Letter J The A to Z of TV Gardening

Welcome to The A To Z Of TV Gardening, where we sift through your favourite gardening 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... J.

We start today with a journey into the wild.

Get your safari suits ready.

Because J is for jungle gardening.

Let's meet our guides Rob and Dave, aka The J Team.

We're at Desert Jungle HQ in Taunton.

Which is our little exotic plant centre that Rob and I have created here over the last three years.

We lived beside each other and we didn't speak to each other

for the first four years after I moved in.

Cos I was a milkman and worked unsocial hours.

And then suddenly noticed our gardens were beginning to merge.

-I had bananas, he had bananas.

-Yeah.

One night there was a power cut and our neighbours had an Aga and it was the only place anyone could eat.

-And erm...

-So we all met up over stew and...

And our lives have never been the same since!

-And our wives rue the day we ever met, I think.

-Definitely!

You can have an exotic garden with totally hardy plants.

You can put down a membrane, you can bark over the top.

There's no weeding. Or you can use the really difficult stuff

which gives a different dimension to your exotic garden.

But does incorporate a bit more work.

You've got to be prepared to be sitting at work on a December evening.

Weather forecast comes out there's a frost. Thinking, I've got to get home really fast!

Get the fleece out, cover up the tree fern, the banana or whatever.

That's just you. Most normal people don't!

We've got a huge range of plants, far more than we thought we would.

We specialise in bamboos, tree ferns, palm trees.

Cannas and aroids.

We do a lot of cacti and succulents.

We've probably got the best part of 1,000 different things, I suppose.

One of my loves is bamboo. I think they're fabulous plants.

Evergreen, and the colour range on them is just fabulous.

You get this delicious yellow colour on some of them.

There's a bamboo for every garden. Some of them can be quite thuggish.

This one here for example is beautiful but it's big.

They work great in a jungle garden as a really good foil.

It just gives you that evergreen structure.

So in the winter there's always interest in the garden with bamboos.

It's just the ultimate plant.

This is my tree fern house.

It's my favourite place on the entire nursery.

This is possibly the most special of all of them.

Certainly my favourite one. It's Cyathea medularris from New Zealand.

Or it's called the mamaku.

And it's immense, it'll grow 60 feet tall.

What I think is incredible, you've got this frond coming up here

that over a period of weeks just grows and grows.

It's going to get this huge frond at the end of it.

And it's just an incredible marvel of engineering

how something, this little fist of frond,

can turn into this great big thing above my head here.

If you can get hold of a small medularris and love it, look after it,

it'll be possibly the best plant in the garden.

Certainly the best plant in mine.

Now, we all know the majority of plants love a bit of warmth.

But there are a few who can't wait to get a bit of fresh air.

So let's get our gear ready because up next we're abseil planting.

J is for juniper, a tree that loves a bit of altitude

as Juliet Morris finds out.

These hardy folk are part of the Cumbria Wildlife Trust project.

Around 3,000 juniper seedlings have been planted already,

and today the team will be looking to plant about 100.

But getting to the site is a bit of a hike.

This is Long Crag on the lower reaches of Helvellyn.

Even on a rather lovely day like today, this is hard terrain.

But for these guys, whatever the weather, they've got no choice but to be out here planting

because they've got to get the juniper seedlings in before the end of April.

The common juniper is one of only three conifers native to the UK.

In the old days, it was grown for its berries,

which were used to flavour gin.

But cheaper berries from abroad

and changing agricultural practices here in Britain

meant its numbers went into decline.

Since the 1970s, nearly half of all juniper has gone.

And the species is now mostly found

in remote upland areas of northern England and Scotland.

So, Dave, these are obviously the junipers here.

How old are these?

These will probably be about three years old.

That's how long it takes to take them from the seed at the nursery

up to the stage where they're ready to plant out.

So why is it important to try and preserve juniper,

to try and re-establish the species in the way you're doing?

I think any species is worth conserving in its own right.

But obviously conservationists like to have a nice diverse range of species and habitat.

Bio diversity is what we're about trying to achieve.

The juniper has a real niche in the habitat here.

It's very good for supporting various birds.

The fruit, the seeds, provide food for passage migrants

in the autumn/winter.

Things like red wing and fieldfare.

In the breeding season it provides good breeding habitat

for song thrushes, stonechats, windchats, that kind of thing.

Right, well, these guys

have clearly got their work cut out so I'm going to give them a hand.

All for the love of a juniper tree.

Andy, I have never abseiled before in my life.

-And you're assuring me it's all right?

-Absolutely, yeah.

Let's get the harness on you first.

Grab hold of that. Take your gloves off.

These juniper trees had better know how much people care.

So that goes round your waist.

Before you do the buckle up,

reach down between your knees and pull that.

That was very polite! Between your knees.

That is absolutely safe.

Am I going in the right direction?

Now don't get your ropes mixed up.

Oh! Don't look down.

Never look down.

Yes!

I've made it.

-LAUGHS:

-Oh!

That's the practice run over.

Now it's time to do my bit for the juniper.

So, what sort of a spot, Dave?

I can see a ledge further down below.

We can probably get on to that.

We should be able to get some plants into there.

Oh! I'm not a great expert at this, I'm afraid.

You're doing well for a beginner. You're doing OK.

I'm amazed that they can grow on something like this, to be honest.

-It is amazing but the roots will go down into the rock cracks.

-Right.

And then they get their moisture from there.

And, hopefully, they'll survive.

We probably only get two or three out of about ten that we plant.

Oh, really? So...

Two or three is better than none

and I challenge any sheep to try and get round here!

That's it.

So, spots that have got heather presumably are a good find?

That means there's education there, and some soil and things like that.

-So, I reckon I can fit one in this...

-One more plant.

In this little crag.

Little crevice, even.

-What do you reckon, will he be all right in there?

-That'll be OK.

Put the soil back again.

-You did very well.

-Grow, junipers, grow!

Though not all of these seedlings will reach maturity,

enough of them should survive to ensure that this ancient and important plant

is part of the British landscape for centuries to come.