Letter H 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 H.

And we start with a flower that has a wide range of colours,

a very distinctive scent and it can look great in a bouquet.

This H is for hyacinths.

'And we're off to Cambridge, home of the Hyacinth National Collection.'

I think the thing that makes me a complete and utter hyacinth nut

is the fact that every spring

you see the first little coloured shoots

appearing among the green

and then two weeks later,

the whole of the world round you seems blazing with colour.

This is the little species hyacinth

that grows in the wild in northern Iran and Iraq,

brought over into Europe in 1573

and all the varieties of hyacinths

have been raised from this one species.

My national collection at the moment comprises 170 varieties.

Some of them are fairly recent.

Some, in fact, are seedlings that I bred myself.

But the most important ones are the very old varieties

that were around in the catalogues perhaps 200 years ago

that would otherwise, unless they were conserved, be lost for ever.

Always the rarest category of hyacinths were the double yellows.

I was under the impression

that the last ones disappeared nearly 100 years ago,

but lo and behold, when I got in touch with the lady in Lithuania,

she'd got this beautiful sunflower

and this itself dates from pre-1897.

I think one of the most beautiful flowers I've ever seen and extremely rare.

This variety, Diana, is my own raising.

It's taken me 12 years to get from one bulb to eight bulbs,

so unfortunately, it will never go into production

because it is very difficult to propagate.

Normally in the last weekend in March,

I open up the fields to the general public

and they come along literally in their hundreds.

And to move around amongst them, hearing the comments,

the "ooohs" when they first smell the perfume,

and to couple this with the fact that I'm saving things from extinction,

is very, very rewarding.

Of course, to me, there is a great deal of irony in this

because a number of years ago, I lost my sense of smell completely.

But my memory does take me back to the days

when I could smell them,

particularly just before dusk

on a lovely, warm day, working among the fields,

completely immersed in this beautiful fragrance.

It's an unforgettable memory

that will live with me for the rest of my life.

'So, for how to plant hyacinths, here's Monty Don.'

The scent of hyacinths can be delicious but it also can be a little bit much,

and I think one bowl in the room is enough and it's dead easy to do.

Get yourself a terracotta bulb pan.

Put a crock in the bottom to make sure the drainage is good.

Talking of drainage, it doesn't really matter what growing medium you use,

because it's not providing nourishment for the hyacinth. That's all in the bulb.

What it is providing is a rooting material

and something that will retain moisture.

Now, this is Delft Blue.

You can pack the bulbs in.

I've got 12 and I'll get all 12 into this container.

These have been prepared simply by chilling them,

which tricks it that it's winter.

If we just put a little bit of extra compost in between them

and then water them lightly and put them into a cool, dark place.

It doesn't have to be extra cold

but it shouldn't be above ten degrees.

And just keep them lightly watered.

And when you start to see the shoots appear...

..about two or three inches long,

then you can bring them into light.

The bulb thinks it's spring, it puts on a spurt of growth,

the flower bud develops quicker

and then just at the point when it's ready to open,

you bring it indoors and that extra heat

will make the flower open faster and you'll pull out that lovely fragrance.

Then when they've finished, put the whole pan outside and forget about it

until the foliage has died down, then you can gather the bulbs,

keep them for next year and plant them out into the garden.

Now we're looking at a feathered phenomenon

that's hitting the world of gardening. This H is for hens.

'And here's a man who couldn't be happier with his ones.'

# I'm singing boom, chick-chick, cluck-cluck-clucking

# All day long, don't you know?

# Yeah, don't you know?

# I'm singing boom, chick-chick, cluck-cluck-clucking

# All day long, don't you know?

# Yeah, don't you know?

# Now, sometimes you give me loving and sometimes you give me dough #

As far as chicken-keeping goes with me,

it started as a hobby when I was ten years of age.

It became an occupation,

I'm not going to say a great living,

when 14, 15 years ago, I took two heart attacks with cardiac arrest.

They actually gave me three months to live at one stage.

And I just had to have something to do to keep me going.

And in honesty, the chickens have kept me going.

I have a great saying. "You don't have to live in the country

"to follow a cottage economy."

You can have a small garden,

you can grow your veg and you can keep your poultry.

The food miles - nil.

No matter what colour chicken you choose, they're all green.

I'm old enough to remember when everybody had a vegetable garden

and a pen of hens in the garden. The knowledge was passed over the hedges.

Everybody... I'm not saying they were experts,

but they were knowledgeable poultry keepers.

And consequently,

-it's a thing we're losing.

-CHICKEN CLUCKS

-Oh, Flash.

-HE LAUGHS

# Everybody's talking about chicken

# Chicken's a popular word

# Everywhere you go you're bound to find

# Chicken ain't nothing but a bird #

The only thing you really need to keep a chicken happy

is, I would say, water before food,

because if they are ranging, they'll find a fair bit of food.

But it'd be water, food and a small amount of grit.

One of the things that people ask, "Are they going to wreck my garden when I get them home?"

Chickens will wreck your garden if you don't use a bit a common sense.

I think when you've got small seedlings, yes, they'll be tasty, so protect those.

They clear up all the slugs in the garden.

We also have the droppings, which we use as an accelerator on the compost.

I wish something had happened when I was 30

to kick me into touch and make me do this.

I've never been so happy in my life.

I'm so content here.

And in an evening, when everybody's gone home

and I can get a pint of shandy

and just sit down here and listen to the birds and look at the chickens,

I am so delighted. There's nobody happier on this earth.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd