Letter D The A to Z of TV Gardening

Hello and welcome to The A To Z Of TV Gardening.

Now let's look at the biggest flower family in the world.

'Because D is for the daisy family,

'also known as asteraceae.

'And here's a botanical lesson with Carol Klein.'

Ahh. This is beautiful!

Every so often, I get the opportunity

to actually sit in my garden and enjoy it.

I mean, what else are gardens for, when it comes to it?

But perhaps this isn't the place I would've chosen during the month of August.

There was nothing really exciting going on.

But now just look at it.

This gorgeous Rubeckia.

It's Rubeckia fulgida deamii.

Daisies are such beautiful flowers, such a gorgeous construction.

They almost look like the kind of flower that a child would draw,

with this centre and then these beautiful petals around the edge.

The petals actually are called ray florets

and the whole purpose of them is to draw insects from far and wide

to come and feast in the centre and pollinate the flowers.

And the flowers are right in the middle,

but there is not just one, there's a whole collection of them.

There's lots and lots of little ones.

And the daisies themselves make these gorgeous flat platforms

so that insects can land and feast to their hearts' content.

Rubeckia fulgida deamii needs decent soil.

It needs a good living.

So if you're really on the dry side, don't try and grow it.

But there are a host of other Rubeckias, too, which you could try.

One of them is the annual, Rubeckia hirta,

and I've got a load of one called Rustic Dwarves,

which was one of my mum's favourite flowers,

and they are so rewarding! They just give you colour and colour and colour.

They're wonderful cut flowers, too.

All the Rubeckias and many of the other daisies that we use in the late Autumn garden

are from the prairies of North America.

But this scintillating blue aster

is Aster frikartii Monch

and it doesn't come from the States at all.

It's a cross between a European and an Asiatic species.

It flowers almost endlessly from July onwards

and, as you can see, it's a pretty good companion to these Rubeckia.

I no longer grow aster novi-belgii,

the most popular Michaelmas daisy,

cos I got fed up of people wandering down the paths and saying,

"What's that plant with the interesting white foliage?"

It was actually powdery mildew and it completely disfigured the plants.

The reason for powdery mildew is that these plants are very, very inbred

and the further a plant gets from its species

then the more likely it is to get disease.

And powdery mildew is caused usually in very dry conditions.

So I'm afraid I abandoned them.

Well, I'm not afraid, actually, because the asters that I've adopted in their stead

are so much worthy of a place in the garden.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd