Letter X, Y & Z The A to Z of TV Gardening

Welcome to the A-Z Of TV Gardening,

where we sift through all your favourite TV gardening programmes

and dig up a bumper crop of tips from the best experts in the business.

Flowers, trees, fruit and veg,

letter by letter, they're all coming up a treat.

Everything we're looking at today begins with the letters X, Y and Z.

Here's what's coming up... The plant that gets Hugh Dennis reminiscing...

We had a massive yucca in our garden

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

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

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

We should look at the environment as a whole. Here at Twycross, we're looking at the bigger picture.

Just some of the treats we have in store.

So let's begin with X.

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

that deliberately keeps water usage to a minimum

with plants that don't get very thirsty.

This X is for Xeriscaping.

To show why it can make sense,

Steve Backshall went to one of America's hottest destinations -

Las Vegas.

Las Vegas is the fastest-growing city in the US,

with over 4,000 people moving here every month.

It's the residents of Las Vegas that use most of its water

for drinking, washing, sewerage, dish washers, washing machines.

But the biggest user isn't inside the house.

In the summer, 90 percent of domestic water is used outside

and the greediest culprit of all - the humble lawn sprinkler.

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

Much of it simply evaporates into the air

and is blown away.

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

But it is possible to have a garden in the desert without wasting so much water.

The McDoniel Elementary School has planted a new xeriscape,

or desert-style garden.

Hilarie Robison of the Southern Nevada Water Authority explains.

-What did it look like before?

-These front areas were all covered in grass,

which requires a lot more water than we get through rain,

so these desert plants are much more efficient

and can survive with an efficient amount of water.

What's the traditional attitude of the people living around here towards water and the use of water?

We have had such growth over the last 10 to 20 years,

people come from different places and they don't understand the desert environment.

They want to bring with them the plants and the shrubs and the trees from wherever they came from.

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

and how important and crucial water is to life

and how limited a resource it is.

Why choose to set up a project here in this school?

The school is the perfect place for education.

Young people tour the garden, learn about desert plants

and how important water is here in the Mojave Desert.

ALL: Whoa!

-BOY: That's a big one.

-TEACHER: OK, now we're talking!

What's going to happen if people carry on using water the way they do now?

If they continue to use water as they do now, we'll be in a lot of trouble.

They need to cut back and use less water,

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

Thanks, Steve. Some of the best plants to use in xeriscaping are cacti.

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

But first, let's meet Brian Fearn,

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

A cactus is a plant that's lost its leaves

and the function of the leaves has been taken over by the stem,

which has become green.

The spines that it's got

are to prevent animals from getting at the water that the plant is storing.

The ribs are to prevent the plant from bursting when it takes up water rapidly,

so it acts like a concertina.

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

We were on holiday in Scarborough.

There was a greengrocers shop adjacent to where we were staying

which had cacti in the window,

and, of course, they look distinctly different from anything else.

These plants have got the lifetime of trees.

They will live to 250 years plus.

Indeed, some of the plants I've got,

I can trace the history back to Victorian times.

This plant, I found ten years ago

as one plant in 20,000 seedlings.

I grew it up and it's produced this beautiful variegated plant, which is unique.

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

The island of Madagascar has probably more weird and wonderful plants and animals

than anywhere else in the world,

and this, Didieria madagascariensis, is probably one of the weirdest.

With its long, narrow leaves and long spines

it's just a weird plant.

One of the biggest mysteries with these plants is that they never flower,

but if you follow a few simple rules,

they will perform for you every year.

You water them once a week all through the summer,

and that's a good soak, use a hosepipe.

No water at all from October to March

and that really is no water.

If you water them in the winter and you keep them warm in the winter,

they won't flower for you, it's as simple as that.

Keep them cool and keep them dry.

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

take a watering can and cut the bottom out

and then you can go through the motions

of attempting to water them

but never doing so!

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

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

It's going to be quite a long time before I have cactus like Brian's.

The question is, why would you bother from seed

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

There's nothing more satisfying than being able to say,

"I grew that. That's my cactus from seed."

So with that, I'm going to try.

Now, you need to use...

..a really, really free-draining potting compost.

So I've got regular potting compost over here,

and to that, I'm going to add a quarter sand

so that it's a really free-draining mixture. That's really essential.

Because it's so free-draining, you'll need to put mesh at the bottom of the pot

or else it'll all just run right the way through.

And then just fill the pot up to the top.

You need to let that soak in water until it's all completely wet,

because only at that point can you sow.

This is rainwater.

I'm using rainwater because cactus generally don't like tap water. It's got a very high calcium level.

What I'm going to sow is one of these.

This is Echinocereus reichenbachii baileyii,

or the Woolly Hedgehog to you and I.

It's a really sweet little cactus. Eventually it does get bigger than this.

It's winter-hardy in the UK.

Now, cactus seed are very, very small,

and because they're small,

like all seeds which are tiny,

you only sow them on the surface, you never cover them.

A really fine seed can just be tapped off your hand

while gently moving...

..around the pot.

Cactus grow in semi-desert conditions,

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

and then, suddenly, there'll be this kind of downpour of rain,

and it's in that period that the seeds take advantage of the sudden moisture from the environment

and have to get to work really quickly.

So I'm going to spray the surface of the compost with some more moisture,

because it's all about keeping the humidity high,

which is going to make these seed germinate.

And to really, really lock that moisture in,

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

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

because that just keeps the bag from collapsing in on itself,

and then wrap it with a rubber band

to lock the moisture in.

This way, I'm going to recreate really humid conditions.

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

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

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

and a night-time temperature of 18 to 20,

so that's going to be the hot end of this greenhouse or, say, a baked windowsill.

Thanks, Alys.

Well, that's it for X. Let's move on to the letter Y.

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

This Y is for the yew tree.

Here's Joe Swift finding out why yew is top when it comes to topiary.

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

The late summer borders are looking spectacular, bursting with colour,

combining ornamental grasses, perennials and half-hardy annuals just beautifully.

But topiary is what this garden is really famous for.

This part of the garden is just so simple

and has only two elements in it -

the fresh green sward of the lawn

contrasting with these yew pieces, the dark textured colour,

and these are like living architecture.

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

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

so it doesn't surprise me that, they are laid out to represent the Sermon on the Mount,

complete with 12 Apostles and four Evangelists.

CHORAL MUSIC

With over 100 trees and up to 40 feet high,

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

SAW BUZZES LOUDLY

Whoa!

-This is a labour of lovely, isn't it?

-It certainly is.

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

About four and a half to five months, depending on weather conditions.

So that's nearly half the year.

You end up with arms like an orang-utan

after about three months of it!

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

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

What are the golden rules?

If you've got a good, sharp pair of shears,

that's pretty much essential for make a nice, clean cut.

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

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

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

You might get a lot of dieback.

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

You'll keep the crisper shape and you'll keep the shape you want if you're cutting them once a year.

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

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

They're pretty tough, aren't they?

We say goodbye to Y

with a little treat from Mr Hugh Dennis, fan of the yew,

but not of another Y, the yucca.

I like gardens, I really like gardens.

And I like the kind of British obsession with gardens.

This is the Cleve West garden.

Cleve West is a garden designer,

not, as many of you probably imagine,

a suburb of Cleve. He's an actual man.

I like this topiarised yew,

as I believe it is called, with the little pom-pom on the top.

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

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

somewhere else in the garden, something explodes.

That's a yucca. That brings back memories.

We had a massive yucca in our garden

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

which went past this yucca tree

and, erm, most days, I fell off into it,

it was right on the corner.

A yucca tree, essentially,

is like nature's upturned knife block.

I wouldn't have one in my garden now, obviously, to protect my children.

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

Let's explore the role plants play in a very particular place,

because this Z is for "Zoo" gardening.

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

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

Twycross Zoo is the World Primate Centre.

We've been here 45 years,

with the largest collection of primates in the world.

Monkeys aren't the easiest things to work with,

but the site's got so much more.

We've got a good elephant herd, giraffe, a good bird section.

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

We should look at the environment as a whole.

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

Some of the areas, like the flamingo pool, we're trying to plant geographically.

We've got Chilean flamingos in there, so we try and plant Chilean plants

or, broadly, South American plants.

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

We've got Gunnera manicata, the giant rhubarb,

which is a South American plant found in the same area as flamingos.

But also, we're surrounded by Flag Iris.

Behind me, you got things like docks and stinging nettles,

which we don't mind at the back because they're good for insects.

So we're trying to garden the front, but leave the backs natural.

It's important that we grow plants here for food for the animals, and we're very interested in browse.

Now, browse is shrubs and trees that we cut

and give to our elephants, giraffes and monkeys,

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

To check the toxicity of the plants, we look on databases, places like Kew Gardens,

and also what other zoos are doing and what plants they're using,

so a lot of scientific work goes into it, as well.

This is our Longhouse Aviary.

The birds in this aviary are predominantly from the Asian subcontinent.

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

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

Underneath some of the trees and shrubs,

we're planting a dwarf form of miscanthus,

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

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

and it should just cover the ground area.

-Underneath all this, there is decent soil.

-Yes.

'John Thompson is our head gardener here at Twycross Zoo, and has been for the last 36 years.'

This is the new trend.

It's not my type of work. I'm fitting in with Ben.

You see, I was just bedding plants, roses, the colourful subjects.

This is more, as he recalls, biodiversity.

You need tradition in gardening. People are very quick to the new, new, new, new.

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

and has got that experience that me, at the age of 31, hasn't got, so it's a case of working together.

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

but also work with the animals and plant onto the enclosures

and try and get a naturalistic landscape back into this site.

That's my plan for the next few years.

My visit to Hampton Court should be interesting.

I hope to visit the conservation area and get a few interesting plants,

and walk round the display gardens and get some ideas.

I got some good ideas last year, and hopefully, this year,

I'll be with my camera, walking round, picking up a few tips.

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

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

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

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

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

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