lot

of areas here will be developed for hedging to cut for browse species.

To check the toxicity of the plants we have here,

we look at databases, places like Kew Gardens,

and also what other zoos are doing worldwide and what species of plants

they're using, so a lot of scientific work goes into it as well.

This is our Longhouse Aviary, so the birds in this

aviary are predominantly from the Asian subcontinent.

What we're trying to do here is plant a range of Asian plants that

will grow happily in here but also will be beneficial to the birds.

Underneath some of the trees and shrubs,

we're planting a dwarf form of miscanthus, which is

a hardy grass that we can cut once a year down to the bottom,

and the birds will work through, they'll nest in,

and it should just cover the ground area.

Underneath all this, there is decent soil.

John Thompson is our head gardener here at Twycross Zoo,

and has been for the last 36 years.

This is the new trend. It's not my type of work.

I'm fitting in with Ben.

You see, always just bedding plants, roses, the colourful subjects.

This is more, as he recalls, biodiversity.

You need tradition in gardening today.

People are very quick to the new, new, new, new.

With John's, if he doesn't mind me saying, sort of 70,

and has got that experience that me, at the age of 31, hasn't got,

so it's a case of working together.

My vision for the zoo is that we have a beautiful grounds for the public to appreciate,

but also we're working with the animals and we plant the enclosures to try

and get a naturalistic landscape back into this site.

That's my plan for the next few years.

My visit to Hampton Court should be interesting.

I hope to visit the plant conservation area and get a few interesting plants for the zoo.

And again, walk round the display gardens and get some ideas.

I got some good ideas last year, and hopefully, this year, I'll be

with my camera, walking round, picking up a few tips.

Thanks, Ben. Well, we hope he did pick up those tips

and we hope you've picked up some, too,

now that we've completed every letter of the alphabet.

We've reached the end of our journey through the A-Z of TV gardening.

Thanks for joining us, and see you again soon. Goodbye.

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