Episode 13 The Beechgrove Garden

Hello and welcome. Here we are in Beechgrove in the middle of June.

I'm not going to mention the weather,

but the long-sleeved jumper tells it all.

Now, we're looking at the chrysanthemums today.

There's not a lot needing done with them at the moment,

but the way to success and grow a decent crop

is to keep an eye on things, so they don't get out of hand.

The chrysanthemums were planted from rooted cuttings in the early part of the year

and here we have a whole range. There's no flowers at the moment.

They won't flower until August, September

and that was the whole idea, that we would be getting cut flowers then,

but we have single flower, just like big daisies,

then we have doubled and anemone-centred, then spray types,

where you expect, at the top of a stem, a whole range of flowers.

At the present moment,

what we want to do is to get plenty shoots growing.

Look at that, isn't that gorgeous? I've got five or six shoots growing.

At the top of every one of these shoots, we will have lovely flowers,

whether they're single ones or doubles, it doesn't really matter.

But that's the crucial first stage.

The big problem is, if you have a dominant bud,

it tends to go on and on and it holds back the side shoots.

So, as we've said so often, chop it out.

There's another one there.

Chop it out.

And that will then release the energy

into these shoots here so that we keep them going.

In the meantime, they're going well enough.

They don't need fed at the moment, but they'll get top dressed later on

and then we keep a watchful eye for pests and diseases.

And the usual suspects are, of course, earwigs,

which destroy the buds and flowers,

capsid, thrip and aphid,

but there's none of that here now, so, as I say, we give them

an occasional bit of attention, a wee bit of feeding later on

and then a new net perhaps up here to take them up through.

Plenty to do, but it's all in hand. We'll see them all later.

In the meantime, on the rest of the programme...

I'll be at a school in Glasgow, showing you how,

if you collect lots of these, you can have lots of these.

How many Scottish gardens do you know of

that grow exotic orchids outside that smell of coconut? Stay tuned.

We're always getting new plants arriving and this is quite unique.

This is a sweet pepper and it's a trailing variety

called Sweet Sunshine and where is that sunshine?

I really wish it would warm up. We had three plants arrive

and the basket

and what we need to do, really, is keep this,

I think, in this propagation house for a couple of weeks.

Warmer temperatures, hopefully the plant will start growing

and then I'm going to put it into the Keder.

And the plants in there, those tomato plants, the variety Shirley,

grafted and non-grafted, are looking superb at the moment.

I maybe should add about this pepper

that they will eventually produce peppers that are yellowy orange

and they almost look chilli like.

I think it is going to be quite an interesting plant.

Now, speaking about the weather and warm temperatures, okra.

Now, I've tried to grow okra for several years. I've never succeeded.

You might remember that we had a look at these plants a few weeks ago

and the leaves were looking really white

and you can still see one or two there that are particularly white.

But they are starting to green up

and the reason for that is we've brought them into this house

and we started to give them a bit more heat.

Also, we're keeping them nice and humid. Remember,

these are tropical plants and so a bit of gravel, the moisture there.

It's not sitting in the water, cos they don't like to be too wet.

You never know, fingers crossed,

we might get one or two of those ladies fingers.

Now, also, what I like to do at this time of year,

you've got to remember that we've put out all the bedding plants

so one or two of our greenhouses are a bit empty,

so I want to fill them, this time with easy house plants from seed.

And I've got celosias here. Now, we grew some of those last year

and they have those lovely feathery plumes.

Hypoestes - I think that's a lovely little house plant.

I know it as the polka dot plant

but another common name is freckle face and another one is measles.

You can tell why, because of all the spots on the foliage.

And I've got a lovely collection of coleus as well.

They're coming in all shapes and sizes

from quite sort of dwarf varieties to some with really huge leaves.

So all we've got to do is just sprinkle the seed over the compost.

Difficult to see these because they're black.

And these need temperatures, like the okra, of around 18-21.

But once we've got them germinated,

then they're quite happy at around about 12 degrees centigrade.

Then what I'll do is sprinkle a little bit of compost on that

and, once they germinate, hopefully we'll end up filling a greenhouse.

I'm here at St Bernard's Primary School in Glasgow

to see an award-winning school gardening project.

After cuts in free fruit for school children,

the pupils here decided to start trying to grow their own.

Miss Winters, you're the headmistress here.

How did this whole gardening project come about?

It originally started when we no longer got free fruit,

so we thought we'd start out with a garden. It's fantastic,

parents support us, the community support us and we've had to expand

-down into other areas.

-You're lucky you've got more space!

-What do you do with all the produce, then?

-We harvest it, we eat it,

we involve our parents, our local community.

We have a grown-up gardening day

where we invite them to come in and buy our produce.

We also show them a cookery lesson on using the produce.

So kids see it, they sow it, grow it, harvest it, sell it,

-and they can buy more seeds for next year, so it keeps going.

-Yes.

-That's perfect. Do you want to show me around the garden?

-Certainly.

I'd like you to meet Callum and Alanna.

Hi! So you're going to show me around the garden, then?

-Yeah.

-Right. Come and tell me the things you've been up to.

Here we have sunflowers

and over there are the courgettes

and the Jack O Lantern pumpkins.

What are you going to do with them?

-Are you going to carve them into carved pumpkins?

-Yeah.

This is a marvellous looking thing.

That's the greenhouse.

-It's made out of plastic bottles that we saved up.

-Good for you.

So you recycled them? They've been used? Did you count them when you put them up?

-No.

-Aw! I thought you were going to tell me 4,249!

And here we have our wormery

-which has red tiger worms in it.

-Ooh!

-And what you put in here, then?

-Any waste except for meat or fish.

All your vegetables, eggshells, all that kind of thing.

But it looks like they're still hiding right now!

-SHE LAUGHS:

-Camera shy worms! That's all we need, isn't it?

-In the greenhouse...

-What's in here, then?

In the greenhouse, as you can see here, we have a grapevine.

Which I'm sure we'll get a few snacks off those.

I hope so! You like grapes, do you?

-And here's some tomatoes.

-We do have growing bags, but, unfortunately,

we don't have anything to put in them just now.

Well, guess what? I might have something to put in your grow bags for you.

-Ooh!

-That'll be good.

-Yeah!

Here we've, um, blackcurrants... CAROLYN LAUGHS

-..and raspberries.

-They're kind of exploding out of here!

-Mm-hm.

-They're getting a bit big.

-A bit!

-We may have to redo the net.

-Well...

-Or just trim them.

Well, we don't want to trim off any of the fruit,

so I think maybe we could make a bigger cage.

The way you can tell it's a blackcurrant is rub the leaf,

and smell it, and it smells of blackcurrants, doesn't it? Lovely!

-What's this over here, then?

-Over here, we have some chives.

As you can see, these have been doing quite well.

Nice flowers on them, aren't they?

-The flowers attract a lot of bees, butterflies and insects.

-OK.

If you would like, you could try a little bit of this chive here.

Make sure it is chives!

Definitely chives! What kind of things have you seen on the flowers?

-We've seen quite a few butterflies...

-Butterflies.

-..a lot of bees.

-Mm-hm. Bees like these, don't they?

And a lot of wasps in the bins.

Wasps in the bins as well! So they're doing a good job.

They're bringing wildlife into your garden and that's good

-for pollination and it's nice to see them, as well, isn't it?

-Yeah.

I think we've been wet all morning, so I think we should go

and have lunch and see if the rain goes off for this afternoon.

-Does that sound like a plan?

-Mm-hm.

-Mm-hm.

-OK.

Right, so these are all the plants I brought you.

Lots of different things. Who recognises some of these things?

-Tomatoes.

-Courgettes.

-Basil.

-Chilli peppers.

-Blueberries.

So we've got lots and lots, haven't we? Masses of plants.

What we'll do, some of us will go and plant in the greenhouse,

some of us will plant outside.

These are two different varieties of blueberry bushes,

because they pollinate better if you've two different varieties.

You can see already the flowers are there,

so all these flowers will give you beautiful, big, juicy blueberries.

The thing about blueberries, they need an acidic compost,

so we've got some compost here that's on the acid side,

and that'll make them fruit better.

So what have we got in this bed so far?

Well, we've got pumpkins,

because our courgettes didn't really work.

When they came out, they were all mushy inside them.

-Well, it's lucky I brought you another two plants, isn't it?

-Yes.

I've got a green one across there

and a nice yellow one here, which looks lovely when you've cooked it

and you've got them mixed in a vegetable dish. It looks pretty.

Do you want to plant that one? Would you like to plant this one?

Your blackcurrants and raspberries will get too tall for this cage.

-So what do you think we should do?

-We should make the cage taller.

That's a very good idea. And also, this bit here is sticking out.

Maybe afterwards, we could prune it, so there's not a bit sticking out.

But we might as well leave that. The birds can have those.

We don't mind them getting a few as long as they leave some.

So can you manage to take some of the netting off?

And then we'll take down the canes.

So what's this area used for?

The classes have different beds and the teacher gives them a theme.

What kind of things have we got in here?

There's like buddleia and the, um...

the one behind us, well, the bed behind us

has got, um, like a butterfly tree in it.

What I thought we could maybe try is, er,

mixing flowers and vegetables together. So what I've brought

are different types of lettuce leaves, the salad leaves,

but they look quite pretty. They're cut-and-come again salad leaves.

So you plant them, you can pick a few leaves off to eat them and then,

come back later and pick some more. They keep growing, so it's nice.

They'll stay here, but you can pick leaves off as you need them.

So what I thought we'd do is make a design

with the lettuce leaves then leave you spaces in-between

-and you can plant flowers. Does that sound like a plan?

-Yeah.

The kids have been working really hard all day.

This guy's been standing here doing absolutely nothing!

We've had a great day here, the garden's looking super.

And there's so much more to do, but I know you're all so enthusiastic,

you'll go from strength to strength.

So from all of us at St Bernard's Primary School in Glasgow...

ALL: Bye!

-Well, we made the deadline, but I can't prove it.

-Why?

In other words, there was a fruit here at the end of May...

but I think we will have to introduce CCTV.

-Not guilty.

-No, you weren't here.

-Oh, right!

-You were on your travels, so to speak.

-Somebody else.

But the fact is, Sonata is doing the business for us again.

This poor wee soul has got a touch of botrytis on it.

-And imperfect shape due to imperfect pollination.

-That's it.

-That's what we've got.

-But we chose Sonata, because it outcropped

-the other two last year...

-Mm-hm.

-..and that was the answer.

-And they're doing all right.

-Right. Now.

Under here are some strange looking things. Look at that!

-LAUGHTER

-Good on you!

-Aren't these weird?

Good on you, because the sequence is, these crop until early July.

By that time, the ones outside will start to crop.

They're looking great at the moment.

These are right out of the cold store now.

-Runners.

-So into this.

-They are getting planted in there.

-OK.

-We'll have to trim the roots.

Put them in a cold frame and when this lot come out of here,

these guys are ready to come in.

It's amazing, because that bud in the top there has all the flowers,

all the leaves and all the energy to produce this crop in, what, 60 days?

60 days by the time it comes out. It is remarkable.

-Anyway, will you take care of these?

-I will, I'll take these away.

-I'm about to have a wee look at the vine.

-I'm going to massacre a fig.

OK. Well, I put my secateurs here, cos I'm working along this row here.

There's a fine bunch.

And one leaf beyond the bunch, we've taken the top out

and, this little one here, we'll take that one out as well.

Cos we want to channel the energy into the fruit.

And I'm just going along, systematically, taking out all the growth which is not necessary.

Look at the cherries whilst we're here. Aren't they doing well?

We're going to have to number them, I think,

because they are to die for when they start to ripen.

We've got some that look as if they're ripening now. Look at that.

That's what we'd call an apple's June drop.

These have to come away. These are sadly infertile.

They have not been properly pollinated.

But enough of that. George, what are you fickering at with that fig?

A dilemma, a dilemma on the fig. If you look at the top,

there's hardly any decent stuff at the top there.

When you come down to the bottom, this is where the young growth is.

Look, there's what we want - young growth coming out, and there's a fig.

That will ripen during this summer and that will be splendid, so I...

I just have to bite the bullet. I've got to prune this.

I'll have to prune it quite hard, so those with a nervous disposition

are going to have to look away for a little while,

while I get stuck in about this with a saw and a pair of loppers.

It might not be the right time, but it is the right time,

cos I'm here, the fig's here, and it needs done.

So I'm going to cut it right down to the bottom

and let young growth come away and then, I'm afraid, it starts again.

I'm in a National Trust for Scotland Garden in Perthshire.

You know, I'm like a small boy in a sweetie shop

and I just don't know which one to eat first!

Steve McNamara, you're the head gardener here at Branklyn,

a two-acre garden just on the outskirts of Perth.

How did it happen to be here?

Well, the Rentons, Dorothy and John Renton came here in 1922.

They built a house and then started a small garden for privacy.

Eventually, expanded it to two acres, which it is today,

and crammed it full of loads of plants.

Dorothy had always been a keen gardener from a young age.

But John Renton was almost like a very keen designer.

He was good at the layout and that sort of thing.

He helped out, obviously, at weekends and things like that.

-So he did the layout, she did the plants.

-Yeah.

But where did the plants come from?

A lot of the plants came from the plant hunters of the era.

-Ah, right.

-Ludlow and Sherriff...

-Yeah.

..George Forrest, Joseph Rock, all these people.

But main collectors here were Ludlow and Sherriff

and sent hundreds of packets of seed here.

So they were collecting in the Himalayas and China, weren't they?

Yeah. George Sherriff was friendly with the royal family of Bhutan,

-so he had a great, you know, in there!

-Yeah.

And, of course, collected there and southeast Tibet, places like that,

and sent back these unusual plants.

It must've been so exciting to get these packets of seed coming back

-and not know what would grow.

-Yeah, and it's a testament to their skill,

really, that they were able to grow these rare plants.

The garden is packed with things like that,

but there are so many little corners where things just grow perfectly.

Yeah. I mean, they just tried to create

as many different environments for all the plants to grow

-and find the perfect home for the plant.

-Well, it certainly worked.

-Yeah. Worked really well.

-HE LAUGHS

Everywhere we go in here, there's this wonderful legacy of the Himalayas.

Yeah, you've got the meconopsis collection, the rhododendrons.

These rhodies are fascinating, because, often, it's just

these blousy garden hybrids that everybody looks at.

-Yes.

-They are fantastic, but you get these delightful little species.

-That's a cracker!

-That's wardii, after Frank Kingdon-Ward, of course.

-He was a great collector in China.

-Yeah. I mean, it's just

the whole thing is here, the garden's buzzing with all this history

and intrigue about what was going on in those days.

Look at this. Just... Ha-ha!

We've got the candelabra primulas, we've got the chungensis here.

And the pulverulenta and, of course, the hybrid, chunglenta,

-which is just using the two ends of the name.

-That's an indication that

-they just love it here.

-They love this moist soil.

-Getting on well.

-Take off well.

-There's just so much to see here.

Here we have the pear tree which is the one left out there.

There were quite a few originally. This was an orchard growing area.

-Right. That's the original...

-Original.

-..from the site?

Original plants, yeah. And still going.

It must wake up in the morning and wonder where it is, surrounded by all this Himalayan flora.

-"Am I in Perthshire? Am I in the Himalayas?"

-Right!

Steve, one of the outstanding plants in Branklyn are the meconopsis.

Yeah, we have the national collection of the big blue poppies.

Everybody thinks about these big blue poppies, but there's a variation.

Yeah, we have some white ones and some off-white.

And quite often, hybrids.

-And the intensity of colour always the same?

-Not always.

We speculate here. We added some manure last year

and it does change the colour, we believe, slightly.

This one is particularly good. It's got this pink tinge to it.

This is Dorothy Renton. It's great, because it commemorates her as well.

Absolutely. There's been other forms around here that I've seen.

-There's a fantastic white one over there.

-That's beamishii.

That's a cross between integrifolia and grandis.

It gets this lovely creamy colour.

-A wee bit of promiscuity going on there.

-Yeah!

Now, the other ones I've seen are tall creamy ones

and there's pink ones and there's yellow ones. What are they?

That's what we call the regia or napaulensis hybrid.

So they hybridise freely within each other

and, of course, you get the various colours.

But they're monocarpic. They grow up over four or five years,

-flower, set loads of seed and then die.

-I've got to sow the seed fresh.

You've got to sow the seed, but if they're happy in your garden,

-they spread around, which is great.

-OK.

-So we've perennial forms, we've got sterile forms, monocarpic forms.

-Yes.

-It's really quite complicated.

-It is, actually. This one here is sterile.

Again, we speculate inbreeding depression has made them sterile.

-OK.

-So we just divide them now and produce plants that way.

-That way, you get exactly what you see?

-Yeah, it's a clone therefore.

But there are also some little gems around here which spring out at you.

There's one in the scree, which is absolutely charming.

That's horridula, we call it, anyway.

But it's aptly named, cos of the spines.

You wouldn't want to grab it. In its native habitat,

-it's quite rocky, in the Himalayas.

-Right.

-So it's a good place for it.

Well, then, did you enjoy that wee trip to Branklyn?

-Absolutely fantastic! What a brilliant garden!

-It is indeed.

So many plants, so much to see

and, of course, it's open for, you know, seven days a week.

Get down there and have a look at the poppies, cos they are just brilliant.

-Here we are in the fruit cage.

-Look at this.

-Good news.

Absolutely, Jim, look! The growth on this is phenomenal.

And since it was released from the polytunnel.

It's gone, "I'm outside, I'm going to grow!" It's doing incredibly well.

Wee bit better than this. Mr River's Early Prolific plum.

-It's not very prolific, is it?

-It's not.

But there's a lot of plants like this around the countryside.

-Partly weather.

-Partly weather. A lot of this too, I think,

maybe this plum curling aphid, or leaf curling aphid that's on there.

-We need to get some growth into that.

-OK.

-Get some nitrogen into it,

-so we'll give it a feed with that.

-Really?

-Aye, straight nitrogen.

-Get the thing growing, because if I can get this to grow...

-A handful?

A handful, around about the base, and then we get this thing growing.

And if it grows, it's like you and I.

We're challenged in the follicle area.

If we get our hair to grow, then we can do something with it.

I'm off to do something else with a better plum. There's one over here.

Well, it's only a matter of about ten feet away from that other one.

And if you look at it, it's clean as a whistle.

This is the Victoria plum which last year was groaning with fruit.

This year, well, I think it's going to have a wee rest.

I'm going to take the chance that, while it's resting like this, I'm going to take the young growth,

this stuff here, and train it out flat.

We're going to try this as a fan in an espalier form

and, that way, we'll increase the fruit

by taking the shoots out at right angles to the main stem.

So that's the idea behind this. I think Jim's got some other ideas,

as far as, you know, sort of playing with his cordons are concerned.

Well, what I was doing with the vines there a wee while ago,

I'm about to do with these cordoned redcurrants and gooseberries.

All of this growth is extraneous. It's not what's necessary.

So I'll cut these young shoots back to about, you know, a hand span.

Every one of them. Apart from the fact that it might actually get rid

of some greenfly, if there is any, in the tips.

But there you go. And what am I doing?

We've still got the same size of root system

taking in the same amount of moisture and food,

and it's all going into these lovely, lovely fruits.

In prospect. And the plants are wonderfully clean.

Same thing happens with gooseberries.

Here is another point about growing gooseberries as cordons.

You can get in to prune them. I'm going down here.

I'm going to take that one off, and that one off, and so on.

And doing that all the way up. You can do that

and you can get at the fruit without getting your hands scratched.

These are the carrots that we sowed about six weeks ago.

They're little round carrots. We're at a stage where they need thinning.

What you want to do is select the seedling that you want to keep,

hold onto that, and then pull away the other seedlings.

And what you want to do is, as soon as you've done all this thinning,

dispose of those, because you don't want to attract the carrot root fly.

While we're here on the decking,

it's worth having a look at our Jubilee display.

It really is looking absolutely superb and full of diamonds.

I've devastated the fig, OK?

A wee bit more devastation for you before we go.

This is thinning out of the fruits.

The peach produces far, far too many.

If you leave them, the fruits will be small,

really not very sweet, not very succulent at all.

So what I'm going to do is thin them out.

Now, we want to make these about one hand span apart.

So, I'm going to have to take off quite a number of fruits.

I can hear you shrieking at home again

about the devastation that this man is causing.

But that's what we have to do.

Take off these fruits, make sure that the ones that are left

are then going to swell and make decent fruit eventually.

I seem to have had these secateurs in my hands all day,

so I'm going to finish off doing a bit of pruning of this comfrey.

One of our favourite wildflowers, of course.

Very colourful, handsome plant.

This, of course, is the cultivated form which goes under the name of

Bocking 14, which is exceptionally good for composting.

Here, I'm saying what we can do now is to take a crop of this Bocking 14

by cutting the stems back when they're all nice and clean.

And that is chopped up, onto the compost heap.

That's how we choose to use it. Some people

put it into a bath and press it and wait till the liquid comes out,

and they make liquid feed out of it. Ah, I cannot be bothered with that.

But this makes a great ingredient to the compost heap.

Well, I often think that people that have an alpine garden

are going to have a lot of colour in the springtime.

-But this is looking colourful just now, isn't it?

-Absolutely.

-So, if you were to pick something, Jim?

-The plant that you and Lesley have been trying to kill.

-LAUGHTER

-That wonderful little cotoneaster

-that hugs the rocks.

-Contain it!

-It's in full flower at the moment.

-Wonderful the way it flows over.

-Great for wildlife!

Absolutely. Then I would go for the helianthemums, these rock roses.

That's a great yellow, but there's pinks and reds.

Just absolutely brilliant in a dry scree-like place or a rock garden.

I rather like this that's running a bit wild.

-The fairy foxglove, or Erinus alpinus.

-Easy for you to say!

-Lots of different colours we've got.

-Aye!

-Quite precocious, isn't it?

-It is, yeah!

And then what about the orchids we've got in flower?

-In our wildflower... putative wildflower meadow?

-Yes!

-They've...

-Dactylorhiza, by the way.

-Yes, but they've just come up.

Nobody thought about them. They didn't bother, they just came up through the grass.

-Absolutely stunning.

-They like it.

-They do.

If you'd like any more information about this week's programme,

perhaps all those fruity items that you two were doing?

It's all in the fact sheet.

And the easiest way to access that is online.

Don't forget as well, new for us this year,

we have Twitter and Facebook.

-We've been twittering for years!

-For ages!

What does that autocue say? We'll see you on the 12th of...

-What?!

-What?

-12th of July?

-Yeah?

-Somebody's got their calendar wrong.

-OK, if it has to be, until then.

-We'll see you.

-Bye-bye.

-Bye!

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