Letter E The A to Z of TV Gardening

Welcome to The A To Z Of TV Gardening.

Now, there's nothing like a garden full of flowers,

but sometimes plants give us an amazing first season

and then nothing.

So here's a flower that's not only very resistant

to all weather conditions,

but also returns year after year.

E is for echinacea,

and to get us started, here's Toby Buckland.

Our coneflower, or echinacea, experiment

has come into full bloom and it's just stunning.

We started this off last year to compare 25 different varieties,

some old, some new, basically in response to the fashion

for growing late-season perennial borders.

In recent years, breeders have been working hard to produce new types of echinacea,

but, the thing is, the more highly bred a plant, the larger the flowers,

the more unusual or different it is from the species,

the less robust it is, the less likely it is to come through the winter.

Many gardeners have been disappointed with the newest or latest varieties

as they haven't done well in their gardens.

You've got to give them a five star planting treatment, and that's what we did.

We dug out the border, added lots of grit

and the border slopes from the back to the front, just to increase that drainage.

You can see how well most of these plants did,

despite the challenging conditions.

The planting wasn't enough for us, we experimented as well.

We cut down a certain number of the plants,

or at least removed the flowers, and the top third of foliage at planting time.

On some varieties, it made a tremendous difference.

The Green Envy, that's a prime example.

The plant that was chopped down is almost twice the size

of the one that was simply planted.

With echinacea Summer Sky, cutting down and made all the difference.

The plants that were left have completed kicked the bucket,

whereas the one at the back that got the chop,

look at it, full of flower and looking beautiful, and what flowers they are.

They've got these slightly recurved petals.

That means they point backwards down towards the stem. Lovely.

You've got to see this one to believe it. Tiki Torch.

Again, a good flower, but an amazing orange colour.

Lovely cones with orange in them so the whole plant matches together.

What I like about it is that it has particularly long flower stems.

If you like your cut flowers, this one would be perfect.

White Swan, on the other hand, didn't mind if it was planted or cut down.

It made no difference.

Full of flower, very robust,

no matter what the weather threw at it.

Conversely, Art's Pride,

the echinacea that so many gardeners have struggled with.

What we've found is that by cutting it back, sacrificing the blooms

in its first year, its first late summer,

it makes all the difference to how well the plant establishes.

Look how bonny these two are, chopped down at planting time,

whereas this row is spindly at best and dead at worst.

But like all echinaceas, to keep them going towards the end of the summer,

the old trick - dead-heading.

Snip back the blooms down to three buds from where the flower starts,

because, from there, you get nice strong regrowth

and healthy buds that won't flop or fall to the ground so readily.

So, on balance, our experiment has shown that it's definitely worth

cutting back echinacea at planting,

even if this means sacrificing the flowers.

This helps redirect the plant's energy underground,

increasing the chances of survival.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd