Letter M The A to Z of TV Gardening

Hello, and welcome to the A To Z Of TV Gardening.

We're on a mission to dig up the best advice and guidance

from all your favourite programmes and presenters.

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

we explore everything from flowers and trees

to fruit and veg.

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

Here's what's coming up.

Alan Titchmarsh declares war on moss.

I want a lawn that looks a bit like a bowling green.

Christine Walkden asks if marigolds are too much.

Bright and colourful, but a bit in your face.

Tricks and tips on how to grow mushrooms at home.

There's an extraordinary range of edible mushrooms available to us,

from the common field mushroom to things like this - an exotic oyster.

And kissing and telling is James Wong.

You can only kiss under mistletoe with berries on it.

And every time you steal a kiss, you've got to pick off one of these,

which means, once you've picked them all off,

the free-for-all of the office Christmas party

is well and truly over.

Just some of the treats we have in store.

But first, to something that provides one of the most gorgeous displays of the gardening year,

even though it can take up to ten years for its flowers to first appear.

And when they come into full bloom in the spring and summer,

they just dazzle one and all with their beauty

and they're certainly worth the wait.

This M is for magnolias.

And let's begin with Alys Fowler being mesmerised

in Trewithen Gardens in Cornwall.

This garden is remarkable

not just for the number of magnolias it has,

but also for their size.

Many of the 50 varieties of magnolia in this garden

have been here over 100 years,

thanks to the plant-hunters who brought the seeds back

to our shores from China in the early 1900s.

-So a tree this size, how old does...?

-This one particularly is collected in 1928

and planted in 1929.

It was planted here as an 18-inch seedling.

And magnolias hate root disturbance.

They don't like their roots being disturbed at all,

so to plant it here and get it into perspective to the house

is either luck or genius. We err on the side of genius.

Sadly, just a few maps and letters remain from those expeditions.

But the driving force behind the garden, George Johnstone,

published in 1955

what is still considered to be the Bible on magnolias -

Asiatic Magnolias In Cultivation.

I suppose it doesn't even start to touch on

how they must have felt when they saw these things.

It's hard to imagine trying to see one of these in the wild for the first time.

Mature trees, some 80 feet tall,

completely clothed in these pink flowers.

And we're now beginning to see that maturity

in the garden here, 100 years later.

If they were alive and visiting Trewithen today,

those intrepid plant-hunters would only now be seeing

the impressive scale of the magnolias they discovered.

A tree of this size - how do you maintain it?

Luckily for me, the early maintenance had been done.

On some of the younger plants, we do aesthetic pruning

during the summer when the magnolia is in full leaf.

That way, the sap's got a chance to stop running before winter sets in,

which could cause damage.

It's just aesthetic pruning, taking off the whippy branches,

the long branches, just to keep the plants tidy.

We've been having these very cold winters. Has that been affecting them at all?

Magnolias are very lucky, the way they develop. They've got these bud sheaths,

which are very hairy.

And they protect the bud during winter,

so as long as these are still enclosing the flower,

then it's fine. It's when we get a late frost,

which, in Cornwall, is any time past February,

that's when any damage can occur.

Thanks to its illustrious horticultural history,

Trewithen has six magnolias classed as champion trees.

That means they are the largest of their kind in the UK.

And here is one of those champion trees.

This is Magnolia sargentiana,

and it's one of the Chinese species.

And the flowers are so exquisite,

they look like they've been cut out of silk.

But like any of the species, you have to wait a very long time

before you see it flower like that.

It used to be said that if you wanted to enjoy a magnolia,

then your grandparents would have had to have planted it many years ago.

But these days, thanks to some modern hybridising,

there's plants like this one, Star Wars,

which will flower in three to five years.

So that'll be something for you to enjoy - and your grandchildren.

We're staying in Cornwall

for more marvellous magnolias,

and joining Carol Klein in Glendurgan Gardens

with assistant head gardener Ned Lomax.

Just look at this - woo-hoo!

It is magnificent, isn't it?

Yes, it's beautiful. Beautiful.

It's huge! You just have no idea of the scale of it

until you stand underneath it.

Which magnolia is it, Ned?

-This one's Campbellii Alba.

-Right.

-From the Himalayas?

-That's right.

How old is it?

Not as old as you might think, really.

This was planted in the mid-'60s.

It's a decent size now, probably won't get too much bigger.

-What you're interested in is this flower production, isn't it?

-Yeah.

They're so lovely up there,

but it's a shame I can't actually see one.

-Well, if I can reach, I can get you one down.

-Can you?

-Yeah.

-I was thinking of climbing up the tree!

-How's your catching, Carol?

-Oh!

-You ready?

-Yeah.

Oh!

Got it! Look at that!

-It's heavy.

-Yes.

It's a beautiful one, isn't it?

-Of course, beetles pollinate it, don't they?

-That's right.

Because they were around magnolias long before bees.

Millions of years they've been around, yes.

Well, I love to see it like that,

-but in the distance...

-Yes.

-It's beautiful.

-Perfect. You can really appreciate it.

We're probably about a couple of weeks behind with most of the plants in the garden.

So usually this would be out in full flower by now,

but, as you see, it's getting there. Another week or so.

-Yeah. Which one is it, Ned?

-This is a long one...

-Right.

-Sargentiana.

-Robusta because it really is strong, isn't it?

-It is robust.

But, I mean, it's not the sort of plant

-you can really imagine in most...

-No, not many people have space for it.

No, they wouldn't, would they?

But we've got, um...

we've got two magnolias at Glebe Cottage.

We've got stellata, and then Leonard Messel.

And the great thing about them both

is they flower from being young plants.

-That's right.

-And also, they're on a scale that most people could...

Exactly. They'll fit in most gardens and you won't have to wait a lifetime for your results.

The flower bud itself will take maybe nine months to develop,

because this bud has to go all the way through the winter.

In the very coldest part of the winter, this furry cover protects it.

As soon as you get the sun on it, the bud will swell

and the casing will drop away.

-And these just peel back.

-They do.

They are like little mice, really!

They're just lovely.

So, as Carol said,

if you've not got the space for a thumping great magnolia tree,

a shrub can be just as satisfying.

Here's some quick planting tips from Monty Don.

This is a Magnolia stellata,

which has wonderful daisy-like white flowers in April.

It'll grow in almost any soil,

although it's happiest if it's slightly acidic

and practically any position,

though it does like some sunshine.

The only thing to avoid is early-morning sun.

Don't put it on an east-facing wall,

simply to protect it from spring frost,

when the buds on the flowers can be damaged.

But ideally in a west-facing position,

or what we've got here is northwest.

Now, I'm going to plant it here,

set back a little bit from the path.

And if you're planting any shrub,

keep it simple.

There we go, like that.

Now, magnolias have rather fleshy roots.

They can be quite easily damaged. They're brittle.

So when you take it out the pot,

be fairly careful.

Good root system on this, slightly pot-bound.

So what I'll do is just tease them a little.

Not to break them up, but just to stimulate growth...

..outside its confines of the pot,

as quickly as possible.

Now, although I'm not adding compost, what I will do is add some mycorrhizal fungi.

The purpose of this is to act as a conduit

from nutrients in the soil to the roots.

It speeds up the root growth and the way it can take up nutrients.

The important thing is to have it in direct contact

with the roots themselves.

Now, I'm going to give that a good soak,

and then mulch it. And the mulch is really important.

Where did I put the lid?

Still to come - mistletoe, moles, and how to grow mushrooms at home.

But now, let's look at one of our more intriguing trees.

This M is for monkey puzzle.

And here's a look at how it was first introduced in Britain.

Monkey puzzle trees have been something of a horticultural oddity

in British gardens since the Victoria era.

This avenue of trees in the grounds of Bicton College, Devon

offers an incongruous canopy to the journey up to the main house.

More incongruous still is the story of the tree's discovery

and subsequent journey to England from the Chilean Andes.

Only five seeds came back to Britain

with plant-hunter Archibald Menzies.

Menzies encountered them when they were served to him as a dessert

during a dinner party in the Chilean capital.

Intrigued by the nut-like seeds,

he pocketed his pudding and headed for home.

It was decades later before William Lobb

introduced the seeds commercially.

They became an instant hit.

The seeds of these particular trees

came from that original introduction from Chile.

When these trees were planted, of course,

they had no English name.

They already had a scientific name,

Araucaria araucana,

named after the Araucarian Indians,

who were the Indians in the area from where the trees,

the seed of the trees, was collected.

The name "monkey puzzle" came from an observer

of the trees in cultivation

who said, "Gosh, it would puzzle a monkey to climb one of those trees."

And so that name - monkey puzzle tree -

has actually stuck to this day.

These were planted out as a very early avenue,

probably the very first avenue,

of these newly introduced trees.

I think...although we have a concept today

of what these trees look like, where we see them in our gardens,

remember that at that time, they were a curiosity

and nobody had any idea, who was planting them,

what they would actually grow into.

In their native Chile,

the trees date back to the Jurassic period.

And this prehistoric ancestry

is largely responsible for the monkey puzzle's bizarre look today.

The tress are like they are

because they've evolved a dinosaur-deterrent habit.

They've got this enormously prickly foliage.

They've got these every tall trunks.

They evolve these tall trunks to move that foliage up

above a height which the dinosaurs could possibly eat them.

Of course, this is a case actually of co-evolution,

because as the monkey puzzle trees produce their canopies

ever higher and higher above the herbivorous dinosaurs,

so, of course, the herbivorous dinosaurs

evolved longer and longer necks

to try and actually eat the foliage,

which was becoming up above them.

And so what we've got here

is a mutual Cold War, if you like.

The trees trying to avoid the dinosaurs,

the dinosaurs evolving necks to go up.

But of course, the dinosaurs became extinct,

but here, in cultivation,

we still see the residue of that inherence.

And the great height of these trees,

coupled with a relatively small root ball,

do make it susceptible to high winds.

And this showcase avenue was all but destroyed in the 1920s

by a storm that is still remembered today.

In 1928,

when that great gale was,

it blew down around 30 trees in this avenue.

I mean...really ripped the heart out of the avenue,

if you can understand what I mean.

You couldn't believe that nature could be so cruel, really, in one way.

Luckily, the fallen trees had been planted with male and female seeds,

so it was possible to propagate replacements still standing today.

Now from one of our most unusual plants

to one we all recognise easily,

especially at the end of the year.

This M is for mistletoe.

And kissing and telling all about it

is James Wong.

Tenbury Wells is the mistletoe capital of the UK

and the auctions of holly and mistletoe that take place here

have been going on for over 100 years.

And although it looks calm at the moment, in a couple of hours,

everything you see here will be gone.

Mistletoe is found in many places in the west of England,

and it particularly likes apple orchards.

It's one of only a handful of our native evergreen plants.

We associate it with Christmas,

but the folklore goes back even further.

Now, everyone knows about kissing under the mistletoe,

but what most people don't know is the traditional rules state

you can only kiss under mistletoe with berries on it.

And every time you steal a kiss,

you've got to pick off one of these.

Which means, once you've picked them all off,

the free-for-all of the office Christmas party is well and truly over.

Unless, of course, you get a big old bunch like this!

The ancient Romans used to perform fertility rituals

under mistletoe.

But we don't quite go that far in public nowadays.

But it does explain where the kissing tradition came from.

There's so much more to mistletoe than quaint traditions

and stealing a kiss at Christmas.

For many, it can be a real money-maker.

Nick Champion has been running Tenbury's mistletoe auction for 30 years.

This year's crop is looking especially good,

as growing conditions have been perfect.

How many people are you expecting to come today?

We normally have about 100, 120 buyers

register at each sale.

So how much is in each one of these bundles? They look awfully heavy.

Well, in these ones in particular, they're probably about 30 or 40 pounds in weight in a bundle.

And how much in money does that get turned into?

On a good year, if supply is short,

they'll make £30 to £40 each.

It's quite abundant this year

and I would expect to see about £20 for them.

-When you see it in garden centres, a couple of sprigs will cost you maybe a couple of quid.

-Yes.

-So you really do get...

-Value for your money, yes.

I'm no mistletoe expert.

How do you judge the creme de la creme of mistletoe?

The best mistletoe has dark green leaves

and a very white berry.

The least attractive is the yellower leaves

and unripened berries, which are greener in colour.

-So you want the most dramatic colour difference?

-Yes.

Later, I'll be back at the auction

to find out how much this year's bumper crop is fetching.

Mistletoe has always fired the imagination.

In Christian mythology,

mistletoe was condemned to live as a parasite on other trees

as punishment because its wood was used

for the cross at Christ's crucifixion.

That's why they say, even today,

mistletoe can never sink its roots into good soil.

I've come to a local orchard to meet mistletoe expert Jonathan Briggs.

Mistletoe's so unusual-looking. What exactly is it?

Well, mistletoe is a hemiparasite of trees.

It grows on the tree branches, never grows in the ground.

So what it does is it uses the whole tree as a sort of root system.

It is green, it is photosynthetic,

so it produces all of its sugars from sunlight. It does all of that bit itself.

In a sense, all it's taking

is the water and the mineral salts.

-But not the nutrients?

-But not the nutrients.

I hear there's loads of it in this part of the country,

more than anywhere else. Why is that?

It's a plant that grows on trees, but it doesn't like woodland.

So it needs trees in open habitats, like this one we're in here.

The other thing that it wants, in Britain at least,

is some climatic conditions that are quite difficult to define,

but seem to be best found in the Severn and Wye catchment,

so Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire.

So how does mistletoe spread itself around in the tops of these trees?

It's spread by birds.

The berries are eaten by mistle thrushes,

who excrete the seeds out in a sticky string.

They stick to the bark of the tree,

and then they germinate.

Mistletoe has both male and female plants.

The female plant is harvested regularly for its berries,

but it's also important that the male plant is cut down,

to prevent it from over-running the tree.

And Reg Farmer has been doing just that.

He's been harvesting mistletoe for over 50 years,

using little more than a saw and a stick.

Hi there, Reg. I hear you're going to show me

-how to do all this business.

-Yes.

It will come down...

Wow! That's a lot easier than I thought.

-It just snaps off?

-It snaps.

It's quite brittle.

Cos this isn't very old, you see.

Would you like to have a go?

I'd love to have a go, Reg.

So, literally, it's just a saw on a stick?

It's just an ordinary saw on the end of a stick.

You made it look very easy.

Uh-huh...and then you kind of lower it down with this?

Are you busy tomorrow?

Do you have a lot of work you need helping with?

There we are - look at that!

That is Chelsea Flower Show ready. Look at that.

Beautiful.

So from the apple orchard to the auction.

It's time to find out how much today's bundles are going for.

16 again, 10 bid... 10 I'm bid, 12...

Now, there are 800 lots here,

but at the rate they're rattling through it, they'll be done in no time.

18 bid, 18...

Unlike most auction halls,

the people actually move to the lots

rather than the lots passing through a big hall.

It's quite difficult to get right in the centre,

because these rows are so packed close together.

There's a lot that's just gone for £32.

And the cheapest ones are about £16, and it seems to be all about the berries -

the number of berries, and how brightly coloured they are.

That's really quite a big price difference.

So what do you do with a huge bundle of mistletoe?

I've got this wedding on Saturday

and coming on the Tuesday,

we just thought it would be ideal to come up here and buy a nice quantity of really fresh mistletoe.

So you've got a whole cartload of holly and mistletoe. What are you going to do with it?

Taking it to Wolverhampton town centre

and we'll bunch it into smaller bunches.

I've got a big trailer, which should be groaning full when I head back to Suffolk.

You've come all the way from Suffolk to come here?

Well, Suffolk used to be a great cider-producing area.

After the war, they dug most of the orchards up,

so mistletoe is very scarce over there.

-It's on those apple trees that mistletoe normally grows.

-Absolutely.

-So you've come all the way down here.

-I've been coming here for 12 years.

I've had a great time learning all about mistletoe.

But for now, it's time to see if that kissing tradition works.

Thanks, James.

Now to an M that's as familiar in the kitchen

as it is in woods and forests.

Our next M is for mushrooms.

And we've got a couple of fun guys here with advice

on growing your own edible ones.

In a minute, Joe Swift.

But let's kick things off with Chris Beardshaw.

They can be beautiful, but deadly.

Some fragrant, delicate and edible,

and others used to make antibiotics.

They make bread rise and put bubbles in beer and champagne.

There's no doubt that fungi

are amongst the most important and versatile organisms on the planet,

in terms of their ecological and economic benefits.

Gardeners will be most familiar with them

because of smuts, rusts and rots.

This is a bracket fungus,

sitting on a rotting stump of Wych elm,

and it's performing perhaps the most important function of fungi.

It's rotting down the solid wood,

breaking down the cells,

releasing nutrients

and making those nutrients available

to the plants around it in the garden.

And this is a perfect example of where fungi thrive.

It's shady, it's cool,

and it's damp.

But it's not the bracket fungi I'm most interested in today -

it's the edible ones.

There's an extraordinary range of edible mushrooms available to us,

from the common field mushroom to things like this -

an exotic oyster.

And this is growing on a bale of straw,

but, as you can see, it's almost entirely white,

and that's because of the way the organism operates.

It's a very simple structure -

linear cells arranged in threads called mycelium,

and they exist almost entirely beneath the surface.

In this case, on the bale.

That's what gives it its white colour.

And it exists underground almost all year round,

only popping to the surface to fruit,

which is exactly what a mushroom is -

it's a fruiting body.

Now, you can buy kits to do at home.

And this is typical of what you get -

a bag of fresh straw.

You also get a bag of oyster grain spawn,

instructions, polythene sheet, the whole works.

What you have to do to start with is to tip boiling water into the bag,

a couple of kettlefuls of boiling water.

That sterilises the straw, killing any other mycelium

that may be present in the straw.

Then you break up...

..the spawn,

sprinkle it in,

and...once you've got it all in,

give the bag a good shake

and seal the bag.

Once you've done that, you have to put it somewhere dark and warm,

about room temperature, for about four weeks.

When I was a student, I used to shove the bales of straw under my bed,

which seemed to be the perfect place.

Then after four weeks, bring it out.

Two nights in a fridge is what's then required,

and that just promotes a bit of fruiting body growth.

Then break the bag open, put it onto a tray,

keep the tray moist, cover it in a sheet of polythene,

and then within four to ten days,

you should have your own oyster mushrooms.

Now, this isn't the only kit you can get.

You can also buy shiitake mushrooms.

They arrive looking a bit like this. It's a dowel peg impregnated with shiitake mycelium.

And what you'll need in addition to this

is a log from a deciduous tree

that's less than a month old.

Any deciduous tree will do, except a laburnum,

which has toxic sap, and therefore,

the sap will get into the mushrooms and make the mushrooms poisonous.

Once you've found your log,

you then need to drill a series of holes.

Knock the mycelium-infected dowels into the holes

and then the fungus will do the rest.

In a log like this, you can get about 20 or so pegs.

Once you've got them dotted amongst the timbers,

you have to seal the moisture in on the log.

You can do that by covering it in a polythene bag.

And then...

it has to go outside.

Now, the perfect place for it is where you find

fungi growing naturally,

which is right next to our bracket fungi,

and, incidentally, next to the hedgehog hut Chris Baines did a few weeks ago.

So you just drop the bag containing the log in the hedge,

and then insulate it with...

leaves.

And after six to ten months, you can then pull away the leaves,

take the log out of the bag, but leave it in the hedge.

Then, when the conditions are perfect,

what you'll get is a crop of shiitake mushrooms,

and the log will keep cropping for up to five years.

But if that all looks a bit too involved,

Joe Swift's option could be described as bog standard.

Now, this one is really, really very cheap,

but very easy to do.

You get a toilet roll,

put it on a plate,

preferably unbleached toilet roll, definitely white.

Put it on a plate, inside a plastic bag.

And then you get your kettle,

boiling water - it's got to be boiling water -

pour it all over the toilet roll,

completely soaking it.

You see it's expanding already.

Then you let it cool down.

Here's one I've done earlier,

which is already cooled.

It'll look something like that - nice and soggy.

Then you get these.

This is an oyster mushroom, and it's grain that's been coated with oyster mushroom spores.

One packet like that will do two toilet rolls.

You get half of the packet...

..empty it into your hand,

and you literally just place it

into the centre...

..of the toilet roll there.

Pour it right down the middle.

Now that's ready to go.

What you do is you seal the plastic bag up now.

Seal it tight.

You leave it for about two weeks.

And it's going to get to the consistency of maturing Stilton.

You'll notice that there's something going on there.

It really will start looking a bit mouldy.

But then after about two weeks,

you put it in the fridge to create the reaction, make sure that the mushrooms think that it's autumn,

and they'll start fruiting.

You slice some holes in the side

and the mushrooms will start coming out.

And basically, out of that, you should get a few good omelettes!

Thanks, Joe. And we're mixing things up now,

because our next letter isn't a typical one.

M is for miscellaneous.

Molehills are coming up.

But we begin with moss, and Alan Titchmarsh

on removing it if it's messing up your lawn.

Phew! Now, it's not all as long as that.

That's where the daffodils have been growing,

but it's now six to eight weeks since they finished flowering,

and safe to sever them by their stocking tops.

A week later, this is what it looks like.

Straw.

A hayfield that's just been mown.

But don't worry. In dry weather, if you water it every now and again,

it will come back and green up.

But watering will not improve this.

No daffodils have been grown here.

It's never been fed. It's never been weedkillered.

And it's never been moss-killered, and yet

I call it a lawn.

It seems to me it's no longer politically correct to have a proper lawn.

You have to put up with buttercups, daisies,

dandelions and plantains.

Well, I've done that for ten years.

And now I want a lawn that looks a bit like a bowling green.

The first thing to do

is to get rid of the moss.

And the thing to use to pull all that out

is this - a wire-toothed lawn rake.

It's wonderful for your stomach muscles.

If you've got a lot of lawn, you're going to get a lot of pain.

Better to find a quicker, easier method

of getting the moss out.

And that is a powered lawn raker,

fitted with a cylinder of wire teeth.

Make sure it's plugged into an earth leakage circuit breaker -

this is an electrical piece of equipment.

Keep the cable over your shoulder and out of the way.

Set it so that it's fairly high.

It doesn't want to be too low.

There are adjustable screws on it.

Put the grass box on straight,

and then away you go.

You'll be amazed how much comes out.

All that from just two square metres of turf.

Doesn't look very nice, but don't worry - it's going to get worse before it gets better.

What we're going to do now is to apply this -

a combined weedkiller, fertiliser and moss-killer.

The tendency is to put it on by hand.

It's uneven, it's wasteful.

Use a wheeled calibrated distributor like this.

It applies it evenly, and it goes a lot further.

Once you've applied it,

if no rain falls within a couple of days,

then you must water it in.

Then this is what happens.

The moss goes black

and the weeds start to grow, and then die.

After about a month,

if you make sure it doesn't get dry,

it'll look like this.

All you need now is the stripes.

MOTOR STARTS UP

Well...they're subtle.

But they're there.

And after that marvellous work from Alan,

we're sticking with mowing, but going back in time

for a look at the future of lawn mowing

as Tomorrow's World saw it in 1979.

There's a two-eyed monster on the loose on the lawns of Hampshire.

But unlike its ancestors,

this one is man's friend,

programmed to do his bidding.

In fact, it's an automatic lawn mower.

Designed by three Farnborough sixth formers,

the Grasshopper always moves in a straight line

until it comes to the lawn's edge.

When, by rolling its eyes,

it smartly crabs sideways,

switches into reverse,

and carries on.

But it isn't clever enough to cope completely with the unexpected.

And when this happens, Man the master must step in.

The motor, powered by mains electricity,

cuts the grass with standard rotary blades.

They're driven by this central motor,

rescued from an old washing machine.

There are two other motors.

This one drives the wheels.

This one, the eyes.

They both used to work windscreen wipers.

But the really clever bit is this probe.

When it detects the edge of the lawn,

it sends a message to a relay,

which stops the drive motor,

activates the eyes

and then puts it into reverse.

Mind you, the Grasshopper isn't totally labour-saving.

You do have to dig a trench all round your lawn

before it can start to work at all.

Perhaps that's why it never took off.

Now we end this miscellaneous mix with more lawn-related matters.

And here's Martin, Chris and Kate from the Springwatch team

on managing molehills.

Not everyone wants mammals in their gardens.

Certain sorts - nothing but trouble.

And the top troublemaker? The little gentleman in the velvet jacket.

-The mole, I'm afraid.

-Yeah.

Messageboards full of it.

How do you get rid of the mole in your garden?

Right. Here are a few top tips

from you. Right, here we go.

What do you do with that? Stick it in the molehill - lots of people have said this -

and when it goes round and round, it makes a noise,

frightens the mole off. Does it work?

No.

ALL LAUGH

-But loads of people said that!

-That would look so nice on your lawn.

All over the molehills. It would really help.

Then there's the bottle.

Bury the bottle, then when the wind blows...

frightens the mole away.

Fantastic. Does it work?

No.

What DOES work?

Smells. Pungent smells.

Loads of people say chopped-up onion

or mothballs.

Do they work?

Maybe.

-Really?

-Actually, yes.

And if you go really pungent... Here's - it's not very nice -

but it might work. Here it goes. This is from Peter Kiersley. He says,

"I know it might sound awful, but I put fresh dog poo down the molehills."

-No!

-Oh, goodness!

"It works for me every time, and they soon move to a sweeter-smelling area."

I don't think that they're that unlovable

that you'd spend a Sunday morning piping dog poo into their tunnels.

Do some people actually do it?!

I don't even want to imagine.

What about you, Kate? Any top tips?

I'm afraid my top tip is

that I just leave my moles alone.

I think moles know when there's a vendetta against them

and they go, "You know what? We don't care. We're just going to dig up your entire lawn."

I find that I'll just rake over the molehills,

so that the tunnels don't collapse,

and just leave them be.

And I have to say I haven't got a big problem with moles.

Now we've come to our final M

and it's a flower that adds a real zing of colour to your garden

in spring, through summer and even into autumn.

This M is for marigolds.

Also known as calendula.

And we start by rejoining a slightly wet Monty Don

for some tips on planting and colour co-ordination.

I was going to sow these seeds direct

in my garden for the senses.

These are some marigolds and poppies.

But I've been dodging showers all day.

The ground is now getting fairly wet, so I've decided to sow them indoors,

which the poppies won't like, because they don't transplant well.

But the calendula I can do.

Now, the reason I'm sowing them is for colour.

And obviously, this is to do with sight, that aspect of the senses.

And I'm aware that everything you can see in the garden

is to do with sight,

but what I'm trying to do in this particular garden

is to focus on how the senses work

and how we can manipulate them in the garden

to maximise them.

With colour alone, for example,

these calendula are an orangey yellow.

If I put them next to a blue or a purple,

the purple and the yellow will seem much, much stronger.

Orange and blue are opposites, and any opposite colour, like red and green,

you'll intensify the other colour.

On the other hand, if I put them next to a red or a pure yellow,

they'll spread the colour,

so you get a massed effect,

like we've got at the hot end of the border

in the long borders.

Now what I've got here is Calendula officinalis Radio,

which is a really good orangey double marigold.

So I will plant this

into plugs.

And when you're going into plugs

with annuals, which could just as well be planted outside,

just get them going in the greenhouse or cold frame

and then harden them off and then plant out the whole plug.

And just a pinch

in each plug.

Two or three. I'm not going to count them.

I can thin them out later if I feel

that there are too many.

But I won't worry if I've got a little clump.

And I'm already thinking

do I want to contrast them with a purple or a blue

or do I want to create a sort of fiery effect

and think in terms of yellows and reds to go with them?

The colour that won't look good with them

is pink in any form.

Or even whites.

So I'll have those in a different part

of the garden.

Now those are on there. I've got a little sieve here.

And I can just cover them up with a little bit of soil.

And, by the way, a little sieve when you're sowing seeds is invaluable.

And all that lumpy stuff

won't block the passages of the

plants.

And obviously, water them in well and label them.

And I'll do a few trays like this

and they can go into the garden.

And the poppies will be done when we get a properly dry day.

Thanks, Monty.

Now let's finish with Christine Walkden,

who says there is more to these flowers than meets the eye.

Marigolds - are they gorgeous or gaudy?

For some people, the marigold is a vibrant vision of summer,

a must-have for your border.

For others, well...it's the Jordan of the plant world -

bright and colourful...

but a bit in your face.

But if you ever see them in their thousands,

they completely transform a British landscape

into something utterly Mediterranean.

This rare sight is a field full of pot marigolds,

or Calendula officinalis, being grown as a crop.

It's thought that their oil will replace the poison in paint

and reduce the dangerous pollution given off by paint fumes.

We're using the oil from the pot marigold as an alternative

to volatile organic compounds,

which are used in paints and varnishes and suchlike.

We're also using it as a wood preservative.

So the colour is totally insignificant? It's just the oil from the seed?

The colour is very nice, but we're only after the oil.

It has been used in the past as a colorant

in things like butter and cheese, and as a fabric dye.

But that's all taken from the petal, which is hand-harvested and extremely expensive.

Here we're just looking at the seed, which we harvest mechanically.

So when will we be able to see this fantastic oil used in paint?

We've still got quite a bit of development work to do,

both in shelf life and pigment, but hopefully, fairly soon.

So let's be clear about these marigolds.

We've got the French marigold that's commonly used in our gardens

and often popped inside greenhouses to keep whitefly away.

It's a large single flower,

dark green foliage that's aromatic

and the leaf is divided.

Whereas the pot marigold, grown in pots historically as a beautiful hardy pot plant,

well, the differences are that it's got a flat head,

matt green foliage

that doesn't smell.

It's this marigold, the calendula, that's amazingly versatile.

You can eat the flowers in salad,

turn them into tea,

dye your clothes with them

or make a healthy mouthwash.

In 2007, the calendula helped win gold at Chelsea

as part of Sarah Eberle's Mars Garden -

a garden made up of plants specially chosen to keep astronauts safe

and healthy on the red planet.

The marigold is well known in medicine.

Recently, after intense research,

the European Medicines Agency

officially recognised the plant's soothing, antiseptic properties.

Something that herbalists have believed for centuries.

It was always used in the house when we didn't have antiseptic creams.

You would use the marigold flower.

If you were now stung by the bee,

you could just rub it onto your skin

and the inflammation would go down.

It is used in almost 90%

of our creams, ointments, toiletries.

How do you capture that in a solution?

Well, there are many ways of extracting marigold flowers.

This is the traditional way. You just put them in the jar,

cover with a little bit of oil.

I'm going to do it with organic sunflower oil.

It's light oil and it will extract beautiful

colour and all the resinous material out of the flowers.

And now I have to, of course...

close it down, because we don't want anything else coming in.

And this will be left in the sunshine to infuse.

Ten days or so, and then strained through a sieve

-and this is what you get.

-Wow!

-Beautiful colour oil.

-Isn't that beautiful?

And what would you use this for?

Small cuts, burns...

anything that needs antiseptic quality to it.

So instead of using French marigolds in our garden, we should really be putting pot marigolds in

and enjoy them?

Ah, they should be celebrated, definitely.

Thanks, Christine.

And as marigolds like full sun, they're probably loving it today.

That's all for now.

Do join us next time for another A To Z Of TV Gardening.

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