Letter F The A to Z of TV Gardening

Hello. 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 letter...

So get ready for one of the most ancients plants on Earth -

Carol Klein looks at the fantastic world of ferns.

You really don't need anything else.

You could make a garden out of ferns.

A 12-year-old with a flair for flower arranging.

Tree ivy is really good because it wraps around the pots or around the flowers

which can look really effective and really quite...pretty!

Why colour choice is crucial when it comes to painting fences.

The colour I'm using here is called Old English green.

It's a soft, dusky green

and the reason I'm using it is cos I want to widen the garden.

And Matt Baker is out foraging for food.

-That's quite, um...

-It's minimal at this stage.

It is, yeah! It's a starter!

That's all to come. But we begin with a flower

that's as easy to plant as it is to maintain.

Even though it tends to prefer warmer climates,

there'll be plenty of you who have got at least one growing in your garden.

We're looking at F for fuchsias.

And we're meeting the De Beer family, as they prepare for the Gardeners' World live show.

This nursery's been here for... Since my great-grandparents owned it in 1906.

Then that followed on with my parents

having a farm shop here.

My father specialised in the plant side of things

and my mother did fruit and vegetables.

I've got early memories of helping out in the tunnels,

helping make hanging baskets,

so I've picked up a general knowledge of plants from my father.

And when we saw it for sale, it just seemed meant to be.

'I come from an engineering background.'

I am interested in plants and it's amazing, all the different varieties that are out there.

My favourites at the moment are one called Blacky

and the Devonshire Dumpling.

-It's got a very big flower.

-And I like the Bow Bells.

It's a basket variety with massive flowers.

It's very nice.

They're so popular

because they're so versatile.

They weather well. Fuchsias bounce back. Flowers come back.

That's why I think they're so popular.

But perhaps for a trendy garden that's in vogue at the moment,

they don't feature so much.

People are very passionate about the fuchsias.

It really surprised both Rachel and myself.

-It's like a bug, isn't it?

-Yes.

-Yes.

They're fanatical, obsessive about them.

One chap came and he took 20 standards and he was all excited.

He was really... It was like he was on a high.

This is the time of year when they come out

and they are real fanatics!

Luckily, we've got an expert on site, Mike,

and he's obviously guiding us on the plant growth.

This is my 28th season of doing shows.

So I've been doing it quite a while!

There's four different varieties.

There's over 12,000 different varieties.

You've got your half-hardy uprights.

You've got basket varieties.

And then you have your hardy varieties which can be planted out and left.

And you have the triphylla varieties,

which are things like Thalia and Coralle,

which have long orange flowers.

Those are very tender. If you don't have a heated greenhouse, bring them into the house over winter.

They look very nice.

They're also one of the few varieties which will take full sun in the summer

without scorching too much.

Once in flower, they'll flower right through until the frosts.

Going to the shows and seeing the display and the colour

is very rewarding.

This year, we got a gold at Harrogate,

a silver gilt at Malvern Springs

and last week in Devon, we got another gold award.

Hopefully we can achieve a gold at the BBC Gardeners' World Live.

-Well, Tim, what did you get?

-We got a silver gilt that we're chuffed to bits with!

-No wonder. Your stand looks absolutely amazing.

-Thank you.

-There's 12,000 varieties of fuchsias?

-That's correct.

Over 70 here. There must be one that's just made for me.

There certainly is. Knowing that you live in Devon, we have a Devonshire Dumpling

-and it's especially for you, Carol.

-Thank you very much.

What are you saying? Round and pink?

-No, a very nice blossom like you, Carol!

-Thank you very much and well done!

-Thank you!

Next, let's meet Ray Ayres, a trucker from Hertfordshire,

with a passion for fuchsias and his own way of planting them.

I drive an eight-wheeler tipper truck,

delivering tarmac, stone, things to ready-mix.

Plants and things.

I do a lot of muck-away and at the end of the day, you know you've done it.

It's quite a stressful job,

especially working round the London areas and places like that.

There's a lot of waiting, traffic queues and that.

At the end of the day, I'm pretty stressed up

and ready to come home.

I can't wait to come home to the garden.

I got interested in gardening through my parents.

My father was an extremely good gardener

and he had most of this garden down to vegetables.

My mother had the front, which was flowers - fuchsias, roses.

They looked after the garden very, very well

and it was always nice to come home to.

Fuchsias, my mother used to call them her little ballerinas.

I think ballet dancers look gorgeous with their little skirts and things.

And I love them.

They're so different. Each one is different.

Acts differently, shows differently.

They're a wonderful plant. I think more people should grow them.

I've got 184 varieties at the moment.

Only about 96 are on show in the garden.

The rest are parent plants.

I always buy fuchsias.

I just buy one of each type from a nursery.

I'm not anti garden centre. They've got their places.

But I do wish people would go to the nurseries.

The men who actually breed fuchsias.

They've always got time to talk to you

and tell you about the plant.

Especially if it's them who's bred it.

Fuchsias are so easy to grow.

So undemanding.

You really don't need posh greenhouses with automatic venting and things like that.

Personally, I use bits of wood, two layers of bubble polythene -

I call it double bubble -

and that's all I've got.

And I grow 800 a year in those greenhouses of mine.

I play classical music for the plants.

In winter, the fuchsias love it.

You can peep in and see them swinging about to a nice piece of Baroque!

Their favourites are Handel and Vivaldi. They love it!

CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYS

Right. One lorry tyre.

Or two or three or four, however high you want to go, to make raised beds.

Hello, Mr Bob Flowerdew. I thought of this long before you.

I'd like to see you try and turn one of these inside out!

But the idea actually is, down on its side, like that,

in place.

This rim here, cut it out totally.

My favourite is to use a jig saw.

Leave in the bottom as a water reservoir.

Little bit of ballast in the bottom for drainage.

Then fill it up with compost, top soil, whatever.

Then you're ready to plant.

So this one is two tyres high.

It's filled with compost.

To make it look more attractive, put wood all round the outside of it.

Inside, five busy Lizzies, and three triphyllas at the back.

Looks a treat.

We've now got 148 containers around the garden, of different types.

Baskets, tyres, barrels.

Tin pots, all sorts.

We use anything, practically, to put a fuchsia in.

At the end of the day, it's the fuchsia you see, not what it's in.

My wife, Christine, she does all the manly jobs about the garden!

The lifting, the cleaning up.

Things that I'm disappearing into the greenhouse and can't get to,

she's out here in the middle of winter, getting it ready for the next year.

I feel very guilty about it, but she loves it anyway.

She's well trained!

I take fuchsia cuttings of about an inch to an inch-and-a-half long.

I do them in August.

I don't listen to the fuchsia experts.

They say take them a half inch long.

But I get a bit fed up with listening to them going on about that

so I do it my way because it works for me.

I'm using a three-inch pot to do these.

You can get five in, as I've normally done over the last few years.

This year I'll possibly only put four to a pot.

I do use the gel as opposed to the powder

because I have a much better success rate with the gel.

I do stress, don't let the leaves touch one another.

Label.

Then a good dousing.

If you realise how much joy there is in fuchsias,

it really is good fun, and it keeps you out the pub on Sunday dinner times as well,

so you get Brownie points!

Still to come, foxgloves, fig trees and flower arranging.

Before all that, let's find out

about one of the most ancient plants on the planet.

This F is for ferns.

And we're joining Carol Klein on a trip to South Wales.

They evolved long before flowering plants,

and they have an entirely different method of reproduction.

They don't set any seeds.

Instead of that, on the back of their fronds,

they produce multiple spores, very, very fine spores,

which are carried in the breeze, hither and thither.

Despite the fact that some are evergreen and some herbaceous,

they all share one common feature.

And that is, each year on this marvellous cycle,

they renew themselves by producing these brand new croziers.

First of all, they're tightly furled, almost like fists.

And then gradually they lengthen and extend

until they become completely new fronds.

You might say that they're all green,

but those greens are so subtle and so various,

and the forms of the fronds are so diverse.

You really don't need anything else.

You could make a garden out of ferns.

And over a hundred years ago,

that's just what people did.

In a big way!

Fern fever had gripped the country.

Elaborate glass ferneries were built at grand Victorian residences.

The one at Dewstow House in Monmouthshire

fell into disrepair after the Second World War,

and was buried under rubble for nearly 60 years,

before its current owners decided to excavate

and restore this lost fern wonderland.

Keeping a watchful eye on this treasure trove

is head gardener, Peter Lane.

It's magical!

-It's fairyland, isn't it?

-Beautiful, isn't it?

It really is. And it is a grotto, isn't it?

You feel as though you're in this secret place

and you've just discovered it.

-Basically, we knew that there was something here.

-Yeah.

So we started digging, found a pond,

found a path, kept going,

and one of the grottos was this, the Tufa Grotto.

Is this what it would have looked like originally?

Up to the roof level you see now, it is original.

But with a few modifications to allow for new planting.

But it wouldn't have had a corrugated iron roof, would it?

No, there certainly wasn't.

There were beams covering this grotto, with stalactites.

All man-made.

And a rather grand Victorian domed-glass roof over the top.

It must have been really impressive in its day.

The vast labyrinth of underground grottos here at Dewstow

were started in 1895 and took over 15 years to carve out,

creating the perfect environment for moisture-loving ferns.

There are some ferns that are unforgettable,

that stay with you.

Athyrium niponicum pictum has an almost haunting presence.

Pictum means painted,

and this is the Japanese painted fern.

Just one plant of this makes a complete cameo all on its own.

It's a beautiful fern.

These damp caverns perfectly recreate

the woodland that ferns like this Woodwardia thrive in.

Peter has his own tried and tested method

of propagating it.

You can see the bulb forming at the bottom there.

-And you can cut that off.

-Just sever it across the stem?

Yeah, sever it and then pot it up.

You would have been OK, I would have thought, but this is my favourite way of doing it.

Very complex equipment. Plastic bag with a load of compost in it!

-And the piece of string!

-Don't forget the piece of string!

-No.

-Most important.

-Shoe it in, then.

And you just want it to be in contact

-with that compost, yes?

-That's it, yeah.

Will you do the string bit?

There we go.

-Were you ever a boy scout?

-I only know one knot.

It was my granny's!

SHE CHUCKLES

So how long will you leave that in there?

I'll leave it for a minimum of six weeks.

Hopefully you'll see one of the new fronds start to unfurl

and you'll know then that it's ready to cut off and pot up for next year.

OK.

I suppose it's easy to assume that all ferns are pretty similar.

But when you start looking at them,

you realise just how vastly diverse they are.

And very often, you think of ferns as being these great big bold plants

with large fronds much divided.

But in contrast, some of them can be delicate and feminine.

Look at the filigree of this beautiful little maidenhair fern.

I think the point is that you don't need a grotto.

You can grow ferns just about anywhere

because they're so accommodating.

Even that grotty corner between the dustbin and the garage

is a perfect place to decorate with ferns.

And what wonderful ornamental plants they are.

Thanks, Carol. Now, get your wellies ready.

We're moving on to F for foraging.

Here, Matt Baker meets a professional forager

who's got the low-down on what you can and can't eat in the wild.

Forests like this one in Pembrokeshire

have been used by people to gather up wild foods

for thousands and thousands of years.

Today, I'm here to meet a man who is continuing this tradition

by foraging for the best that Mother Nature has to offer.

-Yun, how are you doing down there?

-Doing very good, mate.

-Nice to meet you.

-You have two helpers here as well.

-Who are these?

-That's little Beau, the son of George,

and George is around somewhere.

So you are what's known as a professional forager.

-When did you start?

-About 13 years ago.

It began with some friends who were running a wild mushroom business

and I realised through what they were doing that nobody specialised in wild vegetables

and that's what I've worked on.

So I'm guessing, Yun, that there's quite a bit to eat where we're standing?

Absolutely. I was in the middle of collecting some of this cleavers.

And you stand still, and it didn't work.

-But it's the one that...

-Sticky Jack!

-Sticky Jack.

-Mmm. That's quite, um...

-It's minimal, at this stage.

It is, yes, it's a starter!

Just over there, that white flower is meadowsweet.

Now, have a smell of that.

Oh, wow!

Now, that's a substitute for honey.

Yes, that is incredible.

And if you taste it...

..it'll remind you of an antiseptic cream.

Oh, yeah! Is this a full-time job for you now, then?

13 years, 52 weeks a year,

rain, snow, wind, storm, hurricane, I've been out in it.

Who are you foraging for these days?

From some of Gordon Ramsay's chefs like Stuart Gillies,

The Dorchester, Claridges, anywhere I get time to give a call to

and say, "Do you fancy using this stuff?"

Also, I rely on them and their skills to come up with ideas and what to do with it.

Because these are ingredients that haven't been used and aren't necessarily in a recipe book.

So they really have to come up with some clever stuff.

'Just yards away, we came up across another wild vegetable.'

-Is that some there?

-Just here.

'The hairy bitter cress.'

So how much would that be worth? How much would have a kilo be worth

if you were to send it to a chef?

It isn't worth what you have to go through to get it, put it that way!

I mean, you could pay £20, or something like that,

but like I say, for me, it's not about the money.

So it's basically getting into places like this that you love so much?

It's as simple as that.

Let me pull you out!

I'm stuck!

-Lovely stuff!

-OK. We're off!

Let's go and find some wood sorrel.

So what area does wood sorrel thrive in?

Well, it likes the shade and cool of the forest.

So we've found a shady spot here.

It likes a bit of water, but in the summer, that gets scarce.

So you won't find very large amounts of it.

Excuse the attention. Just looking around.

There we have it.

Down here.

Now, for me, this is the king,

or queen, whatever you want to call it,

this is the number one.

It contains oxalic acid, which means you don't want to eat too much of this.

-OK.

-It is, officially, a poisonous plant.

But if eaten in small quantity, no problem at all.

The French make soup out of it, and I gave it to the Queen for her birthday dinner!

-So she ate it.

-In a small dose!

-So if she ate it, I'm sure we can!

-Yes.

It tastes really earthy and it kind of tastes like a woodland.

Now obviously, it's quite a dangerous thing to do

to wander around and just pick things off the floor and eat them.

What is your process?

Firstly, don't touch anything if you don't know about it.

There's a story I tell about foxglove,

which is digitalis and it's known as a heart drug.

But it's a poisonous plant.

You only have to touch that plant and your heart will speed up.

And that story in its own right made me suddenly realise

even touching a mushroom if you didn't know what it was

or a plant you don't know, is not a good thing.

'When it comes to sourcing wild vegetables, Pembrokeshire is a fertile hunting ground,

'offering a wide variety of environments.

'This is one of the county's estuaries.'

So, here, sea beet. Beta Vulgaris.

Basically, it grows just above the tide line.

Very obvious. This it the tide line, brought up by the last spring tide.

And just above the tide line, you find the sea beet.

Basically, it's of the beet family, it's a spinach, a thick leaf.

It's a vegetable you'd cook. Try a little piece.

Ooh, that... Yeah. There's a lot to that, isn't there?

It is. It's a fleshy, thick leaf,

so chefs love it for cooking.

'And on that note, Yun's going to cook up a simple dish

'using this sea beet and the sea bass that I picked up from Fish Week.'

A little selection of our stuff.

A little bit of sea beet.

The fish is really lovely. But I'll tell you what...

..that sea beet in there as well...

I'll get you a little glass of elderflower champagne.

Elderflower champagne as well?

The perfect summer's drink.

Yun, if I'd known, I'd have dressed up, man!

Cheers. Here's to foraging!

Our foraging expert mentioned a flower that can get your heart racing just through touch.

We're looking at that very flower now

as we've reached F for foxglove.

Let's meet the Baker family from Devon,

who oversee the conservation of this great British bloom.

One of the reasons I really love the foxgloves

is because they are a natural plant.

They're native to Britain and probably the most spectacular

of our native flora.

I think the way we garden reflects foxgloves themselves.

They're a very natural flower

and essentially, we garden in a natural way.

We don't go in for the business of extending day length

with electric lights.

We don't use lots of expensive heating.

We've chosen a group of plants which respond well

for the Chelsea week.

Foxgloves give a very good return for the amount of effort involved.

You can sow this tiny little seed, and within three weeks, it's germinating.

Then you get this cabbagey rosette developing

and that gives the energy to produce this huge flower spike,

just nine, ten months later.

Foxgloves were granted National Collection status over 25 years ago.

We're currently the only National Collection of foxgloves.

It's a huge honour, and it means there's a huge amount of responsibility involved.

Foxgloves are not just the prettiest of plants one can grow in the garden,

they're also some of the most useful.

Foxgloves, particularly our native sort, Digitalis Purpurea,

is the plant that Dr Withering of the mid-18th century

used to extract digoxin,

which is used even today as a heart regulator.

It's responsible for keeping an awful lot of people alive.

Mary, my wife and I, set up the botanic nursery 20 years ago

and that was primarily to produce some of the less usual garden plants.

We were aware that everybody loved foxgloves, the traditional British sorts,

and it occurred to us that the other sorts, the other 20 species,

would also find a ready market

if we could make those available to the gardening public.

In the world of foxgloves, we've essentially got two different sorts.

There's the biennial sources, the ones that everyone's familiar with.

Digitalis Purpurea, native to the hedgerows, forests and woods of Britain and northern Europe.

Purple by name, but not always purple in colour

cos you can get this in whites, in apricots, and a rather good primrose yellow.

So lots of diversity there.

Don't be put off by the fact that they're biennial.

This flower spike will produce thousands of seeds,

so once you've got foxgloves in your garden, you'll always have foxgloves.

But we've also got the perennial sorts.

Digitalis Haywoodii from Portugal,

with its silver leaves.

We've got Digitalis Obscura,

and these were rescued from a golf course in Malaga.

It only grows 15 to 18 inches high, from a permanent woody root stock.

A lovely thing to have.

These are the sorts of foxgloves that we want to bring to the public's attention.

Our job as a grower is to make these unusual plants available for everyone.

Having grown the native sorts, let's try some of the unusual ones too.

If you want advice on how to plant foxgloves yourself,

here's Monty Don.

I'm putting these foxgloves here in the walled garden.

This is north facing, so it's fairly shady,

although it gets light in the afternoon and early morning.

Foxgloves are woodland plants.

This is a variety called Sutton's Apricot.

I'm always looking for apricot flowers

because they're a tricky colour.

That balance between orange and pink.

When it's dead right, it's lovely.

But if often gets a bit muddy.

However, these should be good and they exactly fit in

with the palate of the wall garden which is all pastels and soft colours.

Planting them couldn't be easier. I'm planting a group here.

Just make a hole. There's a bit of allium coming up there.

You can see that's got a good root system.

It's been grown in a compost with plenty of leaf mould added

which replicates the whole woodland environment that they're happiest in.

And just pop that in.

Like that. Put one back here.

Now, these should flower next May and June.

And all winter, they'll just sit there.

The whole point about biennials

is that you sow the seed immediately after flowering,

which in this case is May, June time.

They develop foliage and good root system and then wait and bide their time over winter.

The soil is now still warm

so the roots are still growing.

So next spring,

when the light starts to increase

and the soil warms up,

they can grow vigorously from a head start.

And these should be nice and tall, about three, four foot tall,

lots of flowers and lots of seed and then the process will start again.

Thanks, Monty!

Now, if you're looking to create a beautiful garden,

you'll also want what surrounds it to be equally good looking.

Which is why our next F is for fences.

Take it away, Joe Swift!

I'm building a really simple structure here,

but it's going to be in keeping with the garden as a whole.

It's going to have a post at each end, really simple.

I'm going to fix it into this wall, rather than going into the ground,

because the foundations of the wall make it hard to dig.

There are going to be two rails running across it

and then I've got some really nice cedar, planed cedar,

which is a good timber for outdoor use,

which will give a really nice finish along the front.

In fact the rest of the fence around the garden and the bike store

is going to be faced with the same timber

to give it a designer cohesive look.

So the first thing I have to do is dig a hole.

Now, I'm an absolute stickler for levels.

On a fence like this, if you don't get it perfectly level,

it's going to start showing.

OK. Mark that off with your pencil.

And then cut that nice and square.

The next thing to do is concrete that post into the ground.

There are some really good products on the market.

They're designed specifically to concrete posts into the ground.

But you mix them in dry and they go off really quickly

which means they set really quickly

so you can get going on the fence and don't have to wait overnight.

What you do is fill about a third of the hole with water.

Make sure the post is nice and upright.

The pour in the concrete around the post.

And with the off-cuts, just do a little bit of tamping.

And just before it all sets together,

get your spirit level and just check that it's plumb.

There you go. That is perfect.

On the other side, I'm fixing a post to the wall

so I don't have to break through the foundation of the wall itself.

I'm marking up this piece of four by two timber

to make sure the screws go into bricks

rather than into the mortar.

I'm pre-drilling some holes using a wooden bit.

I'm then changing my bit over to a masonry bit

and marking where those holes hit the wall.

I'm then drilling decent-sized holes into the wall

which can take a rawl plug and a screw.

I'm then screwing the piece of timber into the wall

and checking that it's nice and plumb.

Great. That's nice and solid.

Once the two posts are in, it's a case of measuring the gap between them

and cutting the four by two timber to size.

I'm using these special fixings to attach firstly to the crossbeams

and then the crossbeams to the posts so they're nice and solid.

OK. There we go.

We've got a simple framework for the fence to go on.

Once you've got that framework with the posts and the rails going across,

you can basically fix anything to that that you want.

So depending on your budget, or what look you want,

you can go for old boards, tanalised board, wide boards, thin boards.

You can go for metal sheeting.

You can buy those bamboo rolls and just clad that across the front.

But I'm going for something special.

I'm going for this lovely cedar.

Now, it's important to get the spacing really accurate.

Make sure you get the same spacing all the way along.

I'm going to use one of the screws to actually space it.

To get that professional look, there's a couple of tips here.

I've just clad the post at the end with a couple of pieces of cedar

so you don't see the softwood.

And also, just to run a top rail along the top

which makes it look really nice and solid

and chunky and well-finished.

Well, I think it looks the absolute business.

One designer fence.

And that cedar smells so beautiful, too.

It will go silver over time,

but if you want to keep the colour, use an external wood oil on it

every year or so to bring the richness of the colour back again.

But if you do want to paint your fence, what colour should you go for?

Ready with some answers and his paintbrush is Alan Titchmarsh.

The colour I'm using here is called Old English green.

It's a soft, dusky green.

The reason I'm using it is because I want to widen the garden.

You can see the effect it has, this soft colour.

It's already taking that fence out

and into the shrubs and trees beyond.

It's pushing out the narrow boundaries of the garden.

Now, if I were to paint that fence yellow,

it would come straight in at me. It would be bright, but would make the garden appear smaller.

Really in your face.

If I were to paint it bright blue,

and I don't paint every fence I know bright blue,

it would become much more foreground, much more important.

Here, it's beginning to disappear.

If you want a fence that goes into the shadows,

look at a watercolour painting.

What colour are the shadows there? Soft, dusky lavender blue.

Here, this soft, dusky Old English green

is the perfect background for my bright annual flowers.

Thanks, Alan.

Our next topic is a tree you might normally associate with warmer countries

like Turkey and Greece.

But it's actually perfectly happy growing here in the UK too.

This F is for fig trees.

Here's Toby Buckland on how to treat them when winter approaches.

The cold has caused the leaves on my fig tree to tumble to the ground.

But I'm not worried because I think it will still fruit next year.

All the signs are there.

Lots of embryonic fruits that I'm picking off.

Figs produce different flushes of fruits throughout the summer.

It's always tempting to see these ones and think,

"They're going to ripen over winter and give me an early crop."

But the fact is, they won't.

All they'll do is take the energy from the little figs that are close to the branches,

these pea-sized ones, and stop them fruiting as prolifically and as well.

So by picking them off now, you improve the health of your plant

and the health of next year's harvest.

Next, we're joining James Wong

who's also giving tips on how to grow figs

and showing how they can be used for medicinal purposes.

My favourite bit about the fig is its smell.

Having one in your garden on a hot summer's day

it emits this rich, sweet fragrance

that really reminds you of a Spanish holiday.

It's believed they were used by the gladiators as a favourite training food,

and also for the original Olympic athletes.

In the UK, growing figs is relatively easy.

They're hardy down to minus 15

and they'll produce fruit that are pretty much the quality of stuff you'd find in posh supermarkets.

Figs do best in a sunny, sheltered position

and benefit from pruning in spring and summer.

If you plant a tree in a pot, it will restrict its roots

and you'll get even more fruit in late summer.

Figs have a high soluble fibre content

and mild laxative properties.

I'm combining them with senna,

which contains even stronger laxative compounds.

Figs work by drawing water into the intestine,

which helps soften food in the gut

and together with the senna,

they produce a reliable but gentle laxative effect.

I'm going to make a real medicine cabinet standby,

syrup of figs. Everyone's heard of it.

The really cool thing about it is

the stuff that you pick up in your chemist

has pretty much identical ingredients

to something you can cook up on your stove at home.

It's sugar, figs, senna and a couple of flavouring agents added in.

So why not give it a go?

The best thing is, while you're making it, you get to eat figs!

Slice eight fresh figs into quarters.

Figs are actually an inverted flower.

All these little seeds here, which are now fruit,

were actually flowers at one point.

And the scar you get on the bottom of a fig

is actually a little hole that a wasp enters when it's at its early stages

and it flies around inside, or crawls around,

pollinating those flowers and then popping out again.

So it's a flower sort of wrapped around and inside itself.

I've got eight fresh figs quartered up here.

I'm going to team them up with another fruit,

just to give them a tag team action effect.

It's a fruit called senna.

You can buy senna in health food shops.

I'm using four handfuls because I'm making a large quantity.

But you need about six pods per 10ml dose.

Soak them in 100ml of boiling water

and leave to infuse.

After about half an hour, when the mixture's cooled,

you've got this glorious golden tea colour.

And all you've got to do then is basically pop everything in a blender.

Strain the senna infusion onto the figs

and blend until smooth.

Pop it on the heat, and add 100g of sugar.

Cook for about 25 minutes.

Keep stirring to be sure it doesn't stick and burn.

You're aiming for it to look a bit like cough syrup,

thick and gloopy with this wonderful glossy shine to it.

We're getting near there.

The only thing with syrup of figs is it never really looks particularly fantastic.

It actually looks a bit like its desired outcome!

If you stick a bit of lemon juice in at the end,

it can brighten up the colour.

So I'm going to see if that works.

Take off the heat and add your lemon juice.

Stir and watch as the citric acid changes its colour.

It's starting to get a sort of reddish-brown. Fantastic.

Almost a strawberry jam colour.

And when you hold it up to the light,

you can see it's almost gelatinous.

And what that sort of gloopy stuff is

is the soluble fibre.

And that's what helps keep you regular.

It looks good. But what does it taste like?

It tastes really good.

If I do say so myself!

Much better than the stuff you pick up in the chemist.

And it's just as easy to make as a smoothie.

So there's really no reason why you shouldn't give it a go.

It will keep in a bottle in the fridge for three to four weeks.

Take two teaspoons just before bed but don't exceed the dose.

And you shouldn't take remedies containing senna if you're pregnant.

Thanks, James. Now, back to flowers.

Not a specific type this time.

No, we're looking at how to make the best of the blooms that you've cut.

Our last F is for flower arranging.

Here's 12-year-old Beth Smallwood

showing how it's done.

I love doing flower arranging because there are so many different colours.

All the colours of the rainbow.

Reds, yellows, greens, purples, pinks.

It's really great to use flowers as art and do it in 3D.

I am 12 years old.

I started flower arranging a couple of years ago

when we had a flower show at our church.

I saw one that really inspired me to start.

I come about twice a month to do flower arranging with the other ladies.

It's really fun being the youngest,

because the older ladies help me with what I can do better.

We both teach each other, really.

I teach them some new ideas

and they teach me some ideas as well.

We get the flowers from local suppliers,

but we mainly get our foliage here from our nature reserve near the church.

I find foliage is really important to give structure and shape to the flower arrangement.

Tree ivy is really good because it wraps around the pots or around the flowers

which can look really effective and really quite...pretty!

My advice to anybody who's starting flower arranging, or thinking of starting,

would be to get a really good pair of gloves.

Get a really good pair of scissors as well.

And finally, I'd choose a really good vase.

What I really love about the lilies is their petals

and the way they curve at the end.

I also love the closed flowers

because they look really nice in the arrangement.

I just think they make you feel really happy when you see them.

There are no rules in flower arranging, there's no right and wrong.

It's just your imagination, what you think looks right.

It's possible to do anything with flowers.

What I really love about roses is the way they come in different colours.

And I love the way the petals are bunched together.

That makes them perfect for flower arranging.

-How are you getting on, Beth?

-I've finished.

-Well done.

It's gorgeous, isn't it?

I really enjoy just using my imagination and my creativity side.

But also looking at it and thinking, "I've done that."

And other people commenting on it and saying it looks really nice.

It gives you a really good feeling.

Beautiful. And something anyone and everyone can try

as Beth demonstrated so well there.

That's all from us today.

Do join us next time for some more top tips

on our A to Z of TV Gardening.

Goodbye!

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