Episode 20 The Beechgrove Garden

Well, hello there. Welcome to Beechgrove.

Fine morning -

bit of a spit in the wind, so we better crack on.

It's hedge clipping time for us,

and we always start here with the Silver lime,

so-called because the back of the leaf is beautifully silvered

and we've got it at the back of our Silver Garden.

But the problem we have at the moment is this border here,

which was originally planted when the garden was created,

and we used Euonymus "Emerald Gaiety"

to make a little hedge.

Except that the blighter wouldn't come up the way -

it kept spreading out.

So that was thrown away.

In came the lavenders

and obelisks with clematis -

two hard winters, gone.

So here we are, third time lucky - a brand-new set-up.

A nice little hedge again - my colleagues are busy at it.

We packed catmint, holly and this nice lonicera.

Yeah - this is Silver Beauty.

We've not tried that one before, have we?

It's going to work this time.

Tell us about the soil, because it was lacking a bit.

-It was. It's been improved a bit, hasn't it?

-We've put grit in.

We've learned our lesson as far as the lavenders were concerned

that the wet winters just did for the roots,

so there's extra grit been put in there.

And a big dose of our own compost, actually, buried right down there.

And we've raised the level a little bit as well.

That'll make a big difference.

We do have a problem already, don't we,

with the variegated lonicera - a bit of a reversion.

It's going back to what it would originally be, Jim.

You know, you could go in there with secateurs and just cut this off,

but I don't want to.

What I'll do is break that out, and that way,

we'll take all the buds that are in the bottom.

It's a bit like a sucker, isn't it? Just rip it off.

I reckon that's a wee bit of legitimate vandalism.

-Difficult to say, but easy to do.

-Legitimate vandalism.

How will we grow the hollies? That's Silver Queen...a column?

Well, I mean, we did have obelisks before.

-We'll have obelisk. Big triangles.

-Ooh, big triangles.

It's very amenable to clipping and shaping.

-Yeah. Third time lucky?

-Yeah.

Hedging, I shall be talking about again later.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the programme...

-I'll let you guys get on with it.

-Thank you.

I'm in a real plant collector's garden this week.

There's loads of flowers, but as you can see,

lots of lush foliage too.

And you've built your house on a hill,

water on three sides,

lots of exposure, salt spray...

How do you garden in that?

Well, then, it's this time again - bulb planting.

You're thinking about Christmas, Jim.

No! I mean, all bulbs can be planted for troughs and what have you,

but for prepared bulbs, Christmas,

there's a very specific timescale, isn't there?

There is, with hyacinths in particular.

And you do say prepared -

-you've really got to make sure you get the prepared ones.

-Exactly.

They look the same as the unprepared ones, don't they?

They'll be treated so that they'll flower early.

But you have to follow a particular pattern, haven't you?

You've got to get them planted by the last week of September...

Yes.

..and they have to be ready to bring into the house

the first week of December,

so some of them need ten weeks to do that,

some of them might do it in less.

That's a point, isn't it?

When it comes to varieties of hyacinth,

one variety in a bowl we wouldn't mix them up?

I wouldn't choose to mix them anyway,

but some people like a mixture.

They'll react at different times,

so you may get them at different heights.

The other point I'd like to make, of course,

is when you do come to lift them out at the beginning of December,

you must be able to feel the flower in the neck,

it must be through the neck.

You can usually see it. There's, like, a bulge, isn't there?

If you actually take them into the warmth too quickly,

the leaves will come up and leave the flower behind,

and that's quite often a problem.

But first and foremost - yes.

I'm using a bowl without drainage, so I have to use bulb fibre,

because it's got charcoal in it and a bit of eggshell to keep it sweet.

It looks a bit different from the stuff that we've seen before.

It looks pretty yuck, I have to say.

But the other point is that people will say, "It's got to be wet." Yes.

"How wet?" I say, "That's how wet."

Then spacing -

well, I reckon you should have a finger's distance between them

in a bowl.

So not touching, but you see the noses.

They should be just coming through the top of the pot.

Now, I'm doing it slightly differently -

maybe it's slightly cheating, in a way.

But I'm putting them into pots and using ordinary compost.

The same as you, though - you can just see that dripping out.

Then it means that after they've been forced for that period of time,

when you bring them out, you can then plant them into a bowl

and make sure they're all at the even growth rate.

The other point, of course, is these pots have drainage.

They do. So ordinary compost is fine.

Ordinary compost is fine.

In fact, it's probably better than this gunge!

And then it comes to covering them up.

So we've used this for the last couple of years,

it's really quite successful.

It's the raised bed, a layer of sand.

So I plunge the pot in there - you could cover that with sand,

but what I'm going to do is cover it

with two or three inches of leaf mould,

and then you can quite easily check it.

These are going into a poly bag and into the garage,

the coldest corner of the garage,

cos that's the other bit about the programme -

these bulbs will not perform properly

unless they're kept at low temperature,

-and I mean about seven degrees centigrade.

-Frost-free.

Frost-free, but low temperature, to get the roots to fill the pot.

There we go, that's just about ready. It'll go into its...

I think Santa will be here if we don't get on.

THEY LAUGH

Do you know, gardening can be quite a stressful occupation,

and one of the things I use to de-stress is to go fishing.

And this is one of my favourite locations.

This is Coldingham Loch.

But I'm here to see Alison and Krishna Ramcharran,

who are in that house up there.

They're surrounded by water, at least on three sides,

and they have problems with wind.

HE CHUCKLES

What possessed you to build a house in this windy spot?

Well, we saw the wee barn,

and it was a sudden rush of blood to the head, I tell you.

We just had to buy the plot and build.

We did, fell in love with it.

So, you've built the house.

We have, and we've tried to make it as environmental as possible.

We've got geothermal underfloor heating,

we've got double glazing,

we've got solar panels on the roof for the hot water

and lots and lots of insulation,

so we're really nice and toasty on the inside.

And then you step outside.

THEY LAUGH

-It is windy.

-Blown away.

-It's windy all the time.

I mean, the wind comes from over my shoulder,

it's blowing on your face at the moment.

-Whooshing right down this hill.

-Absolutely.

You can't garden if you've got "huge wind problems", as they say.

THEY LAUGH

And that's what we've got here.

So what we'll have to do is create a bit of a shelter belt,

and we'll do that with a fence and some Netlon,

which is an artificial shelter belt,

then we'll plant on the inside of that

with one or two native and non-native species -

things which we know will resist the salt spray, which you get,

cos that's the North Sea, and also will look after this wind.

But your leg's crook.

Yes, it is.

I did it playing tennis,

not deliberately to get out of any of the work, but...

-Well, we'll find a job for you anyway.

-Thank you.

-Can you manage?

-I can.

Right, Calum, what's the score?

Well, we're putting the two end posts in first.

One up there, line between them, and then a couple more in-between

and then we'll run the wire across it.

-Do you want me to dig the post holes for the middle?

-If you like, aye.

-Oh, I see - hard, is it?

-It is, aye.

Oh!

-It's not soft, Calum.

-No, it's not, no.

Look at that, eh? Spot-on.

-Right, Calum. I think we need some help here.

-I think so.

Would you all like to come up, just for a second,

so they can explain what's going to go on?

Now...the idea is that we're going to establish a hedge here.

So it's quite easy, really - "he says."

What you do is you're just easing up here

and cultivating this one piece all the way down.

As you can see, you're going to hit stones.

Don't throw the stones away, cos we'll need them.

Calum will keep you right,

he'll show you where to dig and where not to dig.

-Meanwhile, Alison, you and I will go and get the plants.

-OK.

So we're going to take out a strip along the side of the fence here -

about 400mm, that sort of thing.

Here we go - this is the plants which we've brought for the hedge.

Now, the majority of these are British natives,

there's one which isn't.

But what we've got here is we've got some sloes -

sloe berry, excellent for gin,

but it's also a very good coastal plant,

it'll take a lot of wind, stand up to that no bother.

Then we've also got this one,

which does well in any sort of Scottish hedge.

This is hawthorn, makes a really good, tight hedge,

lots of nice berries for the birds.

And then on this other crate, we've got Rosa rugosa,

which is not really a native, but it's very hardy,

as far as salt spray is concerned,

and it will grow in quite adverse conditions -

and let's face it, we've got quite adverse conditions here.

Then finally, we've got holly.

Now, this is one which, if you walk along the coast,

you'll find it in little pockets, here, there and everywhere,

sown by the birds.

And it shows that it survives.

It's got a glossy leaf, so that will resist the salt spray.

There's the sort of thing we're going to be planting,

that's the size of the plant.

That's the depth it has to be planted in.

Now, do you want them in blocks or do you want them mixed?

How do you like eating your food?

Do you like to mix it up, or to you have it separate?

-I think mixed would be nice.

-Mixed? OK.

All that we need to do now - just watch -

they're quite small root systems,

and we're going to plant them against that back wall there,

so put the plant in,

push the soil round about it like that,

and press it down.

And then put some black membrane round the plants,

stop the weeds growing, and weight it down with stones.

We'll put wire and Netlon onto the fence posts.

Gosh, now...that's different, isn't it?

Feel the difference?

Yes, I do. Yes, I do.

-I don't think you were sure at the beginning.

-No, no.

Just that little sheet of fabric has made all the difference,

cut down the wind.

The hedge will grow, you can take the fabric down

-in about two, three years' time, all right?

-Right.

Saw the posts off at the bottom and use them for what you wish.

Now we can garden, cos we've got the shelter.

-Yes.

-OK?

But I think we've done enough.

-Krishna? Remember the job I said I had for you?

-I do, George.

This is it - you've got to plant these herbs over in that corner.

-Will you make sure he does it?

-I will.

LAUGHING: I bet you will!

Well now, as I mentioned earlier,

this is a time of year for hedge clipping,

especially in this part of the world for evergreen hedges -

we get questions all the time, when's the best time?

Early advice I got was the two months beginning with "A" -

April or August - are the time to prune your evergreen hedges.

We've got here the great Tsuga heterophylla,

the Western hemlock -

a much-underestimated hedging subject,

because you can see, of the five that you've got here,

this has reached the sort of height we're looking for

before all the rest.

And I can tell you, when you start clipping it,

and clipping it regularly,

you get it as tight-looking as the very traditional yew

which is behind me here.

But at the moment, the first clipping,

it's still very loose and it's quite difficult

so I put some guidelines - just a string at the top

and at the bottom.

As long as I keep my eye on that as I'm working through,

the important thing is not to take off too much to begin with,

cos you can't put it back.

You can always go back and take a little more, here and there.

And you want to try and build up a face, like so,

and this is what we're going.

We're aiming at an A-frame -

slightly sloping, slightly battered sides

and a flat top.

At that sort of shape, it's easy to keep it,

and that gives it its greatest strength -

say, for example, with snow lying on the top,

it will hold up and it won't get all bent and out of shape.

I've left the top for a while yet,

because we can then decide exactly where the top should be.

I would suggest, people putting in new hedges,

you shouldn't make them any higher

than you can get clipping them from the ground -

in other words, no steps and scaffolding and all the rest of it.

You'll please the neighbours if you do.

This is the day of the big show reveal.

If you remember, we sowed vegetables way back in March for showing.

Show vegetables - trying to grow the longest, the thickest,

the broadest carrots, leeks, parsnips and beetroot.

Today is the day, Jane.

-I'm really excited.

-We're looking to see what we've got.

-Look at that.

-They're not bad.

-That's not bad.

That's got tentacles on it.

-You're getting all excited, now.

-I am.

Are you all right, there? Am I crushing you?

I'll just stand here. You carry on with your scrabbling.

This season has been so difficult and so different to other seasons,

that's what we've...

I mean, look at the length on this, it's good.

-Don't snap it!

-Look at this.

I mean, that goes on for ever.

But the thing is, there's no width to it.

-No.

-No width at all.

Well, we've lifted our show veg

and we've put them onto our own show bench here,

and rather than be worried about them being the best there ever was,

or thinking they're the best there ever was,

we've invited Jim Williams, who is a National Vegetable Society judge,

to come along and judge them here today.

Jim, what do you think of those?

Absolutely superb, George.

I'm very impressed indeed by all your vegetables here.

-Apart from the beetroot, they're top class quality.

-Right.

This long carrot here, George,

I would reckon, if you were judging that...

It's a 20-point vegetable,

-and you'd be looking at 16 or 17 out of 20.

-Really?

-It really is top class.

-Well done, you! Well done.

Thrilled to bits.

Your stump carrots, again, superb quality, beautiful finish,

no marks on them at all, and as we all know,

Sweet Candle's an excellent quality eating carrot.

-Which is the better two?

-These two, George.

These are a bit big and a bit rough, and you can see they're out of shape

and have got one or two lumps and bumps on them.

-So you're looking for them really, really smooth and uniform.

-Uniform.

When you're judging vegetables, in the judges' guide,

there are three criteria which we really go for -

there's condition, uniformity and size.

And shape comes into it as well.

But ideally, the vegetables should be good condition -

clean, mouth-watering, no pest or disease on them

They've got to be fit for the plate, that's the key thing.

So the parsnips, how do they measure up?

Again, very good, George.

They're pure white, they've cleaned up beautifully.

No marks, no canker, good length.

And we've lifted these quite early, you know -

they could do with another month.

Again, they're excellent quality.

-Is that what's wrong with the beetroot?

-Lifted too early.

They've got length, but they've not thickened up yet.

We'll pass over these. Now, what about the...?

Again, pot leeks - I believe you got these from Arthur Provan.

We did, so we hope we've done them justice.

They're excellent.

They must be about 13 or 14 inches in circumference, good blanch.

It could've maybe been a wee bit better,

you could have done with a greater blanch on them.

So how could we have got a taller blanch on there?

Put the collars on earlier?

Slightly earlier and maybe increased the size of them

up to about six inches.

Ah, right, OK.

Now, there's wee white marks on this as well, Jim, a wee bit disfiguring.

-Is that a down pointer?

-I'm afraid so.

The foliage should be nice and green,

but that's a wee bit damaged, caused by a pest called thrip,

-just a small fly, and it causes these white marks on the leaves.

-OK.

-Right, go on, Jane.

-Well, those are my beans, my long pod beans.

-And these are the other ones.

-I think you've beaten me.

George's are slightly bigger, but when we're judging these,

-what we're looking for is the number of beans in the pod.

-Uh-huh.

Most judges would open one,

but you know you've got one, two, three, four, five,

six good beans in there.

And the more beans in them, the better.

-You want them as straight as possible.

-Ideally, yes.

-OK.

And then we come to one which always impresses me on the show bench,

-which are these peas - show perfection.

-Yeah.

-What are you looking for in those?

-Again, George, good quality -

you can see the natural bloom on the pods from here.

If you hand me on across.

Always handle them by the stem,

cos you rub the natural bloom off the plant.

Hold them up to the light

and you can count the number of peas in the pod.

Hopefully, you're looking at 11, 12, sometimes 13 peas in the pod.

Gosh! Right.

Now, we've got another one lying here,

which is...if it was the only one I had, I might put it in,

but perhaps not.

You can see, George, it's gone past its sell-by date.

It's getting slightly wrinkly

-and the peas in there would be a wee bit hard.

-OK.

Now, we've lifted these today, Jim, and as you say,

they look absolutely fantastic.

How can we keep these? Cos Jane might want to put them into a show.

Well, ideally, if you're lifting for a specific show,

you've got to lift them on the day of the show

and get them as fresh as possible.

But the likes of the carrots, if you wrap these up in a damp towel

and keep them somewhere cool,

they'll last up to a week before you have to show them.

So, fresh as possible.

So, George, I think overall, the quality's superb,

and apart from the wee local shows,

I think you could be showing at the National, very soon.

There's a challenge!

THEY LAUGH

Upstream from Inverurie and Aberdeenshire,

botanists Ian and Clare Alexander have spent the last 32 years

creating the most fabulous garden on a difficult sloping site.

One of the things that attracted us to this site for a garden

was the fact that we've got natural water here.

When we first started, you couldn't really see the stream,

cos this whole gully area in front of us was filled up with rubbish.

So it was a bit of a midden, Claire?

Yes, it was a midden - deep nettle and it was completely wild.

This whole area, really, was a bog rather than a stream

because the wall at the bottom had fallen down.

So a lot of effort in the early days went into building these walls

to break up the slope, and of course,

we had to line the stream, to keep it in the same place.

-To stop the flooding.

-Yes, because it does flood.

So presumably, it took you quite a while to do the hard landscaping?

It did, it took us at least ten years

to do the hard landscaping,

and after the hard landscaping, things get much faster,

because you put the plants in.

This area is very colourful in the early summer,

with primulas and meconopsis,

but we've planted it so there's year-round interest

with foliage, different textures and shapes of leaves,

different sizes.

That maintains interest, even when the flowers have gone.

I think that's really important.

I love greens and the foliage, I think it's wonderful.

But here's a bit of colour - this is unusual, what is it?

Well, this is a thing called Disporum smithii,

it's a relative of Solomon's seal.

In the spring, you get nice, cream, bell-like flowers, nice foliage,

and then at this time of year, you get these fantastic orange fruit.

Yeah, the fruits are amazing.

-Is it to easy to propagate from seed?

-It's very easy.

In fact, it does it for you,

because it throws seedlings and, if we look under here...

-Oh, yes.

-You can see the seedlings.

So you can dig them up,

and I pot them on or plant them out into other areas of the garden.

Now, you're both botanists, so does that influence they way you garden?

Yes, it does,

because we like to have plants in natural, ecological groupings -

shade lovers together, sun lovers together.

I don't mind mixing up the continents -

I'll take stuff from North America, Japan, China...

But if it's a hosta and it needs a shady woodland situation...

That sort of idea, yeah.

That feels a satisfying way to garden, and of course,

the plants tend to look after themselves,

if they're in the right place.

This is quite a contrast to the stream area.

It is, this is a completely different feel.

This is a very calm area, contemplative, with simple planting.

How long has that been in the box?

I think it's been in about three or four years,

and you can see that in parts, it's knitted together.

Not long, three years.

No - you can get a good effect quite quickly, yeah.

So about the same time as we put in the box hedges down there,

we had to work out how to get up from that level up to this level up here,

and we came up with the idea of these deep veggie boxes.

-And they've been very successful.

-Presumably quite easy to work with?

Very easy to work with - you can stand on that side

and you don't have to bend over to weed,

and the weeding is cut down hugely, because they're all gravelled,

and you've only got a small area of soil to weed.

We use biological slug control,

and that's very successful in the boxes.

We put on nematode eggs

and the nematode worms kill the slugs,

and we do that about three times a year.

As we wander around the garden,

-I notice you've got lots of slopes here.

-Yeah, we do.

This is one of the worst of them,

you need a mountaineering qualification to garden on here.

It's really just a gravel bank

and we put eight to ten inches of top soil on it.

We started planting, we didn't really have very high hopes,

but in fact, the plants do very well on here.

It's looking good - good drainage,

and perhaps not quite so frosty here as down by the stream?

Yeah, the cold air runs down the bank,

so they come through the winter well.

And what about the planting?

Well, it's...been a challenge to find plants that work well

when you're looking up at them, because there aren't many borders

where you're always looking up at plants.

What we've learned is the flat top plants, like the achillea,

you don't really see.

Oh, yes - they disappear, don't they?

They disappear, because you're looking up at them.

So what we've tried to concentrate on

is either plants that naturally like to fall forward

or plants that are either spires or globes, like the echinops,

which work very well, and the mornadas,

and the stipa's very nice and you can look up through it.

It's lovely.

Well, a flat part of the garden, and it's really colourful.

Yes - this is the floral part of the garden.

And we planted for a tapestry effect,

both of flower colours and of the foliage colour,

and the forms of the plants, to give a tapestry.

Now I recognise that plant as an allium,

but which one is it?

It's Allium pulchellum - rather lovely, dusty-pink flowers.

Very nice - and late flowering.

-And a lovely habit.

-Yeah, nice habit, yeah

This is one of our favourite spots in the garden, south-facing,

gets quite a lot of sun, so we can grow marginally tender things here,

hardier osteospermum, agapanthus, for example -

although it's fair to say the agapanthus go in

in the winter months.

-So they're in a pot.

-They're in a pot, yes.

-No cheating here.

-I get the impression that you work really well as a team.

-Yes, we do.

We do all the garden together,

we don't have a "his and hers" part of the garden,

and we discuss and agree on planting in all parts of the garden.

-No head gardener.

-Oh, that's nice to hear.

And do you catalogue all the plants? Do you know how many you have?

Yeah, there are about 1,400 plants and cultivars in the garden,

so we have a sort of catalogue that we try to keep.

I thought you would, as botanists.

But you actually opened under Scotland's Gardens this year,

for the first time.

Yes, this is our first time, and we'll do so again next year.

That's great - thank you.

This is Geranium "Pink Spice" - it has lovely coloured foliage,

but it doesn't show up well against the soil,

so we plant it in a container and I think it works really well.

Just doing a last bit of training of this Victoria plum -

the branches are still soft, they haven't lignified yet,

and this is the time to do it.

If you leave it too late,

they'll break when you try to bend them.

Might just have a look at the last of the goosers -

this is the variety Invicta, absolutely stunning.

And I stress again, when they're actually on a cordon,

they're a lot easier to pick.

Can't wait - I'm salivating just looking at these plums.

That's the variety Opal.

This year, we're going to have a go at sowing some hardy annuals

and over-winter them, and see what happens.

I've got half a dozen different varieties, so at the moment,

I'm sowing the "Poached egg" plant, I've got marigold and quaking grass.

I'm going to cover half of them with a cloche,

to give them a bit of protection,

and the other ones are going to be directly sown, not covered,

and as I say, we'll see what happens next year.

Three weeks ago, I sowed some fresh Meconopsis regia seed,

and look at that - it's germinated already.

I'm going to sow some other fresh seed today -

and that's the thing about sowing seeds,

they really have to be fresh.

This is a thing called trillium.

Now, it's a bit messy,

the seed pods are covered in a sort of jelly inside,

and the seeds are covered in it.

What happens in the wild, the ants will take the seeds away

and distribute them.

This is a woodland plant, so I'm using an ericaceous compost,

with a slight acidity in it.

I'm just going to sow the seeds onto the top of the compost -

they're a bit sticky, so it's a bit of a messy job.

But there you are - we'll sow the seeds onto that

and we'll distribute them over the whole of the pot,

cover it with grit, put it in a frame,

but it's going to take two full years before we see any results.

One winter and a spring to produce a root,

one winter and a spring to produce a shoot.

Don't tell me you haven't to wait for good things in gardening.

Well, you know, it's just over two months ago

that Carolyn and myself planted up the herb garden

-and this is your first time in it - what do you think?

-It's very nice.

It's a bit old-fashioned, but then you would expect that.

-That's right - it's herbs, isn't it?

-It's herbs.

They've fairly grown, though, I have to say.

The plants are doing really well,

although the slugs like one or two, don't they?

This Mertensia "Oysters" plant down here, it's getting blootered,

as they say - the slugs are munching.

If you'd like any more information

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

Next week, we're not here.

We're away up to Nessie country -

we're away up to Abriachan to help build an inspirational garden.

And I'm getting to visit a lovely little cottage garden,

I look forward to that.

Until next time...

-Bye!

-Goodbye!

-Goodbye.

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