Episode 20 The Beechgrove Garden

Hello there and welcome to Beechgrove Garden.

Sun specs just now, but if the weather pattern over the last fortnight is anything to go by,

I could be in oilskins in ten minutes' time.

It really has been very testing. It's been testing for plants.

So it's time for us to have a look at two of the new sets of plants

that we've been trialling in the garden this year.

First of all, we'll start with the garvinea.

This plant, of course, is derived from gerbera.

It is said to be hardy, so in order to test it,

we've brought some big plants into the garden

that were already in bud and some younger ones which I'll come to in a minute.

These have been in flower constantly for eight to ten weeks.

That is good value for money, I can tell you.

There's lots of buds still to come,

so if we get plenty of this sunshine,

they will continue to flower, I would think, for another month or so.

As I say, we brought some young plants in at the same time in plugs

and they are intended to stay here all the way through into next spring.

They've only just started to produce a flower now, but that's not what I'm interested in.

These guys have proved beyond doubt that they're worth growing.

Will they be hardy over the winter? They are sold as hardy plants and absolutely, given a chance here,

the whole range of varieties.

Again, they've been slow to flower, but that's not the primary purpose for this particular planting.

Now to one of my favourite kinds of plants, the dahlia.

I've been impressed over the years at the improved variety

of single flower, single colour dahlias,

because I think they're absolutely wonderful in our kind of climate.

Here we can look at a variety, all with this lovely dark foliage

and colours to die for, really brilliant.

I'm not the only one that thinks it. The bees and butterflies are there.

I've even seen some honey bees, because they're so easy to forage, right into these flowers.

They are going to flowers for weeks. One of the good things is

the single flower dries out, it doesn't damp off quickly,

so we can expect, by taking off the dead flowers,

we can expect these to flower on right until the first frosts.

They've got wonderful names. Happy Kiss, Happy Wink, Romeo,

and this little flowered one, that's Scura in there.

Orange coloured, a stunning little thing,

planted en masse would make a great display in the garden.

This is a plant that I would happily grow in the garden every year.

It's an absolute stunner.

Now then, in the rest of the programme...

Steep slopes can be a real problem,

especially if you want to plant on them

so I'm going to be tackling just that.

And I am surrounded by floral voluptuousness.

What a garden we've got for you this week.

I'm back here at the dried flower bed,

but what a job we're having trying to harvest them,

because it's been so wet at the moment.

What I'm looking at here is what we call the safflower,

or saffron thistle.

It is one that you can pick when it is in the green bud stage,

that is, really firm.

Then if you strip off the foliage, maybe you can see what I mean,

that really has a thistle head to it.

Or if you want, you can wait till it flowers

and the flowers are thistle-like, but they're an orangey yellow.

And then moving on, right at the front there,

this is a new plant to me. Not quite sure how we say it.

Teloxys? Or the common name is tumbleweed.

That was meant to grow to about 12-14 inches in height,

so rather disappointing.

But when you have a look at it,

evidently, model makers really love this plant

because it looks like a mini shrub or a mini tree,

and I suppose we'd still need to maybe dry that off,

hanging it upside-down.

Then we've got Nigella looking beautiful in flower,

but it's not the flowers that we harvest.

You can see one or two of the seed pods just starting to form.

Really, I suppose we need to leave this about three to four weeks after flowering

and then we harvest those beautiful seed pods,

strip off some of the foliage.

A very common one for drying has to be the statice.

This one's called Sunset.

They're very subtle shades, sort of peaches and pale pinks

and even a little yellow centre to it.

You can get more vibrant colours like the violets and the blues,

but when we harvest this one, we've got to wait for all the flowers to open

and then you just cut these lovely long stems.

Then we've got Bells of Ireland. This is rather interesting,

as it's the bracks that we're looking for.

When you harvest that, you need to strip off the foliage,

even nip out the top and then that shows off those beautiful bracks.

Finally, another one that's really common for drying, the helichrysum.

If we have a look at this one, I would say that's gone too far.

It's kind of blown in the centre.

What we are looking for is this one. Fairly tight in the middle,

but the flowers are just starting to open there, or the petals are.

I'm just going to pick one or two of these off

and then we'll take them to the potting shed to wire up.

You can see here in the potting shed

we've already got some of our flowers drying off.

I didn't mention some of the grasses.

Here, there is the quaking grass,

and behind it, that lovely cloud grass.

You can see why it's called cloud grass.

Then the Bells of Ireland, I just want to show you those.

They've been stripped of foliage, so it really does show off those bracks.

Back to the helichrysum, or the straw flower.

All we need to do with this is pinch off the stem at the end,

just leaving, oh, three or four millimetres.

Take off any of the foliage.

Then we want to wire that straightaway.

The reason for that is if you wire it straightaway,

the stem itself will firm around that and it won't fall off.

That's it. It's really quite simple.

For this week's problem corner, I'm in the Kingdom of Fife,

on the north shore of the Firth of Forth,

in the coastal town of Burntisland.

Adele Osborne has created a beautiful front garden,

but has been struggling with what to do with an area round the back.

Adele, the extension's fabulous. It does give you a nice little space here, doesn't it?

Thank you. It's really marvellous,

but this is the problem corner, I'm afraid.

I've tried several things on it. I've tried the saxifrage,

some aubretia and a few other bedding plants as well,

but the problem is they just seem to die on this slope.

The soil's really light and crumbly and the whole slope

just wants to wash itself down towards the decking, unfortunately.

This bit's looking so nice. That slope's not quite so steep.

-Your lavender is gorgeous.

-It's fantastic.

I'm delighted with the lavender.

And the Osteospermum as well. This bit could do with a jazz-up.

This is where you sit.

And this is what I look onto.

We have to make it better. Let's clear it first.

-Okey-doke. Sounds like a plan.

-It's not a bad soil.

-It just falls so easily.

That's been my main bugbear.

But you're right, it is really clay-ie.

So that's all the little rocks out from around there.

You said you've got plenty of rocks... I'm hoping you've got rocks to put in here!

I've got plenty of rocks at the front.

When we did the extension, a lot of rocks and stones that came out of the wall, I saved.

Some I've used as retaining wall and there's still some left.

-Nice big ones?

-Huge.

-Heavy ones?

-Yeah.

-Great.

-The heavier the better.

The thing is, to carry on the wall at this sort of level

using the big rocks,

put that in as the base course there

and as we go up, we can make layers in among them,

so you've got level bits to plant in.

Then we can enrich the soil, put some compost in,

because it is very clay-ie. Real sticky stuff.

It is. That sounds like a great idea.

Right. So, some big rocks.

The only good thing about this soil being clay

is that you can basically dig a ledge.

You could make a pond with that, Adele.

-That was a good morning's work.

-A good heavy morning's work.

Those stones are heavier than they look.

And the clay was heavy to move as well. Goodness me.

It's transformed that little area.

You've now got some reasonably flat layers to work with.

It's fantastic. I'm really impressed already.

-It'll look even better when there's plants in there!

-It will.

One thing I'd like you to do structure-wise is put some trellising

along here to give you a bit of privacy and grow some plants up.

So that's the next thing.

Adele, I have to say, I love your lavender hedge. It's stunning.

Thank you. One of the success stories of the garden, actually.

-It's all been propagated from one plant round the front of the garden.

-Really?!

I took cuttings, put them in a mixture of pearlite, compost and sand,

just popped them in and left them to it, basically.

So how old is this hedge then? It looks mature.

About 18 to 20 months old probably. I planted it up last summer

-and it's done all this in one year. I'm really, really delighted.

-That's really good.

So you've got a few more here that you've been growing.

-I think another one in this space would finish it off.

-I think so.

-Let's see what your root system's like, shall we? The moment of truth.

-Okey-doke.

Ta-da! Not bad at all.

I've had them before when the root system hasn't been so good,

and it falls to pieces and they're hard to plant.

They like lots of drainage, so the fact you've put sand and pearlite

has let the roots breathe. So that's absolutely lovely.

I hope it catches up quickly!

I told you it would look better when the plants go in!

It looks magnificent.

It's really turned out nicely.

I like...this is mostly alpines and ground cover.

It's nice to use them when you can lift them up with levels, so they're nearer to you,

because they're just wee tiny things and you want to see them close up.

The elevation of the site, it really brings that to the front.

There's a few plants that I'm not familiar with.

This little one in the corner, the three - pink and purple flowers.

Primula vialii, it's really an unusual combination of colours.

-It is.

-Really nice.

-And I've not seen the aubretia

with the variegated leaf before. That's nice.

It's nice to have flowers and interesting foliage.

I planted a couple of others. The artemisia, with the nice silvery foliage,

and some ajuga. One at the top with lovely sort of cream and purple variegations,

and one down here with black leaves.

There's a scabious, that's a colour I'm not familiar with.

That lovely creamy yellow colour. I've seen the purples and the blues.

It's really delicate.

There's things that flower at different times.

Things like gypsophila flowering now, phlox, that kind of thing.

-You should have colour all year round, fingers crossed.

-That would be fantastic. Thank you.

I think the trellising just finishes it off.

-It feels nice and cosy in here now.

-It does.

I think having the third length brings that part of the garden

back down here into the decking as well

and it really ties them together.

It really is very effective.

I really feel as if I've got a really nice enclosed space.

You should have lots of perfume, as we've got a clematis at the end,

the jasmine in the middle

and a honeysuckle here, highly-perfumed honeysuckle.

You already had this rose.

So you can tie this into that trellis and close that whole area.

It's going to be magnificent. I can spend evenings out here

sitting and relaxing after a hard day at work.

It was hard, wasn't it?

It was a lot of work.

It was worth it. And your chairs are very comfy.

Earlier this year, here in the alpine garden,

we cleared back all the cotoneaster, which was completely covering this lovely seat.

It is actually starting just to regrow here. We'll have to keep our eye on this.

It was also right across the bed here. We removed it

and it gave us an opportunity to put in some new alpines.

This little Campanula - Elizabeth Oliver -

is looking so pretty. It's a little blue double.

Also in this garden, we've got alpine troughs

and these give us a really good opportunity to put in

little special plants, ones which are maybe a bit smaller

and wouldn't really cope with the fighting here on the border.

There are several things which are important about growing alpines,

but the most important one is good drainage.

There are lots of ways you can make sure that this happens in a trough.

First of all, there's a drainage hole

and we cover that with crocks, but also, we put some more crocks,

or large stones, in the bottom of the trough.

Here we've got a cross section, so we get this nice crocking layer,

then cover it with gravel, put some more gravel in, and after that,

the compost I'm going to use is John Innes Number One.

That's quite important because "Number One" refers to the amount of fertiliser.

It's just got one amount. We don't want these to grow really lush

because it will make them susceptible to frost.

What I'm also going to do is mix through gravel into the compost,

get a nice mix and then put that on top, so when we replant this,

we're sure we've got really good drainage.

The last thing we do after planting is top dress with gravel

and that helps the water move past the necks of the plant,

which again helps with the drainage.

I've taken out this section of the trough, but I want to keep

one of the key plants and this is a little dwarf willow.

It is Salix boydii.

Do you know, it must have been in here for about 10 years

and it's minute. That's partly because

this trough is quite shallow.

It's quite interesting when you compare it to the Salix boydii

we have in the main bed.

It shows how its growth has been restrained.

What we're doing the whole time is making a miniature landscape,

so that sort of character is effectively our tree

in the landscape.

So in this little part of the trough here, I've cleared back

a lot of the weeds and also what had invaded in here was the thyme,

which had caused problems around the slabs.

The tallest plant in this part of the trough is the euryops

which has yellow flowers.

Put in a little bit of rock and then again, to continue the landscape,

we're going to have something that's the equivalent of a shrub,

or a bushy thing, and then some trailing things over the edge.

This is a little papaver, or a poppy, pacino,

and then this... I'd never heard of this,

this is Honaria Barbara and it's going to tumble over the side.

That's the quite exciting thing about these troughs,

we can do some really special, individual little plants.

This one was planted quite recently

and had just been slightly invaded with the thyme problem again.

But having cleared it back, there's a little gentian, a little aquilegia

and I am going to pop in the centre of there an erodium,

then put the gravel back.

The interesting thing is you can give these troughs a different look

if you top dress them with different coloured gravels.

So in my third trough, when again I took the thyme off the top,

I found it's actually got miniature purple slate.

It gives it quite a nice sort of acidy feel.

Tallest plant in here is a little juniper.

This is Juniper communis compressa.

Quite remarkable, when you think that's exactly the same plant

that is the tall conifer - well, relatively tall conifer - in our alpine beds.

What I'm going to pop in here, as our shrubby thing...

I did find, and this is a really good tip,

when you plant a trough, you don't want the labels sticking up,

but it's good to know what's in there. So if you can tuck them

somewhere down the side, and then you can see what you've got.

Actually, it's a bit depressing, because then you find out also what you've lost in the trough.

But what we do have is a little tiny dwarf rhododendron.

I thought the association of a conifer and a rhododendron

is nice and ericaceous,

so the plant I'm going to add in here is a lithospermum,

or a lithodora, and this is Blue Star.

For the last 20 years or more, this wonderful garden at Glenbervie House,

which lies sort of halfway between Stonehaven and Laurencekirk,

has been nurtured by Mrs Jill McPhee and her team.

I take it that that 20-year journey has seen many changes,

brought challenges and disappointments and so on?

Yes, gardening is always a challenge

and when there's change of gardeners,

they bring new ideas and different ways of doing things.

It just develops over the years and expands.

That's really how a garden does evolve.

One of the excitements of coming to a garden

is the very scale of it, but then also

plants that you haven't seen for years or have forgotten all about.

Seeing something as statuesque as that, what do you call it?

-I say Veronicastrum, but I'm not sure.

-Well, you're probably right.

-I had another name in my head, but the botanists do change them.

-Yes.

Let's just pause and feast our eyes on this Tropaeolum.

All the way from South America. Absolutely stunning, isn't it?

-It's very happy here and it obviously loves it.

-Yes.

Growing through a yew tree and it shows up wonderfully well.

Well, you're obviously very fond of Daylilies.

There's a great colour range.

-Yes.

-It separates the vegetables from the flower part of the garden.

-You've started harvesting.

-Yes, the onions are quite good this year.

That's a throwback to the old days too.

Veggies and cut flowers. Right slap bang in the middle.

And, of course, you're drawn round like this.

Feast your eyes on that.

Different shapes, different heights, different colours.

Even the greens are all different.

Ever changing.

Wow! Delphiniums as they used to be.

HE LAUGHS

Not one net, but two. How high would you say these are?

About 10 or 12 feet. They get a good load of farmyard muck.

-Keeps them going.

-Yes, the answer lies in the soil, as they say.

Gee whizz.

Trying to avoid the slugs when they first come through the ground,

-that's the...

-Yes, yes, yes.

Well, they may be going over slightly,

but by jingo, they are a major feature of this garden. Gorgeous!

Well, a different environment here, but the same mixture of decorative

and, well, let's start with that one up there.

-The Justica.

-Looks mildly exotic, I don't know it at all.

But I recognise this chap.

-The Ginger.

-Yes.

-But then...

-Peppers,

cucumbers,

tomatoes.

Quite a challenge, this.

-This is the coolest end of the greenhouse.

-Right.

-In winter.

-Yes.

You can feel the difference. We've just jacked it up

a little bit, the temperature, haven't we?

-And...

-White peach there, which is finished.

-They've all gone. Good?

Yes. They were delicious.

-Our Beechgrove ones haven't been started on yet...I hope.

-Lucky you.

Is this a new plant?

This is an apricot, which has only been in about three years.

-It hasn't had fruit yet.

-No.

Everywhere you turn, there's something wonderful.

There's this, look at the size of the head on that! That's agapanthus.

-Agapanthus.

-Oh, stunning.

-It likes the protection.

-It does.

I'll bet there's not many people realise their asparagus plant...

-Can go to that size.

-..can climb like that, yes, aye.

We obviously notched up the temperatures again,

we just get more and more growth.

We're staring at a raft up there, a veritable raft.

Now, why would that be?

That's to try and keep the house a bit cooler

-and give shade to the streptocarpus.

-Yes.

There's a frame up on the top which the passion flower grows through.

Aye, it's the most glorious coloured passion flower.

-Do you know which one it is?

-Hahniokewensis, I think.

-It's a stunning colour.

-It's a beautiful colour.

-You have those as well.

-Yes.

HE LAUGHS

It does provide the right atmosphere for our wonderful streptocarpus.

They really are superb.

The trouble with having a greenhouse with such a variety

is keeping the temperature right.

-I know, but you've got them into sort of zones.

-Yes.

But I have to say, these are huge pots. Look at the size of this pot!

And what was it they always say? The advice is...

-Keep them smaller.

-Aye, aye. It is. But what's in there?

What sort of compost do you use?

A bit of home-made compost and multi-purpose...

and just keeping a mixture.

You're not going to divulge. OK.

Gardeners have to have their secrets. But they are stunning. They're a great credit to you.

-Carrying on, here we have begonia, I think.

-Yes.

-Begonia million kisses.

Finally, the thing that impressed me the first time I came here...

-The Rhodochiton.

-It just flowers and flowers and flowers.

It's like fairyland to me, you see, and I could go on and on

and on and on, because these have just got so many memories.

-We've had a lovely time.

-Good. Thank you for coming.

It's been wonderful.

At the bottom of the silver garden,

we've got a lovely plant combination here.

Clematis Chinook with the pink of the Bistort

and that bright pink phlox, it looks beautiful.

And this clematis is nicely,

gracefully tumbling over the wall, disguising it beautifully.

I thought that was a really good look. So I tried to copy this

a little bit further by putting in some tender perennials,

which I hoped again would disguise the wall and flow over it.

My first one was Bacopa, this is Gulliver's White

and it has a much bigger flower.

It hasn't made the sort of growth I hoped it might.

And the next one, frankly, I don't know if you can see this,

but in here, this is Dichondra Silver Falls,

and it's made very little growth at all.

I've had very little success with that myself, I have to say, in the past.

This is white trailing Lobelia.

It's starting to approach getting over the edge of the wall,

and inevitably, it all seems to happen, with any white Lobelia,

you get a bit of blue just running through there.

This is the success. This is Nepeta, and it's grown...

It has no flowers, it's grown for its foliage, which is green with white edges.

Let's see how much growth it's made. It's gone right the way over.

So that is 94 centimetres. I'm trying to sound young.

It's actually 36 inches or three foot. I'm pleased with that one.

The Convolvulus has got these very pretty blue flowers.

And I chose the plants here to complement the silver garden,

so there are whites and silvers and blues.

This is starting to get over the edge.

More white Lobelia, not tumbling enough yet.

This is silver Helichrysum, you grow this in hanging baskets,

grown for its foliage, these silver leaves.

Starting to go into flower, which I'd be tempted to nip off.

It's sort of making a bit of an upright statement,

I want it to go over a little bit more, get some more dangleation.

And then the variegated ivy is just starting to work and go over the edge.

Now, that's a permanent plant, so we'll leave that one in.

We've also got some more permanent plants at the top of the garden,

which are going to tumble over the walls there.

Carol, I must compliment you on your taste in gardening clothes.

Very, very smart.

We're properly co-ordinated, aren't we, today? I can't believe it.

I know. We'll have to talk to the wardrobe department about it!

Anyway, back to these trailey plants that we've got here.

Now, the ones down there were all tender perennials or annuals,

these are all permanent plants.

This is Ice Dance. It had white flowers on it when we planted it.

It's made good growth over here,

but similarly to the plants down there, there's a lot of activity.

This is all going in the wrong direction, back into the bed.

So we want to prune to shape, don't we? We want to leave the front and take away the back.

Yes. I'm going to take all this off, because it's going in completely the wrong direction.

As you would with any shrub,

take off the things that aren't doing what you want them to do.

And I'm doing the same with the companion, this is called Blue Rivulet. So leave the front there,

and one or two of these, just trim it back.

Obviously, once those flowers are over,

I might do a bit of dead-heading.

-The Hebe, that's a lovely plant.

-That's worked really well.

That's Summer Frost. It hasn't flowered this year.

It'll have white flowers.

Very, very huggy,

so it's gone over and it's just started to cling to the edge.

Again, it needs a little bit of a haircut just around the back to stop it going into the border.

Nice, hardy plant though. Then, the rosemary. I don't know how hardy that one is,

but that, at the moment, has really started going down the way.

That's the prostrate rosemary. Best chance of getting rosemary through

in Aberdeen in a nice, sunny, raised bed with good drainage.

And then the mint, that's not really doing what it's meant to do.

It's already done it. It's had one lot of really long dangly bits coming over. Those have been trimmed off

and it will have its next lot come over.

Instead of a handy hint this week, I've got a little surprise for you.

Because we were away, we missed the harvest of the saskatoon berries.

-It is little.

-I've had to fight for these last two. Have a taste.

-Thank you.

-This is Amelanchier alnifolia.

-OK.

Wonderful autumn colour on the bush, so it could be in a border.

-A great flavour and very high in antioxidants.

-Great flavour.

-It's a bit mulled...

-Mmm.

-Mmm.

-Tastes of mulled wine.

You see, that's what makes the world go round.

The reason for being here, we're going to be sowing some vegetables.

Brassicas and lettuce to go over winter.

-One of the seed companies is going to offer these varieties as plants later on.

-OK.

Like you did with the leeks, we'll sow our own plants and see which of the two...

There'll be some in a tunnel, and some outside,

-maybe with a bit of fleece on just to protect them.

-Yes, depends on the winter!

It does. So, we'll see how we get on.

-As I say, lettuce and cauliflower...

-A whole bunch of this is to extend our season,

because we've got a really good harvest now and want to keep that going into the autumn.

These are gorgeous.

-Clean as a whistle.

-Lady Crystal.

-Beautiful. Who's this brute?

-It's for practising the shot put.

-What about this tomato?

-It looks like a lemon. Have you tried it?

-It's cream sausage.

Tried it earlier. I would say it's very bland.

A bit like the saskatoon, I would think! If you'd like

any more information about this week's programme, it might be about

those lovely dahlias that you were looking at. Or, Lesley,

you were filling the alpine truss. All the information

is in the fact sheet, and the easiest way to access that is online.

Next week, I'm going to be back in the cutting garden, looking at anything in flower.

And I shall be starting the round of hedge clipping.

-So until we see you in The Beechgrove Garden next week, it's goodbye.

-Bye.

-Bye.

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