Episode 2 The Beechgrove Garden

Well, hello there, and welcome back to the Beechgrove Garden.

I can tell you that the weather has improved since last week.

Well, the snow's almost gone, but it's still as cold.

It was a -2 at home this morning when I left.

So we've still got to be very careful,

but we're in the business of propagation for the most part.

But if you blinked last week,

you might have missed a little reference to seed potatoes.

I was talking about the fact that the sprouts,

or chits, if you like,

are just beginning to come

and they're nice and dwarf. They're really good.

Is it time to plant? I did say then it wasn't time to plant,

but believe me, we're getting letters -

well, they never stop all over the winter -

"It says in the book that we should be planting our early potatoes."

You forget the book.

You go by the soil conditions.

And I can tell you that the temperature of the soil,

six inches, 15 centimetres down,

is about five, thereabouts.

I'd be happier when it's up to seven, eight, nine.

And then we can plant.

Now then, back to the propagation thing.

We've been really busy amongst the chrysanthemums, for example.

This cut-back old stem,

this is called a chrysanthemum stool,

and from the base... Last week, I was talking about dahlias.

Here we have beautiful cuttings,

ready to be taken, about that long.

And here we have one that's already potted into its medium here,

with a little bit of feeding, coming along quite nicely.

But we were only confident about propagating from them

after we'd dealt with a problem.

Last year, our stock was infected

by chrysanthemum eelworm.

Leaves were falling, leaves were badly marked.

Well, you wouldn't propagate from diseased stock,

so these fellas in January were dipped in water at 46C

for five minutes.

Not a little more, not a little less.

It's a very precise business -

a bit footery, as I would say.

Nonetheless, we've got fine cuttings that are coming along delightfully

and we hope we will have clean stock.

At home? We're busy there as well.

And I really brought these in simply because

we use this little pot.

Roots coming through, geraniums.

Verbena...there they are.

And these have just been sitting

on the kitchen windowsill,

getting plenty light, and watered from the bottom -

coming along nicely.

Now, tuberous begonias. If you want to propagate from tuberous begonias,

you've got two ways of doing it.

You can actually split the tubers.

Now, this is a tuber of a variety called Hatton Bedder

from just up the road from here.

It was born and bred, so to speak.

Big tuber, a bit difficult to handle.

How do we propagate that?

Well, we can split it. And if you leave it until now,

until you see all the little sprouts coming up,

you know where you can split.

If I just want to make two of it, I can go through here.

But the thought is I could go through there as well and get a third.

It depends how greedy you are.

Now, that's beyond me

to put a knife through that. So how do I do it?

Quite simply...

Pick my spot, just about there...

and then hit it a skelp.

OK.

Seems brutal, but I assure you

the tuber will be perfectly OK

when I've finished.

Well, quite obviously, you've got these wet cut surfaces

and they have to be protected.

You can use lime

or you can use talc!

At one time, we used sulphur,

but that's no longer available, so there you go.

They're still tender pants.

They still need nurturing, a bit of TLC.

They're going to be in these greenhouses until well into May.

You may pot them up into baskets or whatever,

but they must be protected.

Now, if you don't fancy that,

or if the tubers are not big enough,

of course, you can actually grow them on

till these little shoots become available as cuttings.

Then we're back again - cuttings, into a proper cutting compost

and into the heated frame, as we've been doing with all these others.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the programme...

The original plan was for me to be planting out herbaceous this week.

However, that plan has been very firmly placed on ice.

And how does hairy string stop spiralled roots?

Wait and see.

Well, it's more chat about tubers, but this time, it's all about artichokes.

It's Jerusalem artichokes that we grew last year.

We had them in a border and we also had them in barrels.

And, well, this is some of the crop,

because we've stored them over the winter time,

and, of course, if you store them, you can grow them year after year.

And this is a variety called Fuseau,

so this is a named variety,

which I'm quite impressed with

in comparison to just our common Jerusalem artichoke.

The tubers are really quite tiny,

so, of the two, I would recommend the named variety.

And as I say, we grew them in barrels, we grew them in the borders,

and actually, the best results were in the barrels,

and I think that's just because of the season.

It was so cold, it was so wet.

We didn't even crop them until November time.

And then, we've a different type of artichoke here.

This is the Chinese artichoke.

Never grown this one before.

Rather strange-looking tubers.

And they are really nice to taste.

You can eat them raw. They're lovely and crunchy

and they've got a nice nutty flavour,

or they're great in stir-fries.

Now here we've got our gladioli corms

and these have been stored over the winter time.

This particular one is nice and firm.

But I'm afraid quite a few are really soft.

They really are quite rotten.

And really, the important thing is to make sure

that you dry them off properly when you lift them.

In our particular case, though, I think it was when they were stored,

they were quite humid,

and that's what's caused the rotting.

You really need a dry place with good ventilation and frost-free.

Now onto a new project for us.

And this is growing some wild flowers.

We're going to eventually add these to our wild flower area,

but I want to grow them from seed, grow them on as plug plants.

And I've got a dozen different varieties.

And the ones here in this container,

they actually need a special treatment.

The primrose, the betony and these lovely cowslips,

they need a cold period to initiate or stimulate germination.

The rest of the varieties, though, it's the standard way of putting them in a pot

and we'll give them a bit of heat - round about 18 degrees Centigrade.

And you fill your pot with compost,

and if you can make yourself one of these presser boards, that's great.

Just sort of press the compost down gently.

Or if you don't have that, just use the bottom of a pot

and that works perfectly fine.

Now, the variety I'm going to sow at the moment is greater knapweed.

Now, you could tap the edge,

but because of the size of the seeds,

I prefer to put them into my hand.

I think you've got better control

and then you can spread them around the compost,

making sure that they're not sown too thickly.

And, in fact, with the number of seeds I've got here,

I reckon I could probably do a couple of pots,

because if they're too close together,

you get really leggy seedlings

and possibly damping off as well.

So I'll just put those back in.

And do check on the seed packet

as to how much you should cover them.

I've got a variety here called yarrow,

and when you look at the instructions there,

you shouldn't cover them at all -

they actually need the light to germinate.

Then get your sieve,

lightly cover this...

Then you've got to water it in,

and then we will put it under a little bit of heat.

My original intention for this week

was to be up to my ankles

in new herbaceous perennial border.

However, as you can see,

our mercurial climate states otherwise.

And that means I get the chance to unlock

one of the greatest secrets in creating beautiful gardens -

the art of crafting boundaries and structure.

And there's no better place to start than here

at Crathes Castle.

Originally laid out in the 15th century,

the principles remain as true today as they were then.

Chris Wardle is the current head gardener -

one of only four men in the last 100 years

to be custodian of this most theatrical garden.

What's remarkable about this space is the dominance of the prunus.

I mean, it's a monstrous specimen.

This must be part of the original plan.

This tree here goes back to around about 1700, 1702, something like that.

We speculate a lot about the tree,

because it's only ever in etchings or pictures,

but we know that something was in here.

We know there was artistic licence,

but we know that it's as old as that.

And it's a fantastic focal point for the centre of the garden,

because it allows everything else to hang off it,

and that's what gives you

somewhere to come to, to then jump off

to the other parts of the garden.

To have something which is quite as monumental

being the hub, it draws you in from wherever you are

in this section of the garden,

but in its original form,

it didn't have these axes running off it.

So when do these gardens date back to?

Well, what we're in here

is a modern creation that comes from the 1920s into the 1930s.

Another part of the garden is a lot older

and it has an older feel to it,

whereas everything that is here was hung around this.

This tree was growing here.

There was probably fruit and vegetables in production.

You have to use your imagination during the winter,

but in the summer, each of these axes comes alive

with a very different personality.

There's so much going on here. At the moment,

it's this big, wide, open expanse.

You get a chance to see all the areas.

You can look through the garden.

Whereas, when the summer comes on, the borders grow up,

it becomes a lot more intimate.

And during the summer months,

behind us here, now the fountain is the focal point

at the lower end of the garden.

But those are white borders,

a pure white montage.

The white borders are fascinating.

The twist that the designers of the gardens,

Lady Sybil Burnett in the 1920s,

how she chose to use purple

as a foil for the white...

And this is the Prunus pissardii,

where you can see it very heavily pruned as a hedge.

Well, we pollard it at this time of the year,

so it doesn't give you the full effect.

But by pollarding it, cutting it back hard

when everything is down at this time of the year,

that is another aspect as well.

You've got structural shapes, and you can look through the gardens.

But as they grow up in the summer,

then it gives you that wall

to divide the gardens and hence create spaces.

One of the interesting gardens we've got here

is the Gold Garden, just off to one side.

And that is a fantastic garden.

Our visiting public, it's their favourite garden.

It's the one they all sit in, even on a dull day.

It's light, it's spacious.

It's an interesting garden because it's the one

that we put the most effort in,

but the one that looks like the least effort has gone in.

What fascinates me about the way you're describing the garden

is that you're painting a wonderful verbal picture of promise

of what is about to happen.

And yet at this time of the year,

what we see is the structure -

it's the hard form, the hard geometry -

which, in a way, holds all of that personality together.

It's the dividing points between those personalities.

It's only at this time of year you can really get to see it.

The highest possible vantage point

affords the best views of structure in the garden

at this time of the year.

And up on the castle ramparts, you get the perfect view.

Here you can see the successive layers of terracing,

each creating a very defined level

at which the planting takes place.

The enclosing walls that radiate warmth back out.

And those really confident, striking axes

and cross-axial lines.

It's division and subdivision

and further subdivision,

each creating a narrative,

one flowing narrative,

that allows you to move throughout the garden,

taking the personality of each space into the next chapter.

And over here you get a real sense of just why this garden works.

Look at the way the topography in the distance

is creating layers of shelter

from the onslaught of the wind.

And then a bank of deciduous woodland to further filter it.

Massive new hedges, 20 feet or more high,

which help to just soften anything which then gets into the garden.

It's this culmination of structural planting and material

which means that the joy of this garden

can erupt once the sunshine emerges.

A grand castle garden is optional

when it comes to making the most of boundary and structure.

Here's a great way of doing it, even in a confined space.

Narrow the path down at a turning point,

line it with box hedging

and have a stone threshold,

which announces the emergence

of a different chapter within the garden.

And here in winter, the focal point is an urn, arching cherry,

and a bench off in the distance.

The whole point of this is that it tempts

and teases you to explore.

Think of the principles as a theatrical experiment,

designed to provoke emotional response

from grand openness in the herbaceous borders

down into a subtle narrowing.

Here, enkianthus, enshrouded in lichen,

gives the impression of enclosure.

But rather perversely, the nature of this deciduous canopy

affords glimpses and views

that allow the eye to infiltrate to the delights beyond.

Unlike this, where the monumental scale of the hedges,

their proximity and fine texture

all conspire to absolutely limit the view.

There's nothing timid about it.

It's the designer grabbing the viewer by the scruff of the neck

and saying, "Look at this!" Enclosure and now exposure.

Pure artistry.

Isn't that fascinating to see the garden in winter with the snow on the ground?

You certainly can see the structure.

But more of Chris at a cold Crathes later on.

Meanwhile, here in the veg tunnel,

Jane and I - the head gardener... Well, the temperature's rising.

..are going to look at the show veg.

-We had reasonable success last year.

-We did really well.

Can you remember your excitement?

-I know.

-You can't wait to get your hands on it again!

Now, look at that. That was a prize-winning beetroot.

And if you look at this thing that was a down-pointer on this,

it was the fact it had spiral roots.

They criticised the spiral rooting in it.

-Would you believe it?!

-I know. Marked you down.

So what I did was, I went and asked one or two of the growers what they would do

to try and avoid the spiral roots,

and I got an answer.

And we'll try it. What they do is,

they put a piece of string with a wee lump on the end

down the hole. Right? So that's a lump there, like that.

Drop that in. And that goes right down to the bottom of the hole

and then you put the soil in.

So if you put your compost in...

and that goes into the top of that.

And what it does is... You pour it in. I'll give it a shoogle.

It'll all go down to the bottom.

Now, what happens when you put this in with a funnel like this

-is that generally, it goes in spirally.

-Yes.

It goes down in a spiral.

So no wonder the roots grow like that.

-A bit more, George?

-Just a little bit. Not much. Thank you.

That's fine.

So what will happen now

is that we will take that

and we will pull up the piece of string.

And what that does is, it dislodges the compost.

And you can see that it all slumps back down again,

-so that means it's lost the spiralling.

-Mm-hm.

And that is going to then be just absolutely right.

No spiral roots, we hope.

They'll just grow long and straight, won't they?

Now, tell us what your secret formula is this year.

Well, we've chosen a soil-based potting compost

and we've added perlite and sand to that

to improve the drainage and the aeration.

We've also got a secret blend of fertiliser.

-You've nearly thought of everything, haven't you?

-Nearly. But I've got something else.

-Go on.

-Do you remember, when we opened these pots,

that the root tips had grown down into the soil underneath the pots?

The roots at the end were really, really thick.

And it was very difficult to get them out. So what we've done is

excavated out a pit underneath each of these, and filled it with sand.

-Not just a pretty face, eh? You've been thinking about it. Well done, you!

-I have been thinking about it.

-Now, this side?

-We've got a row of pots

and we've got some rather special leeks!

-Look at this.

-Look at that.

These have been grown on specially for us.

It was Arthur Provan that grew these on, National Vegetable Society of Scotland.

And I picked them up just the other day.

So they've been grown in heat and light to get them to this stage.

We'll keep them in heat and light for a little while

and then we'll plant them out in about ten days.

-We'll put some in here, and then we'll plant others out into the bed.

-Yes.

Yes. And we'll earth them up.

Because we want to get about six inches of white onto them.

And get them about six inches round -

something like that,

right round the top, so it's going to be a challenge.

And in these pots at the front, we're going to put carrots.

Yes. And it's the usual one - it's Sweet Candle

-and some of the other ones.

-OK.

So lots and lots to do.

But not just here. We've got other things to sow in the potting shed.

We've got to go and sow some of the exhibition long-pod bean,

which we put out the challenge about last year, didn't we?

Yes, I remember.

-No pressure, then, Jane(!)

-No!

Well, that project of Mr Anderson's is long-term.

Mine is much more short-term

and I'm looking for heat.

Now, we've talked about soil being cold and all the rest of it.

Well, it's time to go back to the old days.

We're talking about a hot bed.

We're creating a hot bed.

And the basis of it for the heat for nothing

is manure.

It happens to be horse manure with plenty straw.

And that's the key to the whole thing.

If you cover this up, it will produce heat by itself

and it doesn't cost you a penny.

So we were fortunate enough to come across a source.

The straw is important.

The bulk of it is important.

And the muck comes from horses that have been well-fed,

so it's always been the best of muck.

So we've got about that depth...

consolidated in this raised bed here, of that.

Then, young Mr Beardshaw, when he was here last week,

he suggested we maybe put in some carbon,

some of this charcoal - biochar.

Well, we've actually put in a wee layer. It'll sweeten it, you see.

It'll make them taste better.

What? Coming in a minute.

Then we've got so much of the soil that was already in here.

It's a mixture of soil and compost.

The hoops are in place,

because as soon as this is filled up,

we will cover it with polythene

and wait for the heat to come up.

Well, in fact, before we started,

I shoved the thermometer into the dung here

and it shot up to 50.

That's ten C.

And I'd been talking earlier about six, seven, eight,

you know, to get germination.

So it's already gone up.

I have to say that since then,

it's gone down because it's open to the air.

But once it's covered up, temperature comes up,

the whole thing is ready for planting.

Hardened-off lettuces,

but also sowing radish,

carrots, turnip, salad onions in here.

And just stand back and watch them go!

I can tell you, we'll get some earlier crops

than we will across here.

Because we'll put the same crops in here, which is a simple raised bed.

We will cover it with polythene so it's got an equal chance,

so to speak, but it'll be quite a bit longer

before these plants start to mature in here.

Time alone will tell.

Now then, I've just been describing creating an environment

to grow salad vegetables quickly at this time of year.

It's time to go back to Crathes now,

where Chris is talking to head gardener Chris Wardle

as they look at the conditions and the kind of environment

that's been created there to grow the wonderful plants that they do.

There's an obvious aesthetic reward

to creating these successive layers of structure and protection,

but there's also, of course, a horticultural reward.

There's a physical reward in the plant material you can grow.

When the gardens were put together,

the concept of using the layers of protection

has great pay-off

for what we can horticulturally do within the garden.

For example, down on the wall below me here,

we have a daphne in flower

and a sophora.

These are all exotic specimens

that you wouldn't necessarily expect to be performing in quite that way

this far north

in a garden like this.

But with the way the garden is set out,

because we have these layers of protection,

then we could constantly trial and use each of those areas,

and it's a great concept to apply to all gardens,

because then you can start to push the boundaries

and really look closely at what you can grow within that environment.

Talking about pushing the boundaries,

towering over you is a Eucalyptus gunnii here.

Now, further south, in the Cotswolds, where I am,

there isn't a single eucalyptus that's performing really well.

They've all been wiped out by a succession of really harsh winters.

And yet yours... Well, you've lost the head of it, but the rest of it is looking pretty healthy.

So it demonstrates that, if you put the right structure in place,

you can nurse plants through.

Even more so, can get plants to start to thrive.

This arbutus over here...

It's from California. What on earth is it doing here?

When you look beyond the context of where the garden actually sits,

we're protected on the north side by a hill.

Predecessors, 200, 300 years ago

knew that they needed to protect this environment,

so they planted the policy trees.

And then, way further out,

we have then another layer of protection as well.

And we have the hills beyond that.

So there's layer upon layer upon layer

of microclimates heading down to where we finally are here.

And these walls, of course, perform a fantastic function.

Not only do they divide the garden up and create the terraces,

but they also create lovely warm spots,

south-facing, and the heat radiates back out.

And you've got some interesting specimens over here too.

A wonderful paulownia,

with the thicker stems and slightly hirsute.

The paulownia will have big leaves

and if it ever gets to flower,

if we get a hot enough summer,

it should have a thing that looks like a foxglove flower on it.

That'd be quite something against the blue sky like today.

And then the more delicate, twiggy nature of koelreuteria.

These are specimen trees

that should be really on the edge.

But here we have our heat-source radiators here.

During the day, even with low sunshine in the sky,

the heat is soaked in by these walls

and it gradually gives it out over the night,

so you'll never get that low temperatures

and everything is really buffered,

and that gives you just another aspect

of how we can play with the little microclimates we've got.

You're not entirely protected here,

because you have some extreme conditions.

Not last winter, but the really hard winter of two years ago,

we went down to -16, -17 degrees, stayed there for three weeks.

We had a total snowfall depth of 63 inches here,

but with using the walls, the shelter, the climate, everything...

I know it's a hot topic at the moment,

and I think the snow is not going to be good for everybody, but it's actually your friend.

It can help to insulate and blanket the plants,

and then it can work in your favour.

Don't fight nature - go with it.

Do you think when Lady Sybil Burnett originally conceived and laid the garden out,

with its successive layers of structure,

would she have anticipated

the level of protection that her horticultural specimens would have been afforded?

I think she knew what she was doing.

She was collecting plants, talking to other people

and thinking about what that protection could do within this garden.

She knew what she was doing,

and that's allowed us to then take the garden forward.

This is an autumn-flowering gentian

which I've been growing in a pot,

but it's got quite congested and I want to reinvigorate it,

so I'll pull off some of the old foliage that's on the top there.

This comes away quite easily, the dead material.

Then you're left with these fresh young shoots.

Now, on the top,

we have the shoots, and underneath those,

this wonderful arrangement of thong-like roots.

Now these are the ones which give it the energy

to grow right through the summer,

produce lots and lots of foliage,

and then big buds and superb flowers,

which will appear somewhere around October, November,

because this is a late-flowering one.

So, if you rush, you've still got time to do it.

Plant them out in the garden, split them up that way,

or, indeed, grow them in a container with ericaceous compost

and you can move it around the garden to where the sun strikes it

in the autumn period.

It's quite some time since we looked at our fedge,

which is defined as a living fence.

Made from willow,

it comes at this height,

gives you an instant barrier,

and it the first few years, it leafs out all the way down,

but with time,

all the growth has gone to the top.

You can see where we've been cutting back the top growth.

In the meantime, some of the shoots have died.

Here they are. And they will be cut back

to make room for a whole series of...

hardwood cuttings

planted into the base. Look at that.

Give them half a chance and they will start to green up

and we'll be back to where we started.

I would just like to take the opportunity

of looking at what I think is a really good planting combination

at this time of year.

We've got the wonderful hebe here, Red Edge,

which of course is evergreen

and it gives us interest for 12 months of the year.

And that foliage, well, it's a maroony-pink. I think it really is gorgeous.

And then next to it, well,

here we've got the sort of early spring interest,

with the stinking hellebore.

OK, you maybe don't like the name,

but isn't it lovely with these bell-shaped flowers?

Well, I don't think I've seen this jacquemontii bark looking better.

It's quite stunning, isn't it?

Absolutely. And normally, you see, if you rub your hands over these,

they come off with a dust on them.

But there's nothing there. I think they're enhanced!

I feel you've got to touch it, actually. It is beautiful.

And the gardeners, what they've been doing

is just using a soft cloth on it. Not a scrubbing brush or anything.

-I've heard people use a little nail brush to...

-Mmm.

They've little else to do with their time!

-But it's beautiful, isn't it?

-It is.

What about the bamboo? I think that looks great.

Like this birch, I think they're looking as good as we've ever seen them.

Don't go too close - you might disturb the panda!

Look at the colours of the stems on that.

It's a real golden colour, isn't it?

And the golden colour is echoed in the golden yew,

but also, look at the cryptomeria. Isn't that brilliant?

-Some people think it's dying, but that's the winter colour.

-It's the way it should be.

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

especially all those plant names, it's all in the factsheet.

And the easiest way to access that is online.

And don't forget as well, we're on Facebook and Twitter.

And next week...

And next week... Yes, I'm hedging my bets.

I'm under cover and I'm going to be looking at house plants.

Well, I'm having a humungous battle with a hosta

somewhere up in the Secret Garden.

So we'll keep a watch out to be sure you come back from that, George!

Well, with fingers crossed, toes crossed, legs crossed,

I MIGHT just get a few early potatoes planted next week.

-Until then, goodbye.

-Bye!

-Bye!

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