Episode 1 The Beechgrove Garden

Well, hello, and welcome to the Beechgrove Garden.

First programme of the season and a wonderful spring day it is too!

Absolutely amazing weather, isn't it?

But it's been spring for a while, hasn't it?

It tells you something about the Scottish weather -

it's so unpredictable.

Remember the serious winds we had in December and in January?

We've got 100 ft polytunnels, nine of them, lost every single one.

Lost the glass out of the greenhouses and in our shop,

I thought it was going to blow away that morning. It was terrifying.

The wind that came through in December loosened everything up

and then the one in January took out the things that had been sheltered before.

The damage in the Botanics at Dawyck and Benmore

is absolutely astonishing and they've lost about 50 years of growth,

-that's the serious thing.

-It's a real shame.

The west got it, you got it, we were quite good here.

The garden here was comparatively unscathed.

One or two cold frame lids, that's about all that got damaged.

We'd a big garden seat covered in a waterproof cover for the winter.

It was lifted four metres, boom, and crashed down.

That's where gardeners have seen the problems,

with plants being broken and there's a bit of repairing to be done.

There's hardly been any frost either, has there?

Well, on a positive note, it has been so warm, hasn't it?

End of February, 17.2. Incredible.

And we have to say that we're back to the Scotland thing again.

The west coast has had a pounding with rain and wind and so on,

-down in the south-west, flooding. We've been fine.

-That's right.

All the water's gone up the west, the rain shadowing the east,

usual sort of story and the fields, though, are dry, the ground is dry.

There's hardly been as much rain as we normally have

and everything's warm and just ready to go.

But it means that the garden is as far forward as I've seen it.

-Isn't it looking fabulous?

-It's really coming on.

All the work has been going on apace, hasn't been held up.

Here's the team, already busy with Jane,

our new head gardener, getting the pond cleaned up.

-So it's all moving.

-The frogs are on the move.

Are they?

Anyway, in the meantime, in the rest of the programme...

You know, I don't know how many times I've been asked,

what do gardeners do in the winter?

Well, believe you me, gardening never stops and we thought

we'd take the opportunity, here we are in December, what goes on.

And here we have a healthy young pineapple,

a native of tropical America.

What's it doing here in tropical Inverness?

Stay with us.

As we said, this is a really early season, possibly three weeks early.

Look at these, these are wonderful Narcissus February Gold

coming out now and then this thing called Jetfire.

They look splendid but watch, because there's slug damage on these

so we need to put some slug pellets down.

Anemone blanda, this wonderful blue

and you get the blue and yellow together -

it's a great spring combination.

Further down, this little daffodil just doing its bit,

quite unprepossessing.

That's Gypsy Queen - a wonderful creamy colour.

But look at this, Lent lilies.

Unfortunately they always hang their head down

so we don't really see the beauty of the flower,

but fantastic flowers when you get close up to them like that.

If you want to see them without bending back like this,

put a mirror underneath and you'll get the reflection coming up

and you can walk past and see them no bother at all.

You know, we've already mentioned that the weather this winter

has been so mild and that has made

such a difference to the garden and the gardeners.

Already, this seaside garden looks wonderful, not a weed in sight

and everything's been mulched.

The good thing, because the last two winters

I was looking at some plants and they looked dreadful,

take for example the Phlomis there,

it's nice and green, plenty of growth.

The Olearia, Olearia haastii, that got hammered for two winters

and now there's plenty of new growth there.

Had we had another severe winter,

I think I'd have said that's got to go out.

Then we've got things like the tree lupins,

there's life there, the Artemisia, lots of wonderful life there,

so I'm so delighted.

But if I move forward here, you shouldn't really see me

because this is where the Snowgum was.

That wonderful eucalyptus, a really hardy tree,

but two winters with severe weather,

what happened in the end was a lot of the bark started to crack

and the top died back, so we had to have that chopped down.

Over the winter time, a tree surgeon came in,

a lot of the limbs were taken down, the gardeners helped

and the good news is, there's still a bit of life here.

It's sprouting out. It is quite a hardy eucalyptus

and I think what we need to do is contain it -

we don't want it to get too big.

We may eventually thin out some of the growth.

The calendar border, it's looking fantastic as well.

That's been mulched

and there's quite a few plants there that are looking good.

George has already mentioned some of the dwarf bulbs like narcissus,

but there we've got Glory of the Snow

a pink form, called Pink Giant.

That's a wonderful pink form.

And then on the same theme of pink flowers we've got Daphne mezereum -

pink flowers, and it comes into flower before the leaf forms.

It's got beautiful fragrance, so the important thing about that plant

is make sure that you plant it near the path.

So, in the family fruit orchard, over winter,

we've put the net on the top to keep the birds out

so they so they don't get in and nip all the buds off

particularly the fruit buds, that's what's important.

Also, we've brought in the blueberries.

They were in a polytunnel elsewhere.

We've brought them in here, given them good acid compost and got them going.

They'll get lots of water over the summer

and that will make them fruit better, we hope.

Last year, we hammered this plum, didn't we?

We took the inside out of it and were left with two shoots.

What I want to do now is sacrifice any fruiting on this.

It's got fruit buds on it

but I'm going to take the majority of the young growth off this

and get a good structure onto the plant.

These are going to be pruned back.

Don't yelp at home, don't get all excited.

That will then bush out and it will make a bush like this.

This is another plum, but what we've got on this one is

we can see where all the fruit buds are all the way along there.

When this fruits, it's going to bed over like that

and another shoot will come up here.

What I've got to do is to make sure

I take out any crossing wood at the moment.

So that's good to come off, down in there,

because that was coming right out, crossing.

Look at this, going through the net. Going to take that down to there.

I'll do the same with that one there.

And then that way, we open out the bush.

I could actually take that down further, couldn't I?

There you are, look at that.

Opening out the bush, making sure we get air through the middle

gives the fruit that's going to develop lots of light

and that will be good colour on the fruit, come picking season.

Even in the coldest days of the winter

the gardeners were never short of a job to do.

They've spruced up this pergola, which is now 16 years old,

and I think it looks very smart in this dark shade of green.

Some of the plants also looking very nice in the garden,

this is Hebe Red Edge, with that lovely purpley tinge.

I think that's beautiful.

And flowers, well, we've got these hellebores here, with a lovely purple tinge to the green.

I think that's gorgeous, one of my favourite plants.

Rhododendron's looking healthy. Look at the buds on that - that'll flower in a few weeks' time.

Also flowers across there with the Chaenomeles

and there's buds on the Cornus.

The whole thing is absolutely coming to life.

This cloud pruning that Carole did

on my pine a few years ago is growing on me.

You can see the formations now and it's come through the winter quite nicely.

There's no burn and it's looking really healthy and beautiful,

so I think I've forgiven her.

Well, it may be a warm, sunny day in late March but last December,

on a cold frosty day, Jim and Carole tackled a few winter garden jobs.

Well, this is a bit of an unexpected pleasure, eh?

-Beechgrove in winter, in December.

-It is, Jim.

Let's have a look at some of the stars of the show,

because we don't get an opportunity.

The pampas grass in the Seaside Garden, it's one of the dwarf forms,

Pumila, and because it got knocked back last winter,

it now has a show at this time of year, rather unusual.

It's certainly earning its corn!

As indeed is the Mahonia down there, the yellow-flowered Mahonia.

That variety is Charity.

If you get that in a nice sheltered corner,

it's got a wonderful perfume coming off it.

It's nice to have scent this time of year.

Something slightly unusual is the Muscari.

We've got a pot of Muscari in flower now.

That shouldn't flower until what, March, April?

The star of the show has got to me that Cryptomeria.

When that's got the sun on it, it's stunning, isn't it?

People worry because they think it's dying. That's meant to be the winter show.

I think we're going to have to go and do some work.

Our advice is always to get the winter digging

done as early as you possibly can.

Here in our main veg plot, there's nearly three-quarters of it

done already and you'll notice that

the surface has been left quite rough. That's on purpose,

because it increases the surface area to be affected by the weather.

It freezes, it melts, it freezes, it melts

and by the time you come to dig that and get it ready for sowing

and planting in the spring, it crumbles up.

The weather has done the tilthing for you.

"The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men

"Gang aft agley," as they say.

I was going to be digging in this green manure,

which was sown back in the end of August,

because the plot was otherwise going to be empty.

Green manuring will help to add fibre to the soil

and it really helps tilthing and as they say, nature abhors a vacuum.

The whole procedure, single digging here,

first in all was to cut back all the growth from the green manuring,

there it is, and get that into the bottom of the trench.

Then, skim off the top surface layer with the rest of the roots,

but this morning we discover the top surface layer is

two inches deep in frost and the cardinal rule is

you should never dig in frosted ground or frozen ground

because it'll stay frosted when it's buried and cause problems later on.

What I wanted to go on to do and show you is

the old-fashioned way of digging.

Once you've got that cleaned off and into the bottom of the trench,

most of the textbooks will show you

digging and throwing the sods forward.

Far better to do it sideways.

It's a much easier job. Look at that.

Look at that soil! Then just flick it over.

Well, well. We often say that gardening is a 365 days a year business.

There's always something to see or something to do.

Well, here's something interesting to see in this solar tunnel here.

Plants that were put out in our last programme,

the 26th programme at the end of September,

and here they are, coming along - overwintering brassicas and lettuce.

It was one of the seed companies were offering young plants

and here they are here.

We got the seed of the same variety, sowed them ourselves,

they were all planted on that same day

and we've got a lovely collection here looking quite nice.

We've a cabbage here, Excel. Then there's a calabrese.

Look, the heads are just coming on that.

Looking a bit sad this morning as they've had a frost

but they'll come back again. That is Aquiles.

Then Spring Hero cabbage and then a cauliflower called Mystique -

a mystery to me because I don't know what it's going to do.

And then finally, a nice range of lettuces.

They're all coming on rather well

so I'm looking forward, I'm salivating thinking about them.

We'd a few spare plants and everybody doesn't have a polytunnel.

We've tried them in one of the raised beds here

and covered it with a fleece

and they're looking a wee bit sad.

They are, but I think people don't realise

the range of vegetables you can grow.

Things like lettuce, they're hardy enough, aren't they?

-They'll recover.

-Hopefully they will, Jim.

Anyway, I'd just like to remind you

that back in the back in the middle of September

Lesley and myself were planting bulbs for Christmas.

We were forcing things like hyacinths.

Now's the time to have a little bit of a reveal here.

We're speaking roughly ten weeks

that they've been covered in the dark.

It's a bit frozen here, so I'll have to be careful how I do this.

I can see already... Oh, look at that!

One of the hyacinths there, see if I can get another one.

Oh, they are perfect for coming out of here.

What I'm going to do is take all of the bulbs out,

take them to the greenhouse, and we'll pot some of them on.

That's all the bulbs lifted and just to remind you,

Lesley and myself were forcing a whole range of bulbs.

We've got things like underneath here we've got crocus.

We've got tulips, we've got narcissus

and then the hyacinth, which I wanted to put into individual pots.

The next stage is putting them into a bowl

and making sure they're all at the same stage of development.

I think it's quite interesting looking here -

I've got two varieties - Pink Frosting and Delft Blue.

If you look at the Delft Blue,

they are a little behind the pink variety.

I think that just goes to show that you should never mix your varieties

when you're planting them for forcing.

What I can do is just pick three at the same stage.

Look at the fabulous root system on that, which is great.

I'm really pleased with the results of this.

And I can put two or three in here.

What we've got to be careful about is the temperatures now -

you don't want it too warm, round about 10 to 13 degrees centigrade.

If anything, make sure they're slightly shaded.

Do that for about a week and then you can maybe increase

the temperatures up to a maximum of around 18 degrees centigrade.

That way, hopefully we'll get flowers for Christmas or if not,

by the New Year, and the flowers were last quite a bit of time.

'And sure enough, all throughout the month of February,

'we had a really wonderful and colourful show of bulbs.'

And then finally, speaking about flowers,

just have a look at these cinerarias.

I'm so pleased with these.

These were sown from seed back in June, just a packet of seeds.

The variety, Cineraria Spring Glory

and I promised you that we'd get flowers by December

and that's what we've got.

A few minutes ago you saw a frustrated gentleman

standing in front of green manuring that he couldnae dig in

because it was frost all over the place.

Since then, the digging has been completed

and we've had the areas covered to help warm them up.

And look at that, the soil's in wonderful nick -

even the weed seedlings are coming through.

And the temperature, in fact, is up to nearly 10,

which means that we can start sowing carrots probably by next week.

I'd hate you to think that the gardeners were slouching once all the digging was done.

We've been doing other things as well -

we've a fancy new shed up there, not so far to go for a cup of coffee!

Hopefully you'll recognise this pot from earlier on in the programme.

That was when I was planting up those forced hyacinths.

That was back in the middle of December

and these didn't actually flower for us until the end of January.

The reason for that is we held back the temperatures,

just around about 10 degrees centigrade.

That meant that they flowered for about a month.

What do you do after that? Can you force them again?

Well, the answer is no.

But we can use them - we can plant them into the garden.

But we need to do a little bit of work first.

What you want to do is a little bit of deadheading,

so you don't want all that energy going into the flower and setting seed.

Leave the stalks on and then I want to feed them

about every 10-14 days with a high-potash fertiliser,

something like a tomato fertiliser.

Let the foliage naturally die down, then you can dry them off

and we'll plant them in the garden in autumn time

and hopefully, they'll flower for us next spring.

This greenhouse is absolutely packed full of plants

that have overwintered really well.

A lot of those plants are going to go up to the conservatory

but take a look at this new greenhouse!

Yes, indeed. This is a propagating house

and when we came here in the first place,

we brought with us a house which was an experimental double-skinned house

and sadly, it's no longer available on the market

and getting spares for it was getting more and more difficult.

It was becoming a bit of a headache so we've built, during the winter,

this brand-new proper greenhouse

and the two things that attracted me to the design in the first place

were the huge ventilators, because many, many glasshouses

don't have enough ventilation and the temperatures get too high.

That was one thing and the other thing is that it's fitted

with outside shaded blinds that can be pinned down.

For sunny days you pull the blinds down and these dull summer days,

you can bring them up, as the plants need all the light they can get.

Our propagation bench here fitted in nicely, as did the other bench

which Carolyn is busy filling up as fast as she can go.

I certainly am, and it's a lovely greenhouse, lovely day to be here as well.

What I'm looking at is alternatives to Impatiens walleriana,

which is Busy Lizzies to you and me.

Last year, people had a lot of trouble with downy mildew.

It may happen this year, depending on the weather.

If it's warm and sunny, you won't see it.

If it is our normal Scottish summer, you might.

I'm looking at other things that we can trial

to see how they do in our Scottish climate.

I've got things like petunias, verbena, bedding begonias,

which I think will be a very good alternative as well,

-but it's not got the colour range.

-Very reliable but, as you say.

Very reliable. Some tuberous begonias here as well.

Things like dahlias, dahlias are becoming very, very popular now.

Good colour range and all do well in Scotland.

They don't mind the rain, do they?

I remember the dahlias that we had last year in the plots.

That's right. So there's lots of alternatives.

If you still can't be without impatiens,

then you could look at things like Mew Guinea impatiens,

Also, SunPatiens, which are kind of a bigger, beefier plant.

Are they going to be as hardy?

Are they going to do as well in our rainy summer?

New Guineas need warmer temperatures, so they can't go out till later.

SunPatiens are pretty tough.

I mean, there're bigger, but pretty tough.

We're not going to neglect the old Busy Lizzie altogether?

No, no, definitely not - they might be fine this year.

The breeders are looking at breeding out the problems and gaining disease resistance,

so they probably will be back on track fairly soon but you know,

if we get a nice, sunny summer, well, no problems at all.

Well, I've always fancied a grand staircase entrance. Here we are!

Welcome to our first garden visit of the new series.

I'm in the Floral Hall of the Bught Park, Inverness

and I'm off to meet my guide for the day, Sarah Speakman.

What I love about this sort of setup is you see

some very strange plants but also, you see some old pals.

Like the Amaryllis there - that's a gorgeous colour.

-It's very beautiful.

-Do you just throw them out when you're finished?

SHE CHUCKLES No, we don't.

We save them, Jim. We let them die back, we then let them dry out...

We probably keep them in storage for two or three months

-and then we bring them on again.

-Away you go again.

-Yes.

-Your Iresine's looking a bit bedraggled.

It is. I'm very ashamed of the Iresine!

But there'll be a lot like that around country.

What do you do with them?

We'll cut it down by about two thirds, take it right down to some of these healthy buds,

and it'll grow away from the bottom very nicely.

Good on you.

-These are lovely. These are Nepenthes.

-Yes.

-Amazing, aren't they?

-Yes.

-I paid a visit to Cambodia

-about three years ago, and they were growing up the trees there.

-Wow.

I stopped the car, you know, to have a look at them.

There they were in the wild.

Yeah, I've heard that in the wild

-they will catch small mammals and birds.

-Well, I didn't stop for long!

-THEY LAUGH

-It looks as if it's fish-feeding time.

-It is, Jim.

-Are they getting their cornflakes?

-They're getting their wee pellets,

and we're coming up to the most important person in the floral hall.

-I'd like to introduce you to Pam.

-Pam, hello. How are you?

-Fine, thank you.

-How long have you been here?

-About eight years now.

-So all these plants and these fish will be your personal friends?

-Yep.

-Do you know their names?

-Most of them.

-Not that I'm going to, sort of, test you or anything...

-Good!

..but they are well labelled.

They are.

Do you aspire to be a botanic garden?

Jim, we would love to be a botanic garden.

Do you have to meet certain parameters?

You don't have to sit an exam.

There are certain guidelines that are laid down for what a botanic garden should be,

and we do meet some of those, in terms of

-the way our plants are laid out.

-You've got to start SOMEWHERE.

-You have to start somewhere...

-It was fairly raise the profile.

-It really would.

-Why have we stopped here?

-What I wanted to show you here

was an example of one of our predator insects.

We use biological control to control the pests that we don't want.

-Looks like a slater.

-This little thing is the larvae of an Australian ladybird.

It's called Cryptolaemus montrouzieri,

and what it is after is mealy bug.

It's good for us because we have a big mealy bug problem.

-Is that available to the amateur gardener?

-It is, Jim.

It's the bane of people's lives, mealy bug.

But your plants in general are in very good health.

Very little disease, so you have good environmental control,

and you've obviously got good pest control.

Well, we do use a lot of different types of predators.

Do you have to keep renewing that,

or have they made themselves at home here?

These ones have survived the winter. There's a colony.

We do introduce new individuals every year,

but we have the right conditions.

And the adult ladybirds quite like this environment, do they?

They do, and they will fly off to the places that we can't reach

and they will track down mealy bug that are way up in colonies in the climbers.

Brilliant. Super.

That's rather a handsome weeping fig.

It is. It's beautiful.

There are lots of people with that,

-but I bet they don't realise how big it gets.

-HE CHUCKLES

What's this fella?

This is an avocado, Jim.

Gosh...

It was donated to us about two years ago

by a lady who had grown it from a stone,

and look at it now. It can't stop growing.

There's a good object lesson, folks.

It's a popular pastime, is trying to get this thing...

This is what it does. Huge,

-and no sign of any...?

-No sign.

-I searched for avocados, but no sign yet.

-Could be a few years.

I think it will be a few years.

So, here we are, a change of environment.

We haven't travelled very far. It's quite dry.

We've come right into the desert now.

-Of course, this amount of stone will take the heat and...

-Yes, radiate it out.

There's some stunning plants.

While that's Crassula ovata, which is actually the money plant.

Of course, aye!

So if you got a money plant at home and it's not flowering,

if you keep it there for long enough, it will!

-Let it get that big, it will do.

-Do you find people want to touch them?

They do want to touch them, but they are full of needles and thorns.

Some people would be forgiven for thinking that this is just

a floral hall set-up, but you've got some rather nice gardens.

-We have.

-To what extent?

-About two acres, Jim.

Yeah, because they're lovely,

and you can't walk past these without commenting on these wonderful birches.

-They are really beautiful.

-Do you wash them often?

-No, we never wash them!

-Some people in the towns with all the stuff in the air,

go out with a sponge and rub off the green moss...

It's the Highland air that keeps them clean, Jim!

As we came through the gate back there, Sarah,

I noticed the garden project. That's this area here.

-Tell me about it.

-That's right, the garden project

is a horticultural project for adults with learning difficulties.

We provide a sympathetic workplace environment

for them to use different skills.

Horticulture is a great vehicle for learning skills,

which can be transferred to any environment.

And can some of them move on?

Some people move on, some people stay with us for a long time,

which is lovely.

-I've had a super visit.

-Thank you very much indeed.

-Many thanks.

This is a great time of year to be dividing

and splitting your herbaceous.

At the moment, I'm looking at this elephant's ear,

which needs a good tidy up in the centre.

There's quite a lot of dieback there,

and because it's a fleshy root system,

I'm going to have to go in with a spade.

But if you had something with fibrous roots,

I would lift the clump and then use two garden forks,

back to back, and divide it that way.

This is one of the little wood rushes which we put in a while ago.

What's happened is, it has started to grow up and up.

It will get completely out of shape and do the wrong thing.

So I'm going to lift it... You can then tease out

some bits like that with root on them.

These will then go into a container, one or two pieces of compost

on the top, a good water,

and then in about a month,

they will be rooted well and I can plant them where I want.

Some plants like this sedum tend to get a bit of a dying out in the middle,

as you can see here.

The best thing to do is to lift that and split it

into maybe... I'll probably get three sections out of here.

Then all the different parts will rejuvenate

and plants will grow a lot better.

This is the time of year you can sort out plants that tend to get a bit invasive, like this Athemesia.

Go around with the spade, like so...

and prevent it from spreading.

That leaves a wee one here that's isolated.

Let's have that one up,

because I can get that into a pot...

..and I know the very gardener who would be quite grateful to have it.

Well, there's surely another sign of an early season -

last days of March and they're already in the pond, clearing it up.

Short sleeves! Yes, not bad.

A lot of clear water in there,

and you can see the water lilies coming through.

And you can see the frogspawn as well, there's loads of frogspawn!

And a little skunk cabbage that's just appearing,

that's incredibly early, isn't it?

Yes, we'll have to watch that - it's one of the baddies.

Speaking of baddies, blanket weed, as well.

Get in early.

That's the downside of this warm weather, keep on top of it.

-Talking about the downside, what about...?

-Well, these are OK.

They'll be all right. They won't escape.

THEY'VE come through the winter remarkably well. That's Saracenas, north-east American.

Yes, carnivorous plants.

-They are.

-I was extremely doubtful, George, as to how hardy they were.

-They've come through this winter.

-And there's a bit of new growth,

maybe we need a bit more moss on the top.

I think we'll need to pretty it up a wee bit.

We'll need to get all the covering off the gunnery -

that's still covered up and it's probably time to come off now.

-It'll be desperate to come off.

-I think so!

What about us reintroducing fish?

-You'll have to watch George.

-Why?

-He might catch them.

-You used to have them, didn't you?

-Yes, we had some nice golden orfe.

Yes, we should maybe reintroduce them.

-But maybe that's for another day?

-OK.

So, here we go again.

Like last year, if you would like any more information

about this week's programme, it's all in the fact sheet.

The easiest way to access that is online.

But something new for this year,

would you believe it, you can find us on Facebook and Twitter.

You can find out all about us and the Beechgrove Garden.

-(What are you talking about?)

-SHE LAUGHS

That's enough for this week! Until next time,

-goodbye!

-Bye!

-Goodbye.

-Goodbye.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd