Letter T 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 letter T.

Here's what's coming up:

We're training trees with Alan Titchmarsh.

Provided you've got an inside leg measurement of more than 24 inches,

you'll see exactly why they're called step-over apple trees.

Rachel De Thame visits a garden that is a cut above the rest.

It's the best, the oldest

and certainly the most expensive topiary garden in Britain.

And a fight against blight. Can Alys Fowler save her tomatoes?

This structure is the only thing that is keeping me

and the tomato in hope that we will still get ripening fruit.

Just some of the treats we have in store.

But let's begin with a wildflower that originated in Asia

and then exploded in popularity across Europe,

to such an extent that in the 17th century,

a single bulb could sell for thousands of pounds.

T is for tulip.

Let's meet a couple of gardeners who've got a real passion for them.

We bought the property in 1994.

It had been empty for three years,

but previously owned by a sisterhood of Anglican nuns.

Of course, the house has got huge history

because it dates back to the 16th century,

and prior to that,

there was a structure on-site that's underneath the 16th century part

that was part of the Benedictine monastery.

When we first decided to open the garden to the public,

we opened in 1998, so we've been open 10 years now.

Our first thought was to plant 2,000 different roses, but of course

they start to bloom in late May, early June.

There's a huge season in front of all that.

Now, why would your visitors come to you in March and April

if you've only got roses?

Of course, by under-planting the rose beds with thousands and thousands of tulips,

we have a magnificent display of colour

and interest for quite a long time

because we've planted over early, mid and late flowering species

so that there's a lot going on over a five, six, seven-week period,

depending on the weather.

Of course, the whole great explosion of interest in tulips

occurred during the 17th century, when of course this house was already established,

people were living here, life was going on.

So it has lived through all that and it seems, therefore,

quite appropriate that we represent that.

We plant on average between 15,000 and 20,000 tulips every year.

So at this point in time,

there's something over 135,000 tulips in the ground.

But we tend to find that we get a good three years

out of 80% of the bulbs. Some multiply, some we don't see again.

We find that any of the strong reds do seem to be

the ones that will come up again and again.

Probably the best performing tulips are the Darwins and the Cottage.

They are very strong.

I'm particularly fond of the Species Tulips

and we've got several different varieties growing down here.

It's on a side of the house that,

although predominantly in the shade for a lot of the day,

this particular bed juts out and catches the sun for most of the time,

and it suits this particular group of tulips extremely well.

The Tulip Sylvestris that you see here is known as the leafy tulip

and in fact, it was also known as the weed of the cultivated land.

Apparently, it turned up in vineyards and there were times

when the odd vineyard might be seen as bright yellow

just because of the tulip that was growing at their feet.

It's thought that maybe they found their way into large areas of Europe -

Italy, France, in particular -

simply because they moved with the vineyard's stock.

I think this is gorgeous just for its bright, sunny-yellow colour.

Cheers my spirits.

This one is the Apricot Parrot Tulip.

They were around when the Dutch had all their mania for tulips

and you'll see them in the early wonderful flower paintings,

er, the Dutch canvases.

They disappeared but they have been re-bred

and this is what we're now getting.

I think they're absolute knockouts.

Wow, just look at these! Another type of Species Tulip.

This is Tulipa Clusiana 'Tinka'.

The colours in the petals are just gorgeous.

This lovely pale lemon inside colour

and on the outside, suffused with a pinky red.

Absolutely adorable and the petals opening up as if to the sun,

saying, "Soak me up, soak me up, I love it!"

So long as they're happy with us, so long as we're meeting their needs

and we can keep them healthy, we'll carry on planting them.

Now he knows there are 6,500 varieties out there

and he's a bit of a train spotter!

I've only got 500 of them, another 6,000 to go! Oh, dear me!

Tulips are not tricky flowers to grow

but it's still worth following these tips offered up by Monty Don.

I love tulips.

I love everything about them.

They're probably the most voluptuous of all flowers.

Also, they bring to spring that first flush of really intense colour.

They have a silky vibrancy that almost no other flower has,

and certainly no other at that time of year.

In fact, here in the lime walk, I'm planting white tulips.

Last year I planted some Nicholas Heyek, which is a new tulip on me.

Lovely, ivory, pale, pale yellow.

Some of that will stay in there,

but I'll top up with White Triumphator

and that is a tall, simple tulip

with perfect white flowers that last for weeks and weeks.

Next year, I get the mixture of the two.

Tulips aren't cheap so if you can buy them in bulk,

they will be a lot better value.

What you're looking for, however you get them, is a nice, healthy bulb.

Firm, no sign of mould, and looking fresh.

A tip to get them looking reasonably natural

is to put the same number in each bay

but don't try and plant them uniformly.

Just squeeze them in between the plants,

in this case it is the wallflowers.

OK, now they're spaced out.

I would do the whole lot, I would lay them all out on the ground

before I planted the first one.

There's a big debate about the best way to plant tulips.

You can either treat them as annuals, in which case

you might as well just bury them under the soil, and they'll do fine

and they'll like the topsoil and feed well from it,

or you can treat them as a perennial, coming back year after year.

That's tricky.

You can only do that if you have really good drainage,

if they get a good summer baking, and even then, it doesn't always work.

But if you want them to come back year on year,

you must plant them deep.

That means at least four inches and, if possible,

six inches under the ground.

To do that, a bulb planter is a real help.

This is perfect for tulips, the right size.

So I take out a plug and that's the start,

but it's not really deep enough.

So I want to work that out, get in there and you can see already,

it's a bit of a fiddle. Then, get them in the ground.

And that goes in.

And it's covered over. That's fine on sandy soil, not too difficult.

But over the years,

I've come to the conclusion that it's best to treat tulips as an annual

and if they flower again the following year, that's a bonus.

That way, you get a really good display every year,

and then you can top it up as the years go by.

Planting them is dead easy.

Simply, with a trowel, loosen the soil, pop them in - that's it.

It does mean that you can get a lot in the ground pretty quickly.

Still to come: tomatoes, the best tools for your garden,

and how to achieve a tropical look.

But now to a gardening technique that gives aesthetically-pleasing results

whilst being very practical, too, especially in small gardens.

With this T, we're training trees.

So, let's get twisting and turning with Toby Buckland.

Drawing influence from historic garden design is a brilliant way of enhancing your own garden.

The art of training and manipulating trees into impressive living structures

is one technique that has been around for centuries.

Whether it's weaving hazel into a green and dappled tunnel,

training fruit, or sculpting with topiary,

there seems to be no end to our love affair with training trees.

With that in mind, I've got an idea to use one of these techniques -

pleaching - in my family back garden.

Now, essentially, pleaching is growing a row of trees,

so they've got a clear leg, a trunk that comes up to a bushy top.

The tops are all trained horizontally,

so they grow one into the other and can be grafted together.

So the whole thing becomes like a hedge on stilts, basically.

Starting point, good chunky stakes.

These are going to support a framework that

I can train the branches of my trees down to

and I've hammered these in every 1.5 metres, every 5ft.

These are an ornamental crab apple.

A wonderful tree that produces beautiful blossom in spring

and they're followed by these round apples.

And here, grown as a hedge, it will screen off my veg patch nicely.

Now, to make the framework.

The material for this is your common or garden bamboo.

This is going to provide the support in-between those

posts for the branches.

As soon as your bamboo's all lashed together and it's nice

and solid, put it in place on the posts.

Now, the longer bamboo cane down the middle makes all the difference

to how easy this is.

You can just rest on the top like that,

while you tie the sides in place.

And then it's onto the rest.

Now onto the pleaching.

Bend down branches that fit with the frame I've created,

so the branches that are spaced ever 30cm apart

up the main trunk.

I'm just going to loosely hold them

in place with a twist of the wire like that.

It doesn't want to be tight cos if it is, it can strangle the branch

and kill it off.

I'll do the same on this side.

You can see we're already creating those beautiful tiers that will

give this such a traditional and formal look.

Now, branches like this one, that grow out from the main trunk, between

my bamboo framework, I'm just going to snip that back to a few buds.

By snipping them off, not only will I get blossom on there,

followed by fruit,

these little stubs with the leaves on will encourage

the stem of my apple tree, the trunk, to thicken up,

so eventually I'll be able to dig out these posts altogether

and the framework of bamboo will just be supported by the branches

of the tree. It'll look a lot more airy and light.

And over the summer, I'll get new branches forming.

First on this tier, then the tier above,

right to the top of the bamboo structure.

And also, over time, the hedge will get wider and wider. It really will

start to look magical.

Training trees is something you can do even if space is at a premium.

Here's Alan Titchmarsh with a few more tips.

There is a way of fitting fruit trees into the smallest garden

and that involves using what are known as single tier espaliers.

More commonly known as step-over trees.

You need an apple tree like this on a dwarfing root stock.

That means it's never going to be one that you can sit under in your

deckchair, but it will keep it small and in proportion to your garden.

It's these sideways-spreading arms, the first tier of the espalier,

that you aim to keep,

so anything which is coming up here needs to be snipped off.

Sideways, lateral growth you're encouraging here,

not growth that's going to come upwards.

But like all trees, even a small one like this,

needs to be planted to last.

Spend as much on the hole as you do on the tree.

And that means working into the bottom loads of well-rotted manure.

Some in the bottom of the hole and some on the soil around so that

when you put the plant in, you can return it, mix it, with that.

Now, planting depth is quite important.

Now these roots here, if they're really tightly-bound in to

that root ball, just tease them out a bit.

And then you can fill that with more manure and more soil,

just firming it in with your fist or your welly, as you go.

Now, it's had canes to support it in the nursery

while it's been trained, but I've put in a post and wire framework,

which you can tighten to give you a nice support.

So the thing to do now is to take off these canes

and gradually tie these horizontal stems back into that new wire.

Once those little tiny plastic ties have come off and this cane has

come out, you'll see that it's quite

capable really of supporting itself.

But not for long.

And these now need to be tied in to make sure that they take to

this framework, rather than the previous one.

I'm using plastic-coated wire here, which is

fine for winding round that and then the stem.

You can do this right the way along the stem.

It's a lovely satisfying job, this.

There we are. We've got the makings of our step-over tree.

The one thing that people worry about with fruit trees is pruning.

The thing with these is it couldn't be simpler.

Most of your pruning takes place in summer,

that's why it's called summer pruning and summer pruning tends to restrict

growth, whereas pruning things hard back in winter encourages vast

spring growth, so by pruning in summer

and simply shortening these side shoots, or laterals,

back to about finger length, you will build up the fruiting spurs,

these short, stocky shoots that carry blossom and then apples.

It looks incredibly simple. That's because it is.

You will find in the middle, often enough,

a shoot which is deciding, "No, I'm sorry.

"I want to be a proper apple tree! I want to grow tall."

Don't leave it on. Cut it back to finger length.

Now, one year on, you've got five fruits on this,

but each tree can easily have a dozen of them.

Feed them well every year, make sure they don't go short of water

and keep up this summer pruning.

The great thing then though is, provided you've got an inside leg

measurement of more than 24 inches,

you'll see exactly why they're called step-over apple trees.

And we're staying with the ornamental use of trees

and joining Rachel De Thame.

This time, it's all about trimming, as your next T is for topiary.

A visit to the gardens at Levens Hall is like taking a walk back

through history.

It's the best, the oldest

and certainly the most expensive topiary garden in Britain.

Some of these shrubs and trees were planted more than 300 years ago

and the layout has barely changed since the 1690s.

Some of the planting may change and the topiary gets clipped,

but above all there's a real sense of continuity with this garden

that links the past with the present and the future.

Nestling in the northern topiary garden is a small

house which is where the history of the garden begins.

This was built for the original designer for the garden,

a Monsieur Guillaume Beaumont back in 1690,

and it's still the head gardener's house today.

Since Monsieur Beaumont designed the gardens,

there have only been ten head gardeners.

Currently occupying the title with a mere 15 years at Levens is

Chris Crowder.

Some of the topiary shapes are extraordinary.

-How much are you allowed to change those?

-Well, they are amazing.

Certainly, some of them have been here 300 years.

We go round the outlines of the oldest and the biggest ones, but we plant new ones of our own

and there's about a dozen down there that it's our generation that

forms that shape and the generations to come will have to follow our outlines.

Most of them haven't got names. They're all different.

There's about 100 of them.

But the Great Umbrellas, these huge ones above our heads, ideal for sheltering on a wet day.

All I can see actually is this sea of bedding,

all these people working on it.

How many bedding plants do you estimate you put in every year?

It's about 10,000 or 15,000 and of course,

we change it twice a year, so we've been through the beds already

putting in the spring pansies and tulips. It stocks this summer.

I'd love to stay and help you plant all these but actually even

-better than that, I'd like to go and see the rest of the garden.

-OK, we'll go for a walk.

The first thing that strikes me

-is just how strong the garden is, in terms of structure.

-It certainly is.

-These great beech hedges running off into the distance in this direction.

-How old do you think these are?

Before my time, before anybody's time. Possibly 300-years-old. But certainly on a map of 1730.

And you can see how gnarled these shapes have become,

these pieces of beech, as we've clipped them year by year.

And how full of holes they are now.

They're coming to the end of their natural lives and it's a wonder some of them stand up, really.

It's a fantastic structure. It's almost like a cathedral

-with bits of light just coming through the gaps in the leaves.

-Yeah.

And then you just come out into the light again.

This is known as the Beech Circle. In a way, it's a quiet, still spot in-between the big

hits of the borders that way and the borders that way.

What is it, do you think,

for visitors today that they love about the garden?

I think when they first come in, they're absolutely gobsmacked at the sight of this topiary.

Its age, its size and the extent of it all. It's such a visual feast.

I hope when they go round the rest of the gardens, they actually find a huge interest really in the borders.

There's a lot beyond this particular patch of garden, as we've seen.

It's also on a reasonable scale.

It's only six or eight acres, the entire garden,

so comparisons can be made with home borders.

This is the man, isn't it? "Monsieur Beaumont, gardener to King James II.

"He laid out the gardens at Hampton Court Palace and at Levens."

And many other places, we believe. But Levens is the only survivor.

Although it's got such a huge sense of history,

it doesn't hang heavily round our necks.

It's our garden to do with now and next year, it's always developing.

So it's a living garden right into the future.

That was really impressive.

Let's move away from the ornamental and head towards an edible garden.

Up next is a fruit that loves the sun

and turns up in most of our savoury dishes and salads.

T is for tomatoes.

And we're out shopping with Alys Fowler.

A must for my salads are tomatoes.

For me, they completely capture the taste of summer.

But because they're so cheap to buy, I'm not going to bother to sow any.

Instead, my friend Dave

and I are heading off to a car boot sale where they sell young plants.

Whatever you're buying, check that the leaves are healthy and take

the plant out of the pot to make sure that the roots

are well developed but not pot-bound.

-Do you know what tomatoes these are?

-My mother-in-law grew them.

-She gave them to us yesterday.

-Does she grow good tomatoes?

She does actually, yeah.

Do you know if she grows them in a greenhouse or outside?

In a greenhouse.

-I'll take a gamble. How much are they?

-20p.

'If you don't want to gamble, it's best to buy plants which have been

'labelled, so you know exactly which variety of tomato you're getting.'

This 20p plant and this 50p plant have quite a lot of difference

and I'm beginning to slightly regret buying this one

because this is a named variety,

so I know where I'm going and it's clearly a much healthier plant.

So I'm going to put this down as a bit of a loss

and buy one of these as well.

But tomatoes have one big enemy, blight,

an airborne fungus that can destroy the plants, leaves, fruit

and all, and those growing outdoors are most at risk.

Because the fungal spores spread through the air

and thrive in our warm, wet summer weather.

So I want to hedge my bets

and keep one plant growing indoors as security.

I don't have room for a full-size greenhouse,

so I'm going to custom-build my own with my handy friend Sid.

Greenhouses serve two main purposes.

They protect your plants from the cold and help to keep out pests

and diseases.

I want my greenhouse to be beautiful, as well as effective,

so I'm making it out of some salvaged 1930s windows,

joined together by timber supports and angle brackets.

All up, it's cost me £160.

OK, so it's a little eccentric, but I love it.

Out the way.

-Perfect.

-Mind your fingers.

We'll see if they fit.

-Yeah.

-They do.

-Yeah.

-There's a really eerie light inside.

-Open it out.

Yeah.

It's going to be perfect.

I broke my heart last year over tomatoes.

I grew so many different varieties and I watched them

all go down to blight. So this year, I said no tomatoes, I'm not going to grow a single tomato.

It was my big protest to the summer and yet,

here I am in May with a tomato. And it's thanks to the car boot sale because at 50p,

if it doesn't work, if we have an appalling summer,

if the blight comes back, well, I lost 50p.

And if it does work, I have lots of lovely tiny tomatoes

because Gardener's Delight is one of the best, easiest tomatoes to start off with.

Tomato plants are hungry plants,

so you need to feed them with a kind of vitamin tonic.

There are bottles of seaweed feed that you can buy,

but I prefer to make my own for free with nettles.

I literally throw nettles into a bucket,

add water and leave them to rot.

This makes an amazing nutrient-rich soup,

but be warned though, it smells revolting!

The point is, it's good for the tomato.

And if you want lovely tomatoes,

you have to suffer a bit at the beginning.

I've got one well-established tomato that a friend generously gave me

a few weeks ago.

That's the one I've chosen to closet in my new mini greenhouse.

It's been out on the patio until now, so I'm moving it indoors

and hoping for the best.

But it's not all good news.

As the days get warmer, the inevitable happens.

Tomato blight arrives in the neighbourhood,

killing all my outdoor tomatoes.

As I garden organically, I don't want to use chemicals to fight it off.

This structure is the only thing that's keeping me

and the tomato in hope that we'll still get ripening fruit.

If even a single spore gets in there, the whole thing is over.

So far, things are looking good. If I only go in to water

when necessary, I should get ripe fruit by the end of the month.

It seems I spoke too soon.

A couple of weeks later and blight has reached into my greenhouse,

shrivelling my plants and making the fruit totally inedible.

That's another year lost.

I am resigned, these days, to the fact that I cannot really grow

tomatoes, even when I try and build funny greenhouses for them.

We've had lots of wet, hot, humid days

and this dear, beautiful, large, lovely

plant is now riddled with blight.

Black stems, black leaves and eventually black fruit.

This is truly heartbreaking and so that's it -

I don't think I'm ever going to bother with tomatoes

until somebody brings me an honest-to-God blight-resistant tomato

and says you can grow it outside and it won't get it.

But blight doesn't strike everywhere.

So I don't want to put anyone off from trying

because there's nothing quite like the taste of a home-grown tomato.

Thanks, Alys. And now we're joining Toby Buckland,

who is sharing some tips on how best to plant tomatoes.

These were sown back in March.

Whenever you're planting tomatoes, it's essential that they're

given a good drink so the compost is moist before they go in the ground.

And there literally are so many ways to grow them.

There are those that can be grown outside

and ones that need a protected environment under glass.

Now, there's also two types of tomatoes.

There are those that are grown as cordons on long single stems

and those as bushes.

And I always think that in a greenhouse,

the cordons are the ones to go for cos they're more space efficient.

And you get heavier crops over a longer period.

The time to plant your tomatoes is

when you notice flowers start to form on the stems.

Now this is a cordon tomato, a variety called Rosada.

Its party trick is it has thin skins

and that is particularly good for greenhouse tomatoes

because the sun streaming in through the glass can tend to thicken them.

Before planting, because it's a cordon, I'm going

to remove the side shoots.

These appear just where the leaves meet the main trunk of the plant.

We're going to pinch them off.

That channels the plant's energy into producing a better crop of fruit.

No need to worry that you're pinching off any flowers or fruit

because those don't form in the leaf axles.

They always form in-between the leaves,

just come straight out from the stem like that.

As long as you leave those shoots on,

you're guaranteed to maintain your fruit.

The way I'm growing the tomatoes in here is using ring culture.

It's a technique that's been around years.

The ring refers to plastic pots with the bases chopped off them.

Now these are important because tomatoes have two types of roots.

There's shallow roots that gather nutrients

and they have deep roots that hunt for moisture in the soil.

And by encouraging the shallow roots, the nutrient-gathering ones,

you can really boost the productivity of your plants.

Where these bottomless pots come in, is in planting,

and looking after the tomato as it grows.

Just going to set this one into the soil at the usual level,

just covering the root ball.

I'm dropping the pot over the plant and then each week,

I'll carefully earth them up with a couple of centimetres of good

compost until the pot is almost filled.

This will encourage the plant to send out feeder roots that will

soon fill the pot.

So I can start to feed the plant with my tomato fertiliser once the fruit

starts to set into the container, so none of the food is wasted.

And when I want to water the plant, I water the soil around the outside.

Really concentrates how well the plant grows

and can improve performance drastically

and I'm going to have a row of plants here, spaced 60cm apart.

Because this is a cordon tomato, the main stem needs to be trained.

You can use a cane to train your tomatoes up,

but personally I like to use string attached to a cross-pole support.

In this case, a piece of plumber's pipe.

Simply tie the string to the top

and then run it down to the stem of the plant and loosely tie it on.

Each week, train the stem to wrap around the string to keep it

tidy and productive.

And don't forget to keep pinching out those side shoots over

the coming weeks.

If you prefer growing your tomatoes the traditional way,

in grow bags, plant no more than two plants per bag.

This gives them the room they need to flourish.

There are lots of horticultural products on the market,

like cane holders to keep your plants well-supported in grow bags.

Or there are bespoke ring culture pots similar to my DIY version

that I used in the greenhouse.

Outside, there are other tricks to use.

And I'm going to plant my outdoor tomatoes in the veg patch

of my family back garden.

The most important thing with growing tomatoes outdoors is

the situation - full sun and shelter, they're essential.

When growing in the ground, I like to prepare the soil with lots

of compost and then stick stout canes

in, two feet apart, in staggered rows.

What I also do, this is a good trick,

is bury tin cans with the bottoms taken off them next to the canes.

These act like funnels, making for fast watering during summer

when you don't have a lot of time to get out to your plants.

Just guides the water down to the roots where it percolates

out from the cans for the plants to lap up.

When it comes to varieties,

there are specific types of tomato that do well outdoors.

Look for varieties

that are listed as early producers.

So Red Alert, Gardener's Delight, they tend to grow quickly and

crop quickly, so even if the weather turns bad, you do get some tomatoes.

Another group of tomatoes to go for are those listed as Russian

or from the Eastern Bloc. Koralik is one variety we're growing

here that's particularly blight-resistant.

And this plant is called Black Russian.

Medium-sized fruits. They're mahogany and delicious, absolutely lovely,

particularly in a sunny year because when the weather's good in summer,

tomatoes grown outdoors, well, there's just nothing to beat them.

The flavour is fantastic.

Any gardener knows that dedication and time are key

when it comes to having a great garden.

But there's also nothing like having the best kit for the job.

Because our next T is for tools.

And Joe Swift and Carol Klein are sharing some of their favourites.

-You show me yours and I'll show you mine!

-All right.

-You've got to have a fork and a spade, right?

-Yeah.

And these are my favourites. I've got quite a few.

But these are the ones that I use all the time and they were my mum's.

-Aw. Stainless steel?

-Yeah.

-Really nice size.

-Aren't they?

-You like that, don't you?

-You could have your breakfast with that one.

-You could.

It also shows you, if you buy good quality stuff,

it will last several lifetimes.

Yeah, and with people like me, who leave their stuff out

all the time, stainless steel really pays for itself. It really does. But what about that?

Well, this is brilliant on the allotment, an azada hoe.

They use them all around the world.

Yeah, they come in all sorts of shapes and sizes.

This is quite a big one. Some of them have two prongs at the back.

There's a guy on my allotment called Michael who does everything with it.

He digs with it, weeds, plants and harvests with it.

You can do so many things with it.

Especially leaning on it!

Yeah. You're a man of the soil, Joe.

I can see you using that all the time.

-But some of the tools I use most...

-Chopsticks!

You're famous for your chopsticks!

But they're so good for pricking out, they're just ideal.

-Seed planting, if you're station sowing.

-I'm converted. I've been watching you on the telly.

-You haven't, have you?

-I have. Now my missus is going, "Where's the chopsticks gone?"

-I've got them in the allotment, they're brilliant. Really good tool.

-They're ideal.

But this is probably the thing that I use most. It's my penknife.

-That's seen a bit of action.

-Yeah, I dread to think how many cuttings I've taken.

But it's simple, straightforward, does the job - that's the thing.

-Yeah, that's a really nice knife.

-It's beautiful.

-Surprised you haven't lost that one.

Here's something that's maybe not so beautiful an object, that's for sure.

-Cable ties.

-Yeah.

-These are brilliant.

I was at Gardeners' World Live last year and I started the allotment and

someone said, "You know when you're tying beanpoles in

"and doing avenues of boundary canes and stuff, cable ties, cable ties!"

So I went off to the shop and bought a bag and they're brilliant

because you don't need to tie a knot. And they keep them really tight.

It's a man thing, getting excited about a cable tie!

-Can you undo them?

-You need a knife but you can actually undo them.

They are reusable. They're recyclable.

You slip a knife in there and then you slide it out.

-Brilliant! Fantastic!

-Not a lot of people know that.

-What you need now is a really good knife.

-That's true.

-I'll do a swap!

-No, thanks.

With the basics covered, we're going a bit wild now,

as our last T is for tropical gardens and this one is based,

believe it or not, in the West Midlands.

My name's Dave McKenna and I'm a butcher by trade.

I've been a butcher all my life. I'm 57 years of age.

I had a traditional garden with the lawns

and all your normal run-of-the-mill plants.

And I wanted something different.

It was a case of - I'll try and make a jungle.

And I went to this chap's garden and seen a banana tree,

"Wow!" That was it and I never looked back.

Five years ago, six years ago, when we actually started the tropical

garden, it was a case of there wasn't that many tropical plants about.

So you had to subsidise by using English-looking

plants for large leaf. And now, it's getting better.

Because of all the climate change

and the nurseries are getting more adventurous.

We started off with Chinese and Japanese, I've gone further afield

now, to call it Indonesia, I can put any plant I can put my hands on.

When I went to Thailand for the first time, four or five years ago,

as soon as I got off that airplane, it was a case... I'm home.

No matter where I looked, there was plants I just fell in love with

and I didn't want to come home. And I've been back ever since.

I've got no favourites because they all suffer with jealousy.

If it's a case where I spend a little bit more attention on one, the others

will start sulking, so it's the case they all have the same

amount of care and there's not one favourite plant at all.

And that's hand on heart, that is.

CHIMES

Over the summer, it's quite easy, it looks after itself.

You just go round with a pair of scissors or clippers

and tidy up as I go along.

I like to go round with the old watering can or the hosepipe.

By doing this, you can actually look at the plants

and if they need that extra bit of care or attention or

it's in the wrong place, I just move it about.

Find its level of happiness.

In the winter time, a lot of the plants we have,

I have to walk round and I take up about 50% of the plants.

Now if I take them up, pot them up,

put them in cold stores or in a greenhouse where they need to be

temperature controlled, or some of the harder ones, I can leave

outside, covered in soil with jackets on, so they're all nice and snug.

But I've still got a nice display at any given time through

the winter, in the winter months.

The bamboos and the Cordylines and just the ordinary trees.

The garden is actually 80ft in length by 60ft at its widest point

cos it narrows down.

But I made the garden longer and bigger by so many paths

and that was only like an evolution thing where you used to

just have a path down the garden and of course, when you

come into a garden, if you see it all in one spot, the surprise is over.

But if you put barriers there

and start getting pathways going round,

it gives people more time and you've got more control on plants

and you can actually put more plants in. So if you do a pathway,

it's the case where I've gained more space,

but you haven't lost anything in plants.

We've always got more room in the garden for plants!

As long as the wife's out shopping, or at work, you can

bring as many plants as you like!

It's always amazing to see all the different things people can

do with their gardens. That's all from us today.

Until our next A To Z Of TV Gardening, goodbye.

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